Penguins at Puerto Tombo (Ally)

We arrived in Pueto Madryn safe and sound if a little weary after our bus journey. We found a place to sleep no problem which was a relief. By 5pm we were starving and it was to be my first proper meal after 3 days so was really hungry! We struggled to find a place as everything was closed but we did find a pizza place much to our relief and then were in bed by 9:30pm (on New Years eve). Terrible! At midnight we were woken up by fireworks and fog horns and we watched them from our window - then went straight back to sleep. So not a very exciting new years eve. But we both felt really good the next day.

We did nothing!! But we did meet some lovely people (Meg and Adam from the UK) who we decided to hire a car with them the next day to go see the penguins. Another couple from New York also joined us and we had a super day. It took us ages to get there as it was all on dirt roads, it was raining and they drive on the left hand side here. G is an ace left hand driver!

G has taken loads of pics which he will put on the blog in the next couple of days but I will try to describe it for you. They are almost exactly like the Boulders one in looks and burrows. It is the biggest colony of penguins outside the Antarctic. The burrows started about 500m from the beach and stretched for over a km. We were able to walk amongst them and the noise was very loud and the smell was overpowering after a while! Just the sheer scale of the coleny was mind boggling. They looked so cute waddling to and fro from the beach and they were also very curious about us. Constantly checking us out. The chicks were reaching chick "teenage hood" and were starting to lose their down fluff so they looked very patchy but were nevertheless adorable.

Today G is going round the Vales peninsula to see if he can spot lots of sea birds. He saw many yesterday and was in 7th heaven.

Tonight we leave to go to Bariloche which I am very excited about. I think it will be very touristy but hopefully we can do some walks and some bike rides. After that the general plan is to cross into Chile and then go down south the the glacier national parks.

The largest colony in the world outside the Atlantic

We could get really close