It feels good to stay put for a day, after spending the last 48 hours road tripping through the barren plains and fossilized rock formations of the Chubut province in Northern Patagonia.

The region’s two principal draws are its rich wildlife – including several marine species which you can get unusually close to – and more incongruously, the Welsh influences of an area that was first colonised by 153 Welsh settlers in 1865!

So, with three days in Puerto Madryn, I knew I wanted to make the most of those two attractions… but was soon disheartened to realize that once again, my guidebook was badly out of date when it came to prices: signing up for the various tours I wanted to take would seriously eat into my budget, yet I didn’t want to miss out on any of these unique experiences that the area promised to offer.

I was torn.

As I started chatting to my Irish dorm mate Debbie that night, we quickly realized that we wanted to see the same things and began to contemplate renting a car. We made a few enquiries and worked out that this would indeed save us a good few hundred pesos – so we enrolled a Swiss couple to carpool with us, and at 8.30 the next morning, the four of us were off on our 2-day Patagonian safari!

Day 1: Hanging out with sea lions and other strange creatures on Peninsula Valdes

Our first destination was the province’s touristic hotspot, the Peninsula Valdes national park, whose entrance lies some 100 kms North of Puerto Madryn.

Now let me tell you, driving in this part of Patagonia is an experience in itself! A surprising and pretty exciting one at first, although it soon grows rather frustrating and tedious as you follow the straight, flat roads cutting through the empty plains, and the kilometers begin to seem endless. The distances are longer than expected and you can go for miles without spotting a car (or anything else for that matter!), and it doesn’t help either that many of the ‘roads’ are in fact gravel paths where speed is limited to 60 km/h…

The only form of entertainment along the way comes in the form of odd little shrines to ‘Gauchito Gil’, a legendary gaucho who acquired saintly status in Argentina and is now revered with red flags and mini-chapels every few hundred meters on the roadside. I didn’t get a chance to stop for pictures, but if you want to see what these look like or find out more about Gauchito Gil, check out this blog post dedicated to the topic.

Two hours and tens of shrines later, we finally approached our first stop on the Peninsula: Punta Piramide, the region’s biggest colony of sea lions.

And sure enough, there they were, gleefully basking in the sun:

Knowing that whales weren’t in season, we decided to skip the South part of the Peninsula – where the latter can be observed between June and December – and headed straight for the North half. Another loooong, slooooow drive later, we reached Punta Cantor, Caleta Valdes and, finally, Punta Norte, where orcas, penguins and elephant seals can sometimes be spotted.

Unfortunately we had no luck with the above mentioned and, unlike the many people who had brought their deckchairs and were camping on the beach in the hope to catch a glimpse of the killer whales, we soon gave up and left the Peninsula with no orca-spotting story to tell.

The trip was not in vain though as we encountered other rare sea and land species, including the following:

We also saw different types of big birds…
 

… and more sea lions, including those two young ones who had wandered off for a walk and a swim:
 

After one last contemplative stop and a mandatory pose next to the whale skeleton at the visitors’ centre, it was time to face the three-hour car ride back to Puerto Madryn to the sound of cheesy Argentinian music…
 

Day 2: playing hide-and-seek with penguins at Punta Tombo

Day 2 was all about the penguins!

Joined by fifth musketeer Ruth from Germany, we climbed back into our Chevrolet early in the morning and braced ourselves for another 3-hour ride to Punta Tombo, a colony of over 200,000 Magellanic penguins.

Cue more shrines & sickly sweet Spanish pop on the radio…

We arrived at the colony by midday and set out on the 3 kilometer trail that crosses through the penguins’ breeding grounds. The particularity at Punta Tombo is that you are literally walking among the penguins and can get very close to them indeed!
 

There was obviously a giant game of hide-and-seek going on around the colony:

Other individuals however were more sociable – this chap for instance put on a pretty good show!

There seemed to be a few gatherings and war councils…

…although you could also spot a few lonesome cowboys:
 

In any case, the penguins of Punta Tombo all have to share their territory with guanacos, the Argentine variety of lamas:
 

It was a great experience getting so close to these two species and we all left with big smiles on our faces.

On the way back, we stopped in Gaiman, the centre of the Welsh-speaking Patagonian community. Gaiman has several museums retracing the history of the Welsh settlements, but visitors (including members of the British royal family!) come to the leafy little town mainly for its typical Welsh teas, something which Debbie and Ruth could not resist:
 

Slightly put off by the fact that the cost had almost tripled in just two years, I declined to join them in their tea party and wandered around the main square to take pictures instead…
 

Was it worth the 95 pesos they paid? Well, the girls agreed that although the food wasn´t that exceptional, the tea itself was one of the best they´d ever had, so you decide!

Like all good adventures, ours finished in a pub: to recover from our emotions and car fever, the now-enlarged Casa de Tounens gang (this is the name of the great, homely hostel we were staying at) went to check out Puerto Madryn´s most popular drinking hole, the Margarita bar, where I had my first – but not last – Pisco Sour!
 

I spent my three nights in Puerto Madryn at La Casa de Tounens, Hostelworld’s top-rated hostel in the area, and one of my favourite ever!

More than the convenient location or facilities, La Casa de Tounens stood out for its extremely convivial atmosphere. The Franco-Argentinian couple who own the hostel can welcome you in Spanish, English or French, and the homely communal facilities will get you chatting to other guests in no time: one hour after reaching the hostel, I was already cooking dinner with my new friend Debbie and had organized my road trip for the next two days (the owners can help you plan your visit and rent a car)!

You can book your stay at La Casa through Hostelworld using one of the links above. Alternatively, if you feel that your backpacking/hosteling days are over, I recommend looking for something a little plusher from the range of properties offered on Booking.com or Agoda.

Have you had close encounters with penguins or whales? Would you consider a ‘safari’ road trip in this part of the world? Would you have expected Welsh settlements in Patagonia?! Let me know in the comments below!

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