Hordes of Penguins

Oddly enough I felt somewhat spry after my 27 hours of traveling from El Chalten to Puerto Madryn. 9 hours consisting of two connections and bus rides and then a whomper 18 overnight bus ride. A large part of it is due to the business class-esque seats that we sat in during the ride. Although worrying about getting a visit from my busmates "las cucaraches" kept me from sleeping too deeply. Food was provided on the bus, 2 snacks and a hot dinner, which made us think "great we don't need to pack any of our own." Unfortunately for us we should have brought our own food, the stuff provided ranked as the worst food I've ever eaten, lower even than airplane food.

Puerto Madryn occupies a nice stretch of coastline with many wildlife observation/interaction opportunities. While we buying groceries a funny lost in translation occurred. As we were checking out at the grocery store Nafisa was confused because the cashier asked her if she wanted to pay three times. After some help from another guy we figured out that she asking us if we wanted to pay for the groceries in installments ! We respectfully declined and paid all at once. I was also amused by the cooler at the checkout line holding beer instead of soda.



We decided on seeing the huge penguin colony instead of the moderate size sea lion/ penguin colony combo. We had a wonderful guide named Diana on a cozy 15 person bus. For our morning break we stopped at a gas station with a hot water machine which reminded me of mate. A drink that takes the place of coffee for many South Americans



I don't think I've gone a day without seeing someone with their small gourd and thermos of hot water for mate.

We made it to Punta Toomba where we saw Magellan penguins everywhere. I'm talking about you didn't even need to look 5 feet from the trail to see one. They especially liked the bridges which provided them with a bit of shade. We worried for a couple minutes because we heard a lot of the penguins sneezing and we thought they were getting sick. Our guide laughed and said that was simply a way for them to get salt out of their bodies.




We left Puerta Madryn on a 14 hour overnight bus to Bariloche. I woke up several times in the middle of night and was amazed at how smooth the ride felt. Only once the sun started to rise did I realize that was because we weren't moving at all ! Our bus broke down but after a couple hours another bus rescued us and we arrived in Bariloche.

Location:El Chalten, Argentinia