Sea lions, penguins and llamas - oh my!

Penguins!
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We arrived in Puerto Madryn eager for a shower after a 17 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires.  The buses here are actually fabulous, especially the night buses con cama (with bed), the time passes quickly when you can sleep in comfort and watch movies.  We were even served a hot dinner with wine!  Watching a disney movie dubbed in Spanish but with English subtitles for our benefit was also quite amusing.  With all that class, we just can´t figure out how you always end up smelling so terrible after the bus rides (maybe it´s all the time waiting in the sweltering heat with a backpack on.)

Elephant Seal on incredible beach.
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We were actually a little surprised by our first  glimpse of Patagonia - we expected that there would be trees...  It´s practically a desert here.  The land is wide open nothingness as far as you can see with only small scrubs and llamas dotting the landscape.  Puerto Madryn is on the coast though and our hostel is just a block from the Atlantic ocean so it doesn´t feel as much like a desert here as on the outskirts of town, except, that is, for the sand and dirt blowing in your face as you walk.  Our second day in town we took a tour to the famous Valdes Peninsula national park to see the wildlife.  Unfortunately, we did not see any orcas violently snatching restful sea lions from the beach, actually we didn´t see any whales at all.  However, we did see a lot of sea lions with pups, elephant seals, all kinds of llamas, a couple armadillo (larger then the ones in Uruguay), a glimpse of a grey fox, some little lizards, and my personal favourite - penguins!  We were also impressed by the fossilized beaches and cliffs and pretty unbelievable natural structure of the beaches.

Sea Lions.
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Our hostel here was pretty good - nice and clean and we only were without water for one day.  We met a couple other Canadian couples while we were here too - both knew where Powell River was!  We enjoyed a nice seafood lunch today with a couple of journalists from Edmonton, reminiscing together about the efficiency of Canadian institutions.  Our entire morning was spent in line ups today where we did not understand what was going on:  2hours at the post office to mail a package, half an hour at the bus station to book a ticket, 1.5  hours at the bank to cash a travellers check.  It really doesn´t help that they banks are only open for about 4 hours a day, the lines are unbelievable.  Nevertheless, a churro filled with dulce de leche (creamy carmel eaten on everything here, even on toast for breakfast) helps to make one forget about those inconveniences.

Whale skeleton.
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For several reasons, including time, money, and weather, we´ve decided not to travel any further south in Patagonia.  Tonight we are catching another night bus, this time to Bariloche in the Lake District of Argentina near the Chilean border.  We are planning on spending about 5 days there, it is supposed to be incredibly beautiful (as well as famous for it´s chocolate and ice cream).

Miss you all back home and hope that things are going well.

Sabrina