Whale of a time!

Getting ready for our boat trip. I think the guide was more interested in Yaz than me when he took this picture...
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So finally we made it to Puerto Madryn, and after Bariloche it´s wasn´t exactly a party town and it was pouring with rain (Tourist Information promptly advised us that rain only occurs like twice a year in Patagonia!!).  But we were here for the whales so the day we arrived we booked our whale watching tour for two days later, the rain stopped us from going the following day.  Restaurants were a little sparse in P.Madryn but we finally came across a nice looking Parilla (Grill) place and I ordered the obligitory steak and chips...  We are in Argentina after all...  After ordering we looked around and everyone had these small grill-type things on their tables that had all sorts of lumps of meat on, and we instantly regretted not getting one of them to try.  The next evening we returned to the same restaurant and ordered the grill.  It was bizarre, and slightly disturbing... There were a couple of chunks of steak on there, and some lamb, but the rest of it wasn´t meat as we know it, and I mean intestines, blood sausage, and some unidentified lumps of some creature...  Anyway, needless to say, we ate the parts that we knew came from the right parts of the animal and left the rest, vowing never to order that again.

Wave for the camera...
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The next day we were up bright and early (by our standards anyway) and headed off to Puerto Piramids for our whale watching tour in the Atlantic Ocean.  It was awe-inspiring! The whales are huge, and I mean HUGE - I´ve never seen a living creature so big before in my life!!! And they´re nosey at that! As soon as they see a boat they go right up to it to check out what it is, literally bumping into it from the sides and the bottom... It´s hard to explain what it´s like out there, every couple of minutes you hear this real loud blowing noise, you look around and see this massive sea monster right next to the boat.  There´s no other word for it , it was amazing, and most definately an unforgetable experience!  Fortunately it´s also mating season so we saw groups of two (or threee ?!?!) at a time.

Big smile
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After an hour or two on the boat we headed for the Peninsula Valdez where hundreds of seals congregate to laze about on the beach.  This beach is supposedly covered with them and you and you can walk pretty close to them. We got there and there was ONE seal there! ONE! the guide was shocked! And this one was only there because she supposedly gave birth a couple of days beforehand...!  Anyway, not too disappointed having seen some huge Southern seals in Valdivia, up close and personal, we headed back to get an early night, ready for our onward journey to El Calafate the next morning.