Day 99 - Puerto Madryn

20 hours on a bus might sound pretty horrendous, but these days its second nature to us. After boarding at 8pm at night, half-sleeping at a 45 degree angle unable to get comfortable and playing bingo in spanish at 11am, we found ourselves in Puerto Madryn, on the Atlantic coast of argentina in the middle of Patagonia. Nothing much to do here, except to watch whales bobbing around near the coast. We trotted down to the beach where we could see whales in the distance splashing around, and dreamed of seeing them upclose the next day.



And up close is how we saw them. With no real expectation of what we would experience, we donned some life jackets, and headed 2 minutes out to sea where within minutes these enormous whales would swim under our boat, flicking their tails out of the water, and spraying from their blow-holes. These things are HUGE. At least the length and width of a bus, they were within 20m of metres of us and we were all transfixed. It was special.





But then we saw the good stuff. After rocketing out to sea for just 10 minutes, with the shore still in sight, our guide pointed out to sea where we saw something I never thought I would see in my whole life. From out of nowhere, this double-decker bus sized whale jumped out of the water, at least two thirds of its body, then crashed on its back into the water, spraying water everywhere and creating a noise like the dynamite we blew up in the Bolivian mines. It was unreal. I knew they did it, I'd seen it on the discovery channel, but SEEING it was unbelievable.





They carried on jumping for ages, seemingly defying gravity, and everytime we watched in awe. It was truely one of the most amazing sights I have seen IN MY LIFE, not just on this trip. And something I know I will never forget. AND THEN, as if we hadn't seen enough, one whale slowly approached our boat, until it was within touching distance. At just less than a metre from the boat, this enormous whale starts poking its head out from under the water so that it could see us with its eye. Then it starts poking it tail out, and spraying us with its blow-hole. No lies here, this whale WANTED to check us out, and even play with us. It was amazing. and for 20 minutes we just watched it. No wonder they are an endangered species, these animals think humans are fascinating.





But we couldn't watch them all day, even though we wanted to. We headed back to land, then mini-bused our way across the peninsula to a point where we saw elephant seals lazing on the beach in the sun. We were being destroyed by amazing examples of nature, at every turn a new species of animal or beatiful landscape. We wandere ddown to the elephant seals, just to be told that a week before we could have walked within metres of them, a week later and we would have seen penguins and a month later we would have see Killer Whales launching themselves ashore to eat baby seals then wriggling back to the sea. Bad timing. But what we DID see was unbelieveable. As we went to leave the site, we caught a glimpse of another whale jumping right next to the shore line. This place was magical.





As we returned, we hopped off at the bus station and booked our tickets to Cordoba, a 24 hour bus ride this time, then headed home for a Mate tea and watched some dogs leave the local Dog Brothel. Promised green parks, nice walks and a cute city, we boarded the bus and tried to make ourselves comfortable...