Friday is a gloriously sunny day, exactly the sort of day when you walk the length of yourself several times over. Of the three tours we had been suggested to take, one of them seemed reachable on foot. Punta Loma was "about 4 hours walk away" said the chap at reception. "There you will see sea lions up close". Sounded good to us, especially if we could save ourselves $380 in taxi costs. All we had to do was follow the coastline south and we'd get there. Cycling would be difficult, we were warned, as the road is gravel for the most part. That doesn't bother us, we figured, we'll just walk along the beach all the way there.
Breakfast is a tasty basket of patisserie and fresh coffee. We collect our mound of laundry from the little lavaderia across the road, $65 to get all Sarah's clothes cleaned, plus a fair amount of mine too. Then to the supermarket for baps, cheese, salami and cheesy poofs for a picnic. Agua con gas completes our feast. Away we go!
This is La Tosca Hostel, and very nice it is too.
Puerto Madryn is a rather ordinary little town with a rather important touristic location, which makes it quite appealing.
Our destination stretches out before us. In the distance on the far left is Punta Este, which is about half way to Punta Loma. Take note of where the sea is at this point. This is low tide.
We took the shortest distance to our goal, right down on the edge of the sea, and splish-splashed our way for a few miles. The top of the beach, furtherest from the water, has beautiful golden sands and some dunes along the way, and you could happily spend a holiday here, no one around to bother you, lots of nice little restaurants to visit.
Once again, this is how far the sea goes out at low tide.
We made it to this little section, Punta Cuevas, where the famous Ecocentre is. Puerto Madryn is renowned for its marine biology faculty.
The museo del desembarco, all about the Welsh who arrived here in the mid-1800s. You see this dragon quite a bit.
An homage to the local Tehuelche indigenous peoples who helped the Welsh survive when they arrived here.
View of the land from Punta Cuevas
Ecocentre. More buildings behind it, including...
...a whale skeleton!
Not sure what this was. A naval installation was close by, and a old and rotten ship-launch stretched itself over the beach.
The landscape changed a little away from the town, as we got closer to cliffs. Suddenly we were on pockmarked stone with little pools of seawater and lots of marine life to water.
Glorious reflections.
Miles of little tiny crustaceans stuck to the rocks. Excellent walking surface though.
Every so often we would stop and load up a bap for lunch. Inevitably we would be attacked by sandflies.
At Punta Este we had to leave the beach and head up onto the cliffs. At various points along the way you could find little tents of people who had escaped the world and come here for a hell of a lot of privacy. Except that a few other people had had the same idea. Still, turn a corner and you were on your own.
From the top of the cliffs we could see just how far we had walked. 4pm had just passed us by, we had been walking for well over 3 hours. We figured it was time to head back. No doubt it would get dark round here pretty quickly at 8pm or so. Now where is the road?
We followed the tyre marks as far as we could through the scorched earth, up and down and round about. We saw how far the coastline stretched to Punta Loma. Anyone who walked there in 4hours needs some sort of Olympic medal. It is about twice as far as we have come.
The handbrake is a very important invention in these parts.
Still, it was worth the walk, even though all we saw were Oyster-Catchers and bloody sea gulls.
In the very, very far distance in this photo, on the left, you can see Punta Loma. Turns out it is about 17km away. Who walks 17km in four hours? Even I don't walk that fast!
Incredible blue skies, never seen that sort of deep blue before.
Inspiration for my new haircut, ho ho ho.
These are sharp, don't touch.
We found the gravelly road by watching the plumes of dust erupting every time a car blazed past. We resisted temptation to hitchhike back to the town, we weren't quite exhausted yet. The road was easy to follow, dead straight, and at least was solid underneath so you could make progress, unlike the sand of the cliff tops.
Back at punta cuevas we found everyone had finished work and come with their families down to the sea for the evening. A lovely environment, just lots of folk shooting the breeze and drinking gallons of mate. We did, however, notice that the tide seemed to have come in a little.
We wanted to live here.
Some sort of concert taking place here over the weekend.
Yes, the tide had indeed come in. Imagine that.
Compare with the photo earlier. It's easily come in by 100m or more! We learned the next day that all around Peninsula Valdés that the tide comes in at different times, so you can be clever and visit all the coastal wildlife hotspots at high tide over one day.
Far left, how far we got to.
Back at the hostel we book onto the tour to Peninsula Valdés for the next day, get showered, and take ourselves out to what we think is another branch of the popular Antares brewpub chain. Sadly, it wasn't, merely a restaurant that sold a few artisan beers. My dinner was ok, Sarah's was very so-so, and the pints were definitely the first ones out of the line. Not a great end to the day in Cheers restaurant unfortunately. Good job we have a load of guanaco to look at tomorrow!
Sarah's chicken wok noodle thing. Tasteless.
My roast lamb, patagonia style. Tasty enough, but thats about all I can say.
Home! Bed! Sleep! Up at 7am!
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