Photo Upload: Patagonian Sealife

Continuing South on the coast of Patagonia we encountered some marvellous animals.

I recon the cormorants (birds) told a funny joke.

These are nesting holes for Megellanic Penguins. 500,000 nest at Punta Tumbo.

Going for a swim, they come out of the water much cleaner.

Waiting for an unguarded egg.

Guarding her egg (the males guard too, but they look slightly different).

Cavies! cute eh. They live around the Penguins, they are about fist sized.

Photo Upload: Whale Watching on Peninsula Valdes (and Orcas!)

Many people have been anticipating my Peninsula Valdes photos, here they are.

First Whales H and I saw there were this Albino calf and its mum.

Me, watching the Mum and calf swim away after having been about 15metres from us.

There were 2 dead whales on the beach. They stunk but the seagulls loved it.

This whale wasn't as long decayed. According to the dog the tongues the best bit. (another dog brought some to us as we sat on our chairs. H was ungrateful and kicked the smelly rotting meat away.)

See the whale and the people watching... the water is immediately deep so the whales can come in close.

Jump! If you get one jumping or tail flipping they usually did it again and again.

Even when there weren't whales it was spectacular, especially at sunrise.

Beach camped.

Orcas! (or, in English, Killer Whales)... I wasn't sure if they were but even the people at the Puerto Madryn Eco centre say they are, and everybody else does too. So that settles it? I was the only person on the beach when I saw them and snapped this picture. 

Photo Upload: A week in Chile

H and I had a week in Chile (we're going back though). Here's a little of what we saw.

In Argentine Patagonia the houses are often with walls of tin / corregated iron. In the lakes district of Chile we saw wooden houses more often.

Transporting timber.

Camping lakeside and waiting for the ferry to take us back to Argenina in the morning.

Photo Upload: Early Argentina

I have computer access! So here's some more photos from my first weeks overlanding in Argentina.

Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Andes. I just had a look rather than walking up.

Andean Condor in flight.

Argentine farmhouse.

From Europe to the Southern tip of South America: H's journey.

One of the most asked questions so far is how did we get to where we are (the location of which changes almost daily). So I will give you a brief summary. 

I joined H in Mendoza, Argentina, just 2 months ago. But his journey started from Belgium 3 years ago. 

He drove from Belgium to Denmark and ferried the vehicle from Denmark to Iceland, then shipped by container ship from Iceland to Newfoundland, Canada. Then he spent 2 years driving down and up and across in North and Central America. All of this was done with a girlfriend (now ex), who after 2 years decided they should go home. But H didn't go home, he shipped from Los Angeles to Colombia and continued travelling south, alone. 

At some point he got lonesome enough to put a notice on the Lonely Planet (ie guide books) travels forum to which I responded. He had other responses too, but I was the only one who wanted to keep on travelling long term. And so, here we are... travelling. 

Half a million penguins in one spot at Punta Tombo, Argentina

At Punta Tombo, on the coast of the Argentina Patagonia, there's about 500,000 magellanic penguins nesting annually. We were there super early in the morning, just finishing our walk before the 5 buses of teens arrived. 

Penguins are cute, we all know that. At Punta Tombo you get to observe a weird landscape, some with shrubs but at each metre another hole in which there is likely another penguin on his or her eggs (his or her because penguin couples take it in turns to mind the eggs while the other one feeds). This weird landscape goes to about a kilometre inland. 

The holes aren't deep so you can see into them. To manage the visitors there is a strict walking trail and board walk which provides plenty of viewing of all the aspects and the penguins don't seem the least concerned about people being there. 

Penguins are in the holes, wandering about amongst the holes, heading down to the beach for a wash and a feed, and others are returning to their hole/partner. Amongst the penguins, there are also little cavies (guinea pigs are in the cavy family) running everywhere. And the occasional guanaco (like llamas). 

Another bonus, being there so early in the morning (the first by a long shot), we saw 2 guanacos having a fight in the parking lot while we were cleaning up from breakfast, right outside the back door of the camper. Even the parkranger had his camera out. These animals have long necks and so the fight was mostly a kind of wrestle where they went neck to neck and tried to topple the other. Neither was successful and they eventually ran off. It was an exciting event to have such good viewing for!

Bagged earth building project at Camerones

As I've mentioned before, despite having a motor home H and I are doing a bit of couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.org) to meet some locals as we travel around. We still sleep in the camper but share some meals and conversation with locals by this participation. 

Via couchsurfing we found a project where a group of people are building houses using recycled and locally available products. A start has been made on a bagged earth house. 

The offer on couchsurfing was that you could help out to build these houses. I never committed to helping out, but told them we were interested in their project. (I've been caught before with projects that weren't what they seemed). 

When we arrived the host and his friend weren't in town, but it didn't bother us as we'd re-met with Dutch overlanders and went free camping out of town with them. 

Then the next day our host still wasn't back from the city, but his friend came back and we chatted and drank matè and set up camp in the 'hosts' backyard. Finally, after 2 nights the host got back from the city where he'd been purchasing materials for the building project. 

We enjoyed some interesting conversation and I enjoyed learning about what they were doing. But these guys aren't getting a lot done. It seems to me that what work they've done so far was achieved last time they had some travellers to help and they haven't worked on it themselves since. 

It's okay for them, they have a concept that it's about the journey and the project rather than being about completion. But for me, I made enough money to afford this lifestyle by buying and fixing up a couple of houses, whilst working full time to pay for them, and so their idea of just doing it for the journey seems illogical and slack. And meanwhile, the bags on the bit they've already completed are deteriorating in the sun. 

They said they'd do some work the next day, but we were moving on (ie not staying to help). Then, in the morning when I asked what time they'd be getting started, our host said that it was a perfectly nice day to do nothing.... The sun was shining, there was little wind (for this part) and it probably got to about 26 degrees Celsius. Seemed like a perfect day to get it done to us!

Interestingly, there is a lot of subdivided land in Camerones and other parts of this country that have been sold or are being sold. In Camerones it really grabbed our attention because its a sleepy little town with no sign of industry or any industry being developed. So why buy a house block there? 

It's to do with the Argentine economy and them having inflation at about 25-30%. If you put your pesos in the bank or under the the mattress then in a years' time it will only buy 25-30% less than what it will buy today. So buying a piece of land is a more secure way to hold an asset. And land prices have risen in the years leading to now. 

Likewise our host had been in the city buying building materials, he had paid for them but wasn't interested in having them delivered for a long time, because next year, due to inflation, they'd cost so much more... And this year, he's not interested in getting on with it. 

Welsh community in Patagonia Argentina

One of the items on my 'to do' list of Argentina was to visit one of the Welsh communities to drink tea and eat welsh cakes. So we went to Gaiman, and I'm not disappointed. 

On arrival we went to a tea house and enjoyed a table full of cakes, bread, and scones. It was good, but more than that we enjoyed the town. Gaiman is a town with lots of trees and gardens and clearly there is a better sense of taking pride in ones home here than in the other parts of Argentina, and Latin America in general, that I has seen. 

It doesn't take much to take a look at Gaiman and most people do it as a day trip from Trelew or Rawson, but it's worth a visit if you are in the area.