Trelew, Chubut, Patagonia

It´s a terrible pity that I can´t upload pictures and videos most of the time since I have one that would sum up the post quite well. We saw penguins. I now have a picture of me with a penguin just as I said I´d hope to have in my profile. We went a long long way to see them and we were all very glad there were some left when we got there as it´s out of season for them really, a fact we only discovered a few days before we left. Having said that the sight of the penguins and sealions was still worth the 12 hour day we spent on the little feckers. Patagonia really makes one feel like a David Attenborough. In the last 2 days or so we´ve seen numerous Rheas, Guanacos (they´re like llamas), armadillos (soft on the inside crunchy on the outside), penguins (which at least Jenny will be glad to now are called pinguinos in Spanish), hawks with prey still attached, desert foxes and most likely loads of other things. Oh yes, also petrified oysters.
I really like Patagonia and in ways I´m glad we skipped Buenos Aires in its deathly cloud and came down to this great expanse of nothing, unlikely at it seems. We stayed in Gaiman and Trelew, 2 Welsh towns in the Chubut Valley. The Chubut seems to be one of the rare rivers in the region and when viewed from above reminds me of the Nile valley in Egypt, green in the strip down the river and desert wastelands on either side for hundreds of miles. The Chubut valley, actually Patagonia in general, is kind of like a geography fieldtrip all the time. The valley is most definitely a U shaped valley and today we went to a paleological park and strode the many layers one after the other til we got to modern day. Like a ladder through time it was and at only 100 metres up I´m convinced we could see for hundreds and hundres of miles. Incredible really. In any case, the Welsh town thing is worth a mention after all that talk about landscape.
We arrived in Gaiman witha great hunger on us and though (for me at least) the hunger wasn´t really sated I did feel very satisfied. The reason for this was because we had tea and cakes and real apple tart!! AND a cake with redcurrants in it, which anyone who knows me at all well will know is my favourite fruit! We stayed in this lovely tea room slash B&B for two nights and had our fill of lovely cakes. Breakfast even lasted three of us for 3 meals on our trip to the desolate and foodless peninsula. I was very appreciative. The place we stayed was called Ty Gwyn in Welsh of course as is the norm with a lot of places in Gaiman. In the town´s museum we met a lovely girl called Tatiana Rodgers who was desceded from some of the first settlers to arrive on the pilgrim ship, for pilgrims they were. A group of npnconformist Welsh who fleeing from persecution decided to go live in a desert thousands and thousands of miles away. Fair dues to them says me. Anyhow Tatiana let us have a look at her boyfriend´s book of photos of the town which I linked to above and it really was fascinating. Seems like Welsh customs are more protected here than in Wales, Male voice choirs, tea and cakes even love spoons. I´m not kidding about that and Tatiana is learning Welsh too - it´s taught in school here. I never thought I´d be asking an Argentinian how to pronounce Cymru properly but there you go.
Gaiman though is not one to disappoint and even after all of these nice and unexpected surprises it had something else up its sleeve. The Parque Desafio. This was really something and something I wish I had created or would like to create maybe in another time and place. I suppose I felt some sort of fellow feeling with the creator. This park is a park of rubbish, all sorts of things made of rubbish and without pictures I´m sure it doesn´t sound impressive, it has to be seen to get the scale of the thing. Mr. Alonso who made the place over 25 years has a great sense of humour too, which I like very much with his litterings of penguins, Celtic towers made of bottles, the Taj Mahal and the petrified forest which he testifies was formed 65 million years at about 3 o´clock. It seemed the kind of park Douglas Adams would make, or at least write the captions for. And so ends our Welsh adventures for the moment.
We´ll be away to the petrified forest next, for real this time, some many miles away and from there to the end of the world. I really need to fix my map. Looks like I´ll be making it at least some of the way up Chile given the time we´re making. Snowsports may unfortunately not be our friends given out strange in between season. Too late for penguins in great numbers and too early for snowboarding but as it has been pointed out to me when we visit the giant glacier at Perito Moreno surely we´ll find some snow. It is a big fuck off chunk of ice after all, it´ll be cold enough!
Til the next one!