Happy Feet!!! (Oooops, was supposed to be before the BA post!!)

Gosh, we’re so behind in blogs it’s not even funny… guess we’re gotten too caught up having fun that we’ve abandoned the strenuous hours of hard work it takes to jot one of these down but considering I’m sitting in a hammock in a private cabana that we’ve rented in the woods, I guess I have no excuse!

Well, I’ll take it back a few weeks to when we arrived in Puerto Madryn, the sea lion and penguin capital of the world!!! (not really but added that  for dramatic effect) David had talked non-stop about this little town and as I had done no previous research on this little gem, I just went along with all his excitement. When we arrived I was thoughrouly impressed with his pick! It was my job to line up a hostel for our arrival and I really lucked out, picking the best hostel on our trip yet! It was called, La Tosca and the owner was fantastic! He learnt everyone’s name right away and started explaining what there was to see in the area. He had designed a full brochure about the must see’s and had a power point presentation showing pictures of the wildlife and sights.  We were so impressed that we ran out to rent a car to start our adventure! I should note here that we were travelling with our dutch friend, Corne and an English mate we had met on out 50hr bus ride from Bariloche, Christian!

The following morning we woke up at the crack of dawn to a wonderful surprise of freshly baked cakes for breakfast! After getting our sugar fill we started our journey to Punta Norte where we saw hundreds of sea lions and were on the watch for Orcas!

  There were tons of little cubs and it was a blast watching them run up and down the beach, for sure more graceful in the water! Unfortunately we didn’t spot any Killer Whales which was a big bummer… Oh well, guess now we just have more of an excuse to make our way to Van to check em out! We then headed up the coast to Caleta Valdes to check out a penguin hang out. These little guys were taking shelter from the wind and had come up the hill and were standing right in front of us! I was really impressed with their yoga breathing as they made these crazy mating calls! After making fun of how silly they looked walking around, we jumped back in the car and headed to a small town 20mins away called, Puerto Piramide for some helados!

The following day consisted of tons of road trip games, a HUGE penguin colony, called Punta Tombo, where we saw millions all clustered around us (this is the 2^nd largest Peinguin colony in the world with the 1^st being Antartica!!!), more road trip games, more sea lions, the alphabet game, a car load of people napping as David drove, more helados, a trip to another port town to check out pink striped dolphins only to learn that we had missed the last boat and a trip back to Puerto Madryn! It was a great day!

On day 3 of our adventure, we booked David and my first dive outside the course! I was soooo scared! As soon as we arrived at the shop the dive master calmed me down by telling me that Patagonia was the most difficult place to dive in the world!!!! I was so very close to  dropping the tank right there but seeing how it’s me, I refused to let Dave be braver, so I grabbed the gear and followed him to the boat to ride off to our first destination. Before our dive we headed out to a tiny sea lion island where we would be able to snorkel with the massive animals! As we pulled up, we noticed about 50 seals and lions on the beach. The leader of the pack was about 500 pounds and as soon as we saw him, everyone on the boat thought twice about jumping in! The instructor got us all set up though and basically pushed us in!!!

As soon as we got into the water, the beasts all followed suit and jumped in as well! It was amazing!!! We were swimming in 5ft deep water at parts and the seals would swim right under you! They were so beautiful! It sure makes you realize how much humans don’t belong in water when you see these huge creatures flowing every which way beside you! They were really playful and curious and would come right up to you and then dart away! It was nuts! After spending about 45mins in the freezing cold water we jumped back in the boat and made our way to the next destination. 

The first dive we had chosen to do was a ship wreck, in 22 degree water, at a depth of 30mtrs, with a visibility of 5mtrs!! I was shaking before I even got into the water! I made the dive master hold my hand the whole way down and felt a lot better once I caught glimpse of the boat! It was so cool! The visibility was a whole lot better once you got down as well and you could see the entire boat covered with mussels and algae that now made the walls of the pirate ship. There were fish swimming in and out of the windows of the boat which was really cool to see! After Christine, David and I had made a circuit of the boat the dive master took us to the top of the ship and asked if we wanted to go in… We haven’t been trained in entereing ships yet so this wasn’t really aloud but we all took him up on it and swam right in! It was dark and gloomy and really creepy! We swam back out and by the time I had swam out I was at 50bars of air, which is the minimum before having to ascent. Apparently, my fear hadn’t left me because I had breathed 2 times faster than the rest of the group! After a safe ascent and trip back to Puerto Madryn David and I packed our bags for our 18hr bus ride to Buenos Aires.