Patagonia baby!

Elephant Seals
Penguins
Irritating Technology
Coaches

Due to poor wifi, and not wanting to stay in, it's been extremely difficult to update blog. Plus I've another Apple gripe. Fecking iPad will not recognise my 64GB memory card so I can't upload photos directly. Must try and access other people's Netbooks and they are nearly always in use. So irritating, bah humbug! But let's drive on regardless.

Friday 30th Nov:
Arrived in Puerto Madryn, gateway to the Valdez Peninsula, via sleeper coach and the day was spent getting our bearings, checking out local restaurants and getting familiar with the nearby supermarket.

Thankfully locals here do not have the same issues we experienced in BA with trying to cash in a 100 peso note (approx €16). In BA, due to large amounts of forgeries, cashiers would barely accept 100 peso notes. Instead they would ask, no, beg, for smaller denominations. At any one time most tills would seem to only have a few pesos in the register. Burly men would have to reverently exchange our dreaded 100 peso note for smaller change. Twas funny, but frustrating, to witness. We had to convince many cashiers that 100 was our lowest note and patiently wait while they dealt with other customers in order to gather enough change for us. Extremely surreal, but it all seems to be behind us.

Saturday 1st Dec:
Spent full day at the Reserva Faunistica Peninsula Valdes, which is one of Argentina's best wildlife reserves. Saw loads of animals: Magellanic penguins, elephant seals, maras, southern right whales and guanacos.

We went on a two hour whale watching boat ride, which according to our guides was extremely successful. On leaving the beach we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins. Turns out they are fast little buggers so I don't have decent pics of those. We then proceeded to find two Southern Right whale mothers and their calves. Got the obligatory tail shot, but we saw no breaches.

Due to their docile nature, slow surface-skimming feeding behaviours, tendencies to stay close to the coast, and their high blubber content (which makes them float when they are killed, and produces high yields of whale oil), right whales were a preferred target for whalers, who reportedly considered them the "right" whales to hunt.

Sadly we did not spy any Orcas, which is a shame as here they have developed a unique hunting strategy to adapt to local coastal conditions. In this area the Orcas are known for slamming onto the sandy beaches, "beaching", forcing a wave of water to dislodge inexperienced sea lion pups along the shore before making a light meal of the pups. Although we had cameras at the ready there were no Orcas to be seen in the bay.

We had a little bit of drama Saturday night. All rooms had security cages to enable you to padlock valuables when out and about. Unfortunately Colin accidentally locked his wallet containing the padlock key into a security cage. However with a lot of determination (aka stubbornness), teamwork and my long fingers we managed to open and upturn his bag, prise out most of the contents, (his wallet was of course at the very bottom of the bag), open the wallet and retrieve the key. Crisis averted and no bolt cutters were needed. Plus it's good to know that I've a career in theft should I need to avail of it!

Our truck is still at sea so it's another luxury sleeper coach to El Calafate for us. Oh it's a hard knock life!