we are here in puerto madryn, which is our first stop in the patagonia region!
here is michael embodying his new role as darwin-esque-patagonian-explorer-of-the-south:
the land is very flat and very dry.
quite different from where we have been the past few weeks. there is very little rainfall here because of the andes mountain range to the west.
but the water is so blue, the bluest water we have seen here (all of the other parts of the argentine coast we´ve visited, the water has been more brownish).
and yesterday the clouds looked like they came straight out of a dali painting.
today we went with a group of people from our hostel (10 of us in all) on a small group tour with 12 people (including the 10 of us) and 2 guides around peninsula valdes. it´s a protected area that contains tons and tons of wildlife. in just one day we got to see quite a lot.
the following are all pictures from today´s outting…
sea lions and elephant seals
sea lion
penguins!! our favorite part of the day.
lots of them! see them all down lining the coast?
we could also watch them swim through the water and waddle around. it was all fun.
we knew we´d see penguins today, but had no idea we´d be so close.
baby penguin 🙂
we also saw guanacos (which are very similar to lamas) and maras (they look like kangaroos… not like the gang in LA) today but they are so fast we didn´t get good pictuers. oh yeah, and sheep. lots of sheep.
…but luckily, we didn´t see anything like this:
that thing is wayyy too big to be normal.
our group ended the day on a boat looking for whales. the whales come to breed here, but have to go to antartica to feed for the other 1/2 of the year and the whale breeding season here technically ends on december 15th, but there were still a couple whales (as in, literally two) still hanging around this morning so the boats went out again in the afternoon (with us aboard) to see if they were still here. however, we were litterally just hours too late! the last two whales must have left today sometime between the morning boats and our afternoon boat and so whale watching season is officially over. bummer.
pictures from the boat:
last thing: a disclaimer about mydisclaimer post about all of these pictures being sooc. (yes, a disclaimer about a disclaimer… how american of me.) well, today i figured out how to do minor editing in my camera! sooooo i guess they are all still technically sooc… but i did figure out how to tweak them a little!! yippy.
okay, last, last thing:
today we saw this dog riding on top of a car. so werid. and no, the car wasn´t going slow. it was going on right along with the flow of traffic. and yes, the dog looked like it was going to fall to his death at any moment. eeek.
