We have now been in Argentina for almost three weeks. We left Punta Arena, Chile on February 8 with our new friend Johannes from Germany. We ended up taking the non touristy route up the Argentine coast and made our first stop in the town of Sarmiento, famous for it´s petrofied forest. Here are Johannes and Amelie in the desertlike landscape. Practically the entire southern third of Argentina is pampa, pampa and more pampa.
We happened to find ourselves in the small town of Sarmiento of the weekend of the yearly Rodeo festival! What luck! The town was doubled in size for the festival and full of Argentine tourists. As far as we saw we were the only foreigners. Above are the three of us at the rodeo... a pretty strange sport if you ask me... but interesting to see at least once.
From Sarmiento we made our way to another even smaller, non touristy town called Camarones where there is a major penguin colony. We walked around among hundreds and hundreds of them. Close by there was also a sea lion colony, but they were too far away for photos.
They made me feel extra tall!
We then went farther north up to Puerto Madryn where we chilled out for a few days after the week of intense travelling. We took a day trip to the Peninsula Valdez where we saw tons of seals, and elephant seals. This photo was taken through Johannes´binoculors. The black ones are the puppies. They were all so cute playing together in the waves.
This is a Pichi... Amelie´s new favourite animal. It was scurrying around the parking lot at one of the look out points on the peninsula.
Argentina has turned out to be so incredibly different from Chile, far more than I had expected. The culture, language, traditions, daily routines, etc. are all so different. We are now used to the fact that businesses are all closed between 1pm and 5pm and practically every town has a plaza in its centre that comes to life at night full of free show, artesans and music. As we´ve been moving farther and farther north the climate has been getting hotter and hotter, a major change from the chilly south of Chile. It´s been difficult getting used to the heat.
1 comment:
That pichi looks like the armadillo from the red covered bridge and your German friend looks like one goodlooking fellow.
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