Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 10 - Puerto Madryn, El Calafate, El Chalten (Argentina)

At the start of the week we were still in Puerto Madryn and following our successful day whale watching had booked a bus trip down to the Punta Tombo penguin colony, the most important Magellan penguin breeding ground on the continent with over 200,000 of the little critters during the breeding season when we were there (more than doubling at malting season). As soon as you entered the reserve you could see penguins sitting on eggs and chicks, under bushes and shrubs and hiding in holes, they were everywhere. It was so cute to watch the parents greeting each other after one had been at sea for 10 days eating, before they switched roles and the other headed out.

On the way back from the colony our bus stopped at a welsh speaking settlement, Gaiman. All of a sudden there were welsh flags and signs written in welsh everywhere. The welsh settled in 1874 because they wanted somewhere secluded where no one would bother them and they knew no one else wanted to live in the Patagonian wilderness – they’ve done pretty well with the place. The village is lush and green with cute little houses with sash windows. Famous for its high teas we thought it rude not to join in. The Ty Gwyn was a quaint little old school café with recipes for welsh cakes and pictures of welsh castles on the walls and for a small fortune we had a pot of tea and more cake than you could shake a stick out (no welsh cakes though).

The next day was a chill day in Puerto Madryn followed by an overnight bus to Rio Gallegos for a connection to El Calafate. We’re getting a little sick of getting off of night buses and needing a whole day to recover so splashed out on a ‘cama’ (Spanish for ‘bed’). The seats were like leather lazy boys with hot meals served and a special helping of a sweet swiss roll filled with ham and cheese, delightful.

Our hostel in El Calafate was perfect, a little house on the hill overlooking the lake. Our first full day in town we took a bus out to the Perito Moreno glacier in the Los Glaciares National Park. At 19 miles in length and 97 square miles in size it was a pretty impressive sight. After a boat trip through the icebergs to see the glacier up close we headed to the board walks to spend a couple of hours viewing it from every possible angle – we have a billion photos to prove it which Rhys very much enjoyed culling. The glacier moves at 2 metres per day so there are constantly bits cracking off and falling in to the water, even a little sprinkle makes a noise like thunder.

That night we arranged to meet some guys from Bariloche in a bar in town and ended up drinking more fernet and cokes than really necessary. After balking at the USD$1 entrance to the casino we headed back to the hostel.

Before heading to El Chalten, a colourful little village a couple of hours north inside the national park, we decided Converse and Etnies really weren’t going to be the best shoe wear for serious trekking and spent a small fortune on shiny new trekking shoes (Ceri, you’ll be glad to know it probably means we’ll be home a couple of days early!).

In El Chalten we checked into the cheapest and possibly the worst hostel in town (over run by loud obnoxious travellers and super basic) and headed for a 6km walk along the track out of town to a waterfall.

Our first full day we decided to test the new shoes with a 27km hike out to the Fitz Roy mountain range. Boy was it a hard days walk but I have to admit the new shoes made me feel like a spritely mountain goat when it came to the steep bits, shame they didn’t help with the overall stamina. The hike was worth it though, the view was stupendous, absolutely breath taking. At the end of the trail was a glacier lake full of ice bergs at the foot of Fitz Roy. By the time we got back to town we were both shattered and ready for an early night.