Sea Lions and solitude

Hola all,

We are leaving Puerto Madryn today, taking the overnight bus to Buenos Aires. Yesterday, we rented bikes from our hostel and went down to the Punta Loma area. We arrived at Punta Loma around 10 am, but the tide was too high at that moment and it was suggested to us to come back at noon. So we biked a bit further down the gravel road. The road was a bit bumpy, making us wish we would have rented bikes with shocks. We stopped to befriend a herd of horses; the horses, however, wanted nothing to do with us and ran away. At the end of the road we walked along the shore a ways until reaching this narrow, desolate, beach. Much to our dismay, we saw a dead whale washed up there. He, or she, must have died recently as the birds had just started to feast. We named the whale Moe, and had a funeral for him. It was a unique experience to see a whale so close; the skin was very cool and felt almost like a rubbery carpet. We also, on this beach, saw our first and only penguin. The penguin was also dead. Near the road where we had parked our bikes there was a maze of great dirt bike tracks...I´d advise for those who like biking to rent a nice mt bike and spend an hour playing around in this area. You could get some great air off a few places, and the downhill looked like so much fun. Next, we stopped at Punta Loma where the sea lions live. Beware that you have to pay 25 pesos to see them, but the money goes to conservation. The bike back was into the wind, so more of a workout...Other than that, not too much else going on here. Madryn seems to be very touristy and not really our style of town. The seafood isn´t what I had expected either; we have yet to find a good place to buy fresh seafood (a local secret?). We hope that the food in Buenos Aires will be much better. We are glad that we did not pay for the tour to Peninsula Valdes - in chatting with others who have done this, it seems that your time and money is better spent walking or biking near town (we´ve seen whales just as close and as frequently from the town pier as those who paid for a boat tour). Next blog, from the big city. Later.