Puerto Madryn is the gateway to the Valdez Peninsula which we visited today. Since we will spent another night at the same campsite we didn’t need to put down our tents but just emptied them so nothing gets stolen. Our leader Anki advised us also to not lock our tent because it happened at this campsite that locked tents got slashed and not just things got stolen but also the tent was damaged afterwards.

Although we don’t meet our local guide until 10am we drove already to town at 8am since many people wanted to go to an internet café to check for emails regarding their lodge reservation at Torres del Paine National Park where we will be in one week from now. We will spend five days in this park and most of us will go trekking. The longest you can trek is the so called “W-Walk” which includes four nights in the park. While most people will go for less than four nights and spend the night in lodges with full-board I and my fellow traveler Ian from the UK have chosen the hardcore option of trekking the whole four day with my own tent and food. Although this option is the least expensive one I’m not doing it to save money but for the experience. I enjoy completely giving up luxury from time to time and going back to the basics so I appreciate later on what I have in civilization and not take everything for granted. What fascinates me is being very close to nature and dependent on my own. I will need to carry all my clothes, camping equipment and food for four days. I also heard at least two of the campsites have no facilities and so I need to fill up my water bottle from the stream and if I want to wash myself I need to do it in the stream as well. Sounds like fun to me. I only hope there will be no heavy rain or strong wind otherwise it will be quite uncomfortable.

After picking up our guide we drove towards the Valdez Peninsula. During the drive our guide told us some interesting facts about the area such as Puerto Madryn being the only Aluminum production site in the country which provides good employment to the region. Another major industry is obviously tourism since the town is a popular beach destination for Argentinian holiday-makers. There are also a number of cruise ships stopping here but this year there were less than half tourists than in the years before. The reason is volcanic activity in Chile leading to ashes blown to this area of Argentina and flights getting cancelled frequently. Our guide also told us that many people living in the area got health problems from the ashes such as problems with the skin or breathing. Lastly we learned the first settlers in this area were Welsh and in some smaller places in the area you can even go for an afternoon tea to one of the local tea houses.

Our first stop at the peninsula was a visitor center where our nature experience began with some Patagonian foxes hanging out at the parking space. They were not afraid at all and came close to have a look at us. The center also features an exhibition about the fauna and flora of the area including a huge whale skeleton. Another attraction of the visitor center was the toilet. While in more or less all toilets in South America you are requested to not throw the paper in the toilet because otherwise they don’t flush here you were actually allowed to do so. There was even a sign explicitly asking you to throw your paper into the toilet.

We continued to a little village at the peninsula were approx. 300 people live in the middle of the national park. Here we had lunch out of our truck before we continued to more remote areas along the coast. In total we made three stops at the peninsula. At the first stop we could observe southern elephant seals which are remarkable larger than ordinary seals. Unfortunately they were a bit far away and we were not allowed to leave the path along the coast and get any closer. At the second stop we saw a penguin colony which was much closer than the seals. The third stop was a spot called “Punta Norte” were we were expecting to see some orcas coming with the peak of the high tide around 6:20pm. We spent two hours watching but were not lucky enough to spot any. But this is nature. You aren’t in a zoo and therefore, there is no guarantee to see them. At least we spotted a hairy armadillo instead which was crawling through the bushes.

The drive back to Puerto Madryn took two hours. Since it was already 9:30pm we didn’t cook our own food at the campsite but went to a restaurant instead where our guide had reserved a table for us. The service was incredibly fast and so it didn’t took long for 21 people to make individual choices, eat and pay. I thought when I’m at the sea I should eat some kind of fish and ordered calamari and a bottle of red wine which I shared with Molly. When it came to payment it turned out that somebody had thrown a fake 50 Pesos note (12 USD) into the pot. Luckily we had not just paid our food and the cover charge which is supposed to be the tip but some additional tip on top so nobody needed to put in additional money to replace the fake 50 Pesos note. Fake money is a real problem in Argentina especially affecting the 100 Pesos and 50 Pesos notes. Since nobody of us has experience with fake money we all had a closer look at the fake note the restaurant returned to us and it was pretty obvious this note is fake. There was no watermark, no silver strip and even the photocopy was kind of blurry.