Argentinosaurus

I have not really had any one particular thing to write about recently since now I have met up with Robin (who is here en route to New Zealand) we have been traveling about and only spending a couple of nights in each place. After a few days showing Robin the delights of Buenos Aires (mostly eating alfajores in the Botanical Gardens) we headed off down to Sierra de la Ventana with high-minded ideas to do long walks and climb the mountains of the area and generally be outdoorsey and virtuous. Well yes it was all very well meaning however in reality it was unbelievably hot and it was as much as was humanly possible to walk all the way to the Heladeria and get ourselves an icecream. Hard work I know.

A note on ice cream: Argentina does incredible ice cream. Really really good. There are Heladerias on pretty much every street and the flavour options are 20 at minimum, usually including at least 3 or 4 different types of Dulce de Leche. In case anyone thought I might be wasting away out here, it has been decided that one ice cream is a daily minimum. Also.... it is one of the only things out here which is still cheap, with inflation up to the region of 20% and the pound being a bit of a weakling in the markets right now, things really are little cheaper than the UK unfortunately. In reality this means for me that although I will still be continuing to travel as before (which is camping by the way!), the weekend at a lovely estancia riding horses gaucho-style is looking unlikely. *sigh*

After lolling about in Sierra de le Ventana there was a 9 hour bus journey to Puerto Madryn. Guttingly missed the whale season but did get really close to penguins, sea lions, rheas, guanachos and malting elephant seals. I mean they were actually losing their skin so no need to go googling any new rare breeds or anything.

Next stop was what Rough Guide over-prominsingly called the 'Welsh Heartland'. Ok so everybody knows about the Welsh community that live in Patagonia, or really I mean lived. The little town of Gaiman (yes Gaiman) was settled by Welsh folk back in the day and now it attracts tourists to its 'authentic tea shops' and indeed there are Cymru stickers in lots of windows however ask any of the locals if they speak the lingo and they will tell you that they had to do a course at school and know a few words. The older folk may rave about their grandparents being very Welsh, yet red bedragoned flags aside, this is a nice little Argentine village.

Ok one last thing before I embark on a 12 hour bus journey to Puerto San Julian.... I visited Trelew's museum of paleantology. Wow. What a phenomenal collection of complete dinosaurs, all from Argentina. I was absolutely blown away. Also there really is a Argentinosaurus! Google that instead of the sea-lions as it is simply incredible and being Argentine it had to be the biggest... I don't even come up to its knee.