On the whale trip I met a couple of girls who had decided to hire a car and drive to the penguin colony at Punta Tombo - only two and half hours away - and Gaiman, the 'Welsh' village, rather than pay another 60 quid to be driven there in an uncomfortable minibus with 20 Belgians. So again I was up at 6.30am yesterday morning. I'm supposed to be on holiday!
The penguin colony was worth the drive though. At the moment the tourism down here is sufficiently under-developed that they're relaxed about walking around the colony . There's no ropes or fences - all the rangers ask is that if one wants to cross in front of you, you let it go ahead of you. Which seemed reasonable enough, it is their home after all. It means you can get very close to them - if you were allowed you could pick them up, stroke them, take one home in your bag, whatever. They're very docile and seemed completely unperturbed by our presence.
It's quite tricky to get your head round the weather down here. The enormous sky is a beautiful blue and the sun blazes down - you can feel yourself burning very quickly if you haven't got sun cream on. But as soon as the wind picks up it's absolutely perishing. Freezing wind, burning sun, semi-desert, whales, penguins. It's all getting very weird.
Not as weird as Gaiman, the Patagonian Welsh village though. The place's most famous landmark is the Tea House which the Princess of Wales visited once in the 1990s. It's a genuinely odd place, little old spanish ladies in Welsh costume serve real tea, cakes, scones, jam, bread and butter and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. And all in the middle of Patagonia.
Patagonia is a strange place. It's so alien to anything I've ever seen in Europe, let alone in the UK. Getting around it is a major pain in the arse and the prospect of another 18-hour bus trip to Rio Gallegos looms this evening, but I'm so glad I decided to head down hear rather than straight across to Santiago to Buenos Aires.
