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Sea lions and seals and penguins, oh my!!

We are now in Puerto Madryn, a lovely little port town on the southern east coast of Argentina.  It is beautiful, our campground is right by the ocean, and the first day we arrived (after a two day bus ride), we sat on the beach, with the tide way way out, and I just read my book and soaked up some sun!

But I digress, let me start with our tour of customs and border stops!  Ushuaia is on an island that you have to take a ferry to and from, however, to get to the ferry, you have to cross over into Chilean territory, which means stopping at the Argentina border, getting your exit stamp, then 15 minutes later, stopping at the Chile border, and getting your entrance stamp.  Then, on the other side of the ferry, you drive for a bit, and end up at another Chile border crossing, get another exit stamp, then another Argentina border, for another entrance stamp.  All in the space of about 5 hours.  It´s really quite ridiculous.  I now have about 2 pages of my passport full of just chile and argentina stamps.  Thankfully it´s a new passport (1 year old), so it still has a fair bit of room.  Which is a good thing, because I saw Amy´s four stamps from Macchu Picchu.  not even including her stamp to enter Peru, but for climbing Machu Picchu itself, there are 4 stations where you get stamped, and they are huge.  This should definitely be an interesting passport when I am finished with it!!

Did I mention our bus ride was over two days?  We left Ushuaia at 5:30am on Saturday, and arrived in Puerto Madryn around 2pm on Sunday, after changing buses twice.  I spend so much time on buses!  But ti´s so much cheaper than flying!

 Yesterday, we took a full day tour to Peninsula Valdez, which is this amazing little peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic ocean, and has a ton of Sea lion, Elephant seal, and Penguin colonies.  In fact, many of them are the reproductive colonies, where they come to mate and raise their young, before taking off into the water again.  Did you know an Elephant seal can hold it´s breath under water for 2 hours, come up for 5 minutes of air, then back under water for another couple hours?  Crazy!!  I´m lucky if I can hold my breath for 1 minute!!

We got tons of pictures of the cute little penguins.  But let me tell you, those animals are not very exciting.  They just stand there or lay there, and soak up the sun!  Same with the seals and sea lions.  But the scenery was absolutely gorgeous - the water just goes on forever and ever.  The animals were not caged in at all, they were just in their natural habitat, and we were just up on the hill, looking down at them. It was an amazing experience.  So much better than a zoo!!  Then all of a sudden, this penguin crawls out of a hole like 3 feet in front of me, he´d been curled up sleeping in there!  So cute!!  So I got some good close ups!

Anyways, from here, we´re going to bus to Buenos Aires, then I´m headed to Mendoza, Argentina.  From there to Santiago Chile (more exit and entrance stamps!!), then, who knows!

I hope all is well.  I am really missing home, with all the mountains and oceans I´ve been seeing lately.  But not enough to rush back and miss anything here! LOL

Ciao!!

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