21st January, Puetro Madryn

Yesterday, after doing our last update, we had lunch then walked along the beach back to the camp. It was about 40 degrees, and a 5km walk along the beach. There was a very strong wind all afternoon and into the night. Before dinner everyone appeared in their penguin outfits, some looked really good.

We had a party after dinner to celebrate Snell´s birthday. During the night, at about 2am, there was a terrific wind - probably as a result of the extreme heat of the day. The sand was blowing into our tent and over us, through the mesh and fly. Fortunately the tents all stayed in place.
The campground was really full, with tents everywhere. There is always a queue for the showers, until about 1am and starting again at 6.30am. Liz got up at 6.15 this morning to have a shower, as she was on breakfast duty.

We left camp at 8.30am and headed for the Wildlife Reserve. It was an hour´s drive to the start, and then we drove on a gravel road for another hour to the place where we could view penguins. Since these were the same as those we saw at Camerones we did not stay long there, but carried on to the next spot where we saw elephant seals. There were not many on the beach. While we were there though a couple of orcas swam past. We were about to leave, so we were already on the truck. However Liz managed to see the fin of one as they headed off. Some of our group saw them up close to the shore and were very impressed - great big animals.

We then drove for an hour to a more northern spot where we saw hundreds of sea lions. There were males, females and new pups, one was born while we were there. Noisy, writhing, smelly...lots of fighting and posturing. We hoped the orcas might make another appearance as it was high tide, but it was not to be.

Drove back to the city, 2 hours, half of it on gravel. Sonce we were quite late (6pm) we have all stopped to eat in town, rather than cook at the camp. Tomorrow we will leave at 6.30am with two long days drive to get to BA:

So next update will be from there in a few days!