East bound- for an unbelievably cheap price, we were on a train headed across the country to the coast. 19 hours of screaming babies, smelly feet air, too much cheap wine, and little sleep, later we arrived in viedma. A city with the beautiful rio negro flowing through it (which we ate the most delicious melon by), but unfortunately has pretty much no restaurants, strangely enough. We spent hours walking around looking for a place to eat. One questionable all you can eat chinese place, one fast food mccdonaldds like restaurant, and a cafe with sandwiches...we opted for the sammys...we spent the night in the bus station, and sped out of that anorexic city at four in the mornin, headed for peurto madryn. We got settled and finally got some sleep, acnd made arrangements to fulfill our reason for going to thecoast: orcas!
We left in the excursion bus for peninsula valdes the next morning. Sightings of beautiful guanaco, choique(ostrich like birds) ,armadillos, dog sized rabbits, southern fur and elephant seals, penguins, southern right whales,and...no orcas. We felt like we couldn't really complain, but we hadn't given up hope. We had the tour leave us on the peninsula in the small settlement out here, puerto pyramides. The next day we went back to punta norte, the beach filled with seal mamas and their babies..orca hunting grounds. We sat staring at the sea expectantly. Within ten minutes I looked down the coast and saw something abnormal amid the stormy choppy sea. A fin! It was moving along the coast toward us...three adolescent orcas! The ranger was in disbelief because its very late in the orchard season and they are hard to see in may. Unfortunately the orcas weren't hungry, no baby seals taken as a snack that day, but we were ecstatic. We have spent the last couple of days hiking around, jumping off sand dunes, looking for fossils and shark teeth, whale watching, enjoying the benefits of off season (free camping, no crowds..pretty much no one actually)...it has been beautiful.
After this slow whale pace of life, its off to the big city, the rat race, ha
buenos aires!