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We stayed for four nights at Puerto Madryn and spent two of those days working on our website. Whilst shopping at Carrefour we met Oscar and Liliana. They have a similar motor home to ours and he is a famous film producer for the local area here. He's also done films for National Geographic about the Orcas on Península Valdés. They gave us a photo book as a gift!
Then we drove around looking for an oil change. Not so easy here. The Fiat garage wanted $156 US just for an oil change!! If you take the official exchange rate it's $250!! We normally pay $30 in America so it came as a huge shock. The second shock was that it costs over $12 per litre of oil and we need 7 litres. Ouch!!
We asked around and finally found Carlos who would do an oil change for $10 if we provided the oil filter and oil. Fortunately we have oil filters from Steffen and 5 litres of oil so all we needed was to buy an extra 2 litres. We bought a 4 litre bottle for $38. It's a good job we only need to get this done every 10,000 to 15,000 km.
The entrance to his very small garage left only 2 inches either side for me drive in and reverse out between two concrete walls - and that was with the wing mirrors folded in! Plus we needed to turn slightly to the left to park above the bay and had no choice but to drive through some low tree branches. It was slow going with Kirsten shouting directions - I had no mirrors and she had no room to get past either side. So she had to direct from in front to get me in and then from behind to get me out.
It took an hour and Carlos told us that our oil leak is only small but he can't see exactly where its coming from. We need to get the engine cleaned first but that can wait. In the meantime we'll just keep an eye on the oil level and top up when necessary.
We left Puerto Madryn and headed inland to a dam - Dique Florentina Ameghino - which is 120km west of Trelew along Highway 25. We stopped on the dam to watch fishermen catching a very large pike and then drove further into the canyon along a dirt road. The next day we stopped at a Welsh village called Gaimán for the night where we got free camping (including free electricity and hot showers) at the local fire station. A lot of welsh people settled here in 1865 and the families are now third and fourth generation. They are famous for afternoon tea and we went to Ty Te Caerdydd where Princess Diana visited on 25th November 1995.
Afternoon tea costs around $22 per person but we went to a side door to the bakery and bought half a kilo of cakes for $5! At least we managed to make them last until the following day - our friends Peter and Irme from Germany who were visiting the tea house at the same time, finished off their half a kilo before they even left the car park!!
We returned to the coast and went to Playa Isla Escondida - a tip from an Argentinian couple I'd spoken to when we were watching whales. The final 24km of the drive was on a gravel road which took us an hour but it was worth it. The view of the coastline coming down the steep road towards the beach was wonderful and we stayed for two nights.
We parked right on the beach where several elephant seals were enjoying their busy day just a few metres away! They can live up to 14 years and the big bulls are 6 metres long and can weigh up to 4 tonnes. They are off feeding now as the mating season is over, so these were the younger males who are not old enough to mate (from age 7) and are not big enough to fight off the competition.
The rivalries were being played out in front of us as they are already practising for later and they were quite lively at times and also quite loud. Lots of video and photo ops!
Elephant seals at Playa Isla Escondida
The next day we went to look at the tidal pools where we saw a young elephant seal lying in one of the pools - it didn't even have any teeth yet. We also used our under water camera to take videos of colourful crabs fighting ... not easy to get without losing a finger or two!
Colourful crabs fighting
We stayed for two nights and then drove back along the gravel road, then onto tarmac for 18 km before returning to a gravel stretch of 23km to get to Punta Tombo which is coming up in the next report.
