utterly amazing cuteness

punta tombo

in rio gallegos the day turned good. we booked a bus ticket for cama (comfy comfy seats) for only 2 dollars more than semi-cama (less comfy seats) and had the most utterly luxurious bus ride of our lives. mmmmm... we were even sad when our 16hrs of bus-time were over. awww
the sadness didn´t last long tho, since we had arrived in puerto madryn, the place of my dreams... where we were about to see... dun dun dun... PENGUINS! YAY! we arrived in the middle of the car agencys´ lunchbreak (from 12 till 5p.m.... not hard to arrive in the middle of that) and had to wait till the afternoon to get our car. as there was no longer enough time to see penguins that day we made a stop in gaiman. our guide describes it as a welsh colonial town, with low non-descript buildings, and the chance to have welsh tea and biscuits. and that´s what it was: non-descript. so we had the tea (other things to do: go through a tunnel. we also surfed a tree branch. but really, there was NOTHING else to do). then we slept at the campsite of the volunteer firemen, and admired the fire truck from the 1940´s or 50´s.
the next morning we got up at 6.00 to get to the penguins by 8.00, to see them till 10.00 to be able to drive the 2.5h back to p.madryn, to return the car at 1.00 and take our booked bus at 2.00... things were not to happen this way, since we got stuck in trelew for an hour on the way. so we ended up being somewhat late, but no less excited, when we finally got to the penguins.
there´s SO many of them! and they are SO cute!! we arrived when they were only just waking up, the colony of about 600,000 penguins. they live in burrows, which i didnt know. and its the egg-hatching season, so we even saw amazing baby penguins. they sneeze, they cuddle, they clean their feathers, they´re cute, they waddle, they cock their heads in the most adorable manner, they swim, they make nests, they trumpet (!!) and they´re just great. by the time their charm had slightly lifted it was 11.00 and we were late. so we had to have a rally race back to puerto madryn. the limit in this race was sadly our car and not the speed limit, since the car started shaking uncontrollably at about 110km/h. but magically we made it. and got on another bus, less comfortable, but with the promising destination of buenos aires.