Last week I took a trip down to the northeastern side of Patagonia to a little coastal town called Puerto Madryn. The town is famous for the whales and other marine life that populate the “Golfo Nuevo” to mate and give birth as the climate gets warmer around this time of year. After a 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, my three friends and I dropped our bags off at the hostel and signed ourselves up for a tour of Península Valdés an ecological reserve that serves as the main attraction of the area. We spent all day driving around the arid Peninsula, which happens to look a lot “like the Australian outback, but with funky llama things instead of kangaroos,” according to one of my Aussie friends on the trip. We stopped at various beaches and were lucky enough to see the very first penguins of the season. Having never seen a penguin in their natural habitat before, it was awesome to be able to get up close to one of these goofy animals. One particular penguin was scratching his side with his webbed foot like a dog scratches his ear.
