Reta day 2

Dinner

Today was a lovely rest day. We went for a walk on the beach. We were the only ones there.

It was windy but not very cold.
Club de Mar Terrazas Cayastá where we are staying.
We saw lots of cool birds. I think these are American Oyster Catchers.
Back at our hotel we had a sauna

For dinner we stayed in and had cheese and crackers with chocolate for desert. It was a great day!!

Las Grutas to Reta

Today was another very long day of driving. We started out driving through boring pampas.

The terrain for the first part of our drive

About half way through our 390 mile drive the terrain started to green up and we began seeing lots of wheat fields.

Wheat fields

At one place where we stopped to stretch there was a memorial to the fallen in the Malvinas war. (The British call it the Faulklands war).

Duke checking out the anti aircraft gun.

Not far from out destination we saw a lot of horses so we stopped to check it out.

It seemed like a great afternoon for barrel racing.

We are staying in a very nice apartment right on the beach. For dinner we had fantastic fish at a nearby restaurant.

Fish of the day at Restaurante Kirios.

Puerto Madryn to Las Grutas

We are making our way north, back towards Buenos Aires. Today we drove three and a half hours north to the coastal town of Las Grutas.

The terrain was pretty much the same the whole way. We stopped to stretch a couple of times.

It’s been very windy along the coast for the last four days. It was windy when we arrived in Lass Grutas but a couple of hours later when we went out for a walk the wind had dropped and it was 77 degrees.

The beach from our hotel room.

We had a great walk along the beach. The cliffs above the beach are full of burrows built by burrowing Parakeets. The birds are raucous and very loud. There are hundreds of them. It’s cool to watch them.

Burrowing parakeet burrows.
More burrows
Burrowing parakeets

For dinner we walked a couple of blocks inland from the beach and had an excellent meal at Del Azul Bistro and Sushi Bar.

We both had Paella. It pronounced paecha here!
Then we shared a cheesecake with berries.
We had a fun time. The ambiance was great and the staff was wonderful.

Puerto Madryn Day 3

Today was a rest day, but we still saw some very interesting things.

We went for a walk up to the headland east of our hotel. The first Welsh settlers landed here in 1865. There is a monument and a small park where they landed.

These are the remains of the cave homes they lived in until they became established.
The flags on the headland. The Welsh flag is on the right.

On the way back to the hotel we were lucky enough to see Orcas feeding in the bay. They were quite far out but it was wonderful fun to watch them. Orcas are the one animal we didn’t get to see when we visited Puerto Valdés yesterday. So we were very excited to see them today. I took about a million pictures, mainly of tails. But Duke got one really good picture of one out of the water.

For dinner we went to a bar across from the hotel and had empanadas.

Empanadas

Puerto Madryn – Day 2

Today we drove out to Valdes Peninsula. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and Argentine nature reserve. We saw so much wildlife.

Lots and lots of Guanacos
Sea lions at Punta Piramides
Elephant seals at Punta Delgada
Elephant seals at Punta Cantor. Elephant seals can be over 16 feet long and weigh more than 8,000 ponds
Today was another very windy day but the temperature was pleasant
We had coffee before going on to our next stop.
Just a bit farther up the road we saw lots of penguins in a penguin colony

After waiting to see a Rhea for more than a month today we saw several

A pair of rheas crossing the road.
We saw several of this cool bird. A Elegant Crested Tinamou. I love using Merlin to identify birds.

The restaurant we had planned to go to for dinner didn’t have any tables available, so we went to a nearby bar and had pizza.

Dinner