Tuesday was a bit of a non-event day for me – it was more about getting back to Buenos Aires after my short stay in Puerto Madryn. My flight wasn’t until 3pm which left me quite a while in the town, but not enough time annoyingly to go out and see the whales at Peninsula Valdes. I really could have done with one less day in Rio and another day to do that. So anyway, today’s post is a bit boring sorry!
When I looked out my hotel window, I saw not only was it another gorgeous day, but also that a massive cruise ship had arrived in town.
With five hours to kill before I had to leave for the airport, I wandered back in to town and headed to Havanna in Puerto Madryn’s modest shopping mall for a coffee and bit of breakfast and to catch up on e-mails.
Once inside, I discovered it looked as if half the cruise ship had decided to decamp there too. It was loud and noisy with American tourists.
After writing a postcard for my niece and nephew, I got out of there pretty quickly, and headed for a wander around town. In between the shops and small restaurants you’d find the occasional pretty looking building.
And random looking window displays like this one – apologies for the reflection here!
The place really did seem a bit overrun with tourists, and it gave the place a very different feel from the day before, when there hadn’t been a cruise ship in town. I guess it’s good for the town though.
There really aren’t that many things to see in Puerto Madryn – I headed to the museum…
…but it was closed.
I had a very slow wander back to my hotel and had a look at tree sculptures that I think had been done by locals along the main road.
Amazingly I had managed to kill four hours just wandering around and having my coffee. So heading back to the hotel, I took one last look out to sea, hoping to spot a whale, but no joy.
I grabbed my belongings and called a taxi to the airport. Weirdly although the taxi driver didn’t speak English, he did speak French, so we chatted all the way to the airport. I asked him about the stray dogs I’d seen around town, but he said that most of them actually had homes, and just went wandering about during the day. He was a pretty cool taxi driver – but it was very strange all of a sudden speaking French in Argentina!
After about a fifteen minute driver, we arrived at Puerto Madryn’s airport (actually called El Tehuelche Airport). It was still absolutely scorching.
I was back on Andes Líneas Aéreas, so checked in.
This time my boarding pass was printed! I walked up and down the airport for an hour, and bought a couple of souvenirs from the small shop before boarding.
It looked like the same plane as my trip down to Patagonia.
The flight was non-eventful again really, nothing amazing, but nothing really to complain about apart from the ancient dirty seats!
I was back in Buenos Aires, and checked in to my hotel – it really is a perfect spot for me – the room’s enormous, and it’s pretty centrally located in Retiro. That’s a business district in Buenos Aires, but it’s still got enough going on.
It was only about 6pm when I checked in again, but I was absolutely exhausted for some reason. So I walked down to the local supermarket, bought a chicken sandwich and packet of crisps and borrowed a DVD from the hotel’s library and chilled out. About half way through the movie I was beginning to drift off, so I just switched the lights off and went to sleep.
Definitely not the most exciting day of my trip, but I was going to make up for that by doing loads the next day.