High: 68*F/20*C Low: 57*F/14*C
Distance to Montevideo: 720 NM
A Brief History (as in Celebrity Today):
So, just how did a city in a country predominantly influenced by Spanish and Italian culture come up with a very British-style name? Thanks to 150 Welsh immigrants, who landed at what's now Puerto Madryn in 1865 and named their settlement Porth Madryn, after the trip's principal financier Sir Thomas Duncombe Love Jones-Parry, who'd dubbed his own Welsh estate Madryn.
While Jones-Parry didn't stick around Port Madryn very long (he returned home and gained fame as a member of Parliament) the settlement itself blossomed with the debut of the region's "iron horse" (the Chubut Railway) financed by Spanish, Italian, and some of those pioneering Welsh settlers. The railway, which opened in 1888, ran south of Port Madryn to Trelew and eventually stretched well inland to Los Palmas before closing in 1961. The original Puerto Madryn train station has since been partly restored and is now used as a bus terminal.
Puerto Madryn is a very small town without much to do - there's a little boardwalk along a beach, but you really need to do a tour. In the right season you can see orcas grounding seals on beaches to eat them... yummo. One of the best tours I've been on is Punta Tombo Penguin Rockery. It's about a three-hour drive, but I had a good tour guide who told us a lot of useful information about penguins - I was at the front of the bus so we had time to talk - it wasn't exhausting like talking to guests for hours, he was pretty easy on the eyes ;-). Punta Tombo was amazing because there are penguins EVERYWHERE! They burrow in little holes but will come right up to the path to look at you. You have to stop and let them cross the path, and sometimes they stop in the middle and look both ways at the people who've stopped - sometimes they run/waddle back the other way, it's so cute. Some of them are noisy lil buggers, too! One of my favorite penguin sights was seeing a lone penguin off in the distance walk up a hill and then disappear down... okay and I can't forget to mention the penguins in the surf, trying to make it to shore, but being take back out again with the retreating waves. Sigh, I love penguins.
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