Day of arrival in Puerto Madryn

Day of arrival in Puerto Madryn

Puerto Madryn, Argentina, South America

I arrived in Puerto Madryn at 8am today, just about an hour delayed. I was recommended to get a taxi to Hi Patagonia Hostel, but I really felt like taking a walk, so I took the 30 minute walk down to the hostel. It felt like an abandoned town, and then I realized that it’s Sunday, so all Chilean and Argentinian towns shut down on a Sunday. There was nothing open, and no one in the streets. It was incredible really. It was like walking through the beginning of a zombie movie.

I got to my hostel and met the owner, Gaston. He is a really nice Argentinian guy who speaks perfect English and he just sat with me for about an hour chatting. It was too early to check in a get into my room, but he showed me around the hostel and I was free to use any of the common areas. I hung around until about 11am and then Gaston let me in my dorm room. I’m in a four person room, and so far there are only three of us, me and two french guys. Jonathan and Yohan are really nice, and we ended up getting dinner with a couple other guys from the hostel tonight as well.

When I got in the room I relaxed for a bit, since I didn’t get a lot of sleep on the bus. I then met a Dutch guy named Gerbrand at the hostel and we went out to get some lunch. We went to a place on the beach and enjoyed a good lunch, cold beer, and a nice view. After lunch we took a walk down to the end of the beach where we visited the Ecocenter. It was basically a museum that was explaining what kind of biodiversity they have in the area, and what is being done to conserve it. It was nicely set up, and fairly new, but it was pretty small. It cost about $9 to get in, and neither of us were that impressed with what we saw.

After that, we walked back to the hostel along the road, because the beach is covered with green seaweed and it was pretty nasty to walk through. We got back in time for me to catch the end of the Denver vs Buffalo game, and then a few of us went out for dinner. At first we were going to go for pizza, but then we heard there was a good Mexican restaurant that was worth trying. I went with Jonathan and Yohan from my room, Gerbrand, and Jonas (a Swiss guy from the hostel).

We found Lupita’s Restaurant, but the service was incredibly slow. I only had an hour before I wanted to be back at the hostel to watch the Patriots game, and the food took a lot longer than that to come. I had a chicken burrito, which was just okay, and then I took off by myself back to the hostel. The other guys still had a while to go with their food, and they knew I was anxious to get back. I missed about a half hour of the game but was able to find it on TV in the lounge at the hostel.

The guys came back from dinner about 45 minutes later and Gerbrand stuck around to watch the game with me. He didn’t know the rules at all, so I was explaining it to him and I think I may have recruited another NFL fan. For someone who had never seen it before, he picked it up pretty quickly. The game finished at about 1:30am and the Patriots beat San Diego, so that was a big win for us. I’m going to be on the cruise ship next Sunday, so I definitely won’t be able to watch the Pats, so I’m glad I could catch this game.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *