Patagonia, 29th January - 1st February

There were four long drive days to get across the flat grasslands and shrub of Patagonia. It was hour after hour of featureless flat land with the occasional something different to break the monotony as we followed Rota Nacional numero 3 for the 3,100kms from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires. A view of a small settlement to break up the monotonous landscape.

 An oil production facility in the middle of nowhere.

 Another building in the middle of nowhere...this is a shearing shed for the sheep that brave the cold and the wind. Although it is only windy all summer, winter is apparently windless but just freezing cold with two feet of snow.

 After all the grasslands, this was a break for the ferry to take us from the island of Tierra del Fuego to the mainland.

 This was our choice of a bush camp, next to a small volcano. Several of the vents overlapped and had flooded with water. It is called Laguna Azul meaning Blue Lagoon but the skies were grey so when I was there, it was not blue.

 Another of the vents on the side of the volcano that wasn't flooded.

 A view of the lava flow that erupted from a fissure on the side of the volcano, the dark smudge representing the bare ragged basalt of the lava flow.

 Just outside Rio Gallos is one of the few bits of scenery that broke up the otherwise flat, windy plains. It is a memorial on top of the ridge with a raised winding path from the road up to the top.

 A picture of a palm tree blowing in the wind, otherwise a road sign warning motorists of strong cross winds.

 A general picture of the flat rolling plains. Several of the group for one reason and another had flown on to Buenos Aires to rejoin us there....and we were envious of their choice as in reality, they had missed nothing.

 There were some compensations such as a wonderful sunrise over our bush camp on the beach.

 The road follows the coast for a while and there on the beach was a permanent colony of sealions, perhaps just twenty metres from the road and perhaps stretching along the shore for 50 metres.

 A close up of one of the posturing males. The smaller females mostly swam amongst the surf. They had good reason not to go too far out to sea as the were whales not far off shore. We saw plenty of great clouds of steamy breath being blown into the air but never saw any of the animals themselves.

 We stopped off at a sizeable town of Puerto Madryn, a popular port with cruise ships set facing a lovely bay with sandy beaches.

 It had originally been settled by Welsh immigrants in the late nineteenth century, and many of the local names are much more Welsh than Spanish. And they proudly fly the Welsh flag overlooking the bay.

It was only on the last day as we left the Province of Las Pampas and entered Buenos Aires Province that we saw trees again and gradually the scenery changed from grass to scrubland and finally to agricultural land. It was still flat but there was more water and we arrived in Buenos Aires late on Friday afternoon, to mix with the rush hour traffic and demonstrations to get to our hostel for the next few days