Finishing East Coast (October 16 to November 1)

After seeing a lot of animals around Peninsula Valdes we followed the east coast more to south.

Close to the cities Trelew and Rawson we stayed at the "Playa Bonita", not the first and last beautiful beach (even with with the exact same name) and the temperatures developed to 15 degrees and more, so that even the locals meanwhile took out sunchairs and umbrellas and enjoying the beaches not just for taking a walk or fishing.

And we enjoyed the camper's life outside of the car, especially for cooking and eating.

After another 250 km drive through the Patagonian pampas we came to Camarones, a small village close to Cabo Dos Bahias, a place to spot a lot of pinguins and sea lions. Even if these places are called "tourist attractions", one has the fantastic scenery and landscape mostly alone. If this is still because of the time in the year (late spring in the southern hemisphere), or the fact, that this country is just so big, we have never found out.

Nevertheless, at least we met a nice Polish/Czech couple travelling with two 250 ccm Chilean bikes and tent since 8 months through the whole of South America.

While talking with them and standing in the sandy wind on a gravel road, we realized again how luxurious our "small" car is, even if we struggle sometimes a little bit with the limited size and comfort.

So again, it is just a question of the perspective.

Then, we saw a lot of cute penguins (taking care of their eggs), sea lions more in the distance jumping out of the water (like dolphins), and a lot of guanacos (which are present almost everythere, even as skeletons).

After leaving Cabo Dos Bahias on more pampas roads, we came by chance to a green oasis close to the city "Commodore Rivadavia".

We found an abandoned estancia surrounded by trees, which seems to be used by locals for paintball events. Seeing trees and enjoying sitting in their shadow, was a highly appreciated variety after weeks of less vegetation, dust, and dryness.

The region there is one of the main oil/petrol fields on land in Argentina, and the majority of people are living from this buisness and the governmental owned petrol company YPF is taking care of their employees, with recreation parks for weekends and holidays, where the "petroleros" can enjoy the most relevant dish: asado (meat) from the grill.

A museum gave also a very interesting insight in the history of the petrol in Argentina.

The city's name "Commodore Rivadavia" is like in many other places in Argentina based on historic people (e.g. Commander Rivadavia), who came here hundreds of years ago and founded the cities.

Besides this historic aspect, also the catholic footprint is present everythere. Argentinians are building small and tiny huts along the road for asking for holy support and honouring several saints (e.g. San Cayetano, Diffunta Correa). As water is one of the most relevant gifts to the saints, Argentinians found a clever alternative to recycle plastic bottles there, instead of throwing them just into the landscape as they are normally doing (very often even filled with very human liquid of truck drivers).

Nethertheless, we enjoyed our road trip further on, with amazing walks and sunsets at the beaches, before arriving to a special city: Comandante Luis Piedra Buena.

Again a green oasis in the pampas, where everything has to be watered for growing and the streets are full of (permanent!) Christmas decoration (but guanacos are pulling the sledge with Santa Claus) and characters of cartoons and movies as statues and signs, just before another 200 km later, close to the city of "Rio Gallegos", "San Expedito" was waiting for us. A former roman soldier turned into a saint being in charge of all maters of "urgent things", just besides a lot of the typical Argentinian barbecue grills for asado.

Again an example for a very pragmatical way of doing in Argentina.

We took the chance of the nearby hills for a nice hike, discovering a lot of funny small flowers.