After all that horseriding you'd have thought that we would have given ourselves a rest. Not likely! We travelled to Puerto Madryn and cycled 80k along unsealed roads in 2 days!

The reason for coming to Puerto madryn was to see the Southern right whales. We had seen the pictures taken by our Irish friends and wanted the same experience for ourselves. When we arrived however, we discovered that the boat trip excursion was a lot more expensive than we had bargained for so we took the cheaper option of cylcing out to a place from where you could see the creatures at high tide.

The journey was about 19k along gravelled roads but the scenery was enjoyable and we reached the promontory viewpoint in time to catch a couple of whales swimming past about 20 meters from the base of the cliff on which we were standing. They surfaced and blew from their blowholes and dived to reveal their massive tails. It was an awesome sight and I gasped and cheered. We took many photographs and then waited for another 3 hours in case any more turned up. They didn't.

Thankful that we had seen any at all we got back on our bikes. Jon had a puncture and although he asked the masses of people who had appeared from nowhere, no one had a pump or repair kit. We had to walk all the way home wheeling the bikes as we held out our thumbs for someone to help us. The only people to stop were in a small car and try as they might there was no way the bike was going to fit in the trunk. All the fancy ute's that went by didn't appear to want to make use of the massive flatbed space behind them as they stared at us with shaking heads.

The following day was much more successful. We hired bikes from a different place who provided a pump AND repair kit, and went south. We saw a huge colony of sealions (focars) and spent an hour or so sifting through stones on fossil beach. The roads were similarly bad and there were a few times that I found myself grounded in sand, but we are both very pleased and suprised that we were able to do so much excercise and still survive after having spent so long in Mendoza lounging around and drinking!