After a day at sea, we pulled into our first Atlantic port at Puerto Madryn, Argentina, a speck of a town of about 60,000 in the remote region of Patagonia.
In the mid-1800’s, the government of Argentina had laid claim to a vast amount of land in Patagonia, but had no one to settle it. At the same time, in Wales, Welshmen were upset at the encroachment of English language and culture upon their ancient tongue and traditions. In late May of 1865, a small band of 153 settlers, few of whom had ever been out of their own villages, boarded the beat-up clipper ship “Mimosa” at Liverpool and left everything they had ever known to sail to a new world. They had cobblers, miners, blacksmiths, bakers, and preachers but, apparently, not a farmer among them! They had a difficult two month journey, made more so by the tyrannical captain who denied them access to the fresh air and sunlight of the main deck. They sailed into Gulfo Nuevo on July 27, and named their new home for Sir Thomas Duncombe Love Jones-Parry, their Baron of Madryn, northwest Wales.
The city has a large aluminum industry, but is a center for tourism for the Patagonian coast, with penguin and sea lion colonies a couple of hours away. Not big on foot-high penguins, and having plenty of sea lions in California, we opted to stay in PM and just wander the city. It has a very nice sandy beach that stretches for miles, and a colorful central downtown area. Although it was sunny, it wasn’t exactly sunbathing weather, and virtually no one was taking in the rays.
There’s not a lot to the town. We did find a colorful fruit and veggie market, but most of the streets looked like they could have been plucked from any town in California’s Central Valley. They had the same look, except for the glimpses of ocean.
I did note that the RV industry is thriving, and hooray for a rather dilapidated example of my favorite jalopy, which looks like its suspension is stuck on a permanent rake.
About the only thing of note to do in PM is the local “Oceanographic and Natural Sciences Museum,” housed in a neo-classical house that was built by one of the early settlers. It had a few curiosities and interesting displays and, best of all, was free that day. It also had a rather unnerving spiral staircase up the tower, with treads that seemed not to have any visible support except where they came out of the wall.
We saw no restaurants that had any appeal, and I wished we had sprung for one of the tours that went inland to some of the Welsh villages that dot the area, like Trelew, Rawson, and Gaiman. They offered a visit to a Welsh tea shoppe, which might have been nice. Apparently, the Welsh spoken in these small towns is considered to be the purest form of the language, and folks from Wales travel here to study it and refresh their speech. We didn’t hear anything but Spanish in PM. We made our way back to the bus pickup area. The ship does get to dock in this port, but at a remote pier out by the aluminum plant, about a 15 minute bus trip into the town center.
We queued up for this bus, which promptly closed its doors after discharging its passengers and pulled away empty. I think those folks in shorts and T’s are Canadians from northern Alberta.
Had to wait another ten minutes or so for the next one to arrive, which did haul us back to the ship, just in time for a stint at the design-it-yourself pasta bar! Mmmmm. Bow ties, mushrooms, and veggies. I’ll spare you the desserts.
We went on deck later on to watch us pull out. The captain supervises things from his flying bridge, with the dock workers casting off the huge hawsers. They throw them in the drink and the ship’s capstans winch them aboard. The side thrusters move us sideways away from the dock, and we’re underway.
As we moved out into the bay, I noticed a small speck furiously smashing its way through the waves, coming at us from the dock.
This turned out to be the pilot boat, coming out to retrieve the port’s pilot from our ship. That little sucker was tunneling into those waves. I don’t think any of Loni’s seasickness remedies would have worked on board that thing. Once we got to the proper location, the ship stopped, the pilot boat came along side, and the harbor pilot jumped down to it. I missed that moment, but he was pretty nimble.
Off they went back to the pier, we picked up steam, and farewell Puerto Madryn!
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