A Relaxing Day in Puerto Madryn

[wiselindag]

My husband and I, semi-retired cruisers chose to wander around in this port and did not book a tour. The tours to Punta Tombo were expensive and involved driving over rough roads for several hours in order to see penguins. We chose to skip the long bus or van ride … a must for penguin lovers, but we planned to see penguins in the Falklands and at Otway Sound (Punta Arenas) later in the trip. Here is the report of our day:

 

We had conflicting weather reports for this port. The Freestyle Daily said we would have rain, but the group bulletin board indicated sunny and 71 degrees. When we awoke, the sun was shining and it remained quite sunny out. We had no plans for this port and since it was sunny, we decided to walk into town and see what was to be found here.

 

The NCL Sun was docked at the end of a long pier, so we took the shuttle bus from the ship and then walked to the Tourist Office (as others have indicated about three blocks to the left along the street parallel to the water. The street is called Roca). I asked about the shuttle from the T.O. to the EcoCentre at the Tourist kiosk on the pier near the ship, but the woman there (no doubt paid by taxi companies and tour companies) assured me that we needed a taxi since there was no shuttle. When we got to the T.O., there was an EcoCentre shuttle outside, but we decided to just walk around town instead. I was surprised by the modernity of the town and the wide streets in every direction with nice looking shops. Scattered around the downtown, were some houses with lovely gardens. I suspect if we'd been more energetic and walked farther, we would have seen more of these.

 

We walked around and along the seafront and then headed back to the ship for a lazy afternoon. On the way back we decided to continue our walk along the pier instead of taking the bus, and were glad we did. Shortly before we arrived back, we were motioned over to the edge by some nice people from Chile who had spotted a colony of sea lions sleeping on the steps leading up to the pier from the water in a quiet sunny spot against a gate. We took some photographs and then returned to the Sun, feeling we had seen some local sea life without a tour.

 

Although we didn't shop, there were many stores in town including what appeared to be a very nice shopping center. There were also numerous cafes and restaurants scattered around town in the area near the pier and although we didn't sample any, they looked quite nice.

[Memphis Belle]

wiselindag,

Thank you for sharing your experiences at this port.