I arrived on time at Trelew airport in Patagonia for the third and final leg of my Argentinian and Antarctic trip. I was soon leaving the airport in the pre-booked hire car on the thirty minute journey to Puerto Rawson. There were a number of options for the three days I had for this final section of the trip, with trying to get out on a rib to look for Commerson's Dolphins as the first of these options.
I knew the afternoon rib departed from Puerto Rawson at 14:30. I arrived with about thirty minutes to spare to find the place was locked up. The two hour trip was about seventy quid and I wasn't prepared to risk booking for this afternoon, as I knew that any delay in the internal flight would mean I would lose my money. Clearly, there was no trip planned for the afternoon.
With no rib trip running, Plan B was to spend the afternoon looking from the coast and hope to locate some Commerson's Dolphins from land. I hadn't managed to find anything online suggesting favoured feeding sites, so it was a case of driving up and down the coastline for a few miles either side of Puerto Rawson and hoping I got lucky. I was focusing on looking for some Commerson's Dolphins, but did occasionally get distracted enough to raise the camera.
As I explored South of Puerto Rawson, I ran into the first parties of Burrowing Parrots. I remember they were a commonly-seen Parrot on my 1998 visit to the Valdez Peninsula, but that didn't stop me taking lots of photos.
With no joy to the South of Puerto Rawson, I explored the beaches around the North end of the town.
There was a nice selection of other wildlife art along the Puerto Rawson coastline.
Having failed to find any Commerson's Dolphins along the shoreline to the North and South of Puerto Rawson, I was left with a dilemma: should I stick around in Puerto Rawson overnight in the hope of getting out on the next day or stick with the plan to head as far North as I could and try and see the limited range Pampas Meadowlark, which was one of my other key targets for this Patagonian section of the trip. Having been lucky to bump into the Commerson's Dolphins in the Beagle Channel, I decided to head North.
After an hour and a half of driving, I reached Puerto Madryn. I had another look for Cetaceans along the coastline here, but again I drew a blank. This wasn't surprising, as there was a busy port here, which probably wasn't going to be great for Cetaceans. The obvious choice would have been to stick around in this area and spend a day on the excellent Valdez Peninsula and to look for some Southern Right Whales. However, I was short of time for this leg of the trip due to the cost and availability of flights back to the UK in the run up to Christmas. In hindsight, I should have booked a post Christmas flight and spent another week in Argentina. However, that wouldn't have been a cheap extension and it had already been an expensive trip. I had spent a couple of excellent days on the Valdez Peninsula during my 1998 trip.
As I was trying to get to new locations on this return visit, I pushed on North for another three hours to the small town of Las Grutas. This was an area I hadn't visited in 1998 and there was the opportunity for several Ticks in this area. I arrived in Las Grutas an hour after dark and headed South along a coastal dirt track until I found a quiet place where I could kip in the car for the night.