In the morning of 24th February, I reached Caleta Olivia where the bus terminated and we all got off. The Swiss girl I’d chatted to on the way bought me a coffee while we waited for a midday bus to the next place up the coast, the oil town of Comodoro Rivadavia. The trip was short and when I got there the wretched Swiss queue jumpers were there! I had several hours to wait for the next bus, so after a bit of lunch I wandered down to the seafront to look out over the grey South Atlantic.

By 4:15 pm I was on a bus to the town of Trelew – this was supposedly the centre of the Welsh-speaking part of Patagonia. It’s a remarkable story, that of the colony of Welsh people that was set up to try to preserve the Welsh language and traditions outside Wales (“a little Wales beyond Wales” was what the guidebook described). By 9 pm I was in Trelew and after a visit to the tourist information office I found a residencia to stay in. The reason for stopping a night in Trelew was that the following morning I would be able to take a tour from Trelew to visit a penguin colony…

While getting a bite to eat I heard a middle aged couple (who weren’t obviously tourists) speaking with a guttural language that I didn’t immediately recognize, and for a few seconds I thought I was witnessing locals speaking Welsh. But these turned out to be Swiss, so obviously not Welsh speaking! (Not that a Swiss citizen speaking Welsh is impossible – I’m sure there’s one somewhere…).

25th February dawned and an early start got me to the Sur Turismo office in time to get a ticket for the “penguin tour” at 8:30. It was a long trip – well over 2 hours, part of which was spent backtracking along yesterdays incoming road.

A curiosity that I have noticed in several Argentinean buses is that the drivers love to dress the gear lever in a furry cover, for no logical reason that I have been able work out. In this bus the red furry gear lever cover was big enough to deserve a photo… and the matching fur round the rear view mirror was a bonus!

On arrival at the Punta Tombo colony I decided it was well worth the long trip. Magellanic Penguins were everywhere, and they were in action, waddling about their daily routines in an often comical fashion. The nesting areas which they went to and from were mostly fenced off to avoid visitor disturbing them, but there were plenty of opportunities for penguin-human interactions.

The beach was full of penguins, many were on the way to or from the sea but a lot of them just stood there squawking at each other, apparently being sociable, and looking like people packed into a particularly popular bar.

The nests, several tens of metres back from the beach, were generally guarded by at least one penguin from that pair. If another penguin walked past on its way to its own nest, and got a bit too close, the residents of the nest would squawk angrily at the passer by. But invariably the passer by just ignored the angry locals.

Mid afternoon, back in Trelew, I walked 3 km to a roundabout at the exit of the town, where I sat for 2 hours waiting for lift to Puerto Madryn – another Welsh-sounding town. Then suddenly a truck carrying mattresses stopped, without me even having to wave my thumb at the driver. An hour later I was in Puerto Madryn where the helpful information office directed me to a cheap hotel.

I bought a ticket for the following night to Buenos Aires and tried to have an early night, but the news on the BBC was quite dramatic and that kept me awake. The situation in the Gulf was changing rapidly and before I went to sleep I heard a news flash that Saddam Hussein had declared he would withdraw from Kuwait.

Most of the 26th February was spent resting, writing postcards and letters, and wandering along the sea front at Puerto Madryn. It was a warm day and I didn’t wander far. Eventually at the end of the afternoon I headed back to the terminal where, as I might have predicted, I came across the wretched Swiss queue jumpers yet again. They saw me but I ignored them as usual.

A plush looking bus was waiting to take me on the 18 hour trip to the Argentinean capital. I didn’t get much sleep, and during the night I heard on the BBC that after 7 months, Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait had finally ended.