We saw in new year 2008 just shortly after sunset, camped up just the two of us on the cliffs of the Peninsula Valdez. The first morning of the year we spent naked, paddling around in the rockpools, stuffing our faces with grapes to celebrate the new year, then languidly striking camp.
Later we watched sealions cavorting in their way on rocks below the cliffs, mating in a way that seemed so human as to have us averting our eyes!
Back on the road after spending most of the day just hanging around, we stopped first in Puerto Madryn for gelati then in Trelew for toasted sandwiches, thus sampling two of the major items on the typical Argentine menu as we went. The sandwiches became dinner as we realised it was eight in the evening while we ate them, then we got back on the road in what seemed the early afternoon. We covered another couple of hundred km of beautiful though featureless plains after supper, then started looking for a good place to pitch a tent in this windswept corner of the world. 
A disused gravel pit served the purpose well, offering shelter from the wind and a smooth surface where once a tank or machinery would have been. With broad, cloudless skies above, we felt no need to pitch the tent and instead spent a restful night under the southern stars. After a long morning and then more than 600km on the road, we slept like the dead.
We're very impressed with this vast southern land and its friendly people. On the last day of the year we camped on the northern bank of Rio Colorado on a nice mown block with running water and Eucalypts on tap. With Patagonia starting on the other side of the river, it seemed quite apt that we should camp in a place that felt so familiar to us.
It's a long way to Tierra del Fuego, so it's good to take big bites at the distance.
We aimed for breakfast in Comodoro Rivadavia, about 150km or so, but somehow managed to get there in the early afternoon. We tried for a hot shower at a caravan park, but were naked as well as bummed out when we realised that the promised 'hot' was missing from the water. We ended up showering at the truckstop in town, and that was a pearler after the earlier disappointment and with a few days' grime.
We had read of an oilspill in the south of Argentina while we waited the final few minutes before getting the bike out of customs in Buenos Aires, and after asking around we found out it was just a few miles north of Comodoro. Volunteers were still needed to help rescuing, feeding and caring for affected birdlife, so we headed for Caleta Cordova, the site of the spill, and walked into the headquarters of the rescue operation.
They gave us protective clothing, including goggles to protect against the beaks of stressed birds, and we were into it. First we paired gloves, then up the chain a bit to feed and hydrate the birds, this latter by means of syringe and tube down their throats.
This involved quite a degree of handling the birds (which included cormorants, magellanic penguins, ducks and other species). There were a couple of dozen volunteers and the whole show was very well organised by a group called SOS Maritimo. On our second day as volunteers we also went out to the beaches to catch oil-stained penguins, coming back with two individuals after walking several kilometres on huge, wide beaches in a howling north wind.
We asked around for a place to pitch our tent and Marcelo, the boss bloke, directed us to a house where such was on offer. La Franja de Cesar - translatable as Cesar's Strip, just like Gaza, as Cesar himself pointed out. This experience is probably worth another blog entry in itself, as rather a lot happens when Cesar is around, especially on his own turf.
A bit of a nutter, a passionate and good-hearted man and a fisherman whose livelihood had just been destroyed by the oilspill (this beach is his front yard), he had some stories to tell.
He also had plenty of paper clippings to show, telling the saga of his battle with the authorities and the oil company, this brought about by his habit of documenting smaller spills and reporting them to the Prefectura, or Coast Guard. Seems he'd been jailed for several months for his insistence.
Back to the oilspill, and due to a change of wind from on- to offshore, the stain has moved from the ten-odd kilometres of coast it killed, out to sea. It now occupies an area of about 8x16 km. According to Cesar and other sources, there was a window of opportunity of about 24-hours in which barriers to prevent the spill from going out to sea in the event of a change could have been deployed. This action, though accounted for in the contingency plans of both the Prefectura and the oil company, was not implemented. Now that the spill is out in open seas, it will possibly be sunk with sand. Out of sight, out of mind.
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