A very tiny port town with some brand new apartments and hotels, Puerto Madryn is focused on preserving its environment for the safety and proliferation of the native fauna. The newest building in town is the Ecocenter, dedicated to Jules Verne, and displaying artists' responses to the native wildlife. My favorite was the red whale 'skeleton', made out of the trash thrown into the ocean that gets deposited on the beaches - tires, plastic bottles, shoes. Now, that sends a message!
For those of you who hang out in Monterey, the sea lion colonies here would be very familiar, but they are a novelty for me, and delightful to watch. So playful! The cormorants and sea lions coexist quite peacefully, and ignore each other.
One of the big industries is the wool from the sheep, very much in competition with Australia's wool export. We had the opportunity to spend some time at a local sheep station, Estancia San Guillermo. Their shearer is the second-fastest shearer in Argentina - having won that award last year. Shearing a sheep with today's modern clippers is a far cry from yesteryear's manual shears - the shearer dances a tango with the sheep, holding her close and lovingly, turning her body in a smooth circle to release the fleece in one piece.
The gaucho (cowboy) still herds the sheep by horse, and guanacos (relatives of llamas and alpacas) nose curiously around the station. The ranch is complete with several horses, a large tabby cat, and a puppy.
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