Across the Patagonian pampas

We're heading rapidly for the Horn, but stopped yesterday at Puerto Madryn, about halfway between Buenos Aires and the bottom of South America. Puerto Madryn is a town of some 50,000 people, mainly set up as an area to smelt aluminium (notice that WE use the last "i", because we're not under the influence of a ship full of Yanks yet!) from Australia and Brazil.
We drove some 17km south of the town, to Puerto Loma, to watch the sea lions, but John refused to go penguin hunting (for little Magellanic penguins) - the Americans are fanatical about seeing their first sight of a penguin!
Instead we headed 80km across the pampas, to Gaiman, a village set up by Welsh immigrants 130 years ago. It's still very Welsh, and we listened to a Welsh choir while we ate a "Welsh tea". For us, though, the joy was in the pampas - very like Australian saltbush country ... all that was missing was the ant hills! We saw a few "merinos Australiano" (they run 3 to the acre, we're told), a few horses and two hereford steers, but the countryside was otherwise flat and empty. We had a beautiful day, weatherwise, but we can imagine it would be pretty bleak with a cold wind blowing across. The only other animal we saw was roadkill - as we looked, we both said "kangaroo!", but it was a guanaco that was slower than the traffic!
The weather's getting colder, and the swells are getting bigger - about 3 metres today. The ship handles it well, but it IS wobbly! We're OK, but two of our friends have "Gone to bed with Dot" ... the anti-seasickness patch they wear behind one ear. Nothing's going to put us off the superb food - I've just had crab and oyster cakes for lunch, while John had Chicken and tortilla soup and spicy Caribbean fish ... followed by dessert, of course!
We're still getting a little Australian news on CNN, and really appreciate the family and friends who keep us up to date. Love to all of you.