Erin Mushaway

Our tour started with coffee and tea at a viewpoint of the wetlands, followed by a game drive through the park, an hour to relax at the beach and a delicious picnic to the end the morning. If you’d rather not drive, there are guided tours such as this full-day excursion to Endoneni with a game drive in the famous Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park, book yours here. Yes, you can go on a game drive in iSimangaliso, but the game viewing in Hluhluwe is far superior and worth the hour drive from St. Lucia. There are a number of guided game drives departing St. Lucia every morning for Hluhluwe, such as this half-day Hluhluwe game drive.

If it’s just a light rain you can obviously walk, but if it’s storming you’ll need to be able to call a car easily to avoid standing under the deluge. There’s a cafe inside the museum as well, feel free to break for a coffee and pastry before going back out into the rain! The Teatro Colon Opera House is worth visiting rain or shine, but on a rainy day, it’s an excellent Buenos Aires indoor activity. While the coffee may be better for coffee snobs in a new cafe, I prefer the ambiance of one of the many bares notables (an official list of historical notable bars and cafes in the city).

While it’s most common to use the city of Puerto Madryn as your base here, we actually stayed on the Peninsula Valdes in the small town of Puerto Piramides. We’d been in the cold wind all week on the Peninsula Valdes, so a hot tea and a table full of pastries was something I’d been looking forward to. So, overpriced tea be damned, we drove to Ty Te Caerdydd, the tea house that Princess Diana visited when she came to Gaiman (I know, I’m as shocked as you are). Punta Tombo isn’t exactly close at 2 hours away, but this is the largest Magellanic penguin colony in the world and is a very popular Puerto Madryn day trip.

We spent four nights and five days on the peninsula in the small village of Puerto Piramides, choosing to by-pass the city of Puerto Madryn entirely. If you don’t have a car and are based in Puerto Madryn, you’ll need to book a tour that includes transfers like this one, that visits most of the peninsula and optional whale watching. BUT, it’s 3 hours south of Puerto Madryn (making it 4 hours from Puerto Piramides). It’s an easy hour and fifteen-minute drive from Puerto Madryn to Puerto Piramides on the peninsula.