Puerto Madryn, another Welsh settlement an hour north of Gaiman, was our next stop. Unlike Gaiman, the city has little need of tea shops to attract tourists - it is the de facto wildlife capital of the east coast, famous for sightings of species of penguins and dolphins that exist nowhere else in the world. Being, as I often remark to James, “pretty good at nature now,” and having a particular penchant for cute little penguins, we decided to take a few days to properly explore the area.

The most famous place to spot wildlife is the Reserva Faunística Penínsular Valdés, a large and surprisingly dusty piece of land linked to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The day after our arrival we headed off on a full-day tour to explore. Our group was a lively one: along with us and a trio of French and German friends, our bus was filled with a gregarious group of five ladies from Buenos Aires, one hen-pecked husband, and a very cute little girl. They quickly started getting to know us, rapidly firing questions our way which we did our best to respond to in Spanish. Once they were satisfied, they inducted us into one of the most famous Argentinian rituals: drinking mate with friends.

We'd already seen lots of Argentinians drinking mate during our adventures. Initially, in Salta, we thought it was some kind of ancient bong, but when a policeman took the contraption from someone in the main square, only to take a couple of sips and pass it back again, we realised we must be mistaken. In fact, mate drinking, originally the preserve of the gauchos, has taken on almost cult-status here in Argentina – rarely is someone to be seen without a wooden gourd filled with mate in hand, sipping away through a silver straw, known here as a bombilla. James and I found ourselves slightly saddened that we don't have any similar 'sharing' traditions back in the UK – none that are alcohol-free anyway.

The drink is made from yerba mate, the chopped dried leaves of a type of holly bush. The gourd is almost filled to the brim with the yerba, and then hot water is added. It tastes pretty bitter, a lot like Japanese macha, although generally a lot of sugar or sweetener is added – no real surprise considering the Argentinian sweet tooth. James was not a fan, but I took to it instantly (much to the delight of our new friends), and enjoyed taking a few hearty sips every time the gourd was passed my way throughout the day.

Anyway, back to the wildlife. Our day consisted of a few stops at various points along the coastline to simply admire and take pictures. We saw a lot of lazy elephant seals, enormous fur-covered beasts up to 5m long, who were lazing about on the beach close to the shoreline enjoying the sun's rays. Orca (killer) whales are regularly spotted beaching themselves in order to snack on seals in these parts but (un)fortunately there were none to be seen. We had to content ourselves with the very cute black and white Magellan penguins instead, that are currently ashore in order to hatch their little 'uns. We were due to visit a whole colony the next day, and this first glimpse definitely whetted our appetites for what was to come.

But the highlight of the day was the boat tour that we took in the afternoon in order to spot some southern right whales. These whales settle in to the shallow waters around the peninsular for a few months each year in order to give birth to and wean their young, before heading out to deeper waters to hunt. Having never been on a whale spotting tour I didn't really know what to expect. Whatever those expectations were, this trip definitely exceeded them. Almost as soon as we were afloat (having been driven to the shoreline by a converted tractor) someone spotted a whale's tail in the corner of the bay, and we were off, 50 or so cameras at the ready....to see a mummy whale and her calf splashing about. At one point the baby whale jumped right out of the water, glinting in the sunlight for a few seconds before creating an enormous splash as he landed. It was a proper Free Willy moment.

I thought that was pretty good, but there was more to come. As we moved further out to sea, cries went up around the boat as people kept spotting tails splashing in all directions – the experts think there are more than a hundred whales that come to rest here each spring. We attracted the curiosity of a couple of them, who came swimming over to our boat and took turns raising their ugly faces to take a closer look at us. I say ugly, because their heads are covered in a crop of whitish natural growths, known as callosites, which are made up of whale lice. Nice. We started to think we were goners, especially when one of the whales went charging across in front of the boat and the other dived underneath, creating an enormous wave. But they were only playing, thinking the boat was another potential friend. It was amazing to be so close – I think the Argentinian restrictions are a lot more lax than elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to do the animals any harm at all.

The next day was our penguin odyssey – we were heading down to Punta Tombo, the largest penguin nesting ground outside of Antarctica. But first we had another little extra thrown in for good measure: a boat ride to go dolphin-spotting. Having already seen a fair few dolphins in New Zealand I was more excited about seeing the penguins, but this ended up being my favourite part of the day. Commerson's dolphins, henceforth to be known as panda dolphins for their black and white colouring and slightly pudgy physique, are completely unique to Patagonia. They came motoring up to the boat (more of a dinghy really, with only about 30 people on board) and ran rings around us as they investigated, popping up and disappearing again before you really knew what was happening. We took a lot of photos of water as we raced to try and keep up with them. They were really inquisitive – at one point I got splashed fully in the face by the exhalation from a dolphin's blowhole, he was that close to the boat. A little gross...but pretty cool all the same.

Slightly giddy with excitement, we headed on down the coast to see the penguins. The colony is home to over one million penguins during peak season (in January / February time, when all the chicks have hatched and the young penguins come ashore to shed and re-waterproof their feathers ready for another season at sea), but even when we were there, just before the eggs were due to start hatching, there were some 200,000 pairs of penguins. Penguins mate for life and have a very 21st century approach to parenting: they each take it in turns to sit on the egg, whilst the other goes to sea and fishes for a few days at a time. So we got to see both the penguins nesting and the penguins heading off to or back from the sea. As you might expect of a colony accommodating so many penguins, it was enormous, and it was very bizarre to see the stark black and white creatures set against a desert brush-like background.

Again the regulations governing human interaction with wild animals seemed to be virtually non-existent, and whilst we were given strict instructions about not getting too close, and not petting the animals, we were able to get a lot closer than I'd anticipated. When a penguin is waddling past you, it has right of way, as if you block its path it can get disorientated and lose its way. We were enchanted as a few of these little creatures waddled across right in front of us. The nesting penguins had their own little routines too, getting up off the eggs every few hours in order to stretch, shit and have a little wander around – pretty similar to a human morning really!

Being close to the sea also had the advantage of offering a break from the unofficial national cuisine (ham and cheese) and indulge ourselves in fresh seafood. Not that this seems to be a benefit for the locals: 95% of the seafood caught here is exported, and one of our tour guides proudly told us she only eats fish once a year, at Easter: the rest of the time, it's carne, carne, carne. Her loss is our gain, and we indulged in enormous prawns, calamari, scallops, salmon and a new one for me, spider crab. It seemed there were only a few good restaurants in town, and so we found ourselves spending two consecutive evenings next to the same couple from Buenos Aires on a tour of Patagonia. They were very keen to chat to us, and the husband became my friend for life when he told James he was “muy suerte” (very lucky) to be marrying me!