Bahía Bustamante

Bahía Bustamante was founded in the 1950s as a village for the families who harvested seaweed along this coast, and at its height it had more than four hundred inhabitants. Today the old houses are a lodge, surrounded by one of the richest coasts in Patagonia for wildlife: thousands of sea lions, a penguin colony of tens of thousands, and more than twenty species of seabirds on the islands of the bay. Inland, the steppe hides a petrified forest.

It needs two or three nights to make sense of the drive. Days are spent on boat trips to the islands of the bay, walks on empty beaches of white sand and red rock, and drives across the steppe to the petrified forest. It lies between Comodoro Rivadavia and Trelew, on the coastal road of the Blue Route, and fits as the quiet end of a journey along the Atlantic coast.

The lodge follows the wildlife season, from September to April. November to March has the penguins and the longest days.