Outings and excursions · Puerto Madryn
Gaiman and the Lower Chubut Valley: Welsh chapels and tea
Photos: Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación · CC BY-SA 2.0 / Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación · CC BY-SA 2.0 / Katherinemanquepan · CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
A day trip from Puerto Madryn to the Welsh town of Gaiman: farms watered by 19th-century canals, brick chapels and tea with torta negra.
From Puerto Madryn, Route 3 runs south across steppe and low bluffs to Trelew. There you turn west onto Route 25, and about 15 kilometres later the landscape changes all at once: rows of poplars, green farms and the Chubut River winding along the valley floor. This is the lower valley, a strip roughly 90 kilometres long and 7 to 10 wide that follows the river to the sea.
All that green is man-made. The Welsh settlers who landed from the sailing ship Mimosa on Golfo Nuevo in 1865, about 150 of them, found a dry valley with very little rain, and in the late 19th century they dug the North and South irrigation canals that still run alongside the river. Gaiman, on the banks of the river and the North canal, began in 1874 with David D. Roberts' stone house and became Chubut's first municipality.
The town is best explored on foot. The old Central Chubut Railway station now houses the Welsh Regional Museum, and up in the bluffs is the 1914 railway tunnel, curved and 282 metres long, built because townspeople refused to let the tracks run through the middle of Gaiman. Welsh is still heard in the streets, and every September the town hosts the youth Eisteddfod.
The chapels are the other thread of the trip. The largest in the valley is Bethel Chapel, a brick building opened in 1914 next to the old Bethel of 1880, with room for 450 to 500 people; three of Gaiman's chapels, Bethel and Salem among them, are National Historic Monuments. Others are scattered among the valley farms.
The afternoon ends at a tea house: tea served at the table with home-made bread, scones, tarts and torta negra, Chubut's take on bara brith, which settler women created to make scarce supplies last. About 10 kilometres away, Bryn Gwyn Paleontological Park makes one more stop if there's daylight left.
- Tour type: Cultural, historical and food
- Difficulty level: Easy (drive plus a walk around town)
- Tip: Leave Madryn early to see the chapels and the valley in good light and save the Welsh tea for the afternoon; if you can, time your visit with the September Eisteddfod.
