I never thought I would need Google Translate to get from Welsh to English while in Argentina, but there you are. The Welsh settled Northern Patagonia in 1865, looking for a place they could practice their religion that did not conform to the Church of England, and where they could speak their own language. In 1982 when the Welsh Guards landed in the Falkland Islands, they captured Argentinian soldiers who spoke Welsh. Those troops were from this area. Their Welsh was a little different, a dialect called Patagonian Welsh, and while it had a number of Spanish cognates it, and standard Welsh, were mutually intelligible.

In July 1865 the first 150 Welsh immigrants landed and founded Porth Madryn, now Puerto Madryn. They found caves in the cliffs on a point south of town, Punta Cuevas, and settled there for the rest of the winter while they built houses. Other immigrants from Spain and Italy soon overtook the Welsh who moved south to the Rio Chubut estuary and began establishing settlements up the valley. They established 16 parishes with churches that also served as schools and meeting houses. They founded towns with the names Rawson, Trelew, Dolavon, Bryn Crwn and Bryn Cwyn and the main town Gaiman, which is not a Welsh name but an indigenous one meaning sharp rock. They irrigated the land and created a successful agricultural district. And while most of the valley is assimilated into the Spanish language Welsh is still taught (or rather taught again) in some of the elementary schools and at the University. The TV station in Gaiman carries programs from the BBC Welsh service.

We wanted to see this bit of Wales in Argentina, so we got a cab and drove through semi-arid country that reminds me of Western South Dakota, over a small range, and into the Chubut Valley, which is green compared with the surrounding landscape.

Before reaching Gaiman we stopped at a statue of a large dinosaur at Trelew. This area is the site of the discovery of the largest dinosaur skeleton in the world. In fact, several skeletons have been dug up in the paleontology field and Trelew had a paleontology museum that is closed on Sunday.

When we got to Gaiman, names we saw on store fronts, houses or on plaques naming directors of institutions included David Roberts, Richard Richards, Ricardo Richards, Moira Hughs, Dewi Gwylim Hughes and Jemina Jones. Some of the flags were Welsh, some Argentine and some a hybrid with the Welch dragon replacing the Argentine Sun.

It was Sunday and most of the town was closed but we did get to see many of the monuments to the Welsh settlers, public art, the original house in Gaiman, and some other Welsh buildings.

In the town plaza folks were setting up for an agricultural fair that would start later in the afternoon but too late for us to attend and still make it back to the ship before it left. Because of traffic tie ups due to police checkpoints (see the next post) we decided we decided to leave Gaiman by around 2 PM to be sure to make the ship on time.

I wanted to go to one of the Welch protestant chapels, but the driver took us to a Catholic chapel instead. The architecture was similar to the pictures of the Welsh chapels we saw in the brochures at the visitors’ center so it gave us some idea of the feel. But one of the reasons we wanted to visit a Welch chapel is that it is traditional to serve Welsh Tea after the service and we had read that visitors were welcome. We missed out on that and thought we would miss out on Welch tea altogether.

There are tea houses that serve traditional Welch teas, but on Sunday most do not open until well after church is over, at 2 PM, our deadline to be back on the road. The Norwegian Sun, also in Puerto Madryn that day, had a tour to Gaiman that included Welsh tea. The half century old Ty Gwyn (White House) tea house opened for them and was happy to serve a couple of tables of non-Norwegian cruisers.

The tea spread was massive. It included bread and butter, cheese sandwiches, scones, butter, jam, Welsh tea bread I (a kind of fruit bread) and six different types of sweets. As tasty as it was, we couldn’t finish it. One British woman from our ship had also cabbed to Gaiman so she could have a conversation in Welch. While the waitress did not know English, she did know Welsh. Later two young men came in who spoke Welsh. Our British friend was happy.