Few people hang around long in
RÍO GALLEGOS (pronounced
RI-o ga-SHAY-goss ), heading out instead to Calafate, south to Ushuaia or northwards with as little delay as possible. Despite a surfeit of tourist offices, the town is well aware that it's not a tourist destination
per se , though if you have time to kill here, all is not lost - there are a couple of little museums, one or two attractive early twentieth-century buildings, and a day excursion to the
penguin colony at Cabo Vírgenes.
One thing that does attract people to Gallegos from as far away as North America, Europe and Japan, is its incredible fly fishing . As with the Río Grande in Tierra del Fuego, the Río Gallegos (the river that the town is named after) is the haunt of some of the most spectacularly sized, sea-going brown trout anywhere in the world. Take with you your licence, a guide (if you can afford one), and a camera for the glory shot, as it's considered particularly poor form to kill these leviathans.
