Bahía Bustamante

Bahía Bustamante in Chubut Province was a private seaweed-harvesting town for forty years — the production of agar for food and pharmaceutical industries — and when the operation became uneconomic in the 1990s, the company converted its infrastructure into a small eco-lodge and the 110,000-hectare estate into a private nature reserve of Atlantic steppe, petrified forests, and one of Patagonia's least-visited coastlines. The bay's penguin colony, sea lion rookery, and dolphin population exist without tourist infrastructure beyond what the lodge provides for its twelve guests at a time.

Bahía Bustamante is a privately owned coastal estancia in Chubut Province, 170 kilometres south of Camarones, accessible only on an unsealed road across Patagonian steppe with no services. The 110,000-hectare reserve protects Atlantic steppe, petrified forest formations (distinct from the more famous Jaramillo site, with different geological origins), and a coastline that hosts Magellanic and Rockhopper penguin colonies, South American sea lions, orcas during seasonal seal hunts, and Commerson's dolphins. The seaweed (cochayuyo and pelillo) harvesting that built the original settlement was conducted entirely by hand and without motor vessels — a practice maintained from the 1950s through the 1980s — and the original factory buildings, warehouses, and worker housing have been converted into the current lodge infrastructure without significant architectural modification. The carbon footprint of staying here is essentially zero.