Dan and Sarah`s Trip - Blog & Photos

17 August 2007

Peninsula Valdes and Buenos Aires

After our wonderful day of skiing in Bariloche we look the difficult decision to head east rather than south, as was our original plan. We had hoped to visit the amazing Perito Mereno glacier in the far south of Patagonia but had severely underestimated how far it was (30 hours each way on a bus). Also, as it's winter in upside-down-land, it's not the ideal time of year for doing all the outdoorsy things we enjoy doing. As we're starting to get a little short on time we reluctantly decided to earmark it, along with the rest of Chilean and Argentinan Patagonia for a return visit one day.

So, east we went and after another 14 hours on an overnight bus we arrived in Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast of Argentina. The bus was again very comfortable with 'semi cama' seats and after being served some plastic ham and cheese sandwiches early in the journey (they don't seem to do any other kind of sarnies in South America - we're really looking forward to a cheese and branston pickle sandwich on some nice granary bread when we get home!) we were about to settle down to start pushing out some ZZZZzzs when they decided to serve a three course meal at about 11pm. This was a nice surprise and quite edible but the best bit was the choice of drinks - coke, sprite or vino tinto! Tough choice I know but we both settled for a nightcap of a very generous polystyrene beaker of red wine (American Airlines take note!!) After a pretty good night's sleep we arrived at Puerto Madryn the next morning keen to see the main attractions on offer.

Puerto Madryn is the gateway to a lump of rock (quite a large lump of rock actually) sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean called Península Valdés and this special place is home to many marine mammals including elephant seals, sealions, southern right whales and orcas. This place was featured on the David Attenborough 'Trials of Life' series on the BBC as it's only one of two places in the world where orcas crash onto the beach and temporarily strand themselves in order to bag a tasty snack in the form of a sealion pup or two (or penguin if the pups are too quick!). The seals and sealions are around all year in varying numbers but the whales are somewhat more seasonal. As it happened, our timing was off for the orcas but bang on for the southern right whales, so we planned our couple of days in the area around trying to get a glimpse of them. We spent a day around Puerto Madryn sorting out some car hire and visiting the excellent EcoCentro where we learnt loads about the wildlife we were hoping to see. We also walked along the beach at sunset watching whales just off the coast playing about, waving their fins and tails and even a bit further out, breaching. An amazing sight which whetted our appetite for the next day's wildlife spotting.

Península Valdés is a nature reserve and the only settlement is the tiny town, well collection of houses really, of Puerto Pyrámides, our desination the following day. Our hire car was delivered to our hostel and we then set out to the peninsula.. The road took us past several beaches, one of which had a few buses and cars parked up with people stood on the beach gazing out to sea watching something in the water. Not wanting to miss out (and being generally nosey types) we pulled up in our VW Gol (bit like a Golf only smaller and not as good) and immediately saw what all the fuss was about. We could count over 20 whales just off the shore, some as close as 15m. It was a truly awesome sight. They were just lying there chilling out, occassionally rolling over onto their backs, sticking their noses up out of the water, waving a fin or showing a tail. Further out to sea we could see similar antics and the now familiar spray of mist from their blowholes. We walked along the beach for a while, listening and watching to them for about an hour and a half until we dragged ourselves away to go and find some more wildlife.

Driving onto the peninsula we entered the park gates and paid our entrance fees. Puerto Pyrámides was 100km from Puerto Madryn and we headed straight there to try and bag some accommodation for the night. After finding somewhere cheap (but not very cheerful as it turned out but more on that in a bit, at least it had an electric heater) for the night our next mission was a boat trip out to the whales. It wasn't really necessary after our beach encounter you could say but they are inquisitive creatures and come right up to boats and we were hoping to see some breaching from a much closer viewpoint. It was only a matter of minutes before we found some whales and we spent just over two hours out with them and saw dozens. Towards the end of the trip we did see some breaching from a closer distance, but not right next to the boat for a dramatic and award-winning photograph as we were hoping.

Following Sarah's informative and educational blog-writing example, I feel I should pass on some useful general knowledge we have learned. Southern right whales are so called as they were the 'right' whales to hunt as their inquisitive nature made them easy targets for whalers as they came close to the boats. They are also slow swimmers, yield copious amounts of oil and float when they are dead. Fortunately they are protected in Argentine waters and it seems only the Japanese who still have desires to kill these magnificent creatures. The whales come to the sheltered waters around PV to breed each year. They weigh up to 60 tonnes and grow up to 16m long and unlike the sperm whales we saw in New Zealand are filter feeders and derive nutrients from the plankton they sift from the seas with their baleen plates. Got all that? There will be a test when we get back...

The next day we went off exploring the peninsula in search of more wildlife. There are no paved roads but I felt more than qualified to pilot the VW Gol around the gravel roads and tracks after all the off roading we did in the campervans in Oz and NZ. We saw isolated groups of sealions and elephant seals on a few beaches but they aren't there in great numbers at this time of year. Again, they come here to mate and it turns out the poor old female elephant seal has quite a rough deal. She is pregnant for eleven months in every year but even during the one month when she isn't, things aren't much better as she doesn't get to eat and looses about a third of her body weight. All her energy gets sapped by her hungry pup who goes from 40kg to 200kg in 3-weeks!! (you girls think you have it tough!). We also learnt from the visitor centre the day before that orcas had unusually for this time of year been spotted at the north of the peninsula on the previous day so we hung around for an hour or so in the vain hope that they might come back, but they didn't show.

Sarah made one grim discovery that day; that she was covered in nasty red bites all over her body. We can only put them down to bed bugs from the night before but a few things didn't make sense. Firstly Sarah was wearing PJ bottoms, long sleeved thermal top and socks (yes, very sexy night attire for our honeymoon, but it was cold as she kept telling me!) and secondly I was in the same bed wearing a lot less and I didn´t get bitten once. Obviously she was a sacrificial decoy to keep them away from me! Well, in ten months of sleeping in all sorts of dodgy establishments, this is our first experience of bed bugs so we've been quite lucky I suppose.


Next stop, Buenos Aires via another 18 hour 'semi cama' overnight bus. Nothing to report from that journey other than a distinct lack of vino tinto on offer (but of course we got our mandatory plastic ham and cheese sarnie!). Buenos Aires is the cliche home of tango, football and Evita. Tango was one thing I was keen to avoid and is practiced at numerous 'milongas' around the city and classes are available all over the place. Boca Juniors is the most famous home football team and the infamous 'hand of God' Diego Maradona is one of their former players. And Maria Eva Duarte Perón, better known as Evita is a national icon and probably Argentina's most famous woman.

We found a very nice hostel (or 'hostel suites' as it liked to call itself) arranged around a central open courtyard in the bohemian cobbled streets of San Telmo. We spent four days in and around BA and were pleasantly surprised by what this massive city had to offer, as we're not really into big cities and weren't overly impressed with the only other South American Capital we visited, namely Santiago. We spent a morning walking around the colourful La Boca area. It was match day for Boca Juniors so we visited the ticket office at the ground on the off chance that we could get some tickets for the afternoon game but they were sold out as it was the first match of the season (I think Sarah was secretly relieved that she didn't have to sit in a draughty old stadium for a couple of hours watching some silly boys running around chasing a ball, as she put it). Buildings in La Boca are painted with the blue and yellow of the team but also many other vibrant colours, a tradition brought here by early Italian immigrants who used to paint their houses with the left over paint from their colourful fishing boats. There are lots of art, craft and artisan stalls lining the main street called Caminito, along with tango dancers, one of which accosted me. Luckily I got away with just having my photo taken with her fishnet-stockinged leg wrapped around me and I didn't have to dance! Also managed to get away without Sarah buying anything - bonus!

Argentines are also obsessed with their national drink, mate (pronounced matay). This is a culture in itself and is similar to drinking leaf tea but instead of a pot and strainer you fill a special cup (also called a mate) with the leaf (called yerba), add hot water (not boiling – very important apparently), and then stick in a special straw type thingy (called a bombilla) which has a strainer on the end. You then drink the mate using the bombilla and add more water to the yerba until the flavour is too weak. After which you can discard the leaves and start again. Argentines walk around everywhere drinking their mate in the street and for convenience also clutch a thermos flask of hot water which can be filled at many cafes and shops. It looks very strange but being big tea drinkers we thought we´d give it a go ‘the Argentine way’. Whilst in La Boca we ventured into a cafe and ordered mate for two and obviously looking like a right pair of ‘Gringos’ were given an impromptu lesson on the etiquete. It has a very distinctive and almost smokey flavour and we both quite liked it. So much so we have now bought our own mate cup and bombilla along with some yerba!

After some culture in La Boca we headed back to the San Telmo area for a casual stroll around the streets and a look at the Sunday antique and handicraft market that fills one of the avenues. Again got away without buying anything - would you believe it!

That night we booked to experience tango at one of the many tango dinner shows that run most nights in BA. We chose an old well established place (which was also very cheap) called Cafe Tortoni and turned up for the 2230 show (they do things very late in BA and it´s not uncommon to go out for dinner at midnight). I was slightly apprehensive as I was still very keen to avoid having to actually dance and had visions of being pulled up on stage and forced to make a tit of myself (some of you who have seen me dancing may be thinking what´s new). I was relieved when we were given our table as we were a safe distance from the stage. We had also been a little concerned that given the restricted backpack space we didn't possess any ‘going out’ clothes so had to make do with nicest looking (OK, let´s rephrase that - least grubby-looking!) t-shirt, walking trousers and walking boots (also not good for dancing). Thankfully the dress code was very casual and ours weren´t the only walking boots in the cosy café. We had a nice meal and were treated to a live band and a couple of tango dancers showing us how it should be done. They had several constume changes and I was personally quite impressed with the wardrobe of the girl as she seemed to like wearing very tight, skimpy and extremely high-cut dresses finished of with fishnet tights – NICE!

Next day we did the tourist thing and visited the Casa Rosada in the Plaza de Mayo from where Evita adressed her supporters (and sang in the film I am reliably told). We also did a very morbid trip to her tomb in the famous La Recoleta Cemetery (not quite as bad as seeing Ho Chi Min’s embalmed body in Hanoi!). The cemetery is quite an eye-opener as the tombs are very grand and ornate and contain many generations of family members. Some had glass doors and you could actually see the coffins on the shelves. It seemed that each family was trying to keep up with the Jones’ as most were built of marble and very expensive looking.

From BA it’s only a 50min catamaran ride across the water to Uraguay and Colonia del Sacremento - so we thought why not. We were lucky to have a beautiful sunny day and spent it walking around the cobbled streets of the old town taking in the very Portugese atmosphere - it was initially a Portuguese settlement). The main square was very picturesque and was lined with orange trees and we also visited a small lighthouse. After walking 5km along the seafront and back we decided to chill out in one of the cafes that spilled out onto the cobbled streets. It had a reasonably priced ‘menu del dia’ (set menu) so we thought we’d treat ourselves. Sarah didn’t make the best choice of main meal as ‘Spaghetti’ as listed on the menu turned out to be just that, and not good old spag-bol as she was hoping for. It did have some cheese sprinkled on top but it just didn’t look very appetising to me, even when washed down with a glass of vino tinto.

Well that’s more than enough for one blog so you can drag yourselves up off the floor now and go to bed.

Dan & Sarah