Monday 14th February 2011
Puerto Madryn is a sunny Patagonian seaside town. It was originally settled by the Welsh, but they´ve gone now, leaving behind only the name as an indication of the town´s roots. Other towns, a little further south, still retain the Welsh language in schools and have tea rooms. Puerto Madryn is dedicated instead to aluminium (there´s a big plant that provides most of the town´s employment) and lounging about on the seaside. As fascinated as I am by aluminium, we opted to enjoy the town´s laid back beach atmosphere, and wandered along the beach eating huge ice creams. We took a kayak out onto the choppy sea, bouncing over the waves. The highlight was a huge wave hitting the canoe side on and lifting George completely in the air. She landed deftly back in the boat, rather than in the sea, which might have been more amusing. Despite not capsising, we both got drenched. Unfortunately, on getting back onto the beach, I discovered a wodge of now very sodden pesos in my pocket. We laid the notes out individuually on George´s legs, and she sat in the sun drying them.
Puerto Madryn is also the gateway to the Pensinsular Valdes, a large stretch of dusty scrubland sprouting out into the Atlantic. It is home to one of the world´s most important ecosystems (it says here) and, in the right season the water is choca with Right Whales and Orcas. Sadly, we weren´t there in that season and saw neither. However, we were greeted by a hillside of penguins, patagonian desert foxes trotting along the roads, prone elephant seals and sealions, the latter with dozens of oily black pups, tripping over each other and squealing in the surf. In the circumstances maybe its best we didn´t see any Orcas, which would have created a bloodbath out of the new-born. We also saw more llamas (properly guanacos) and emus (properly rhea), as well as the strangest creatures of all, the armadillos. These things reminded me of huge cockroaches, with their curved back and habit of scuttling out of holes in the sand to sniff around for toutists´ discarded food.
However, the higlight of our trip to Puerto Madryn was swimming with sealions. We squeezed into wetsuits and took a boat out to a sealion colony. Jumping off the boat about 40m from the rocky shoreline, I was gripped with that atavistic fear of the sea and the ghoulish creatures lurking beneath me. However, this soon disappeared as I looked through my mask to a seabed only 3 to 4m below. At first we floated around while the sealions completely ignored us, clumsily grunting around the rocks. However, one guy swam off to the shore, and seconds later came back with a sealion swimming alongside. Soon we were joined by about 5 more. They are inquisitive, playful creatures, and I had great fun with one, which gently bit my arm and darted around as I petted her, just like a puppy. At another point I swam in circles as one weaved around and around me. I swam over to George to chat to her, and suddenly felt a pulling at my feet. I looked under water, and caught a sealion nibbling my flippers. Amazing animals, great experience.
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Wednesday 9th February 2011
Despite its beautiful and remote location, after 4 days I was ready to leave Ushuaia, probably something to do with being sick for a day in a pokey little bedroom, with "The Big Bang Theory" and "How I Met Your Mother" being the only English language proramming on the telly.
Our bus left the town at 5am and started its long journey off the Tierra Del Fuego island. We passed into Chile, and as day properly broke, through landscape that would define the next 36 hours or so of travelling: flat scrubland, as far as the eye could see, either side of the bus. Above, a million miles of sky. For hours and hours, apart from the road, there was no sign of man, just his domesticated animals. Horses and llamas roamed and Patagonian ostriches strutted around grazing cows and sheep. At one point the plain was broken into by the Magellan Straits, upon which we enjoyed a choppy crossing courtesy of a little car ferry.
In the late afternoon we crossed back into Argentina, and eventually rolled into Rio Gallegos, a small town, capital of Santa Cruz province. We stayed at the cheap Hotel Paris, on the main street. It was functional enough, although the proprietor was a true Basilito Fawlteron, far too busy counting his $5 notes to give us much attention (at one point we actually had to nip behind the counter ourselves to collect our bags). We spent the next day mooching around Rio Gallegos. George didn´t like it much, and decided it was quite like Swindon. After having wandered up the riverfront and cooed appreciatively at the tiny corrugated iron cathedral, we holed up in a cafe until our next bus, which left the bus station at 6pm and was scheduled to arrive at our next destination at 12.15pm the following day.
The bus journey was our first seriously long distance, overnight one, and it was generally pleasant. We got food, our seats were really comfortable and we both got some sleep. Unfortunately, it wasn´t all plain sailing. At one point, about 4 hours into the journey, I got up to find the loo. I pulled open the door, and was faced by a rather overweight lady, of advanced years, pants round her ankles, frock hitched up, bundles of loo paper gripped in her hand. She grunted. I don´t know whether it was at me or not. I closed the door and returned to my seat. I was still debating whether to poke my eyes out with the arms of my sunglasses when the bus steward announced that the toilet was suddenly out of order - and so it seemed to remain for the remaining 14 hours of the journey. Luckily frequent stops were built into the schedule to account for my heavy friend´s handiwork. Despite this, we reached Puerto Madryn dead on time. In Ushuaia and Rio Gallegos it was all jackets and woolly hats, but here the weather is gorgeous.
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Unfortunately, in the 12 hours after scaling the glacier I developed a mean-spirited little fever, that left me weak and sweaty for a day or so. I felt somehow like an early missionary, or 19th Century poet, travelling to the uttermost end of the Earth, only to be struck down with an illness, leaving George to stand vigil at my bedside and mop my sweaty brow. But I didn´t fulfil the Romantic ideal by dying, and the following day my temperature had righted itslf and I was left with a streaming cold. Although perhaps not the ideal treatment, George and I went for a 3 hour trek in the local National Park, where all the fauna was so tame, it felt like being in an Argentine version of Mary Poppins (not quite bluebirds resting on my shoulder, but hares and falcons nonchalantly wandering around).
We worked up enough of an appetite to go to a cheap but good parilla restaurant which bears remark only because, although it was all you could eat, a sign warned diners that if they wasted food an additional $12 would be added to the bill. In this climate of fear I just about forced down a salad, a sausage and a hunk of steak, marvelling at the locals´ ability to consume slab after slab of meat.
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