So my blog begins with a chainsaw. Or rather a man that sounded as such on our overnight bus to Puerto Madryn. UGH!!! It’s hard enough getting used to sleeping on a reclining chair, but when you have to listen to the world’s most impressive snorer, it makes it that much harder. Oh well. We arrived in Puerto Madryn at 7:30am on the 3rd. Our first priority was finding a place to watch the Argentina vs. Germany soccer match. We found this cute place called Lizard Pizza, or something like that, and we got a beer at 11am to watch what we hoped would be a good game. No such luck. The beer was cold and refreshing and definitely much needed after watching Germany score in the first 4 minutes of the game… and then watching their 2nd, 3rd and 4th goals too. Needless to say, we were not pleased with the outcome. Afterwards, we took a nap because we both needed one after a rather sleepless night on the bus.
We discovered that although our hostel was generally very nice (comfy beds, nice showers), it had the most out of date and awful kitchen we’ve seen yet. Having no microwave, which is usually a hostel must, made heating up leftovers interesting to say the least.
On the 4th, we didn’t get to celebrate America’s independence with beer and BBQ on the lake, but instead, we wandered around a beach of beautifully colored rocks, and sat about 10 feet away from some of the biggest and cutest elephant seals ever. They make some seriously funny sounds, kinda like a sneeze or a fart, while they are snoozing. They scratch themselves with their front flippers and it looks so much like a human hand that it’s hilarious to watch. You might think we were crazy to get that close to an animal that outweighs us 40:1. But, though they are bigger, they are much slower and mostly they are not afraid of you unless you are standing up (making you look so much bigger since they are lying on the ground). We sat down pretty close and every once in a while, curious eyes would check us out, but mostly they didn’t pay us any attention so we were able to take some great photos. Later, we went to see if we could find some sea lions. We found a few but they are definitely a little bit more mobile and a lot more afraid, or at least weary, of us. We couldn’t get very close to them, but we got a couple okay photos of them as well. I found a few shells to pocket while walking along the beach. Every time we get to a beach that has shells, we always try to find at least one to take home. I usually try to write on them as well, where and when we found them.
On the 5th, Ames’s birthday, we headed to Peninsula Valdez where we planned to take a boat tour from Puerto Pirámides out into the gulf to see some whales. We left our hostel around 7:30am to head to a place where we could watch the whales and the sunrise. It was breathtaking! After watching the whales play really close to the shore, we headed towards the peninsula where we would stop at a few different places to see different wildlife. First was a stop at a museum, where they had the bones of a Southern Right Whale and lots of other marine life and land wildlife on display. Very cool! These whales are definitely huge. Adult females are the largest, around 60ft long and weighing 130 tons. An interesting tidbit I took from Wikipedia says that the testicles of the right whales are likely the largest of any animal, each weighing around 1,100 pounds. After the museum, we headed out to Punta Cantor and saw a couple salt flats along the way as well as a few land animals (Guanacos – small llamas, maras – which are like a mix of rabbits and guinea pigs, and rheas – which are like small ostriches). Once at Punta Cantor we got to see some more elephant seals and sea lions, though not nearly as close as before since Peninsula Valdez is a national park area and they have specific paths and fences and whatnot.
After wandering around the point for a while, we headed toward Puerto Pirámides to catch our boat tour. The boat launched from the beach with a tractor pushing it into the water. It’s a huge boat and they gave us heavy duty ponchos and lifejackets, so we looked pretty stylin’. There was a little boy in our tour group named Lucas. He was 4 years old. He definitely made the tour more interesting. Listening to his little voice say that we were going to see 3 whales was so cute. He was making jokes the whole time and he looked so darn cute in his poncho and lifejacket. Once on the boat, the water was pretty choppy because it was windy, but for the first 20 minutes that made it pretty fun. I think Ames thought it was fun the whole time but the motion made me feel a little seasick after a while. However, I managed to keep my stomach strong for the whole tour. We saw plenty of whales out in the gulf. It was absolutely amazing! We could see the spray from their blowholes all around us. Finally, one came close and we could see the whale break the surface. We finally got to see how huge these things were, up close and personal. Next we saw a couple whales start jumping. It was amazing to see an animal that large jump out of the water! One swam right under our boat which was pretty cool too. We got some great pictures and we bought the CD of pictures that the photographer on our boat took as well. Definitely an awesome experience! Happy Birthday to Ames! After the boat tour, we started to head back to Puerto Madryn, but we stopped at the place where we watched the sunrise again to watch the sun go down and we happened upon two whales very close to shore, mating. It was pretty spectacular. We didn’t really know they were mating until our guide told us so. I thought they were just playing. Either way, it was pretty neat to see them so close to shore.
We asked our tour guide for a good place to get dinner for Ames’s birthday and he suggested a place called Bodegon (I think). At first I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I ordered a local fish that I hadn’t heard of before and right now I really can’t remember the name of it. Ames ordered lamb. Of course, we are in Patagonia, so every chance he gets, Ames orders Patagonian Lamb. I don’t really like lamb that much, but the fish was great. We also ordered a bottle of wine, which is the one listed above. It was very nice. We don’t normally drink a lot of Merlot, but I wanted something other than Malbec and they only had wine from a few different wineries. Two of the wineries they carried were ones that neither of us really likes (Luigi Bosca and Familia Zuccardi). Anyway, the wine was pretty good. It had notes of chocolate, flowers and maybe a hint of something spicy or peppery. Not too dry. Medium to full bodied. Very drinkable with many different meals, though it probably went a little better with Ames’s meal since my fish was covered in a Champagne sauce.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on my Kindle. I bought the first 9 books of the Sookie Stackhouse series. I had read 7 of them before, but because we’ve been watching TrueBlood (the HBO TV show based off the novels), I wanted to reread them. I started rereading them about midway through June and I am done with all 9 already. I can’t wait to buy the 10th one, but right now it’s still pretty expensive since it just came out in April or May. We are all caught up on the TrueBlood show so now we have to wait to watch the new episodes just like everyone else. We have also been watching a lot of FlashForward. We started watching it in Esquel, I think, which is also where we found out that the show was cancelled after the 22nd episode… so we’ll probably watch it up to the 22nd episode and then find another show to get into for the rest of our trip.
We decided after our tours in Puerto Madryn that we didn’t really need another 2 days in the city so we left a day earlier than originally planned to head to El Calafate. We had to catch a bus to Rio Gallegos first and then grab another one to El Calafate. Those two busses took FOREVER! We got stopped I don’t know how many times by some government control thing where they had to board the bus and check everyone’s IDs. Our first bus to Rio Gallegos was an overnight and at some point during the middle of the night our bus broke down and we all had to wake up and move all our stuff over to a new bus. The new bus was not a cama bus (bed seats) so we had crappy small chairs to try to sleep in after that. When we got to Rio Gallegos, we hung out in a café with wifi for a while, waiting on our bus.
Once in El Calafate, we arrived just before dinner, so we asked about a good place to get parrilla (since we haven’t had it in a while and Ames was craving some good Patagonian Lamb). We ate at a nice place overlooking the small town. The parrilla was wonderful! By the time we made it back to the hostel, it was getting pretty late, but we went ahead and booked our tour for the next day before we hit the sack. Our first full day, we headed off on a tour of Perito Moreno Glacier. It was absolutely spectacular and we got a lot of great pictures. We took the little boat tour once we arrived at the glacier that would let us get much closer and get better pictures. We even saw a pretty big piece of the glacier fall into the water (sadly no picture of that). After the boat tour, we walked around the pathways that allow more views of the glacier and while doing so, we got to see our first Andean Condor. Actually, we saw three, but one was flying a lot lower than the other two. It was huge and it was very easy to tell what it was! We are so excited that we finally got to see one. We even got a pretty good picture! After the tour, we headed back to the hostel to relax a bit before we needed to head out to a meeting about the eclipse the next day. At the meeting (put on by Eclipse City) we listened to 4 different speakers talk about everything from all the different observatories in Argentina and Chile to the difference between Astronomy and Astrology throughout history. It was pretty interesting, but as we are not astronomers or eclipse chasers, we just wanted to get some info on how best to view the eclipse and where is a good place to view it from. We did get some good info and bought some “eclipse glasses” that look like mirrored 3-D glasses, to view the eclipse with. After the meeting, we needed to grab some dinner. We had a nice dinner at a place called Pura Vida, where Ames ordered this yum stew that was served in a carved out pumpkin. It had meat and veggies and even peaches in it. It was delicious. I ordered gnocchi in a saffron sauce. Also very yum. Afterward, we watched some FlashForward and went to bed.
Day two was eclipse day and World Cup Soccer finals day. The eclipse definitely took precedence. Considering Argentina already got knocked out of the World Cup, this was not a big deal for us. We decided to look into buying a cheap little tripod for my camera and found a cute place to have some lunch before our eclipse tour was to pick us up around 3:30pm. We did find a little bitty bendy tripod thing to use with my camera so we could try and take steady pictures of the eclipse. The tour picked us up and we headed out in a range rover to essentially climb a mountain, so we could get to a good place to see the eclipse. The drive out there was an adventure in and of itself. When we got to the top of the mountain (~900m a.s.l.) we discovered just how very cold it was and the wind was absolutely ridiculous. People had to weigh down their tripods with big heavy rocks. Ames and I found a great little place to perch and wait for the eclipse. We had our fancy glasses to help us watch the sun. It was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. We tried to take pictures of the eclipse, but I really don’t know enough about my camera and we couldn’t get it to focus right. We tried. I must have taken 100 pictures, but only 1 or 2 turned out at all, and even those weren’t very good. Thankfully, we exchanged emails with a few others with us and they sent us some of the better pictures that they took. About an hour after we arrived at our viewpoint, the sky darkened and we reached totality. It was the coolest 2 minutes and 45 seconds ever! It is something I will never be able to describe, but while I was watching it, I was thinking, “Wow! Now I know why there is such a thing as eclipse chasers.” Like storm chasers, they look up when and where the next total solar eclipse will be and get there. After the eclipse was over, I was pretty jazzed up and we headed back to our hostel, which turned out to be another adventure. There was a truck stuck in the snow on the way back down and it was fun to watch the range rovers in our tour pull him out. Eventually, we finally made it back to our place and by then, I think Ames and I were totally exhausted. I don’t think we even ate dinner before we were as close to sleeping as possible. Our next bus was leaving at 3am so we didn’t actually go to sleep, we just relaxed. We finished watching the rest of FlashForward and read for a while.
At 2:40ish in the morning, we headed out to the bus station to catch our bus to Ushuaia. The bus will have to go back to Rio Gallegos first where we will have to switch busses before heading to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is our last stop before we fly back to Mendoza for one night. Then we head off to Portillo, Chile for some more snowboarding before heading back to the States. Wow! This trip is going so fast. I can’t believe it’s almost over. Well, on to the “end of the world!” Enjoy the pics!
Besos,
Cait
P.S. some of the pictures are not our own, just so you know.
