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Published: January 20th 2006
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On my last day in Pto. Madryn i finally got to go diving. the local newspaper had this big article about how all the local operators were complaining about all the lost business due to the unseasonal weather. The first dive was on this wreck about 5 years old and 30 meters down. the sea was rough, the water was cold, and it was the first time that i used a 7mm wetsuit. the first 10m descent was the most difficult, and after following the guide line down was much easier. my camera case underwater is perfectly neutral bouyant, so all i had to do was swim and push it around. Back to the wreck, since it is a fairly new one, there is no hard coral forming at this point. All surfaces were covered by soft coral and anenomes. very cool. Once we got to the bottom we visited the fishes that call the wreck home. We circled the wreck and then penetrated the hull. wow, i can see why wreck diving is one of the most technical and difficult diving that one can do. It is so easy to be lost and since no one had flash lights we
were only able to go through rooms against the hull. One single touch against the walls would kick up enough plankton to destroy any visibility for many minutes, and since the wreck was located deep, minutes were precious. After this dive we went to the kelp forest which was only 5 meters deep, so i could spend a lot of time exploring the forest and the various rock ledges that hid more fish.
It´s been about a week in Buenos Aires. I arrived here on a Sunday morning at 7:00 after a 20 hour bus ride from Peurto Madryn. The buses here in argentina are among the best i´ve ever experienced. In direct comparison, the buses in Egypt cannot ever stand up to what´s here. Hot meals are served, coffee, tea, pop at meal time. For entertainment a game of bingo is called with actual prizes, and movies are played afterwards. Not only that its all air conditioned, which is infinitely better than sitting next to a stinky local from Aswan to Hurgada for 14 hours with only open windows exposing to the Sahara desert. So back to BA, when arriving the rain was coming in waves, sort of
like how you see it rain on CNN during some hurricane on the Gulf of Mexico.
Trying to get a hotel was futile at that time in the morning so I had elected to stay in the bus station to watch the rain. Trying to find a hotel in BA is also futile if you don´t want to travel all over the city looking. I ended up in a cheap hostel, which had a locker so I could ditch my things with safety. I then ended up exploring BA and got promptly lost as my map was locked up in the hostel. The only way i could find my way back was to get onto the internet and look at a map. The Internet can answer anything.
Then it was to the airport to meet my sweatheart - Debbie. I was checking the times on the e'tickets on the internet, however when it said that her flight was arriving at 10:30 AM, I knew something was wrong. I just guessed that it would be more prudent to guestimate and be at the airport for 9. The travel gods giveth and the luck of the irish were with me
that day. Debbie´s plane arrived at 9:30. Debbie looked so beautiful when i first saw her comng through the gates, it took my breath away. She also had the same things for customs when they didn´t take her card, and the fact that she wasn´t issued an exit card from immigration. Hopefully Argentina will let us out when we decide to leave.
The first afternoon we went to a bar, and tried to open the door and found out that pushing and pulling didn´t make a difference. Then an old man came up, slid the door open exiting, and coinincidentally allowing us to enter. 2 bottles of wine later (at $12 pesos / bottle) left us in a happy mood to choose a restaurant. It ended up with being this big parilla (BBQ), which Debbie had this roast suckling pig and myself a great big steak. wow.
The next couple of days were spent wandering around the city taking in the sites among them, the zoo and botanical gardens. Debbie got to see her first camel, with 2 humps (i don´t know what they're called) and i bought a pail of animal feed so she could enjoy herself
feeding the camel. I think that we went back to the camel a total of 3 times so she could feed it. As couples do silly things, we decided to name the camel Herman, which we promptly forgot. The second time around to feed him, the re-unnamed camel was able to put one leg over the fence to scope out new food giving me a jump. We renamed him Jose, to give him a latin name. We also saw this beatiful white tiger who was making this whining roar, í never thought was possible to come from a kitty.
One of the main points in BA was to meet Debbie´s family who immigrated here in 1948 from Croatia. Things went well, and Marica (2nd cousin) was an excellent host. Unfortuantely most of the family were at the beach house or working (both sons are doctors and are on call), so we were unable to meet them all. Dinner was an international affair with english, spanish and croatian being spoken.
we managed to get down to Pto. Madero and enjoy the riverfront a couple of times, and is a great place to be romantic. Also we got to see
La Boca on Saturday befor we left. wow, that barrio is colourful, with yellows, blues, reds (the whole rainbow) decorating all buildings. And since it was saturday the art fair was on, and a festival like atmosphere was in place. I´d like to see a neighborhood like that in Calgary, however most Calgarians would have a tough time accepting such bright colour into their lives and streets that are perpetually doused in mute greens, greys and browns. I want to have a house (mi casa, mi casa, mi casa), and paint it canary yellow with bright blue trim and the fence a brilliant ornage you can see from space.
Sunday night it´s off to Cordoba, since booking a bus anywhere else was impossible. We later found out that most Argentines had 2 weeks holidays in Jan. with it being split up between the first 2 weeks and the second, which explained that impossible task of getting a ticket somewhere.
sorry everybody for having no photos, finding an internet cafe with spare USB ports is hard to come by. Once I find one, i´ll update the blog.
salut,
Ron
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