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Published: October 6th 2006
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Nick sings for his audience...
... in the new musical medium known only as "Gastro-Pop". Nick:
The Nick Classifieds:
Young Frenchman seeking 20-something yorkshire lass, GOSH, and disagreement on every possible topic is essential! Sorry Ellie, its seems we agree on one thing: We decided pretty much as sooner we were out of our gear to stay put for a few days and this is complete agreement with your seggestion....
To Señor Mick O'Malley: Leave Penisula Valdes to the professionals: 150km and not a single spill!! OK, truth be known it was in a Merc passenger van, but I di´dn't even trip getting out. You did it by bike?! You crazy fool!!
Now back to the ongoing saga:
We got to Puerto Pyramides about 2 hours, and exactly 105km after our last entry and we were sodden, and cold. We stopped off at one fot the boat operators first who gave us some pointers. We then wobbled up the road to see one hostal, complete with outside loo, bathroom and complementary quagmire that one needed to cross to reach either. SO we wobbled on and for 3 x the price ( still only 16 gbp a night) we found a place that has little mini chalet cabins with sea views an ensuite and
Watching me, watching you...
... The song ABBA would have written if they had ever come to Puerto Piramides. a double bed!! This soon turned into a huge airing cupboard that happend to have a bathroom and a bed as we spread out about 12 square km of textiles to dry them out. Dinner consisted of couscous cooked with our afterburner of a stove and was polished off with beer in the local bar "La Estacion" which is a really cool place where we bumped into a Canadian "Garden Artist" (a Landscape gardener in layman's terms, but I was scalded for using this term as I understand it to be a more artistic branch.....branch!! Geddit?). The next day greeted us will clear blue skies and eyelid-flapping winds. This aside we made our way down to the same boat operator, as advised and hoped on to the last two seats on the above mentioned Mercedes van for a trip round the reserve (looks small on an atlas, but is huge) which took us to two beaches one covered with amourous Elephant seals, where bigger is definitely better, belching is a turn-on for the ladies and the pups actually sound like chimpanzees. We continued on to see penguins who preened and dozed a full 50 cms from the end of my lense!!
The day ended with a walk on the beach and a cool sunset! Day two was whale day. We ambled around until the departure time came around and we climbed on board the boat. A 5 min blast of the twin outboards got us within 25m (metres, not miles...that would be silly) of a mother and calf bimbling along. We then sped on to stop in the path of another giant. This one took and interest in us as much as we in it, which braought to mind a sign with a little grammatical error that gave rise to this entry's title: "Whales Watching". Are we observing them or are they comtemplating us? A bit of both I think....The same whale then circled the boat, breached the surface with its calcified head and cleared its Ford Fiesta-sized lungs pretty much in my face....(colgate or mentadent P, not sure which).
Krissu´s editorial entry: for those witha greater understanding than Mr Marsh, whales do not have teeth as they are filter-feeders and do not chew their food.... TV does not prepare you for the size of these beasts which clear the boat by CMs and then swim under it to give you an aerial view of its sun-dappled dorsal expanse. It then settled with its head out of the water to watch with its little eye (its like if my head had a dry yellow lentil as an eye...). Tomorrow its time to leave, and I hope for good weather and plenty of miles under our wheels by the time we bed down on Saturday evening, well on our way to the Andean foothills.
Krissu:
Patagonia: where bad weather can get Really Bad. Wednesday was like in a different world compared to the present - +12 Celsius, combination of whipping wind and rain, no shelter and another 110km, 90km, 60 km, 38 km etc. to go on a dead-straight road. As the skies in Patagonia are huge, we could even see where the bad weather ended - about 200km behind us! We were So Tired and Extremely Wet when we finally reached The End Of The World. But it was So Worth It! Puerto Piramides is just magical. In the comfort of our lovely yellow hut (a cabaña called El Cristal) we spread our dripping clothes in the "loft" and prepared a bite to eat. To feel a bit better about splashing out on accommodation I decided that we are "half-camping" after all as we still used our petrol stove (or MSR as Nick lovingly calls it) and ate crap camping food :-)
We´ve met some interesting people: Rafael, co-owner of Hidrosport, the whale-watching company, recommended by our Argentine contact Bubu (a marine biologist with an intriguing nick-name who we have not yet met!) and a very arty Canadian artist Steve who looked remarkably like Nick´s dad; we had a great evening in La Estacion drinking local beer and nibbling on some local seafood.
Yesterday we spent about 3.5 hours on a mini-bus looking for the wildlife: I am very happy that we decided to get on someone else's vehicle rather than our brave little "pony"
Nick's editorial entry: "pony": read huge macho seasoned warhorse...pony, indeed...: the roads were... challenging, I would say. Mud, puddles, sand, rocks. The little white bus was mocha-colour after about 30 minutes of the start of the journey - we could not even see out from the windows. Peninsula Valdes is actually really big! It´s 90km to Punta Cantor and further 4km to Caleta Valdes. We saw Maras (big rabbit-like rodents who jump around like kangaroos), Guanacos (they looked like ginger llamas but got annoyed if you called them that), Elephant Seals (I´m not sure if the male ones had digestion problems as they made very impressive burping noises! ;-)), Sea-lions and Megellanic Penguins (40cm tall little dudes spraying sand on one-another). And we finished again in La Estacion, this time just the two of us. We managed to get the lovely red armchairs which meant that we spent all evening sitting in the comfort of the chair, occasionally dosing off and not talking much. "The dull couple with nothing to say to one another". :-)
The whales today were amazing. That's the only way I can describe that experience. They are so big, so peaceful and graceful. One of them took a particular interest in us and was swimming around and under our boat. Just amazing.
Tonight we are planning to hike to the tip of the Piramides bay to properly see the scarlet sunset that we almost missed yesterday. Life is beautiful.
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Nick, Accidentally!!!!!??? changed my e-mail address. Don't want to post my new one on here. Any ideas how to keep your updates to the GS site current? Trev