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Published: November 25th 2007
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We spent three days in Puerto Madryn, a seaside town near Peninsula Valdes, Argentina's best marine wildlife viewing area. And we had an absolute blast!
We stayed at a little homestay kind of place, with a little old lady running it who was absolutely lovely. It was great until the second day when Hazel broke a lamp in our room, and we spent the next 36 hours chewing our nails and wondering how to explain it to the lady. In the end she was quite a darling about it, and we got away paying for it and not having to sell all our jewellery to meet the payment.
We spent a couple of days doing dive courses and open water dives and it was great. One of our dives we had a very friendly and inquisitive join us. He was very very interested in our scuba equipment, especially from a culinary point of view, and had plenty of chews on everything. It was very sweet though, since he bit very gently and carefully, like a dog who knows he isnt supposed to gnaw through your hand but is too curious to resist a little chew. The water was absolutely
Sad and lonely
The guidebook says "In November the number of sea lions on the beach stretches like like a brown wave as far as they eye can see". Liars.
Galapagos people: Sounds like Luis Luis's stories doesnt it?
freezing, so I was pretty thankful of our good wetsuits. Nevertheless I had to fight the urge to pee in my suit during both dives.
I also very very sadly, lost my beloved aviator sunglasses that I bought months ago in Bolivia which fell into the Atlantic. A rescue dive would have been useless due to the amount of seaweed and strangely thick plants on the ocean floor so I had to leave behind the glasses that protected me from the brilliantly white salt flats in Bolivia, to the stinging ocean spray in the Galapagos. Truly a tragedy. I shall try and find a suitable replacement in Malaysia, though I know I will never find the same ones again.
While doing confined water dives in a swimming pool, I also had a little incident. Wasnt very cute though. Basically while stripping in the changing room, this guy comes over to me and says something in Spanish which I didnt really get. So I took a guess and picking between saying "Si" or "No", I chose to say "No". He then proceded to grab be in an extremely inappropriate place, at which time it dawned me on, Spanish or
no Spanish, that he was after something I wasnt really willing to give him. Instead I gave him a hard shove. Not to be deterred he came back again and grabbed my butt. By this time I was a bit pissed off and pushed him hard enough that he fell over, and I hoped got the message. He didnt try anything again, but he seemed to think I was playing hard to get, since he continued to make lewd gestures and wink at me. I chose to swear at him with all my knowledgable Spanish swear words, and also gave him a finger, which on hindsight probably wasnt the best gesture to make at someone who had just tried to get it on with you, but whatever!
We also did a day trip to the peninsula a couple of hundred kilometres away, again renting a car and driving on ripio roads (arrrgghhh!) but this time managed to get a nice little Volkswagon Gol (they call the Golf the Gol here) which saw us through. There were however a lot of crazy animals running across the roads. Rabbits, sheep, horses, llamas, you name it, we saw it. And it got
a bit irritating after a while. It seemed like they were just sitting on the side and waiting, you could see it as we approached them, and when we got close enough they would do a runner straight across the road. And on the crappy gravel roads, if you break or swerve hard, its pretty much game over. So you just have to break lightly, and hope they make it across quick enough. We had an especially hairy incident when 3 llamas lying covertly on the side of the road, chose to make a darting run across, and then turned away at the last second. Purely on instinct, I pulled the wheel hard to one side, and then started praying we wouldnt skid off and topple over, and quite surprisingly nothing happened.
Ive finally got the hang of driving on ripio roads though. The trick is to ignore the fact that the car is gently skidding from side to side. If you feel yourself skidding off the road, just ignore it, and let the grain of the gravel guide you back. It actually works a lot better, than making a sharp turn of the wheel.
From the peninsula
we took an expedition out into the gulf to spot whales, though it was more like "try and not bump into the whales". The water was jam packed with scores of Southern Right Whales, great animals to watch jumping and diving. An especially scary incident was when one group of three whales we had been following around for a while, got a little bit irritated and decided to teach us a lesson. They swam straight for the boat, and then dived under at the last second, freaky stuff but very very exciting at the same time!
We also drove to a point where you can allegedly see orcas (killer whales) eating the baby sea lions that lie on the beach. I was absolutely game for this, though Haze wasnt interested in seeing her beloved sea lions getting eaten. However it turns out you have to be one of those crazies, who come every day and sit all day for a week, to spot this. Or be very lucky of course. Neither of which would define us. We did however see a bunch of dolphins frolicking nearby, and one orca stealthily waiting in the water, though he unfortunately (or fortunately?)
didnt seem hungry enough to make a trip onto the beach. The sea lions too, didnt venture into the water too near him. Disappointing no?
We then drove down the peninsula trying to find penguins but were unsucessful so we stopped at a viewing point, which had one of those cute penguin bins that you see nowadays. You know the type, with the mouth open, where you throw your rubbish into it. Thinging that a fake penguin was better than nothing, I decided to take a picture of it, thinking I could just bluff on the blog and say it was real. And then....it moved! Turns out it was real. And wasnt interested in eating my rubbish. And as we got closer, and I mean really really close - about 3 feet away, we saw more and more on the side of the cliff. They were all doing their bin imitations though, standing still. Since it was getting dark, some were already asleep in their little holes but a few obliged by running up the cliffside towards us.
Watching a penguin run up a hill is an absolutely hilarious sight. Truly. The only thing that can surpass it,
as we then found out, is a penguin running downhill which is so funny that I wont bother to write about it. You'll just have to try and watch it sometime. And the most amazing thing is they dont fall over. They run (when I say run, I actually mean a sort of staggering walk) downhill even on steep cliffs, and given the slow speed at which they go at and the fact that they dont bend over or anything, its amazing they dont just topple over.
Anyway after 3 fun-filled days and satisfying Hazel's childhood dream of seeing penguins and not seeing orcas eating sea lions we had to catch a bus to Buenos Aires, where Hazel is unfortunately heading back to London after 2 weeks that flew by incredibly quickly, and I will be continuing to Malaysia.
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