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Published: January 12th 2009
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Cafe Culture
One of the many cafes in the Palermo barrio of BA Hello All!
Dave and I managed to get ourselves sorted and onto our flight of choice, from Heathrow on 2nd of Jan landing in Buenos Aires (BA) on the 3rd.
BA was quite a change, and we were immediately forced to adapt to the 3 "eat"s, being: meat, heat and feet! It seems that the only food available in Argentina thus far is meat, meat and more meat. It's true, the steak is nice. We're no meat experts, so there will be no attempt made to voice an opinion on whether Argentinian meat is the best the world has to offer?!?!?!
It is the height of summer and it is hot, hot, hot! BA has an lovely assortment of parks and cafes in which to find shade from the midday sun. It stays light until well past 10pm so the days are nice and long.
And finally, the feet! I love my birkenstocks, but the transition between winter feet and summer feet is almost always a painful one - especially when on the first day you walk 10 miles on your first day! It's all good now, we've bled, we've scarred and we've healed. We have happy
La Boca
The colourful BA barrio, La Boca feet!
Buenos Aires This city is beautiful, with many parts reminding us of Barcelona and Paris. Although many buildings are relatively new, the architecture is sympathetic and everywhere you turn there are tree-lined streets and quaint cafes. Unlikely in many big cities, you needed fear for your life when trying to cross the roads. The motorists seem really chilled out, they stop well in advance and there is no road rage in site (this may be because most locals have escape BA for summer hols...but we still think they're lovely people!).
On our first morning stroll in central BA, with bright blue skies, warm sun on the back, on a quiet Sunday morning...we witnessed our first pickpocketing! Less than 10 metres ahead of us, the theif snatched the wallet of an older chap and road away on his mates motorbike (Dave noticed that it was a very nice and expensive bike too - so they're obviously doing well in their 'business'). It was a wake up call for us to stay vigilent.
You know you're in Argentina, when the walls in hostels, cafes, restaurants is plastered with Diego Maradonna! Maradonna is something of a
Porta Tombo
Fluffy baby penguins and their mum cult hero in Argentina. In fact, I think there is an established religion that worships him?!?!?!? Although I can appreciate his football genius (cough, cough - hand of god), the man is not a pretty site and should not be used to torture tourists!
After 4 days strolling through all the main hoods - la Boca, Palermo, Recoleta etc., we craved being out of the city and boarded our bus to Puerto Madryn - 16 hours south along the coast. The bus was a dream. The seats were more comfortable and reclined further than those on planes or any other transport we'd been on. Our crew entertained us with a game of Bingo, which did wonders for learning our Spanish numbers! We were fed (3 types of meat of course!) and to top it all off, we were shown a Bruce Willis film - what more could we ask for?
Peninsula Valdes / Porta Tumbo We arrived in Puerto Madryn relatively fresh after our night bus journey and were excited at the prospect of wildlife viewing. The Valdes Peninsula is a big attraction for whale watching. Although the whale season ended mid-Dec, there was still
Puerto Piramides
WWII binos and sealion viewing lots of wildlife on show. We headed to Puerto Piramides and promises of huge sealion colonies - and we were not disappointed!
After a short 5km hike over the hills (*well, it was a short and easy walk when we found the correct route. Before then, it was a big difficult trying to scale the edge of the cliff, convinced it was the right way!), we came to a view point were hundreds of sealions were basking on the rocky shore. An Argentinian man with his binos (circa WWII) was kind enough to let us have a look, to get up close without the fear of attack. We were lucky enough to experience the birth of a sealion pup as well. These animals are absolutely massive and it was interesting watching their behaviour and listening to their grunting and jostling.
The next day we headed down to Porta Tomba to continue our wildlife viewing with the penguins - a million of them! The penguins here have been protected for so long, they don't have a fear humans. It was such an odd and wonderful experience to walk amongst them (well, we were walking and they were waddling) - literally within centimeters.
Trelew Finally, we spent one chill out day in Trelew. Although there isn't a huge amount in this medium sized town, we attracted to it's heritage. Trelew is directly translated from Welsh, meaning "Town of Lewis" - how could we not stop!!! The Welsh settled in this region in the mid1800s and never left. Apparently, there is still some old Welsh speakers - but we're struggling enough with Spanish, so we didn't seek them out.
Yesterday we made our second bus journey - 1500 km and 20hrs later, we arrived in El Calafate....next is Perito Moreno glaciar.
Over and Out.
Dave and Tosh
p.s. If we've missed anyone off this list, please forward their email to us - thx!
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Bronwyn Pavey
non-member comment
Buenos dias!
Hello travellers, Keep the posts coming.... I want to see photos with you two in them as well...maybe a photo blog site as well? Also a map - show me a map. Has anyone seen my da-ffuser down there? Lots of love, B.