Where's Andrew

RIO GALLEGOS, PUERTO MADRYN, BAHIA BLANCA & MENDOZA, ARGENTINA - JAN 11 - 21

Rio Gallegos Plaza Armis

It took about 2 hours for the bus to get from Punta Arenas to the Argentinian boarder. I go through the Chilean exiting process for the last time before getting to Argentinian immigration. It is clear that the customs officials are not used to the visa that is required for Canadian travellers as of 3 days ago. About 6 or 7 people look at the printed copy of the visa that I got online, finally some one seems to know what to do and I'm finally back to the bus after about a 20 minute delay. The bus arrives into Rio Gallegos around 2:30PM.

Originally I had planned on staying a day or 2 in Rio Gallegos but the only thing to do here is to visit another Penguin colony about 100kms from town and I've seen enough Penguins. I decide to buy a bus ticket to Puerto Madryn, it is a 12 hours bus ride and the bus is scheduled to leave at 8PM, so I have a few hours to explore the town and I check my big pack in at the ticket counter where I bought the bus ticket.

Rio Gallegos has a population of about 75,000 people and the main industries are mining and fishing. The bus terminal is located on the western outskirt of town and from there I walk to the main plaza. This part of Patagonia is known for high winds and today is no exception as the wind blows a steady 50km/hour and gusts up over 70kms. It's difficult to walk into the wind and I'm pelted by sand and other debris. I head to the ocean front to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time on this trip. Well maybe I glimpsed the Atlantic while on Tierra del Fuego but it was impossible to know where the Pacific ended and the Atlantic started.

Around 5PM after walking around for a couple of hours I head to a restaurant in the city centre and grab a burger and fries. I'm just happy I found something open. In Argentina, the afternoon siesta is still a daily occurrence. Almost everything other than restaurants and grocery stores close between 1PM and 5PM although many stores seem to be late reopening. It's frustrating if you want to do some shopping. Most restaurants close around 3PM and don't reopen until 7:30 or 8PM, mind you no locals are ever in a restaurant until after 9PM and restaurants are busiest between 10 and 11PM. So, with an 8PM bus departure time, I was not sure if I would find a restaurant open or not. Larger cities will usually have some bars and cafes that stay open all day serving sandwiches and burgers along with drinks. I stay at the restaurant until 6:30PM and then walk 45 minutes back to the bus terminal stopping to grab some snack and drinks at a grocery store on the way.



Puerto Madryn Beach

 The bus leaves right on time and even though it is light out to almost 11PM, there is not much to see other than never ending pampas so I watch a video on my tablet and then try and get some sleep. I'm getting used to sleeping on buses but I can't help but wake up at all the scheduled stops on the way. We arrive to Puerto Madryn around 9AM. I spend the next hour walking around trying to find a hostel and I finally settle for another dorm room bed at El Gualicho for $17US. Puerto Madryn is at the most northern part of Patagonia and I'm surprised by how warm it is. It's a nice sunny day and it must be almost 30 degrees Celcius.

Puerto Madryn is a town of over 100,000 located on a huge bay called the Golfo Nuevo. The Golfo Nuevo is almost a completely enclosed bay with the Peninsula Valdez to the north and the mainland hooking up from the south. But the bay is so large that you can't see the peninsula or any of the mainland that hooks around. It looks like you are looking out on the open Atlantic. The Golfo Nuevo is supposed to be one of the best sites in the world for whale watching but the season ended a month earlier. There is also some good diving here but the water is very cold requiring a heavy wet suit or dry suits so I decide not to go diving.

The Peninsula Valdez is the main thing I want to see as it is famous for 4 things; Penguins, Sea Lions, Elephant Seals and Killer Whales. I'm a bit late for Elephant Seals although there should still be a few around but I'm right at the time when the Sea Lions are birthing their pups and there might be a chance to see Killer Whales. Off the seal beaches along the Valdez coast is the only place in the world where Killer Whales will go right up on the beach after seals. The best time to see the Killer Whales is when the young seals start to swim in the ocean for the first time in about a months time. When the seal pups are first learning to swim, packs of Killer Whales will hang around just offshore for days and the areas above the beach is full of naturalists filming them hunting seals. But they do occasionally come to the seal beaches this time of the year, so hopefully I will get lucky and see them.



Elephants Seals at Punta Cantor

 After checking in and getting settled, I go for a walk to the beach. The beach goes on forever and it's low tide with the ocean a couple hundred metres from the high water mark. The beach is packed with thousands of people, but this is a beach where you have to come prepared as the wind is blowing 30 to 40 kms/hour. Everyone has a wind screen fence that is supported by large solid steel poles that are hammered deep into the sand with heavy fabric stretched between the poles. These fences are setup to block the wind and the sand from the families relaxing on the beach. It is clear why Argentina is so good at soccer, there must be more than 50 different games going on along the stretch of beach that I walk.

 I head back to the hostel around 5PM to inquire about a day tour to the Peninsula Valdez. There is a all day tour leaving in the morning and it costs $50US so I book it. I hang out in the hostel for a few hours before heading to a restaurant near the waterfront where I have a very nice steak dinner for less then $20US. When I first get to the restaurant just before 9PM it is almost empty but when I leave a little after 10PM, it is packed. I'm a bit tired after the long bus ride so I head to bed a bit early. I'm up a 7:30AM and have a quick shower and breakfast in the hostel that was included with the room and I'm ready for the tour van that picks me up at 8AM.

There is about 10 of us on the tour and I soon meet a very nice Canadian couple from Quebec. It takes about an hour to reach the Peninsula Valdez park and our first stop at a museum at the park entrance. After 20 minutes, we are back in the van and on our way to Punta Cantor to see some Elephant Seals. It takes an hour to get there and we park along the cliff face that over looks the beach. The big Elephant Seal bulls would have started arriving in August to battle out for the prime spots on the Mating season would have been in September and pups would have been born in October or early November. So now, all the adult Elephant Seals are gone including the big bulls which are the only

ones with the distinct Elephant like trunk. There are about 50 Elephant Seals still on the beach below us but they are all juvenile seals waiting to put more weight on before heading south. There are a couple of massive seals right below us on the beach but most of them are in one group 200 - 300 metres down the beach. It's good to have the 20 times zoom to be able to zoom in and get some decent photos.

We are back in the van and on our way to see some Magellanic Penguins about 15 minutes north of Punta Cantor. Again we park on the cliff above the beach. The cliff face is not that steep and the


Sea Lions at Punta norte

 Penguins have burrows right up to the level of the parking area and there are probably a couple of hundred of them. After seeing the 60,000 Penguins at the Isla Magdelena near Punta Arenas, I'm kind of Penguined out.

Within 30 minutes we are on back in the van and are heading to Punta Norte where there is a large Sea Lions colony. It's about a 90 minute drive and we will be arriving right at high tide which is the perfect time to see Killer Whales. The viewing area is right above the beach only 70 metres away from the Sea Lions. There are hundreds of them and you can't help but notice the big bulls. They get up to 350kg which is 2 to

3 times bigger than the females and they stand in guard of their harem from any other bull. They seem to be constant altercations between rival bulls, usually with a serious of bluff charges and vocal challenges but occasionally there is a brief scuffle. It is no longer mating season as it is now the time for the females to give birth and the beach is full of very young pups. Within minutes of arriving, I witness a pup being born and watch it struggle for a few minutes to get out of the placenta. Luckily the wind is from the land blowing out to sea but occasionally a gust comes along in a different direction and brings the smell of the Sea Lions to where I am, it is a awful mix of body odour, rotten

fish and feces. We spend an hour here and it is fascinating watching the bulls especially when a juvenile bull tries to sneak over to where the females are located. Unfortunately, there are no Killer Whales around the the beach today.

We then head back to the van where we come across an Armadillo in the parking lot scavenging for garbage. It is not at all afraid of us and we get within a couple feet of it to take some pictures. We are then off to our final stop of the day at the town of Pueto Piramides about 2 hours drive away and it's a small town of about 2000 people located right on the Golfo Nueva. We get there at about

2:30PM and we will stay for 3 hours. A couple months ago, there would have been many tour boats heading out whale watching but there are no whales right now. So I walk along the beach and through town with the Quebec couple and we stop at a restaurant and have a couple of beers. Finally, it is time to catch the van back to Puerto Madryn an hour away.

The tour was OK but not great, it was a lot of driving, more than 400kms in all and I thought we stayed at Puerto Piramides for way too long. I got the impression that the tour company had a deal with the local restaurants to help get them some business. But watching the Sea Lions was very interesting so I'm glad I went.



Puerto Piramides

 That evening, I head back to the same restaurant for another steak dinner, I think I'm getting addicted to Argentinian beef. It is different that grain fed Canadian beef as it is all free range beef that eats quite a sweet grass. The beef is very tender and tasty but certainly quite different from what we get back home. After dinner I head back to the hostel and watch a video before going to bed.

The next morning, I've decided to keep heading north but I'm not up for another long night bus as I did not sleep well in the dorm. So, I walk to the bus station and buy a bus ticket for the 1PM bus to Bahia Blanca which is port city 8 hours away. I then grab breakfast at the hostel and then pack up all my stuff. I spend a couple hours working on my blog before walking back to the bus station and the bus leaves right on time.



Mendoza Plaza Central

 The bus has some mechanical problems and we are a couple hours late getting to Bahia Blanca so it's 11PM when we arrive. I always hate trying to find a room this late. I pick an affordable hotel listed in my guidebook and catch a taxi there. Unfortunately, the place is all locked up and no one seems to be there and my cab is long gone. I don't have a map of the city and it's a big city with a population of more than 300,000 people. I wander the streets of the neighborhood that my cab dropped me in and check a couple hotels but they are full. Then I come across a small hotel and I go check if they have a room and they do. The room is only $20US and it seems pretty good. As I'm getting checked in, a young couple

gets buzzed in the main door, they don't have any luggage so I'm guessing they are just back from dinner. As I'm using the shared washroom getting ready to go to bed, another 2 or 3 young couples get buzzed in and none of them have luggage but they are checking into the hotel. I suddenly realize I'm in a hotel that rents rooms by the hour to prostitutes and their clients. I've already paid for my room and it's now past midnight so I guess I'm staying. I sleep fully clothed on top of the bed spread and I hear the door buzzer going every 10 minutes or so until I finally fall asleep.




Drinking Wine at the Vines of Mendoza

 I'm up early and can't check out fast enough. I walk 45 minutes to the bus station and buy a ticket for a night bus to Mendoza. Mendoza is in the Argentinian dry lands west of Buenos Aires just before the Andes mountains and is the main wine region of Argentina. My bus does not leave until 6:30PM so I have a few hours to kill. I check my bags in at a luggage storage place and head back to the main part of town. I explore the main plaza and shopping areas before I stop at a restaurant for lunch. The town is on the coast but it is a port city with a large naval base so the waterfront is not very nice and there is much to do or see.



Liz & Brad at the Terraces Winery

 I decide to go catch a matinee movie at a cinema that I had passed earlier in the day. The only movie playing in English is Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry and it starts at 3:30PM and if it ends around 5:30PM, I will just have time to walk to the bus station and catch my bus. But the movie is very strange, it seems to have about 4 different stories that take forever to tie together and Hanks plays a bunch of different roles. Finally at 6PM with a few minutes left in the movie I have to go or I will miss my bus. I didn't hate the movie but it wasn't very good either. I grab a cab to the bus station and get to the bus platform about 10 minutes before the bus leaves. I watch a couple videos on the bus until about midnight before finally falling asleep.

In the morning, the bus gets a flat tire and it takes about an hour and a half to get it changed so we don't get into Mendoza until 10AM. I head to the tourist office in the bus station to get a map of the city but it is closed. Next to the tourist office is another office of a hostel booking company. I stop there and get a map and the guy offers me a private room in a small hotel called Hotel Aragon for $24US which is a really good price because Mendoza is expensive. He even pays for a cab to take me to the hotel. When I get there, it is really nice and I'm surprised to find that my room even has air conditioning.

That afternoon I go shopping for new beach shorts for swimming as I lost mine overboard while drying during the Galapagos trip and I buy some cheap flip flops for the beach as well as I will be spending lots of time at the beach over the next few months. I then spend a quiet evening working on my blog as I'm tired because I did not sleep much the last 2 night so I go to bed early.

The next morning, I spend the day walking around the main part of town checking out the main plaza and several parks. Brad and Liz who I first met in Colombia are in Mendoza and I've arranged to meet up with them for drinks and dinner. I meet

them and a friend of theirs from the Netherlands at a wine bar called The Vines of Mendoza. We all order some samples of red wines, mine is a selection of different types including a Malbec and several blends. The wines are excellent and it's a good way to get introduced to the wines of the region. A couple hours later, we go to a local brew pub and sample some locals beers and have dinner. It's a nice relaxing evening and we share stories of where we have been and what we have been doing since I last saw them in Bolivia.

That night my air conditioner is not working when I get back to the hotel. The grill has fallen of and

pulled the AC plug out of the wall. When I plug it back in, the whole unit starts vibrating violently and has the sound of an old Harley motorcycle which is not what you want in a small room. It's late so I decide to deal with it in the morning which was a mistake because it's so hot that night that I actually get up at 3 times to take a cold shower to try and cool down. The next morning I get moved to a different room with an air conditioner that works.

Brad and Liz have booked some tours for us at a couple of local wineries for later that morning. We catch a local bus to a small town an hour away from Mendoza and then catch a taxi to the

Terraces Winery. For $5US, we get a guided tour of the winery and see the grapes, the grape processing area, the distillery and the wine storage areas and then we get to sample 4 wines; one is a Cabernet, 2 are Malbecs and one is a blend and they are very good. Terraces has taken a unique approach to growing grapes. their vineyard is terraced on a hillside and they spent years experimenting with different grapes at different altitudes and now they grow very specific grapes at specific altitudes claiming this is how they get the best grapes possible.

We then walk about 45 minutes to the Norton Winery where we have a reservation for lunch. We have a fantastic meal and then it is time for another tour. We were only able to book a tour in Spanish but a young guy who calls himself Nacho offers to take us on a private English tour. The tour is very similar but the winery is much larger with much bigger wine tanks and storage areas. Again we sample 4 different wines; a couple blends and a couple of Malbecs. It's almost 6PM by the time we leave the winery and we take a cab back to where we can catch a bus to Mendoza and it's after 8PM when we get back. I'm so tired after my terribly hot sleep last night that I just head back to the hotel and have a nice sleep in my new cool room.

The next morning I meet Brad and Liz at the bus station as we are heading to the town of Uspallata in the Andes foothills for a day hike. Our bus leaves at 8AM and it takes about 2 hours to get there. We head to the tourist office to get some info about hiking but it does not sound like there are very good hikes around. The lady at the tourist office recommends a short hike to a hill where 7 crosses are located. It's only a couple of kilometers away so we get there in less than an hour.

The terrain here is very interesting, it is very dry and there are rolling hills made of various colours of sandstone including red, green, yellow, orange, tan

Andrew at Uspallata

and black. After seeing the crosses, we head up a narrow valley on a small gravel road that winds it way up a small flood plan. The rock formations and colours are amazing. We stop and eat some sandwiches that we brought for lunch. A narrow canyon leads off of the main valley so we decide to hike up it. There's a dry stream bed and a zip line that crosses the small canyon. It had been hot and sunny but now dark clouds have moved in and we hear thunder all around us and we think it's going to rain. So we start heading back to town.

We get back at 3:40PM and just missed a bus back to Mendoza by about 10 minutes and then

it starts to rain. We sit outside a small store drinking $3US 1 litre beers waiting for the next bus that leaves at 6:15PM. We're back in Mendoza by 8:30PM and I say good night to Liz and Brad and then go buy a bus ticket for a night bus to Cordoba tomorrow. I then head back to the hotel and grab a sandwich along the way.

The next morning I sleep in until about 9:30AM, I then pack up my stuff when I get up and put my big pack in storage for the day. I then spend a leisurely day walking around Mendoza, reading and working on my blog. Liz and I exchange a few messages that day and set a time for 7PM to meet up for

some drinks before I have to go catch my bus which leaves at 9PM. I meet Brad and Liz at their place and then we meet up with a girl friend of Liz's before we go to one of the brew houses. I've brought my big pack with me so I can stay until 8:30PM before needing to catch a cab to the bus station. I regret my decision on the night bus as Liz's friend is from Buenos Aires, mid to late 30s, really nice and gorgeous. She speaks even less English than I speak Spanish so having a conversation is difficult. It seems like we just got there and it's 8:30PM and time to go. I say a quick good-bye and hail a cab make it to the bus station with about 10 minutes to spare.

One Argentinian tradition that is starting to grow on me is kissing a person upon greeting. It's actually not usually a real kiss but more of putting your cheek to the other person's and making a kissing sound. It certainly is a little more intimate than how we greet friends in Canada. I'm thinking I might bring this tradition home and yes, it does not matter if you are greeting a man or a

women. But I can't help but wonder if my friend Jon Clark would punch or head butt me if I tried it on him, maybe I'll have to find out when I get back.

Ciao from Argentina.