Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Mendoza

Mendoza is a pleasant city and it's WARM here. I woke up today and I went on the taras of the hostal and stretched out and breathed in the air and listened to the birds singing. I am defrosted. It's winter here so it's pleasantly warm. In the summer it's very hot in Mendoza. When I got here yesterday I was so tired that I just went straight to a hot spring outside of the city. It's a nice complex of swimming pools, sauna, and jacuzzi. Part of it is roofed and part is outside. It was wonderful to sit in the jacuzzi with the mountains around and sky above. In the whole complex there were only three people from Mendoza and Gabino from France who came on the same bus I came. He is an engineer working with the marine oil spill response program - very interesting. We spent a long time in the pool talking and just plain soaking in the therapeutical water. In the evening I talked to the people from the hostal and we got to bed at about 3 am - another great place with a great crowd of people. Today I walked around the city and enjoyed the nice architecture and encounters with happy dogs. I also ran into Greta, a girl I met a few weeks ago in Buenos Aires. I can't believe in the conincidences which happen in my life lately. When we were parting in Buenos Aires she was going north and I was going south. It´s amazing that we ran into each other like this. We had lunch together and we are going to see a movie tonight. Tomorrow I will see if there are any cultural events here and on Thursday I signed up for the high mountain trekking. I talked to the guide today and it seems my winter clothing and the sleeping bag is enough so I will go to a peak of 5,000 meters. I was so tired when I got here yesterday and today I am full of energy again. The hot spring works wonders!

Saturday, May 28, 2005

National Park in Bariloche

I got back from the tour totally wet. It was raining all day. The clouds were so thick that it was rather dark. There was mist everywhere and the park looked like a hounted place. We went along the shores of the lakes and then went to see a "black glacier" which is black or rather dark gray and the color comes from the volcanic ashes. This glaciar, unlike Perito Moreno, slowly melts and it will in time disappear. Here also I saw the chips of ice falling into the lake. I also saw a few avalanches in the distant mountains and the noise of the falling ice and snow was loud as thunder. On our way back we passed many waterfalls and went through dense evergreen forests. This is another face of Patagonia. The Patagonian desert is in the east, the mountains are in the south and the lakes and forests are on the west. Because it was raining so hard we stopped at a park restaurant twice to get some lunch and to warm our feet by the fireplace. A mix of a Collie and a Husky lives at the restaurant and we had a lot of fun playing with him - and that made everything which was not wet before wet after we finished chasing him around. In general the region of Barlioche resembles that of the northern and southern Poland. It is very beautiful but since it looks familiar, it doesn't make me so breathless as the places I have seen before.

Tomorrow I am going north to Mendoza with three girls from Australia who went on the tour with me today and who are heading in the same direction. It will take us 18 hours to get there. "Hostal Periko's" is another great place. I am glad I will spend one more evening with the people whose home it will be for tonight.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Bariloche

I got to San Carlos de Bariloche today. It's an area of many lakes among mountains and forests. Looking out the window of the bus some places looked a little like the region of Mazury in Poland. I signed up for a tour and track tomorrow with a group of people from the hostal. I think one day of walking is all I can do. I am just really tired. Life after Puerto Madryn was so intensive that I am barely alive. I did a lot of walking in the past two weeks and also the cold got to me. What finished me off was the 2-hour wait for a connecting bus at Rio Gallegos because the bus terminal is under construction and it was freezing cold there. It is a little warmer in Bariloche but it rains all the time. I will stay here a day or two and then I am heading north to get some warmth.

A little more still about Patagonia. It is really a beautiful land. The whole trip between Puerto Madryn and Bariloche was amazing. I wrote a little about Ushuaia earlier. I would like to add that I went to a museum called Museo de Fin del Mundo and I really liked it. It is a small museum but has very interesting artefacts and pictures of the indigenous peoples who lived there before the settlers came. All four tribes are now extinct. What killed them mostly was the diseases the settlers brought with them and taking away of their land - the usual story. I met Naomi from England who worked as a volunteer at Puerto Williams on an island south of Ushuaia and she saw the remaining few families of Yamana (I don't have my notebook so I don't remember if that's the right spelling) who live there. When they die this will be the end of Yamana. Only artefacts and photographs taken a century before will survive...

One of the most beautiful parks I have seen so far is the Torres del Paine Park in Chile. I took a one-day tour because it's just too cold to walk the trails at this time of the year. The trails are long, usually 6-7 hours, so it must be nice to walk them in the summer when the days are long (summer sets at 11:00 pm in the summer). The one-day tour was just a glimpse of this natural wonder. The park is comprised of a mountain range and it's possible to climb the mountains, see the waterfalls, caves and glaciers. We saw hordes of Guanaco (the low-altitude undomesticated llama), flocks of Nandu (a type of ostrich which is called here "strus" which is the same name in Polish terminology - interesting) and a few gray foxes. Because of the glaciers the water in the lakes is milky, milky green or milky gray, and it's called "the glacier's milk". It's because of the sediments of various minerals, mostly copper and calcium, brought to the lakes by the glaciers. We went to see one of the glaciers and it was amazing to see it in the distance and closer by the chips of ice which separated themselves from the face of the glacier and were floating in the lake. Because of the minerals the blocks of ice were blue and from the distance, when we were approaching the lake from the forest, it looked as if someone scaterred around some plastic toys. It was an amazing sight. I took many pictures of this phenomena. Anyone who loves walking trails in the mountains will love this park. It's possible to do a four-day "small w" trail or a nine-day "big w" trail. There are two hotels and a few camping grounds. I will return there one day in the summer to fully enjoy it.

From Puerto Natales I went to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. The Glacier is located 80 km away from El Calafate, which is a pleasant small tourist town, in The Park of the Glaciers. Perito Moreno is one of the glaciers in the park but it is the one most often visited. It is truly an enormous beast. To explain it's magnitude I will use the comparison the guide gave us: it's as high as a 20-story building and as big, in square meters, as Buenos Aires. The 20-story hight pertains to what is above the water. The glacier touches the bottom of the lake which is on avarage 150 meters deep. We went to see the south face of the glacier and went to balconies built around it for the people to admire it. We saw it from the top of the hill and could see how it descends from the mountains. And then we saw it up close - a mountain of pure ice, sometimes blue, sometime white, sometimes transparent. Every few minutes or so we could hear a loud roar of the cracking ice and a few times we saw blocks of ice falling into the water. It was like the sound of the thunderstorm. Every day the glaciar progresses two meters but the blocks of ice chip from its face so it has been in the same place for the past 50 years.

Monday, May 23, 2005

El Calafate

Yesterday I went to Torres del Paine park in Chile and I will report about this amazing place soon. Today I came to El Calafate which is north of Puerto Natales and is on the Argentinian side of Patagonia. The whole area which I saw in the last few days is amazingly beautiful. But it-s getting really cold... I am going tomorrow to see the Perito Moreno glacier and then at night I am going to board a bus which will take me to Bariloche, however I can-t go north because the only road leading there, route 40, is closed (because of snow and ice = it will reopen in the summer) and I will have to go back to Rio Gallegos and then to Commodoro Rivadavia and Puerto Madryn. Rats! I was late a few days = the boat and road traffic north was closed last week so now I have to do this trip of 3 days on the bus going around the closed areas. The computer is very slow and it-s hard to write... I will be back with details in a few days.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Punto Arenas

I spent a day here and it's a nice port city on the Magellan Strait. I walked around it all day and I especially liked the old port with old houses and port buildings. But I got very cold, especially at the hostal at which the heat doesn't seem to be working. It's possible to get on a boat (naval or commercial) going to Antarctica. I would like to do it one day but maybe in the summer as now I am afraid I would freeze my butt off. I would have to have very professional clothing and it would be impossible to carry it around to other places. The owner of the hostal is also a fisherman and he works on the fish farm (trout and salmon) 8 hours sail from Punto Arenas. I could go with his ship. There are many possibilities to see Antarctica it seems. I think it would be an amazing experience. I am going to Puerto Natales in half an hour. More details soon. Muchos besos in the meantime.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego

The park is very beautiful. It is not very big but all the trails are wonderful. I went on all the trecks along the Canal Beagle (named after a ship on which Charles Darwin sailed here) with beautiful little bays, trecks in the forest and the mountain trecks. I am totally exhausted. It is winter, it's cold (from - 3 degrees Celsius to +8 but mostly +2) and the weather conditions change constantly. The trails were hard because it's either walking in snow or on thin ice (in the mountains) or in deep mud (in the forest) but the views are spectacular. And I did most of the trails by myself which I like the most because I can walk quietly and see all the fauna of the region. I saw many different species of birds including hawks and Austral Parakeets (who would think there would be parrots here!). There's even one type of a humming bird with a transparent tongue but I haven't seen him. Well, the views are brathtaking and I walked for about 7 hours each day. The hostal I am staying at is amazing: people are very warm and cook amazing dishes! Usually when I come back I just slump at the sofa in the living room and remain motionless for some time, then I take off my outerlayers and totally wet shoes and then I just drink beer which is like liquid food... having all the nutrients and easy to swallow and digest... If not for the people who cook amazing dishes (how do they have the strength to do it?) beer would be my only food. They cook such abundance of it that it is shared with everyone around (I sound like a total parasite - I contribute beer). When I came Monday night they immediately made me tea and it was so good to drink it after all day spent on the bus. I will write about my adventures in Tierra del Fuego when I get a computer somewhere in town, most likely in Punto Arenas in Chile where I am heading to tomorrow, because there's a line of people waiting to get to the only computer at the hostal. Muchos besos! I got hit with such huge amount of oxygen that I feel like a new me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

National Park in Fin del Mundo

Just a short note: I am trekking on all the trails of the park and the glacier close to Ushuaia. The computer in the hostal Patagonia Pais, another great one, is the only reliable here but there are many people waiting in line... so I will write about my impressions when I find another computer. THE END OF THE WORLD IS VERY BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!

Monday, May 16, 2005

Tierra del Fuego!!!

Just a short note to say that I came to The End of the World! To Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego!!! Details tomorrow! Muchos Besos!!!

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Rio Gallegos

I came to Rio Gallegos today at 11:00 am. I had an adventurous bus journey. There was a stop of 30 minutes at Trelew and I went to a cafe. I was enjoying my first sip of tea when I saw the bus leave. Hm... I ran to the bus company window and asked what happened. The operator told me not to worry - it went to be cleaned and will be back in 20 minutes. Phew. Then at midnight there was another stop, this time one-hour for the interior cleaning. I went to the waiting hall and watched a movie about a dino in present NYC (it was totally silly but I watched it because Jean Reno was in it and I like him). Five minutes before the scheduled departure of the bus I went outside and encountered only gusty wind and dry weed tumbling by... No passengers standing on the platform, waiting for the bus... I went to inquire at the ticket booth and it turned out it left already! It departed earlier and they just left me there. I had to take a taxi and chase it. What a fun ride! But the bus was comfortable and I woke up just before our arrival at Rio Gallegos. It is a small town on the River called well, Gallegos. I went around the town and along the beach. It is Sunday today and it looks like a ghost town, there's no one around... I looked and looked for a restaurant and found one open -more form than essence but there was no other choice (it was one of the "old lions" places except this time I was the only lion there at this hour). Outside of Buenos Aires the regular eating time is lunch between 1.00 and 2.00 pm and then dinner after 8.00 pm. In small towns there's no food between 2.00 and 8.00 pm which most of the time suits me and is most physiological time to eat for me too, except when I can't make it to eat early because I am doing some sightseeing or bus travelling. Argentinians don't usually eat breakfast, they only drink yerba mate. They drink it from special containers through a special straw (usually made of silver) with a filter at the end to keep the drags inside, and share it with whoever is in the vicinity. When it comes to mate germs don't count. Coming back to Rio. I eate breakfast with a couple who took the same bus I did, Marie from France and Andre from England. We witnessed, from the window of the restaurant, raising the Argentinian flag mid-day every Sunday: girl and boyscouts and police in their gala uniforms were standing in front of the flag pole and what seems like the rest of the town. They sang the national anthem and then all left home and only the wind could be heard again... It was very interesting. I parted with Marie and Andre since they were going further to El Calafate and I found Hotel Paris. Everything is more expensive in Patagonia than in other parts of Argentina. In Rio Gallegos there are no hostals, only hotels. I think the food is more expensive also because it has to be shipped here from far away. Patagonia is mainly a desert. The climate is dry all year rund, in summer and in winter. Rio looks like the end of the world already. Small houses, a few stores, an unwelcoming river beach with marshes and stuff left over from the construction of a long boardwalk. The city was founded, I think, in 1880s but it looks as if it was being built now. In some time, after all the remaining cement and other construction material is removed from the beach, it may become pleasant. It is now what the guidebook says about it - a place to stop on the way to the south end so that one can recover from the long bus trip.

Friday, May 13, 2005

It-s a whale!!!

I decided to go to Peninsula Valdes with a tour because I couldn-t find anyone to rent a car with. Guys from the hostal went there already. I set off today at 8 am together with eight people, a driver, and a guide. To the south of the peninsula and back it-s four hundred km. First we went to southernmost tip of the peninsula = Punta Delgada where a lighthouse is. It-s a place where it-s possible to see the elephant seals (Mirounga Leonina). The guide Federico told us that we will be lucky if we see any wildlife because it-s not really the season for the animals to be here (I am using the screwed up computer at the hostal, hence the strange symbols); whales just begin to come for their breeding season and other animals left to feed in other places and will be back in the spring in September. We approached the dunes and YES! saw a small colony of elephant seals. They are bigger than sea lions and don-t use their hind fins to walk the way sea lions do. They move like worms. Because the season ended a few weeks ago and we were the only tourists there we quietly went down to the beach and got closer to them. A few of them looked at us in surprise, yawned (covering their mouths with their fins), stretched, changed the position and went back to sleep. A young seal which was closest to me looked at me very curiously and when I yawned she yawned too, I scratched my head and she scratched her side. I told her I loved her and asked her to give my best regards to her family. Words were not needed = she and I belong to the same world and sense the same things in the same way. Have you seen a seal's eyes from up close? There-s everything in them: past, present and future. We were sitting on the sand, next to the seals, observing them and the ones which were playing in the water or sunbathing in the distance. Some of them were swimming laisurely along the beach. We saw a few males sparring in twos = it was just sparring as it is too early to be competing for women. It was hard for us to leave but there were other points on the coast we wanted to visit. We went to Puerto Piramides first. It's a small village, the only village on Peninsula Valdes, which makes a living by servicing the national park. There are a few restaurants in the village and we had lunch in one of them. I was sitting at a table with Federico and the driver Dario, and through them I met a legend_capitan who was involved in establishing the park and spend his life working for protection of the whales and fauna of the region. From Puerto Piramides it was a short drive to Punta Piramida where from the cliff we saw a colony of the sea lions belonging to the same species I saw earlier in Punta Loma. They are much more energetic than the elephant seals and one of the girls in the group said that they looked as if they were arguing all the time. They lie down silently and then one "says" something and the rest has to add their three words. There's a conversation, getting into argument, and then they quiet down... until someone says something again. Sometimes someone gets offended and hops into the water to escape all this gossip and arguments. We also saw two Magellan Penguins and some black cormorants. We started to head back to Puerto Madryn with intention to see if we could spot a whale around the place where I went with Claudio and Max the other day. We were standing on a cliff and YES! we saw a dark shape and then YES! a fountain and then YES! a HUGE TAIL coming out of the water. We saw him coming out and diving down many times. He stayed in the same spot and was just diving constantly. We didn't see his wole body because he didn't jump but we were happy with what we saw. We were very lucky! The whales who come to the New Gulf (Golfo Nuevo) are called the Southern Right Whales (Ballena Franca Austral). They come to the gulf to breed because the conditions for giving birth here are perfect: the gulf is protected from winds by a high cliff and when there's high tide they can come closer to the shore where there are almost no waves and the water is warm. So today we just saw one of them, maybe the first to come this season, but in the breeding season there are many of them and you can just sit on the cliff and watch them. There's no need to go on the boat, although there's a posibility to go on a small boat (a dinghy really) but after the young are born so the moms are not disturbed during labour. (Julian is playing with my foot = he just chewed up a hole in my Peruvian sock and he also wiped his mouth with it. I adore him!). When we saw him we got extremally ecstatic. The guide had to drag us back to the car. I think everyone was ready to camp out until complete darkness. Along the way we also saw a type of a low/altitude Llama which never got domestiacted and is roaming free, a type of ostrich, an owl, a skunk walking very close totally unafraid, a few horses running around, lots and lots of sheep belonging to two big estancias grazing on the low grass and bushes. We also saw a few cows. I greeted them with a loud "Moooooo" and they looked up, stopped chewing for a second and looked at each other in disbelief "Is she kidding us? She can never be one of us" and they slowly walked away, offended. With the sheep we also saw many border collies because they are the ones watching over and herding the flocks. Because there are so many sheep in this region there are also many border collies in Puerto Madryn and if a dog is not totally a border collie one of his ancestors definitely was = most dogs look like border collie mixes. The animals we didn-t see where armadillo (Federico said that since the season ended they prefer to stay at home and watch tv instead of entertaining tourists), an animal which looks like a mix of a rabbit and dog, and orcas aka killer whales. Orcas can be seen in the north tip of the peninsula and people at the hostal in San Telmo told me they saw them a month ago (we didn't go to Punta Norte because they are gone now). Orcas have a habit of coming directly to the beach and attacking young seals who play in the shallow water. The people saw it but I think I would prefer not to see this... It would be better for me to see them from the boat in the water. Orcas are a type of dolphin but they are the only dolphins who eat other mammals. I would prefer that they were vegeterians or at least fish=eating creatures...

I am going to Rio Gallegos tomorrow. It-s another 20 hours on the bus but it-s getting colder so I will bypass the cities (which in Patagonia look alike since they are all new = the history of European settlement in this part of Argentina is not long, about 100_150 years) on the coast and go to Rio since it is close to Ushuaia _ the end of the world. I got a nice winter jacket and I am already using my Inca hat, mittens and socks. I hope it will be enough for Tierra del Fuego because I have no space in my backpack for any new things!

I really like Puerto Madryn = everything about it. I checked the prices of homes and apartments and they are the cheapest I saw during my travels. If I don-t get any better idea of what to do with the rest of my life, I will come back here, establish a cafe (this place lacks Le Pain Quotidien or any such place with communal table and herbal teas) , buy a bike and ride to visit my marine friends and walk on the beach with dogs (mine and city dogs) every day.

I will be in touch when I get to the end of the world!

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Fauna of Puerto Madryn

I just read what I wrote before (I didn't have the chance to write more that day) and the reason it's so ungrammatical is that I wrote it just after I woke up (without even brushing my teeth first). I was using the computer at the hostal and usually there are people in line to use it so I though I would beat the crowd and get to it before they all wake up. And I did! however, I was still in the arm of Morpheus... So I thought I saw a cow in the desert from a distance but it was actually a dog. And vice versa. And please pardon the grammar.

When I woke up from my nap the first day of my being here (I don't know what day it was or what day it is today - it's hard to keep track of time here...) I went to the beach and first walked on the boardwalk and then on the sand, breathing in the salty air and picking up stones. Slowly, one-by-one eight dogs joined me for a walk and they were chasing each other, chasing me, and playing in all the dogs' ways. They were all town dogs taking a stroll on the beach and looking for company to have fun. At the end of the walk there were only two dogs left and at that time a very elegant female pitbull came, dressed in a yellow polar fleece vest. The three dogs started playing and one of "my" dogs slowly, however not gracefully, undressed the pitbull and happy for getting the trofeo of the day started running around me. The pitbull's owner came over running and started chasing the dog (I told her the more she runs after him the further he will go but she didn't listen) who with a mischevious smile went into the water with it and dipped it a few times... I was laughing... Eventually he gave it up but had to be chased around until he got tired of his toy. The owner of of the pitbull laughted as well at the end - it was impossible not to laugh. I got home tired playing with the dogs but I so loved it!

The next day I rented a bike and went 17 km to Punto Loma which is one of the places on the coast in which sea lions live. A dirt road along the beach and the dunes leads to it. Only a few cars passed me by during the entire ride there and back. Most of the time I was completely alone. The scenery is what I consider my favorite scenery: the endless ocean, the wide beach, dunes and no buildings or anything man-made in sight. I reached the Punto Lomo station with a park ranger and then went another 500 meters to a cliff overlooking a small beach sheltered by the rocks. Below was a colony of about 200 sea lions. There are many kinds of sea lions. If you would like to see which type this is exactly the latin name is Otaria Flavescens. They were just resting on the beach, sunbathing or playing in the water. The mothers were feeding the babies who were born in February. At one point I heard a cow-like sound from far out in the ocean and one of the babies separated itself from the crowd and started running to the water, making a very excited calf-like sounds. The mom was swimming fast and she got close to the beach at the time the baby made it to the water. The baby clung to mom and they stayed in the water for a few minutes literally hugging. They both came out, got to where the group was resting, and layed down together for a very long time... I was observing them from the cliff so I could see the life of the colony on the beach and the seals who were playing in the water and the ones who were coming from afar. I observed their life for a long long time. It was amazing. There was no one except me there and I could see their life in their natural habitat. Before I saw them in Peru in Islas Balestas but it was from a boat with a group of other people and I didn't see them so close. This encounter was much much more special. I hit the pedals to go back at dusk. I reached a beach with a wrack of a quite big boat, totally rusted, lying on its side. I was looking at the boat and then suddenly I saw a head of a sea lion popping out of the water, looking around. And then the next one, and the next one... They were playing in the water so I saw them chasing each other and diving, splashing water around. Everyone has his or her idea of heaven I think. Sitting on that beach, looking at the sea lions playing in the water at dusk is my heaven. Heaven on earth... I didn't want to leave... I always thought I belong more to the world of the animals than to the world of humans. In moments in which I am alone with them I feel in one with the universe. It is too cold to do that (it's a short autumn now, in a month it will get very cold) but if it was wormer, I would rent a tent and stay there for a few days. Because here, in South America, one can do anything one wants on the beach. Unlike on the beaches of Long Island in New York where it's forbidden to walk the dogs, put up tents, stay overnight, drink alcoholic beverages, make firecamps, and fly kites, here you can do anything you want. So if I come back here in the Patagonian summer (which starts in November) I will put up a tent, observe the sea lions, fly kites, and drink beer. And all town dogs who will care to join me are invited!

The next day Claudio and Maximilian (Argentinians from B.A. who also stayed at El Refugio) and I planned to bike to another spot 15 km away in the opposite direction to see the whales. When we woke up it turned out that the high tide, which is needed to see them from the shore, was right at that time so we went there by their car. We were waiting for them at the Punta Doradillo but we didn't see any. We were told that this is the time when they start coming for their breeding season so we may or may not have the luck of seeing them. We saw one Magellanic Penguin swimming around the rock on which we were standing. Except for one very elegant penguino we didn't see any animals but we enjoyed the beauty of the coast and the beach. Later that day we decided to go to Trelew and Gaiman (80 km from Puerto Madryn). We passed through Trelew quickly as it is a rather small city in the desert and went to Gaiman which used to be the city where Welsh settled in the 1800s. Their descendents still live there which is manifested in some Welsh-style buildings and Houses of Tea. We went to one large estancia with a House of Tea and had lots of tea, of course (in a pot covered by hand-knitted tea-warmer), and traditional Welsh scones and pastries. It comes in a package - homebaked bread, butter and preserves, and a few plates of cakes and tarts. Yum, yum, mniam, mniam. In the background there was Welsh music and on the walls there where many framed pictures of Lady Di who visited the estancia in November 1995.

Yesterday I went to Eco Centro which is a wonderful building on the beach where marine life is studied. A wonderful place in a wonderful scenery. It's about 3 km from the city centre and all the way there I walked on the beach accompanied by a dog who behaved like Maksio - he was very playful, nipped at my heels, fetched whatever he found to fetch, ran after leaves. I walked 6 km but I think he made at least 20. On my way back the wind was very strong and was pushing me back... I got home and rested, really tired by the wind's force...

Today I went to Peninsula Valdes - which is another World Hertiage site. I saw sea lions, elephant seals, A WHALE, ostriches, a skunk, an owl, a few thousand sheep and some cows and horses. Another amazing day. More about it soon.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Puerto Madryn

I see some of what I wrote it just got posted / good.

So when I was on the bus I woke up when the sky got a little pink on the horizon and I watched it become red and then orange and turn into fainter orange and then yellow and then become transparent bright with the rising sun. What the sun illuminated was a vast desert, sometimes just yellow or ash sand, sometimes covered with short yellow grass and bushes. Once in a while I would see a group of cows grazing, and then later a gate leading to an estancia. But the estancia was would be so far from the main road that it would not be seen. The bushes make everything out of proportion, the usual proportion the eyes are used to, and sometime I would see in the distance what looked to be a cow but what turned to be a cow when I came closer to it, or I would see a sheep and it would turn out to be a white plastic bag. Once in a while I would see a plastic bag hanging on the bush, blown there from God knows how far away, or a tire left on the side of the road and that, apart from cows, sheep and dogs, would be it. But sight such as this never is monotonous or boring to me _ I can just watch the horizon for hours. So I watched it until we arrived at noon and disembarked at a small bus station. There was only a few blocks to the hostal I found in my guidebook and I walked admiring the town. El Refugio is a little more expensive than hostals I stayed in before ($6) but it-s very nice, has a very nice bathroom with steaming hot water, heaters in the room, nice kitchen (not that I would cook but it-s a nice gathering place), bike rental, it-s three blocks from the beach, and most of all a 1,4 years old labrador Julian lives there. I was greeted with Julian and we became immediate friends. I chased him around the grassy grounds of the hostal garden and he slumped at my feet in the kitchen exhausted. That day I took a shower, as I always do after 18 hours on the bus, and took a short nap, and went to explore the city. I immediately decided I could live here. Puerto Madryn is a small port town. Although it is a port (with a fish processing plants) the waters around it are pristine clear. The city lives off fishing and turism in the season so it must take great care of its waters so the fish and mamals stay here in great numbers. The port has everything I need to live: a small center with cinema, yoga center, healthfood store, a few cafes and restaurants, nice shops and a bookshop which looks like Barnes $ Nobel. There is a long boardwalk along the main beach in the city and a long molo (a boardwalk going out to the ocean) and at one end of it there-s a yacht club which is a "regular" yachtclub for the Peurto Madryn people, no for some rich folks who live thousands of miles away. I think Puerto Madrynians rent the boats in the season. People are happy and enthusiastic. They ride bicycles and their dogs follow them wherever they go. Dogs are happy, fat and their coat is shining. So this is the city part which I would enjoy if I lived here. And there is the nature part which leaves me breathless... More about in a few minutes because I will write in sections to make sure they get posted without much problemas.

Patagonia again

Just a short note to let everyone know that I put something on the blog yesterday and the day before yesterday but I don-t see it so I don-t know if it went through. I will wait to see if it-s on before I write more. I just have to say that I am, I have to use this word to describe it in full, in EXTASY because I saw seals yesterday in their natural environment and it was just them, me and the coast. I haven-t ever felt anything like this. It-s like the movie BIG BLUE. I am in love with the ocean, now even more than before. I will write about my experience when I am sure it will not be lost. Yours in extasy.

Monday, May 09, 2005

PATAGONIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I made it to Patagonia today at noon!!! I still can*t (I don*t know when the rotten apostrophe is on this keyboard) believe it. I always thought years will pass before I will get here (it was one of my wildest dreams) and here I am. I stayed a few extra days in B. Aires because I really become to love it. I started feeling very comfortable in the city (I think I could live there), got friendly with many people, travellers and locals. Hostal San Telmo is the best hostal I have ever visited. The atmosphere is wonderful in that place. People do things together !@#$%^&*()_+}{" I can-t figure out the symbols on this computer, rats!, walk the city together, some cook for the others, they go to bars, some take showers together. There*s one bathroom for girls and boys so people sometimes brush their teeth together. I habitally brushed mine with an Israeli guy who had the same brushing schedule I had. We talked with our mouths full of toothpase = great fun. The day before I left there was a birthday to celebrate and it was celebrated in style = there was lots of food prepared by everyone and three cakes. I, and the girls from my room, dropped at 2 am and the rest of the party moved to the Senegalese bar. They came back just as I woke up at 11am. But whatever people do in that hostal, it never is over the limits. All the people who come there are very intelligent, witty and have great sense of humor. I will remember my stay there very warmly and hope to return one day.

I boarded the bus to Puerto Madryn at 7.30 pm yesterday and got here at noon. The bus was very comfortable, even the food was included in the price. The sun rose at 8.15 and I watched it coming up and lighting up the endless vast desert. More of the details tomorrow because the computer is driving me crazy.

Tomorrow I am renting a bike and going 17 km along the coast to where I will see sealions. I will write about the amazing day I had today and tomorrow*s adventure when I come back in the evening.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Still in Good Winds

I am still enjoying Buenos Aires and also nursing the flu I got. I just got "home" at 1:00 am - it's another party town, this Buenos Aires.

On Monday I went to visit Teatro Colon - the opera house - and went on the tour around it. During the tour I met Greta - a girl from New Zealand who was also staying in Hostal San Telmo (she went to Uruguay today morning). We visited all the basements of the opera with costumes, wig and mask makers, hairdressers and characterization specialists. It was very interesting. Later that day I walked through Avenida Florida, the shopping district, to see all the hustle and bustle of such area.

On Tuesday Greta and I went to La Boca - an old port which was also the "Italian quarter" long time ago and when the famous brothels were. The climate of the district is preserved and the papermache figures of burdel mamas are hangning over the windows, smiling at the passers-by. There are also lots of shops with souvenirs and restaurants and cafes. Couples dance tango... Very nice. Outside the main touristy street the buildings are run-down but show how the city must have looked when it was just beginning to be built. We also went to the new port and the very modern long promenade along it. I also visited a naval ship which is a 100 years old and now a museum and went into all the capitan and machinery operator cabins, mesa, bathrooms and tiny compartments and narrow "alleys" of the ship. Greta wasn't interested in the ship and waited for me in the outside cafe. Later that day we put on our best dresses (I put on my only "best dress" suitable for the occasion - the sunflower dress), powdered our noses and freshened up our coaffiures and we went to the opera house for Tschaikovsky's ballet "Sleeping Beauty". It was spectacular: the dancing was wonderful, the costumes, the changing scenery. Todo. We very much enjoyed it and then afterwards took a walk through BN by night to our San Telmo district.

Yesterday I went with Greta to the district of Recoleta which is also the house of the Recoleta cemetery where all the influential Argentinians are buried. They are not actually buried. They are placed in large family mausoleums and it's possible to see the coffins through metal gates or glass windows. The mausoleums are huge and of different architectural styles. We visited the Familia Duarte mausoleum where Eva Peron is buried and walked through all the gravesites of all the presidents, scientists, artists, etc. The cementary looks like a city. I haven't seen anything like it before. There were also about 50 cats there, stretched out on the alleys, sleeping on tombs and sculptures of Virgin Mary and other assorted saints. They were all huge and half wild. The men who take care of the cementary-museum take care of the cats as well. It was feeding time when we got there so they were all eating their dinner in the center square. One of them later hopped on my lap when we were sitting on the bench and was purring loudly when I patted his very full belly. Later in the evening we enjoyed barbecue which Pepe, one of the hostal comrades, prepared for everyone and then we went to a Senegalise bar for beer and we talked late into the night...

Today I just spent a lot of time on different buses enjoying the town through the window and went to get a winter jacket for Patagonia! If I wake up healther tomorrow morning I will set out to Puerto Madrin at 9 pm. I went to El Federal for dinner with Sophie (from Australia) and we stayed there until now! I love that place. The Tango trio was there again and we greeted each other warmly. It's nice to become a regular customer at a resturant and get to know all the waiters, the music and the menu... I will go there for breakfast and get my usual cafe con leche and media lunas... Buenas noches, hr, hr, hr........

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Weekend in Buenos Aires

My BA experience has been better than I expected. Yesterday I went with the hostal group to the soccer match. It was in a stadium outside of the center so it took us some time to get there. We took a subway - it's nice and clean and has really nice artwork on the walls of the stations. We went through all the security checks and got to our seats 15 minutes before the start of the game. It was River vs. Lanus and our group was cheering River together with, what seemed like 70% of the spectators - because we were sectioned off from the fans of Lanus so it was easy to see. We were sitting in the section of what seemed like the biggest hardcore fans - throught the whole game they were standing singing songs to cheer River and degradate Lanus, waving flags, scarfs (szalikowcy), throwing fists in the air and smoking pot. We were totally surrounded by clouds of marihuana. The stadium can fit 40,000 people and according to my raugh calucation it was probably 30,000 watching the game. 95% of spectators were men, some with baby boys on their shoulders, wearing shirts with the colors and logo of their team and all kinds of unbelievable hairdos - it seems mullet ("z przodu lysina, z tylu dywan" in Polish translation) never went out of style in BA. The game was good and River won 1:0. During the break a big flag was carried around the grounds of the field with letters "No mas violecia. Es mesaje de Dios" (No more violence. It's a message from God." I think it worked because after the game people dispersed peacefuly and there was no vandalism of any kind. We returned to the hostel and shortly after I got on the bus going toward Palermo where I was to meet with Lorena and Sol. There was a rock concert there, in a place which looked like a warehouse adopted for cultural events. The music was good. I was already deaf from the earlier event so the volume of the music didn't hurt my ears so much. We listened to three bands, two of which I really liked. We were standing in the clouds of grass' fumes again. Marihuana has no effect on me but if it had, I would be stoned the enire day from the amount I inhailed as a second-hand smoke. For dinner we went to Palermo Viaja - the Old Palermo also called Palermo Soho - where there is lots of nice restaurants and shops. Two friends of Lorena and Sol joined us and we stayed in the restaurant until 3 am. BA is a city which never sleeps, like NY but even more so. In NY buses run scaresly at night. Here they are so packed at 3 am that it's hard to get on one and they run virtually every 10 minutes.

I woke up late and went for brunch to my favorite Cafe La Federal just across the street from the hostel. When I walked in I was greated by voice of a woman singing tango songs - very beautiful, powerful but lyrical voice. When I get to a restaurant I usually feel rushed to make a decision and it is always hard for me to decide right away what I want to eat. Here, in BA, people tend to rest for half an hour, sip mineral watter, think what they want to eat, start with an apetizer, half an hour later eat main course, then linger with coffee and desert for a while... Here I am not an undecisive freak but a perfectly normal customer. So after listening to the woman singing for a while I started with a board of cheeses and different kinds of bread and beer, followed by superbly delicious ravioli with pumpkin filling and havy cream souce (callories is not something anybody would count here). Delicioso! I also had cafe con leche witch is so good here that it is hard to resist. I stayed in the cafe for 3 hours. When I was drinking coffee a Tango trio came in: a man with a guitar, a singer and the recitator who in-between the songs talks about "the superiority and importance of tango for all men, women and children." The singer and the recitator were men in their seventies, dressed as elegantly as Roger Straus, with beautiful strong voices. The song about "perrito companero" was so sad and moving that I shed a tear or two into my coffee cup, chlip, chlip... I bought their CD because I liked their music so much and to preserve the memory of that wonderful lunch on the first of May 2005. Which brings me to:

Happy May Day everyone! It is labour day here, as it is or was in Poland, and everything was closed today except the antigue stores in San Telmo. The flea and artesanas market was also on, as on every Sunday and oh! what a joy that was! walking through the streets, enjoing all the artesanas, seeing all the clowns and street theaters and listening to all the music and singers performing. I enjoy very much all the antigues and craftwork but I am a very bed customer - I don't crave to possess any of the things I see... only the visual experience and the music (and blankets but there are no blankets here). So I bought another CD with the Argentinian music. I don't have a CD-player with me, since I am travelling light, so the CDs I bought will have to wait until I settle somewhere and get access to some playing device. I have to mention one of the artists whose art was to "harras" random passers-by and play off their response to him - Jerzy Grotowski would love it. So he would take a father pushing a baby carriage by the arm and act as his beloved wife, or kiss a passing-by girl on the cheek unexpectedly. At one point he hailed a car passing by and shook the driver's hand, and pulled another man passing by with a dog and invited him to the car (the dog readily jumped in) and another girl. The people were really cool and they just got in and the driver drove for a hundred meters and let them out. It was just all so funny, that improvised scene and the face of the actor. People were so relaxed and ready to play his game and the other group who was just watching was laughing histerically. It seems that like in every big city of the world the people in the business district are busy walking fast with lips clenched tightly and eyes fixed on the horizon. They don't see the beggers, they don't see the clowns. The walk straight. In places like San Telmo, which is like East Village in NY, people walk slowly, looking here and there curiously, this window and that, that store and this one, they give small change to the beggers and the crippled, they listen to all the clowns' silliness (and wisdom)... During my long stay in the cafe many people selling various articles came in. Nobody frowned at them for bothering them with their stuff at lunch - if what they were selling was needed the would buy it, if not needed they would just say "no, gracias" but in any case they would treat the people who came in with respect. That is so very nice. Here, too, people show their affection towards loved ones and kids in public. Spouses kiss and embrace, their kids kiss and embrace their boyfriends and girlfriends at the same table, older couples hold hands. It's a very tolerant and liberal society it seems. Moms and dads look like the Fockers from "Meet the Fockers" - another comedy which I liked. Wouldn't every one wish to have parents like the Fockers?

My legs are so tired from all the walking I did today that I am going to go to the hostal, put them up to rest and continue Isabel Allende's "Daughter of Fortune" which I found in a used-books shop and it's a really good book. And so great to be reading it now since it is much about the beginning of settlement in Chile and a lot about the colonists-indigenious peoples relations in that time. And, the girl to my right smokes, the guy on my left smokes... I am roasted people!!!