As I finish this post, Colorado has just upset West Virginia in overtime, and Sideline Twinkie Erin Andrews is interviewing Coach Dan Hawkins. Coach Dan is reassuring us that "we expected to win the game." Really Dan? Then how come your entire team, and half the fans, are on the field screaming and wailing like banshees right now? The field looks like that scene in the second Matrix movie where everyone in Zion participates in that ridiculous tribal dance scene as the machines are trying to gnaw their way through Zion's defenses and Lawrence Fishburne is looking all angsty. What would your guys do if they hadn't expected to win the game? I guess that's just what happens in Division I football.
Back to Argentina. Have I mentioned that Aerolineas Argentinas is Spanish for “Hot Babes in the Sky Airline”? Eschewing contemporary equal opportunity standards, the main hiring qualification at Aerolineas appears to be how successful your modeling career is (or was). Totally mega-hot babes have staffed the cabin on each of the numerous flights I’ve taken. They wear very flattering and fashionable uniforms, and pay close attention to their hair and makeup. “Reapplying” appears to comprise a major part of “preparing the cabin for landing.” Kind of like riding Southwest Airlines in 1979. This by the way is the national airline.
This greatly helped erase the memory of my equally visceral reaction, in the other direction, to the El Calafate metropolitan area’s landscape as my shuttle bus headed to the airport. Or put another way, near El Calafate (like "Near Waco" during David Koresh's 15 minutes of fame) is a big old garbage dump with gravel roads and flying debris. Empty grocery bags, cans, plastic sheets, rags, broken garbage bags, and leftover building material all cover the countryside. But its difficult to tell whether it helps or hurts the natural dirt and scrub scenery that it obscures. Port Arthur thinks these people should do something about the scenery. Mind you, the town is growing as more people visit the area, and this is where they’re building the new hotels. El Calafate reminds me of that Jeff Foxworthy line about you may be a redneck if the directions to your house include “turn onto the dirt road.” That would qualify half the town.
Today I took the flight to Trelew, a town originally settled by Welsh farmers in the late 1800s, en route to Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdes. Ian and Julia from Australia were already in the waiting area when I arrived; apparently they didn’t know the shuttle bus would arrive in time for the flight. They told me that when they flew out of Iguazú to Bariloche, the pilot detoured slightly to pass by the falls, then turned around and made another pass so that passengers on the other side of the cabin could see the falls as well. Something like that could never happen in the US. Too many FAA regulations, too much paperwork to fill out, exemptions to obtain, schedules to keep. I mention it because it’s a great illustration of one of the many differences in our respective cultures. Here, time is a more flexible and elusive concept. Who cares about a business meeting if you have a chance to see one of the great wonders of nature? Or, what good are rules that prevent something like that? By the same token, I noticed that lots of people pay no attention when the flight attendants announce not to get out of your seats before the airplane has come to a complete stop. That sort of thing is fine, until the plane has to stop suddenly and everyone gets tossed around and breaks their hips. In the US, I guess the airlines won’t allow people to stand because it knows it would get about 100 lawsuits if something bad happened. Other places like Argentina, I guess, are more willing to let you do what you want to do as long as you alone bear the consequences. Joe Jamail probably wouldn’t earn much here.
Peninsula Valdes and the nearby Punta Tombo nature preserve, according to the guidebooks and local info, is a sort of quasi-Galapagos Island, where whales feed, penguins frolic, and one can see all sorts of rare and unusual bird and animal species. I had planned to fly into Trelew, where the main airport is located, drive to Puerto Madryn (the main town in the immediate vicinity), then head over to Peninsula Valdes to see what feeding and frolicking I could before nightfall. That, however, did not take place. Before I arrived in Trelew, I learned that the roads to and at Peninsula Valdez and Punta Tombo are all gravel, which my rented standard transmission and paper thin tire treaded Chevrolet Corsa won’t negotiate very well. In arriving at Trelew, I also noticed my energy level was very low ("running on empty," except not from being a cokehead like 1975 Jackson Browne). Too many nights of too little sleep-staying up late after a full day’s action, and waking up far too early the next day to catch flights or buses, had begun to catch up to me. So in Trelew I decided just to head to the little town of Gaiman, about 20 minutes west, then north to Puerto Madryn, where I would reassess whether to head futher to Peninsula Valdes. Trelew itself, according to the guidebooks, was just another town, and had nothing to see. Flying into the Trelew airport, I noticed that a squadron of the Argentinian Air Force was based there. What I actually noticed was a two-story building and several rusty looking 1950s era camouflaged tanker planes alongside, reminding me of the old song, “Free Mexican Air Force.”
Well, Gaiman turned out to be a total waste of time and gas. Its located at the edge of the pampas-a dry, scrubby area suitable for raising some types of sheep and cattle, and not too much else. Gaiman turned out to be much like the surrounding land. Not too picturesque. Travel books had described it as a small Welsh village, that still celebrated Welsh customs and spoke the language. That may be, but it still looked just like Clinton Drive in Galena Park, so I decided to head on to Puerto Madryn. This drive involves taking a two-lane highway for about an hour. The provincial government is either expanding the road or building a new one alongside, so the whole way there (and back the next day), I found myself behind smoke-belching trucks driving about half the posted speed limit, chooglin’ up the road. This greatly slowed down traffic in the process and prompted the rule-averse Argentinian motorists to attempt hazardous passes, generally in posted no passing zones. So although the drive was only an hour, it was a great deal more tiring than this would suggest.
By the time I arrived in Puerto Madryn, around 3:00 or so, I was pretty much exhausted, and extremely hungry. So I made the executive decision that I’d just see whatever I could in Puerto Madryn and call it a day. Puerto Madryn essentially is a beach town out of beach-going season. I saw photos in my hotel and in some shops and restaurants of the local beaches in season, chock full of sunbathers, swimmers, dogs, and sailboats. Today, however, it was very brisk, around 55 according to the car’s thermostat, but the wind whipping off the ocean making it seem much colder. Fortunately, it was a bright sunny day, making the cold seem a little more bearable.
Puerto Madryn is located alongisde the Golfo Nuevo, a fairly sheltered bay bordered on the north by Peninsula Valdes. Because it offers something of a shelter from the Atlantic, the waters are calmer than other Argentine coast towns, and that attracts marine wildlife. Puerto Madryn is probably about as big as Galveston, but the main tourist areas are the beach, the Navy pier, and the street one block off the beach (Avenida Roca, of course-all Argentina towns have basically the same street names) with most of the bars, restaurants, and hotels. Everything else in town is local, and I quickly got the impression that the locals did not mix with the tourists, and vice versa. After eating some very average pizza at one restaurant on the strip, I checked into my modest hotel at one end of the avenue, put on some tennis shoes, and started walking. I made it down Avenida Roca, then headed back along some streets further from the beach. What stood out most were some very small, but elegant looking cottages. These weren’t the usual pre-fab, built in 30 days’ type of habitable space units generally built in beach towns, but older, individualized homes in a mix of Spanish colonial and other styles. I took several photos, which you can see on flickr. These cottages were generally tucked into small tracts, often right alongside buildings next door.
At the main plaza, lots of people were out enjoying the day. This includes several couples just blatantly going at it with no regard for time and place, a practice that I discussed in a previous post. Some local "youts" were working on their sweet break-dancing skills alongside the soccer park. Hey kids, its not 1985 anymore. On a side street, I saw a mother outside a little shop trying to hug her boy, who appeared to be about 9 or 10. The boy was trying to squirm out of his mother’s embrace, yelling that he didn’t want to hug, and then ran away when he broke free. It reminded me how my own mother was always trying to hug me her whole life, and how at that age and for many more years the most I could muster was an annoyed acceptance of such hugs, like the boy I had just seen. It made me think that now I would give everything I have in the world for just one more of those hugs.
I next made it to the Navy pier. This by no means resembles the Chicago Navy Pier, a very large district with meeting facilities, restaurants, a “boardwalk,” and carnival rides. This Navy pier literally is a pier run by the Navy, where people walk, or fish. It extended about 1/3 mile out into the bay, giving an excellent view of the entire town, the beaches, and the coming sunset. The water was very rough, rocking the small tugboat and coast guard patrol boat moored at the pier. I took a video shot of these vessels being tossed about, despite being tied off at the slip. Amazingly, while looking on either side at the bay, seeing a few sailboats out for the afternoon, I noticed whales breaching the surface. During the 20 or so minutes I spent out on the extremely windy pier, I guess I saw about 15 whales altogether. I never could get a good picture though. By the time I saw a whale surface, trained my camera, and zoomed in on the whale, it had already gone back below the surface. So all you can see in my photos are some shots of tail fins and whales swimming just below the surface. Nonetheless, it made me feel less cheated in not having made it to Peninsula Valdes. I think I would have just seen more of the same, at perhaps a closer distance.
Venturing on from the pier down the main walk along the beach, I observed lots of people out. Many were at some park facilities, while others were gathering at a local artists’ exhibition. I also scouted out the restaurant I would go to that night.
After heading back to the hotel and again having an unplanned nap, I woke up around 9:30 to head out for dinner. Unfortunately, the restaurant I’d planned to visit was closed, prompting me to look for alternatives. There weren’t many. Plus, several blocks of the main street were in the middle of a power outage. Let me observe at this point that nearly everywhere I went outside Buenos Aires, I went through some sort of power outage. These didn’t last too long, maybe in the 20-30 minute range. The one in Puerto Madryn, which did not affect my hotel, appeared to last much longer, and had no apparent reason (i.e. no bad weather). No one seemed particularly upset or alarmed in any of these outages, telling me that they’re a pretty common occurrence. As someone involved in electricity regulation in Texas, it took me aback that reliability performance we would consider scandalous is acceptable in Argentina, with no apparent cause for concern. This offers yet another example of how we’re fortunate to live in the US, despite whatever inconveniences we may suffer from time to time.
At the restaurant I ultimately settled on, they had a soccer match playing on about 10 TVs (maybe they hoped it would be more interesting on at least one of their sets). Just after I ordered, they seated this mildly crazy looking guy at the table next to me, which meant that he was seated pretty much right next to me. He spoke not a word of English, and appeared to be slurring his Spanish as he declined a menu and instead ordered an entire bottle of red wine and a small bucket of ice for himself. He appeared to have a fairly elaborate discussion with the waiter which I couldn’t follow, but the gist of it seemed to be the waiter trying to follow exactly what the guy wanted. After he got his wine, he would pour the wine into his glass, then add a few pieces of ice. Red wine and ice. That sounds completely normal. Signed, Socks on a Rooster. Sometime around when I was served my meal, the guy started talking to me a mile a minute. Although I protested “no hablo español” and “no entendio”, he kept on talking. He became more and more animated as I tried to insist I didn’t know what he was saying. I could only catch a tiny bit of what he was saying, but I think it was something along the lines of “why are you in Argentina if you can’t speak Spanish.” As visions of this guy being overtaken by the innate Soccer Fan urge to start a drunken riot began to come to mind, I began to feel that familiar "run for your life" instinct, and it looked like it was beginning to become a bad scene, so I ate quickly and got out. Soccer Fan, not unlike Raiders Fan or Drunken Aggie Fan, is not someone to be taken lightly. At a moment's notice, I could have been strung up outside the restaurant like Danny Glover in The Unforgiven. Or worse, tossed in some Puerto Madryn jail for the next 50 years. The last thing I needed was to try to explain to some Argentinian federal policeman that I, an American, was just minding my own business when this guy just totally unprovoked started the fight. I just didn’t see that developing into a great story. Red wine and ice. Figures. That was a real sign it was time to go home.
I’d planned to end the vacation blog series here, but the next day and the trip back home deserve some thoughts. In the past, I’ve made sure to spend my last night in the town from which I’ll be going back home. Most of the return flights have been at night, so by staying in the town the night before, I can have a relaxing day leading up to the night-time flight. This time, however, I had to beat it back to Trelew for a 12:11 p.m. flight back to Buenos Aires, catch a shuttle from the domestic airport to the international airport on the other side of town, then check in and catch a 10 hour flight leaving at 8:30 that night. That required me to get up around 7 on Monday morning and keep traveling until around 1 on Tuesday afternoon. I drove to Trelew (behind trucks and among pass-happy drivers), flew to Buenos Aires, got my bags, caught a shuttle bus to the international airport, had to wait til they started checking in passengers, then caught an 8:30 flight to Atlanta, had a four hour layover, then took a two hour flight to Austin (then a taxi back home). That was a really exhausting trip. At one point it seemed like I was going to have to take a burro or a yak or something to get home. Lesson learned, be in the city you're going to fly out of the night before you fly.
I sat next to a really cute little girl of about 7 or 8 and her dad on the flight from Trelew. She was paying close attention to me, but more to my ipod, and asking me about myself in broken English. I caught something of a break in Buenos Aires, as Delta had secured use of the American Express lounge next to my gate for business class passengers, which my wait a little easier. Then, a good news/bad news situation on the flight to Atlanta. Good news-a young flight attendant hit on me, asking me all about myself, complimenting me on my jacket, and saying I was too attractive to be a lawyer. (That constitutes hitting on someone, right?) Bad news-it was a guy. Just like Dr. John said, I was in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time. Eight year old girls and gays...something tells me I may need to adjust my attraction action. The flight attendant told the pilot I was from Austin, so the pilot came over and visited with me about Austin. He just moved there, and is running a real estate business on the side because Delta just screwed everyone out of their retirement. Whatever dude, you should see what they're charging for tickets-its not like you're the only one taking some.
Well I guess that's about it. I rank this trip ahead of my Canada trips, behind London and New Zealand. Buenos Aires is pretty dirty and disgusting, although it has some incredible architecture. The countryside is much more attractive, although its a little difficult and very expensive to get around. Not sure I would go back unless I was with someone who speaks good spanish.
Oh, and its still a little weird talking to people and everyone speaking english.
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