Today we visited Punta Tombo, the site of the largest penguin colony in the Americas with over 500,000 Magellanic Penguins. We rented a car, which we shared with two other travelers who wanted to visit the colony. By 9:30, Joylani and I, British Ronald and Spanish Racquel were on the road, heading 2 hours south to Punta Tombo. The drive was not particularly scenic, just more flat desert scrubland. Just bushes to the horizon, nothing taller than a meter. The landscape flat and identical in every direction. The only change we experienced on the drive was turning onto a gravel road for the last half-hour.

Guanacos

There was a ranger station at the reserve, where we parked and from where we began walking to the beach. The first animals we saw were actually a herd of guanacos. I’d never seen a guanaco in real life before and I was surprised by both their large size and awkward appearance. The first penguins we saw was laying down under a bush. It had dug a little hole and was laying on its stomach, probably keeping an egg or two warm (most Magellanic penguins lay two eggs at a time) from the cold and windy air. After spotting the first one, we looked around and noticed many bushes with penguins beneath. As we walked along a marker path, we noticed more and more penguins until nearly every bush had one under it.

But there were also a lot of penguins without bushes, who just took shelter in holes in the ground. While most of the penguins we saw were just lying around incubating, there were quite a few walking to or from the ocean. We read that the penguin couples trade-off between keeping the eggs warm and getting food. So we saw them waddling around alone or in pairs.

They looked so funny and off-balanced when they walked- I was surprised that we didn’t see any fall over. A few times they got going so fast, they dropped down to all “fours” and “ran” though. And although they were slow and somewhat off-balance on land, they seemed a lot more agile once they got to the ocean. Much of the beach was off-limits to visitors, but we could look down on it from a rocky headland that jutted out into the ocean. There were a few dozen penguins just hanging out on the beach and a constant stream of ones waddling to or from the ocean. Once in the water, they would just zoom off into the sea. And we saw a lot zip into shore like torpedoes, then waddle out of the waves and onto the beach for the long walk back to their hole.

Aside from the fun of being sometimes within inches of the penguins, we saw and learned a lot of interesting things. I don’t know if penguins are territorial or combative, but we saw one chasing another around and making a ruckus. Once it had scared the other one away, it just stood there and howled in the wind. We also saw two penguins walking together back from the beach, but one had a limp. Its buddy would stop every few meters and wait for the slow one to catch up. It was pretty amazing to see how far some the penguins walked. I mean, most of the nests were at least a few hundred meters uphill from the beach, if not a lot further. We also saw a large brown seabird land with an egg in its mouth and then peck at it. Another bird joined it and they pecked at the egg until they cracked it and began eating it. Ronald said he saw the brown bird steal the egg from a seagull in midair, which I was bummed I didn’t see. After that, I did notice that there were quite a few seagulls and the brown birds constantly circling overhead, probably trying to spot exposed penguin eggs (as pictured below).

every little hole in the ground is a nest

We stayed at the reserve for about two hours, which was enough time to walk all the trails within the reserve. Penguins are one of those animals that I’ve always wanted to see in their natural habitat and today did not disappoint.

I love overnight travel. I like the economy of it- waking up 1000 km from where I fell asleep. I like be stirred awake by the first light of dawn and later by the first rays of sunrise. I like spending my first waking moments contemplating the new and passing scenery. That is exactly how this morning unfolded: I awoke to the endless desert plains of the Patagonian steppe.
At around 10, we arrived at the small city of Trelew, an isolated desert outpost known as the heart of Welsh settlement in Argentina. After arriving, we found our guesthouse, showered, ate, and headed out to explore the town. It’s a small place of around 100,000 residents, although it seems like a village after BA. The only thing of note that we did or saw was visit the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio, a famous dinosaur museum. It was an interesting museum showcasing Argentina’s dinosaurs, but I was pretty disappointed with it. Our guidebook had really talked it up, but it only had 3 rooms. I think the exhibits at the Natural History Museum in BA is much better. This museum was just overrated and overpriced. Argentina does have a lot of fossils had dozens of dinosaur museums around the country. I’ve learned a good amount from the few museums we’ve visited and have enjoyed seeing all the fossils, so I guess that’s good. Like I said, it’s a really small town and I got pretty bored towards the end of the day. Joylani says I’m just restless.

We finally got out of BA today on a long-distance bus to Trelew, about 1000 km south. We bought the lowest-class of tickets and weren’t sure what the Argentine bus situation was like, but it turned out to be a pleasant journey. We did buy the cheapest tickets, but it was still expensive, so it was nice that at least the bus was good. It was a double-decker bus with several different classes of seats. It was almost up to Thailand standards, which was pretty surprising. The movies were certainly better; I’ll take “Along Came Polly,” “Pirates III,” and “21” over Thai music videos any day. Plus, we got meals and there was round of bingo. But most of my attention was focused outside the bus. Once outside BA, we drove for hours across flat pampas. Nothing but green fields as far as I could see. I was struck by both the flatness and lack of people. Asia is so full of villages and people everywhere, it seemed odd to not pass a village or at least see some signs of habitation every few minutes. We saw livestock and passed only a few small towns all day. Argentina is really sparsely populated. It has only 40 million people and I think it’s the fifth largest nation measured by land area. Additionally, over 30% of Argentineans live in BA??????provionce????. Looking out the window, I began to realize how empty of a place Argentina is. My discontent with Argentina so far had been left behind in BA with the crowds, pollution, crumbling buildings and sidewalks, and traffic. We were now on open road, empty country, and the huge blue sky and vibrant green fields replaced the dull city-tones that I’d grown accustomed to. We watched the sun set over the nothingness to the east, nothingness that stretched all the way to Andean cordillera. It was great to see the pinks and oranges that followed the sunset without the silhouettes of buildings or a skyline. It’s now pitch black outside and I cannot even make out the horizon, not that it matters. I know it’s just nothingness anyways. I’m just content to be getting farther from BA and closer to Patagonia, a land I’ve longed to visit.

 

Today is the last day of our month in Buenos Aires and also the first time I’ve attempted to do any writing. Like I mentioned in my last post, we really haven’t done anything too exciting (Spanish classes, sightseeing, and apply to grad school), but it’s still been an interesting month. Rather than try to catch up on all I didn’t write about with individual posts on different subjects, like the day we went to so-and-so museum or the tangible ways the credit crisis is affecting Argentina, I’ll try to share what our first impressions were and how those impressions have developed and matured over the past month.

            Our first few days in BA were exciting and we were pretty impressed. It was our fourth continent on this trip and the first time either of us had been to South America. Furthermore, Buenos Aires is supposedly different from many other places in SA and it seemed like a nice place. It is joked that Buenos Aires is the most American of the European cities. The center of the city definitely seemed like Europe. From the majority Caucasian population (85% nationally, with German and Italian surnames supposedly more numerous than Spanish ones) to the old world architecture, it seemed that we could have been in any European metropolis. To our untrained ears, Spanish, or Castellano, is spoken with Italian sounding accents, the men wear European-cut suits, and can often be spotted wearing uniquely European things like capris or the color orange. The main avenues are wide, the streets have trees, there are plenty of parks, plazas, and memorial statues. The stone or brick buildings have French balconies and domes cap the corners, while bakeries and cathedrals are everywhere. Yet, BA is American and new world too. Yes, BA is some odd Franco-Italia-Germanic-Spanish conglomeration, but that sort of thing only happens in America, in the new world. Additionally, there is an indigenous population and immigrants from all over, gauchos are revered, and steak is the meal of choice. Initially, BA was new and fresh, it’s Euro-American character was appealing, and the city was developed enough to make our month very comfortable and relaxing.

Congreso

            I think Buenos Aires would be a great place to visit for a few days, but the longer we stayed, the less we liked it. Our initial impressions seemed to be pretty façade. Joylani thinks that we underwent a bout of culture shock and some of our growing discontent stemmed from missing Asia. I think there’s definitely an element of truth to that. For one, BA wasn’t exciting, vibrant, and growing like Asian cities. BA is developed, but old. The buildings had nice architecture, but many were run down; there were sidewalks, but they were often broken and unsuitable to walk on; many people walk their dogs along the wide avenues, in the parks, and in the plazas, but there has to be more dog dookie in BA than anywhere in the world; there are garbage cans and rubbish bins throughout the city, but people prefer to litter. This last point is perhaps even more annoying with the knowledge that Argentineans have a high level of education and facilities to recycle and/or throw their trash away (unlike the undeveloped world in both ways), so their littering problem is more out carelessness than ignorance. The city is beautiful in some ways, but its dirty. There are a lot of parks, but you can’t sit anywhere because of all the dog crap and cigarette butts. Supposedly, BA is one of the cleanest cities in the world pollution wise, but that seems to be more a function of its geography and the strong winds (Buenos Aires) than the actual amount of carbon emissions. The buses spew black soot that pedestrians. Furthermore the buses and subway are overcrowded and the city’s infrastructure is insufficient. So what is BA and what will be my memories of it? I think it wants to be European with all the positive connotations that are associated with Europe, but BA is too rundown to even be compared. True, it’s a developed city, but its not maintained like European cities and is definitely on the downhill. Things like the bakeries and wine were nice, but it wasn’t enough to make up for all that the city lacks. While it is true that I have really liked many Asian cities with broken sidewalks, litter, and crumbling infrastructure, there are some important differences. Argentina has been independent for nearly 200 years and hasn’t been burdened by an exploitive colonial past like nearly every Asian nation we visited. People are educated and the city was developed- BA’s problems stem from carelessness and neglect. Asians are generally poor and uneducated and their cities have never been developed until recently. Not that littering is ever okay, but it seems more acceptable if the litterers are ignorant without any place to put their trash, rather than careless and lazy. Similarly, its one thing if a country is developing and hasn’t gotten around to even making sidewalks, but quite another if a city is developed, but allowed to crumble. Perhaps the American traits of selfishness and individualism and the current European priority of entitlements over opportunity, have melded in this Euro-American city and are contributing to its decline.

Avenida de Mayo on a quiet Sunday morning

            That is a lot more detailed explanation of what I dislike about Buenos Aires than I had planned to write, but it pretty much sums up my impressions of the place. Although we disliked the city, we had a good month. While I got restless staying in one place for so long, having an apartment did have its upsides. Those who know me won’t be surprised I liked having my cereal. Joylani liked cooking. I could try local beers from the grocery store and we tried a few new wines too. Not planning or packing was nice. Plus having a big room and bathroom all to ourselves was nice, not to mention a TV and internet access. We explored all over the city, visiting a lot of plazas, parks, and several good museums. And while BA is on a downtrend, it was affordable given its level of development (compared to other cities of similar development), due to the Argentine Financial Crisis of 2001-2002. But it is still a city, not a place to stay unless you are doing something (working, studying, etc.). You can only sightsee so much and at some point everything that seemed novel to me became routine. It was a good month in a city that we didn’t really like and now we’re ready to go.

We’ve been in Buenos Aires for a month and I haven’t done any writing. So I thought I’d write a short post explaining what the heck I’ve been doing for the past month. Our first week here was mainly spent finding an apartment for the month and checking out the main sights in the city. The second and third week, I took Spanish classes and also worked on some grad school apps (Joylani took classes during our third and fourth weeks). The fourth week, I finished up my apps and explored the city a bit more. So its been a pretty mellow month travel-wise and you readers aren’t missing out on anything. Hopefully, I get one post about Buenos Aires written and posted before we go. Sorry we don’t have more to write about Buenos Aires since we spent a month here, but like I said we’ve just been busy with other things.

I was relieved to have my language classes wrap up today.  Things began to drag this week as I learned about the “subjuntivo,” a tense we don’t exactly use in English, and though I know there is a use, I find just about as unnecessary as those darn imaginary numbers are for the common [wo]man.  Matt met me after class and we had a nice picnic and walk down by Puerto Madero.  We “discovered” this area a few days ago, and it is actually just a few blocks away from where we take classes, but the change in atmosphere feels a bit further.  I think Puerto Madero is the most modern place in Buenos Aires.  The sidewalks are smooth, the buildings are new and fresh, no loose tiles that splash up water when you step on then at the wrong angle, no dog poo, less trash—there are actually a couple nice grassy places as well as many benches for sitting.  The buildings block the noise from the street and it’s a pretty mellow place form being in the downtown part of the city.  We picked up some empanadas on the way over and enjoyed our lunch in a little grassy area while birds scouted around us for spilled crumbs.

One of the things that I love about San Telmo is the murals and other informal street paintings.  Since its a long way to fly just to see the murals, I thought I´d make it easy and give you a little tour from your desk.  Here are some of my favorites:

 

some of the  informal stuff is the most fun

this style of stenciled portrait can be seen throughout the city, but this is one of my favorites for the addition of the bird.  a common one to see is GW Bush with Mickey Mouse ears.

And my favorite building, for the guys on the side doing different things and the penguin gargoyles.

Tonight we went to the Complejo Tango Copa Show for which I won a free pair of tickets earlier in the week.  It was disappointing and just barely entertaining, but it didn’t matter as we had had no other plans and the show was free.  The show sounded interesting—the storyline followed the development of tango over the years.  But the execution was lacking.  The stage was pretty small making the dancers appear to be confined.  The costumes looked really cheap, like a Halloween costume from k-mart.  And although it was a “copa show” and we had been told our tickets included a free drink by the school (where we won the tickets), the waitress at the show informed us that drinks were not free.  This meant that drinks were really expensive because everything on the menu was extremely overpriced.  The friends we were with had to pay 30 pesos for two small bottles of water.  (That’s about $10.)  Maybe if we were in a nice restaurant or in the middle of a desert this charge could be justified.  But the Complejo Tango dinner theater was neither, and the only conceivable reason for them to charge so much, besides greed, was that the staff/performer to guest ratio was about one staff to two guests and I suppose their salaries have to come from somewhere.  My critique for the show is that the sound volume was a bit overwhelming and unnecessary (I really don’t think they needed a sound system for such a small venue) and the dances weren’t too interesting.  But then again, tango isn’t really my thing.  Highlights of the show were watching the accordionist make music from such a curious looking instrument and listening to Matt’s comments (On all the interlocking footwork and kicks: “I wonder how often they kick each other?” and “I’m glad we’re not in the front row.”  And when they started picking out audience members for dance partners: “They better not pick me.  I’m not going.  You better sit on my lap and claim me.”)  Also fun, though not part of the show, was window shopping in the windows of the dozens of furniture stores that lined the street on the walk over.  On our walk back home, around midnight, we found the city very much still awake with many people out walking and packed cafes and restaurants. 

There was a dark and blustery storm this morning.  I woke up around 7am and it was still pretty dark, but I just figured it was due to the recent day light savings time change.  But then there was a gust of wind and I heard a rattle of leaves swirling on the roof top below our window: a storm.  By the time Matt and I left for class this morning it had hit hard, dropping heavy splashes of rain across the city.  We decided to take the Subte to avoid getting soaked, which was surprisingly less crowded than yesterday.  Our language school is located on the fourth floor of a multi-level building.  There is a courtyard in the middle of the classrooms.  Windowed glass doors of my classroom face this space and I watched as the patio became darker and darker during the morning session.  Loud thunder and heavy rain made the morning more interesting (grammar lessons are useful, but sadly not very exhilarating), and when we got out at 1pm it was still raining steadily.  But now the sky has poured all the tears it has and there are wide swaths of blue sky.  But I don’t know how long it will stay like that.  Some days the weather is steady here, but some days it just keeps blowing.  This can be a blustery city.  That’s just the “good airs” I guess.

I started my Spanish class today.  It was a little bit overwhelming and I’m not sure if it’s just a first day thing or if it will be like this the whole time.  I found that as I am put on the spot to create sentences in Spanish I lose other words, like titles of films and such.  I guess my brain only has room for so much thinking.  Hopefully my verbal and listening skills will improve as the week goes on.  At least my reading and writing are ok.  It’s back to the books for me.  Sigh.  It has been a while!