Argentina – The Final Week!!!!!!!!
13/10/2009
So this is the last blog entry for the Peak Leaders 09 Argentina course…….sad times. The unfortunate truth is that I’m now sat at home in my parents living room, trying to ignore the carriage clock ticking in my ear, and reminiscing about the last week we spent in Argentina. Although the aforementioned week involved a lot of travelling it’s a week that I will never forget as it opened our eyes to another side of Argentina, one that didn’t involve steak houses, ski slopes and Jagerbombs!
After an epic night in Esquel, Eskeletor as it’s affectionately known by the locals, many of us hadn’t caught much sleep so it was a relief to know we were about to embark on a 10 hour bus journey. The journey, which the majority of us slept through, took everybody across the Patagonian desert, the biggest desert in South America, to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast. Without visiting Argentina you can’t really understand how empty the middle of Patagonia actually is; we’d literally drive for two hours without seeing a single settlement or car. The road we took was very straight, in ill-repair and surprisingly narrow, just about wide enough to fit two cars side by side…..which was surprising considering it was the main road that ran from the east to the west of Patagonia. It seems that the Patagonian’s don’t really have much need or desire to travel around their country, as a people they stay fairly fixed and get on with whatever they do in their local area. Anyway, I’d love to tell you all about the scenery but for the majority of time I was sound asleep; nevertheless you’ll hear all about it when we travel back to Bariloche, later in the blog.
Before arriving at Puerto Madryn we made a quick stop at a famous Welsh Tea House ‘Ty Te Caerdydd’ for afternoon tea. The place was a little surreal with a giant tea pot in the garden, little old ladies running around serving tea from pots with pink tea cosies and pictures of Princess Diana literally everywhere. It seems Diana had visited the Tea House in the mid nineties because it was one of the most revered in the whole of Patagonia……she obviously hadn’t tried the Plum jam, minging. Anyway, none of us had the heart to tell the owner, a tall dark Welsh looking fellow, that Princess Di was no longer with us, so we ate a vast array of cakes and sandwiches in relative silence in the comfort his living room then left. Once we arrived at Puerto Madryn, around 9pm, the majority of trainees either went to bed or tried to grab a table at one of Puerto Madryn’s famous fish restaurants.
The next day was a very relaxed affair, for most anyway! I believe the only trainee to wake-up before midday was Sophie Ward who took a brisk run along the beachfront to view the crimson flocks of Flamingo’s. The remainder of us met in the hotel lobby at 1pm to jump on a bus to view a colony of Sea Lions. At this point a few foolhardy trainees, led by Hamish ‘Armstrong’ Carmichael, thought it would a good idea to cycle the 12km to the nature reserve. Needless to say an hour later we passed this foolhardy gang 7 or 8km into our journey, at the back were James and Tim who couldn’t wait to tell us their harrowing tales of cycling on sand and other such tales of desperation and woe. At the front, a mile or further on, were Kathrine ‘the machine’ Liver and Petty who didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. On arrival at the nature reserve the smell of fish was overwhelming, which isn’t the most pleasant smell. A short walk to a viewing platform overlooking the Atlantic and down below us lay a colony of over one hundred Sea Lions, a weaving mass of grey and brown that occasionally parted when the males began getting rowdy with one another. During this time David and Sophie made us all feel completely inadequate with the size of their camera lenses…..I’m not ashamed to say I had lense envy. After a while we’d seen enough of the Sea Lions and in honesty the smell had got too much for most of us, so some of us boarded the bus and a few trainees cycled back. That night, whilst at dinner, a bomb was dropped; apparently the only road between Puerto Pyramids, where we planned on watching the Whales, would be closed from 7am in the morning which meant a very very early start.
Half dead the trainees descended upon breakfast at 5am, it wasn’t a pleasant site. Back on the bus for 6am and we were off along the coastal rode to Puerto Piramide as the sun rose over the Atlantic. Puerto Madryn is a strange place, strangely enough it has all the charm of a run-down Kent/Sussex sea-side resort. It would be very easy to forget you’re in South America were in not for the half built tower blocks, mass of Ford and Chevrolet trucks grunting up and down the gridded roads and the endless mix mash of randomly designed housing…no building in Puerto Madryn bares a single resemblance to any other building in Puerto Madryn. Anyway, after a two hour drive through the dawn we arrived at Puerto Piramide, a small fishing/tourist port that sat on a beautiful beach surrounded by sandy hills. Puerto Piramide sits on the Valdes Peninsula looking back across a giant bay to Puerto Madryn, which is so far away you can’t even see it when you’re stood on the top of the cliffs. Unlike Puerto Madryn, Puerto Piramide has a sleepy feel to it, wooden shacks line the beach with hastily nailed together wooden signs….unsurprisingly the old clichés like Moby Dick’s Whale tours and Captain Hooks Restaurant shamelessly made an appearance. As we’d arrived so early we all piled into a beachfront restaurant, much to the dismay of the barman who clearly thought he’d been given the graveyard shift, to have coffee administered intravenously. After a quick shot of the good stuff myself, Charlie Baddeley and Alex Willan decided to scale the highest hill in the area to view the port and the surrounding landscape and fifteen minutes later we’d succeeded….without Oxygen!
After a couple hours spent hanging around and enjoying the sea breeze we all grabbed a lifejacket and boarded the giant Zodiac that was perched on the beach. Apparently the locals aren’t allowed to build a peer within the national park area so the boat operators have to use giant tractors to pull the boats in and out of the water on big metal trailers. Once on our way the captain, a stereotypically bearded and heavily weathered gentleman, navigated away from the beach and out to the depths. The purpose of this trip was to see the Southern Right Whale which comes to the Valdez Peninsula to breed. Southern Right Whales are pretty big; fully grown females can grow as long as 18.5 metres and can weigh up to 130 tonnes, which is roughly twice as much as a Challenger II tank. Less than five minutes into our tour we could see in the distance a young calf jumping out of the water so the captain carefully made his way through the choppy water to the where the calf had last been spotted. Once we got close to the calf and its mother the captain skilfully manoeuvred the boat alongside and all the trainees’ lept to the side of the boat that the Whales were on. Even Lara, who’s arm was in a serious cast, wasn’t shy about muscling in on the action. As the calf lept continuously into the air, in an attempt to hit the pestering seagull that hovered above, the mother popped her head out occasionally for a breath of air, leaving behind a stinking cloud of water vapour. After an hour spent following Whales back and forth across the bay everybody seemed to have taken photos that David Bailey would have been proud of so we headed back to shore passing other wildlife on the shore, including a gulp of White-Bellied Shag Cormorants (thank you Wikipedia) and a lone male Sea Lion bathing on the rocks. Once on land the trainees went for lunch at one of the many shack restaurants that lined the sandy streets of Puerto Piramide. Once everybody had eaten we took a short drive to the nature reserve’s museum and on to a beach to view yet more whales. On this occasion they were no more then 30 metres from the beach, frantically paddling against the incoming swell and onshore winds in an effort not to be beached. That night a few of the trainees hit the town but I think it can be safely concluded that Puerto Madryn is severely lacking in any South American flair when it comes to nightlife.
The next day was an epic bus journey that started at Puerto Madryn and finished 800km away at El Boson where the final party was being held. There’s not much point in describing the whole journey to you as it’ll bore you to tears but I’ll briefly describe the scenery as it was so epic. The Patagonian desert is a vast sandy landscape with wide rivers running calmly through it and large sandy hills that have been blown into all manner of shapes by the wind. Occasionally in the low sheltered valleys you’ll see a ranch; visible only by the tall, narrow willow-like trees that shelter it from the wind and afternoon sun. As the majority of the landscape is formed from sandstone and other sedimentary rocks there are lots of canyons and rock faces with very little in the way of vegetation except for bushes and tufts of grass. The roads are narrow and very straight; it seems as though they only bend if there is a sizeable geographical feature in the way. Anyway, as we drove closer to the Andes and gained a bit of height large pools of salt water appeared along the side of the road and to my amazement a lone Flamingo sat in the middle of one minding his own business. Natasha, who was sat next to me, clearly thought I’d been toking on the old Crack pipe when I stood up and shouted that I’d just seen a lone Flamingo in the middle of the desert. Fortunately Ivan (the everlasting-know-it-all) explained that it was quite common to see Flamingo’s in this part of the desert and my credibility was restored. As we neared the Andes the sun set over the snow capped peaks and cries of ‘are we there yet’ reverberated around the bus.
We arrived at the party venue at around 11pm and in fairness the vast majority of trainees were tired and not in the mood for partying. The venue was Nico’s parents restaurant, a homely little restaurant in the middle of nowhere that resembled a Hobit’s house. After a feast of Lamb and pumpkin stew and a few Stella’s, premium beer in Argentina, it was time for the prize giving. As I’d been living with everyone for the past 9 weeks it was difficult to choose prize winners, as everybody had improved so dramatically, but there were some skiers and snowboarders that had really excelled and caught the eye of their BASI trainers and Argie instructors. Prizes this year were handed out to the following people:
Friendliest and most enthusiastic trainees – Milla Ralph and Rosie Leach
Course joker – Will Murphy
Most promising instructor – Dan Hunt
Best freestyle snowboarder – Neil Patterson
Best freestyle skiers – Alex Morgan, Adam Coombs, Harry Lloyd, Jon Wade, Ed Pycraft and Charlotte Vantreen
Most improved snowboarders – Claire Craig and Andrew Lomax
Most improved skiers – Michael Davies and Ed Barry
After the prizes had been given out Colo and Ivan handed out certificates to everybody and the DJ, Nico’s brother, began pumping out Techno beats from behind the bar. As it had been a long day of travelling a large proportion of the trainees took the early bus home to make the most of their last day in Bariloche…..and a fair amount of us stayed behind to watch Colo and Ed’s dancing, play drinking games and fall asleep in the corner of the restaurant.
The next day was a very chilled-out affair as most trainees did absolutely nothing except pack their belongings and prepare for a final big night in Bariloche. Most of us woke with a bit of a hangover and after a big concerted effort by all the hotel staff and trainees we managed to get Harry, Ed and Adam on the bus to the Airport. Once at the airport we managed to delay the plane for a good 20 minutes due to baggage issues then said our goodbyes to Ronnie, Ivan and Colo. After a two hour journey we arrived in Buenos Aires which was definitely a change of scenery. A short bus ride took us to our hotel in the centre of town and less than a couple of hours later everybody was sampling the restaurants and bars of BA. Needless to say the nightlife and beautiful women in Buenos are second to none, the place is a buzzing cosmopolitan that feels more like a European city than a lot of cities in Europe. After a few minutes searching through the pages of his Lonely Planet Nezza P, Neil’s alter ego, selected a top notch restaurant and despite having a few difficulties hailing a taxi we were soon sat in a beautiful restaurant called Cluny being served delicious food and cocktails by a gang of very helpful waiters. The service, food and drink were first-class and the whole experience cost us less than £25 each; back in London you’d be hard pressed to find the same for less than £100. After a highly entertaining meal we jumped in a taxi and made our way to a giant club overlooking the sea called Mint to watch the sun rise…..for your information clubs in BA don’t get going until 3am. The rest of the trainees found themselves in the VIP section of a Techno club called Crowbar, a night organised by Charlie and Alex. Anyway, we all spent the night break dancing and throwing shapes on the floor and before I’d even had a chance to look at my watch it had got to 7am in the morning and I was stood outside a club in the middle of nowhere, with no money, a gang of local women following me (honest!), a certain Caribbean Sunset haired trainee hanging upside-down in a tree and in less than an hour I had to ensure that 40 trainees got on the bus to the airport……..the rest is history!
Argentina; what an epic way to spend a summer.
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