Happy Birthday to Frank Spencley!

Snow.

A gentle, big flake kind of snow, drifting across the sky like feathers falling from a flat grey sky.

A beautiful and welcoming snow but snow nonetheless.

Where are the winter boots? Any boots for that matter. Scarves? Gloves? Hats? Our bags have been dumped upstairs in the guest bedroom and we stumble over them, bewildered and groggy, still disoriented at the knowledge that we are home. Our clothes are stashed all over the house; suits and overcoats in John’s childhood room, some summer clothes hung hastily in the guest closet. We get the sense that we left in a hurry last December, shoes stuffed in side pouches of suitcases, sweaters, bathrobes and underwear folded willy-nilly in the suitcases. We now must unpack all of our summer clothes and re-pack them while we try and track down our winter clothes and find a place to store them for everyday wear. We seem to be pushing suitcases from one side of the room to the other.



Re-entry is hard. Very Hard.

Happy Birthday to Bob Forsey

Our eyes flutter open to the stewardess’ crackly, electronic voice announcing breakfast. We are just on another flight to somewhere; where are we headed and what time we are landing? I’m not entirely sure. Did we organize a transfer to our hotel and have we booked a tour yet? Not to worry I’m sure. I try to roll over in the seat and keep my eyes closed for a few more moments. What’s the weather there? Where is there? I have learned not to be too anxious about those things that I have no control over.

Amy, one of our stewardesses, has a very familiar twang to her congenial and polite voice; she is either from New Brunswick or from the upper reaches of the Ottawa Valley. My groggy head starts to remember that we are on an Air Canada flight headed for home, or our concept of home for the next bit of time whilst our new understanding of home becomes more of a concrete reality.

We are going home after our year away from home, traipsing, touring, travelling and traversing the globe, following summer.

We touch down to heavy fog, encrusted with the remnants of yesterday’s snowfall. Cold sleet and slick conditions greet our arrival home. I can feel our skin starting to dry and crack in the unusually cold weather; our lips quickly follow suit. I pull out my fleece from Montpellier and my scarf from Paris but they are not enough to keep the bitterness from creeping in at the back of my neck or the bottom of my pant cuff. With the last minute rescheduling of our flight yesterday, my brother Gary is not available to pick us up at the airport as originally planned so we have arranged an airport transfer to deliver us to Stratford and to John’s mom’s house, where we will settle in until the New Year.

In many ways I am indifferent with how our trip has ended. The romantic in me had hoped for the big bang finish. But there was no big bang finish, no sentimentality, no fireworks. Once the decision to go was made, we were packed and out the door quickly and with no regrets, very much like our original decision to take a year off and follow summer. Perhaps this is the way our trip was meant to end; easily and on our terms. On the other hand, it was obvious that we were ready for home and some familiarity.

Now the reality will start to settle in.

We wake today and suddenly John suggests that we try and get on the flight tonight to Toronto. Dee and Mark are heading home this evening and we have done pretty much everything that we have wanted to do in Argentina and Buenos Aires so……we decide to pack up, organize the rental office to come by and return our damage deposit and get some tickets re-booked. Dee, Mark and I have some last minute shopping to do and John heads down to Plaza San Martin to the Air Canada office to see if we can get on tonight’s plane. I think we are feeling a little restless; trying to fill in time while we wait for the end of our trip; Utz also weighing on our minds.

The day is glorious summer, shorts and t-shirts. We stick to Av. Santa Fe for the shopping and pick up some shoes and end up at a specialty shop where Mark buys all of next summers wardrobe, all for a mere $150.00 US. They are being picked up for the airport around 4 pm and we will follow a couple of hours later. The process of packing and moving on as easily as we do still amazes me.


But this time we are heading home.

Today starts with a visit to the home stadium of the Boca Juniors, one of Buenos Aires’ 2 futbal teams. Our taxi driver is clearly a soccer fan, and by the time we arrive he is so excited about our visit that he somehow gets us into the stadium for half the normal price by talking to a friend who works there. There will be an amateur game later today, but right now it is the social club that is on the field in this intimate stadium. We watch, along with the rest of the crowd, as the players, who range in age from 3 to 50, enjoy themselves on the field. The sky is cloudless and the day hot, and after half an hour or so, we escape to explore La Boca itself.


Estadio Boca Juniors

La Boca is the old port area of Buenos Aires, and the immediate living area of the millions of European immigrants who flooded the city. Even today, 100 years after the harbour moved away, the area still wears its scars proudly, and the guidebooks suggest that this is one of the few areas of Buenos Aires that is best avoided after dark. Over 80 years ago it was declared a heritage area, and its tin shacks were preserved, painted bright colours and turned into artists studios.


Street tango in La Boca



La Boca

A cab ride away we find San Telmo, home to the Sunday market. Once filled with luxurious mansions, its wealthy citizens fled during a yellow fever epidemic, and the mansions became rooming houses overnight. We spend some time exploring the market, and then find a place for lunch.

Walking down the street, Greg spots a dancer, waiting to be hired to dance on the street. She catches him in the act of taking her photo, and is not impressed - unless of course he pays for the privilege.



Dee and Mark grab 1 cab and head out for an afternoon at Recoleta Cemetary and some museum going, and Greg and I head home for naps. How we will miss our afternoon naps once we are back in Canada. We meet back at the apartment just before 8, and are joined by Robert and Robert, who have flown in from Vancouver and arrived this morning for an Argentine vacation. We have a glass of wine, and then head off to a restaurant that Dee’s mom found written up in the New York Times, Bar Uriarte, in Palermo Viejo.

We find a very hot restaurant, beautifully decorated and full of Buenos Aires’ beautiful people in the middle of what seems to be a totally residential area. We have a wonderful meal, enjoying lots of conversation and the atmosphere, getting caught up with Robert and Robert, and sharing their first, and Mark and Dee’s last, Argentinean evening.

Everyone enjoys a sleep in today but the warm, sunny weather is too enticing for us to remain indoors for too long. Today will be a tourist day with Deirdre and Mark, and we have left plenty of time for shopping. Utz is in the forefront of our thoughts but we try not to let him overwhelm our emotions on our last 4 or 5 days in Buenos Aires.

We are feeling that our time has come to an end in both Argentina and around the world. We are looking forward to boarding a plane for the last time and schlepping our luggage up and down for the last time. But it is Saturday morning in Buenos Aires and everyone is out. We don’t want to be left behind in the beautiful 30 degree weather.

The four of us head down to the Casa Rosada via Plaza Congresso and take in the Cathedral. We stop for lunch at the famous but touristy Café Tortoni, it’s literary past rivalling that of New York’s Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel. We eat amongst the once grand but now somewhat dingy atmosphere and talk about our options concerning Utz. Having discussed our choices over coffee con leche, and communicated them back to Sarah in Peterborough, we continue our stroll down Av. de Mayo. It is mid-siesta as we wander onto the western end of Ave. Florida but soon all the stores are opening up for the afternoon business. We end up in the Galleries Pacifico and spend some time shopping in the more upscale stores, trying on leather and shoes, Dee and Mark thinking about Christmas and Hanukah gifts for friends and family back home.


From left: 2 views of the Argentine Congress; some of the domes that give the area near the Congress its name

Our walk takes us into the Plaza St. Martin and the leather store Casa Lopez where we all buy leather from the aggressive, but sweet salesladies. They look like they have been on the “floor” peddling leather to tourists for many years. We all walk out with something and stroll back up Av. Santa Fe in the late afternoon warmth, the sun directly in our eyes.

We are planning a special dinner out tonight for our last Saturday night in Buenos Aires and in fact Argentina. This will also be our last Saturday night out around the world, our followsummer trek soon to be over. Dee and Mark are dressed in their summer finery and at our apartment for a glass of wine at 8:00. We pull whatever we can from the followsummer suitcases and iron a shirt and head for an early 9:00 reservation at our favourite Buenos Aires restaurant, Cabaña Las Lilas. Our table is on the patio with a lovely view of the bustling harbour, and we enjoy a bottle of Argentinean wine with each course. The service and the food are as always, impeccable. John and I have already marvelled at cost vs. value at Cabaña Las Lilas, and now it is Deirdre and Mark’s turn as the bill arrives and they gaze, astonished, at the incredibly reasonable price of this wonderful meal. It is an early evening for us tonight; our late night flight last night has caught up with us, and we know that we will have a late night tomorrow night, as our friends Robert and Robert arrive from Vancouver early tomorrow morning and we plan to meet them for dinner tomorrow evening.

Despite my love of animals, I have turned down the opportunity to see the Commersons dolphins and the penguin colony, and am going scuba diving today. This will be my last opportunity for quite some time, and I am excited at the thought of feeling the cool water and the sensation of hovering 1 more time.

I get to the dive shop to find that there is 1 other diver going out today. This is good news, because it means we will dive the only wreck in the area, a fishing boat that was sunk 5 years ago to create a reef.

On the way out I feel my apprehension growing - the waves are higher than they look from shore, we are in a tiny boat, the equipment is unfamiliar. I force myself to stay calm, and we backflip in. I tighten my mask, and the strap breaks! Forget calm - all I want is out of the water. But - this is my last dive of followsummer, and so I breathe deeply, get a new mask, and down into the water we go. (I learn afterwards that the guy I was diving with, a much more experienced diver than I, was ready to get out of the water when my mask broke, and would have if I had. I’m glad for both our sakes that I didn’t).

The water feels good. For cold water, the visibility is quite good. We descend to the boat, about 25 metres down. Although a new wreck, it is alive, surrounded by salmon, beautiful fish with thick lips. I am quite surprised at how wonderful they look, and how friendly they are, swimming right up to us and staring us in the face.

Our second dive is very different, over a shallow kelp bed, about 10 metres deep. My buddy and I go in alone, the first time either of us have dived without a dive master. We spend the longest time swimming and looking at what there is to see. After almost 1 hour down there, we come up, and only because we are both so cold. I have almost 100 bar left in my tank, and can’t believe how long my air lasted at such a shallow depth.

I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the deck of a restaurant right on the beach, basking in the sun, working on our journal, and thinking about the changes ahead: the return to Canada, the search for jobs and a place to live. Where I was feeling ready to come home a couple of weeks ago, today I am wistful, and want to stay on the road forever. This year has been so amazing! It has been such a wonderful opportunity to explore different places and meet different people, and to have the luxury of spending extended periods in these places, really getting to understand their cultures. I have loved it (or at least most of it), and feel quite sad that reality is going to quickly intrude on this strange interlude.

We are called for 8:00 today but we all know that this really means 8:15. It is our last day in Puerto Madryn and I skip the meagre breakfast of toast and medialunas and more bread and more toast. Dee, Mark and I board the bus for our trip to Punto Tumbo and the penguin colony. It is going to be another long, 400 kilometre, day today, and we also have an early morning stop to do some much-anticipated dolphin watching.

John is diving today and I personally think that he will be missing one of the highlights of the Puerto Madryn trip with his favourites, the dolphins and the penguins. Oh well, he will have to live vicariously through us!

The tour bus is filled with familiar faces from yesterday’s tour this morning: the four Americans from Illinois, the Hungarian woman and the Birmingham/German woman, who are both travelling alone. We are joined by a Spanish couple and 3 guys from the Pays Basque. Of course, Jorge is guiding us again today.

The land is flat and desolate; nothing pierces the horizon for as far as the eye can see. It is a clear, intense day, the sun shining down from the blue cloudless sky. Time for the sunscreen again.

We arrive at the port, board the zodiac, and head out into the open waters to try and glimpse the Commersons dolphins, a distinct genus with a habitat that ranges from Puerto Madryn south to Tierra del Fuego. They dress us in orange ponchos and lifejackets, not leaving much room for movement. I opt not to bring the camera because of the spray and this proves to be for the best. As Dee says, “we will just have to rely on our memories of the dolphins.” The ride out is wild and even if we don’t see any dolphins, I will have enjoyed the bumpy, rollercoaster ride nonetheless.

We zoom back and forth across the waves and watch patiently for the black and white backs of the dolphins. There are some disappointed looks on many of the passengers’ faces as they scan the cresting waves. All of a sudden someone points across the zodiac and we briefly see the skimming backs of two Commersons dolphins, breaking through the waves. Soon there are more, swimming under the boat and cresting the waves around us. Those who dared to bring their cameras are shooting madly, just missing the fast diving dolphins; their pictures are full of sea foam and cresting waves. We spend a good 50 minutes out in the surf, chasing back and forth.

We motor back into port and say hello to a small colony of sea lions that has taken up residence in the harbour, living off the tossed-off remnants of the fishing fleet that makes its home here. The fleet looks fairly dilapidated, their rusting hulls burning in the mid-morning sun.

We continue our drive south to Punto Tumbo. The vistas continue completely desolate: a typical Patagonian landscape. We arrive at the penguin colony and grab some lunch at the snack bar. There isn’t much choice at the Mom and Pop shop but we make do and then head out into the colony. Jorge has given us some guidelines about the colony and I am overwhelmed at how close we actually are to the penguins and their new families. There are over 250,000 couples in the colony and almost all have 2 or 3 new chicks. We are able to walk amongst them and peer into their nests and see the newborns. Occasionally the penguins will cross our path as we cautiously move around their nests. They stop and crane their necks at us, trying to figure us out.


Welcome!

I stop on several occasions and crouch and crane my neck back at them. They seem truly intelligent and able to communicate in this way. At one point I am watching a penguin family and snapping photos when one of the family members comes right up to me and checks me out for over ten minutes. Dee arrives and takes a few photos of me with my new friend.


Head shots


The chicks


Families of Penquins

We spend about 2 hours in the colony and are amazed at the number of penguins that live here and the wonderful views that they have. They have the best real estate on the entire Atlantic coast.


What Real Estate!


The penguins share their landscape with other wild animals

The drive back is typical Argentina: rough gravel roads that bump and jolt you the whole time. Our driver today is somewhat kamikaze. He finds every hole and rut in the road and proceeds over it. So much so that we discover one of the tires has a flat and we have an unscheduled 45 minute stop in Trelew to fix it. Our transport to the airport is scheduled at 7:30 and we arrive back at the hotel at 7:15 only to turn around and retrace our same 45 minute drive back to Trelew to the airport where our flight to Buenos Aires originates. The sun is setting across the vast plain of Patagonia and we realize, more than ever, that our big trip is coming to an end.


Bye bye!

We arrive home to an email from Sarah, Utz and Sophia’s wonderful step-mom for the last year. Utz is not well. He has lost mobility in his hind legs and isn’t eating. He is dragging himself around and cannot make the litter box at this point. We are heartbroken. It seems that things are crashing down around us during the final lap of our trip. First the spammers on the website, then I caught a terrible cold and sore throat, and now Utz.

I am so excited about today’s trip I wake early. We are off to see the southern right whales.

But first, we have a 100 kilometre drive onto Pensínsula Valdés from Puerto Madryn, some of it on paved road, but much of it not.

The southern right whale is so-called because it was the most useful whale in the days when blubber was both fuel and food and when whalebones were used in women’s corsets. And so the sailors would call out “that’s the right whale” when one was spotted. They were hunted almost to the point of extinction, and when I was a boy most people thought there were too few still alive for them to make a comeback. But come back they have, and Jorge, our guide today, tells me later that the most recent census has shown that there are over 7,000 of these wonderful beings alive today (the scientists who carried out the census expected the number to be about 3,500), and that the population is growing by about 7% annually.

These whales live solitary lives, moving through the southern oceans, but they return annually to Pensínsula Valdés to mate, in September and October. They then move out to see, and the expectant mothers come in, 1 year later, to calve. They stay in these protected bays until late November or early December, when mother and calf head out to sea as well. The mothers calve once every 4 or 5 years.

We learned yesterday that although many of the mothers and calves have begun their annual odyssey into the oceans, there are still enough in the bay that we are quite likely to see them today. And so our hopes are high.

We see so many whales that I am enthralled. At first we see some spouts in the distance, but soon there are whales much closer. We see them glide alongside the boat, then dive and lift their tails and their fins, almost as if saying hello.




My friends, the whales

One little guy seems as interested in us as we are in him, and he comes right up to the boat, lifting his snout out of the water. It feels like he is watching us watching him.


More Friends

But all good things must end, and so goes today. We go back into shore, and head off to the Atlantic coast of the peninsula, to the elephant seal colony. Elephant seals breed here, and give birth to their young here, but as with the southern right whales, they mainly spend their lives living alone far at sea. They return here twice annually, however, once to breed and once to moult. The moulting takes place at different times of the year, depending on the seal’s age. Right now, the seals on land are independent but immature, and so we will not see any with a trunk, which only the males develop, and only upon reaching maturity.



There is lunch at the elephant seal stop. We are all so relieved that along with the asado there is a huge salad bar, and we pretend to be vegetarians. That of course does not stop us from having a lovely bottle of Argentinean malbec with our lunch.

From the elephant seal colony we head off to a small colony of Magellan penguins, the same breed that Greg and I saw in Ushuaia. We are much closer to them this time, as they have made nests for themselves within metres of the parking lot.



We start the 200 kilometre drive back to Puerto Madryn. Along the way, from our occasional napping, we see lots of wildlife. It is a truly glorious day!


From left: burrowing owl; Patagonian hare (but really a cavy)


From left; male rhea; male rheas raise the family


From left: meadowlark; guanaco (llama)

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Yet again, 4:30 comes way too early this morning, but somehow we all manage to rendezvous at 5:15 at Dee and Mark’s hotel to grab taxis to the airport. We are there by 5:25, in good time for our 6:20 flight, or so we think. The airport is chaotic this morning – the 20 minute difference between our 5:05 arrival to check in for our flight to Salta and this morning is the difference between night and day – both literally and figuratively, as the sun wasn’t up that morning, and it sure is today.

We arrive in Trelew 100 minutes after takeoff, to find a bleak and desolate landscape, the Atlantic side of the steppe that begins over at Bariloche. Flatter than southwestern Ontario, there is nothing to see in any direction for the 70 kilometre drive to Puerto Madryn except desert scrub. Greg says to me that he saw only 1 bird in the entire drive. But we are not here for the landlife, we are here for the sealife. Península Valdés marks the meeting point of two ocean currents, and as happens when these current meet, there is a huge amount of food that is brought close to the surface. And so there is abundant sealife here: southern right whales, orcas, dolphins, Magellan penguins, sea lions, and elephant seals.

As has now become routine, after we arrive and get settled at our hotel, we head to a travel agency to book our excursions. Our plans made, we find a place for some lunch.

This afternoon, Mark and Dee head off to see the sea lions, not far outside of town, on 1 of the 2 large bays that separate Pensínsula Valdés from the mainland. Greg and I, having walked within metres of them back in Australia, vote for the couches and extended naps.

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