Buenos Aires Hotels
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Bless me reader for I have sinned
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Bless me reader for I have sinned. It has been 3 cities since my last confession (otherwise known as THE BLOG).
Whatever way you look at it I'm falling tragically behind in this great blog writing adventure, and the guilt is getting to me. It's a good old fashioned catholic type of guilt - the type that would usually take at least 5 decades of the rosary and a good scrub with a hard brush to remove - at having neglected to update you on what we've been up to in Argentina. The one mitigating fact in the whole affair is that I think it speaks well for the appeal of Argentina - if I'm too busy to update THE BLOG, then surely it means I have better things to do? Like...I don't know...enjoy Argentina for example?
After our stay in that San Quentin-like hellhole of Los Penitentes, I think I told you we went off to a fine steak and bottle of vino in Mendoza. Well, that's pretty much been the way we've spent the last 3 weeks - semi-drunk, slowly digesting and mooching from place to place in a never ending quest for the perfect postre.
After the few days in Mendoza had left us like fatted calves, we took a bus down to Bariloche in the Argentinian Lake District. Wordsworth never saw the likes of these snowy slopes and I'm not sure how he would have managed on the pistes, but Marge and I were here to ski for a few days and try not to break our legs. The snow was only so-so, with the upper reaches of the Cerro Catedral Resort being too icy and the lower ones being too slushy. I know I sound like a porridge-eating Goldilocks, but it was only on the middle bit that you could relax and really enjoy the snow. It was the first time we'd skiied in about 5 years, and it took us the first two days to get back up to speed and to feel OK on the snow again. But once we did, we loved it - and wallowed in the novelty of skiing in August.
The other thing that Bariloche is famous for is chocolate. Not content with the stunning mountains, the Alpine style log cabins and a St. Bernard at every corner (that's the dog, not a Dunnes in case you're wondering), the Bariloche chocolate shops would put most of their Swiss counterparts to shame. Marge and I felt like Norm and Cliff from Cheers in one particular store called Mamushca - we were regulars in it's cafe where wonder of wonders - they gave you a few chocolates to enjoy with your hot chocolate. It was choc-overload...and we loved it.
Now moving with all the grace of beached whales, we took ourselves off to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic Coast to meet with some of our non-chocolate eating cousins. Puerto Madryn is the jump off point for the Valdes Peninsula, where each year large groups of Southern Right Whales congregate to feed, mate and relax (which sounds like an ideal way to spend a few weeks if you ask me). It's also the only spot in the world where Orca Whales have been seen to swim up onto the beach to pick sealions off, and although we were there in the wrong season for this all-you-can-eat sealfest, we did manage to see plenty of other wildlife.
The morning we arrived there, I took a walk down to the beach to stretch the legs after another long bus ride. As I walked along the empty shore, I kept thinking I saw shapes moving out in the bay and hearing whoosing noises. Eventually the penny dropped that there were a school of whales right in at the shore and I stood there for around 30 minutes watching them come up for air and splash their tails around. These guys are big - up to 18metres long and weighing in at almost 80tonnes...It was extraordinarily peaceful standing there on the beach alone, watching these behemoths splashing around only a 100 metres away.
The following day Marge and I took a day trip out to the peninsula to check out the whales in close up. We drove a couple of miles into the reserve, jumped in boat and within 2 minutes were right beside a mother and calf. They rolled over, watched us with their huge eyes and obligingly stuck their tails out for a few photos. We then scooted around the bay and found a group of about 6 whales being swarmed by a school of dolphins...it was amazing. We topped the day off by getting back on dry land and driving to another beach where we stood watching elephant seals and a lone, solitary penguin (who apparently arrived a little too early...the other 200,000 or so of them were due to arrive to their breeding ground in a few days. Hilarious to watch this lonely chap sitting there looking at his penguin watch and realising that he hadn't set it for the correct time zone. I knew the feeling.)
After all that jazz, Marge and I headed off to Buenos Aires. We had rented an apartment in the middle of the city for a two week foray into BsAs, and looked forward to a fortnight of tango and Evita museums. And I figured two weeks would give me ample time to meet someone called Tina so I could serenade both her and my wife with a verse from "Don't cry for me Marge and Tina".
It wasn't enough.
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