P P P P P Pick Up a Penguin:

Mar del plata has been and past, it was a nice coastal town with some
killer waves for those who concern themselves with standing atop of

them on an old door! Other than that and a large casino the town
didn't really hold much for the imagination! Plus the hostel we stayed
in was straight out of the 80's, complete with woodchip, and tabacco
stained ceilings!

Now we are in puerto madryn, on the edge of Patagonia, and a place
where some welsh settles made home in the 1700's I think! Some of the
place names, buildings, and the vast number of sheep, could place us
anywhere in Wales except for the good weather!  Conveniently the first
settlers built their town at the top of a cliff, make of it what you
will, but as the old tale goes "the sheep push back harder"

Well onto our main reason for stopping in puerto madryn! the coast
here has become home for many forms of sea life, and a visit to the
nearby peninsula valdes gave us an up close and personal view of some
of the animals. First stop on our tour was caleta, to get up close and
personal in the mating grounds of the penguins, we where able to get
an arms length away from the penguins, who are currently protecting
their young, so much so that every passing bird was treated to a
chorus of penguin calls! We then moved a little along the coast to a
beach containing miles of elephant seals, due to the time of year we
just got to see them lying basking in the sun, occasionally doing
their own version of the worm to get to a new position! Our final
point on the trip was to Puerto piriamides, here we boarded a boat out
into nueva golfo, to get to see some whales, after travelling for

about 20 minutes we got our first sight of these massive creatures,
from about 200m, we then got a little closer to a mother and calf who
seemed really serene and unfazed by the presence of the boat, we
watched these for a good 20mins, as we thought we where heading back
to shore we caught a glimpse of a larger calf jumping in front of
another boat, it was great to see but a little disappointing it wasn't
infront of us! Finally we got a confident pair near our boat, who
seemed to want the attention splashing their tails, and generally
horse playing with one another! So we went home happy!

With all the goings on with the penguins and whales, it was easy to
forget we had seen free roaming ostriches, llamas, and grey foxes!
Unfortunately we are a little early in the season for seeing orcas but
we might have missed the other whales had we waited till later in the
month!

One disappointment we have had, was building ourselves upto see Harry
potter! The girl in the hostel was adamant it would be in English with
subtitles, but imagine our disdain when we got to the cinema to be
told it was in Spanish! We had been and bought sweets and everything!

Now our plan is to head south, and take in the wonders of the
glaciers! So a 17hr bus ride to look forward to on Sunday! And then a
4 hr one straight after!

Don't cry for me...

So we travelled back to BA from Uruguay and it didn't disappoint, on arrival we ate our first take away, mmmmm Chinese! So what did we do different to the last time we where in BA? well...we revisited Palermo only this time in glorious sunshine, which allowed us to take in the botanical gardens, the Japanese gardens, as well as the street Market fashion designers! While visiting the gardens, and a few other parks during our travels, our attention was turned to how under utilised our public spaces are, in the parks here of a weekend you can hire bikes, roller blades, pedalows etc and everyone uses the park to spend time with friends and family or to exercise! My musings where that, with no football played on a saturday afternoon made this possible!

We also paid a visit to Eva Perons grave, or more accurately her tomb! The cemetery where she rests, is predominantly filled with highly decorative buildings, most with windows allowing you to see the caskets that are housed within, and some have a crypt to house multiple generations of the family, rather than being secured by a few tonnes of soil. god help BA if night of the living dead where ever to occur for real! The cemetery houses a lot of wealthy and previously famous people, be they politicians, scientists, medics or war generals! 

In BA is a 30 or so foot, mechanical flower, the petals open during the day, and then close up as the sunsets of an evening!

We managed to take in the national park this time. Although there were no severe weather warnings, the park was kind of in drought. both the duck and gull pond contained no water, but the street sellers outside the parks entrance sold some amazing street meat! 

Final act of the stay was to visit the famous camnito street in La Boca, this area sees the buildings decorated in bright colours, and offer tango shows on the street, with photos to be had in tango regalia! They even have their own Diego-a-like, so good we had a double take to see if was the man himself! The Boca Juniors stadium is also in the Neighbourhood, the character offered by this yellow breeze blocked behemoth, puts our Ikea, self assembly flat pack stadiums to shame. Unfortunately even though our visit coincided with El Classico, boca v river plate, the only available tickets where priced at £90 each, and we're aren't that much of a togger nut to pay that sort of money!

During our time in BA we has our first and second Argentinian steak one which we cooked on the electric job in the hostel, still didn't disappoint, and the other a beautiful tenderloin from a busy little local restaurant, and both of them made the meat we get at home look like meat you would give the dog, no fat or string bits, and hardly and water lost out of them! B E A Utiful.

We are both kind of gutted to be leaving BA, it's somewhere we both really took to, nowhere did we feel unsafe, and the city seemed to open it's arms to us, definitely a place we would revisit and would recommend! But with hostels in chile booked for christmas we need to make tracks through the rest of Argentina.

We are presently on a bus to Mar del Plata, a seaside resort to the south of BA. We plan on spending the weekend there before heading further to the south an into the Patagonia region!

Carlos paz

Buenos Aires

Punta del Este

Tone it, tan it...

The Monaco of Uruguay, or so it's rumoured! Punta del este, a small peninsula on the eastern tip of Uruguay , it houses a port for some big fancy yachts, that at the moment is pretty empty, and some glorious beaches that the guidebooks declare "tone it, tan it, wax it, and put it on punta" well we have done none of the previous and apparently neither has anyone else we have seen on the beaches, we feel quite  at home as our pasty white selves! In the port we saw some sea lions awaiting feed from the fish Market left overs, and I'm almost sure we saw one eat a sea gull! 

Montevideo was a bit of a strange place, home to some multinational corporations and the massive independence square, but apparently not much more! Also there are lots of dead fish washing up on the beaches but for no apparent reason! On leaving BA we took a ferry to colonia, an then a bus Montevideo! We did have another cracking thunder storm in Montevideo and the rain really fell! 

It's pretty strange at the minute as we are only 2 hours behind the UK but so far away! Not sure if that will change tonight as the americans change their clocks this week instead of last, but we shall see!

We return to Montevideo on Tuesday for a couple of nights before returning to BA, to see if some normality has returned after the previous weeks mourning!

Urugauy appears to be a well established country in financial terms, but this has made the place feel more expensive than Argentina, and from the fact you can but pretty much anything on the never never, it seems that the cost of living doesn't match the income of most people! 

Also Katie has a new obsession, Dulce de Leche! A kind of imitation caramel that seems to be put on everything!