Weight Watchers for Rucksacks

Last Tango in Buenos Aires

The Monday we left BA was pretty hectic. The chaos started the night before as it slowly dawned on both of us that we were going to be the most overweight backpackers ever to sweat to death under their own weight in South America. We arrived in BA with 3 large bags and 4 small bags between us. We left with 1 large bag and a small one each. How we did it I still don’t know but what I do know is there are several very well kitted out dumpster divers in BA. A lot of footwear was chucked, much bulky jumpers, many funky but unfunctional jackets. We’d pare it down, I’d make a run to the corner of the street and leave whatever we’d discarded in ad hoc hodge podge “care packages” consisting of a rucksack, some books, underwear in its death throes (not pretty), and by the time I’d make it back to the apartment where we could spy the street corner from a bathroom window, no evidence of my deposit at the People’s Bank would be visible. These people work fast – especially when a pair of ultra desirable pink Birkenstock sandals is at stake. Its funny though, its not just down at heel dumpster divers who were drawn to our cast offs like fashion conscious moths to a Miss Mod’s sale. A couple of sparkling VW Polos pulled up and disappeared with some “gently used” (thanks craigslist) personal effects like summer dresses, silk scarves, Buenos Aires guidebooks as béarla, our underused travel scrabble, my much coveted “trousers with buckles” collection, and a small fraction of M’s tupperware collection. You get the picture. Shit we don’t need snapped up by people who don’t need it either. Although I’m convinced those trousers with buckles would come in very handy at least once in the Andes (maybe even save our lives or the life of a sherpa) even if I couldn’t convince M of that fact. Interestingly M hasn’t completely abandoned her tupperware obsession, she’s just substituted it for an obsession with ZipLoc bags – collapsible tupperware basically. So after much screaming at each other, tossing of camping gear across the room and several zips under more pressure than your Sunday best after Christmas dinner, an acceptable equilibrium was reached with one concession each. My unwieldy tripod and M’s bourgeois yoga mat (subsequently passed on to an elderly neighbour at our campsite who liked it because it was soft). When you consider S and M on the move with our lives on our backs you have to take into account my busted hand and M’s cranky back. We’re not exactly highly conditioned marching marines. We’re hilariously well past this backpacking lark as would become evident after our first couple of nights in a tent.

Puerto Madryn Community Centre

So we were due to check out of the apartment in Monday at midday – no sign of anyone at 1 o’clock. We needed to hang around to collect our deposit. Waiting around wouldn’t have been so bad if the building wasn’t being fumigated that day. Bad buzz. Seriously bad buzz. Someone eventually turned up at 2 to find us glazed eyed and on our backs on the floor making Geiger counter clicking noises at each other. After a slight scare regarding the peeling lino in the kitchen and whether or not it constituted acceptable use we were on our way. We’d booked tickets to Monte Hermoso and our bus left at midnight that night so we had 10 hours to kill in hectic BA in the company of a morbidly obese family of rucksacks and backpacks, the 2 wee ones on their own clocking in at 30kg. Rather than spend 10 hours exploring the circles of hell at the bus station (this place is where they shot Mad Max II, Sin City and Eat The Peach – or was that Offaly?) I had the cheeky notion of whiling away the time until our bus left in the lobby of a boutique hotel in complete comfort all for the cost of an agua con gas and a packet of peanuts. As it turned out it was M who ended up babysitting our luggage as we lowered the tone of the place to something approximating a 5 star youth hostel. Most of her time was spent fending off the disgruntled attention of the pretty boy waiters eager to suck our already anaemic wallet dry as I ran around the city trying to locate a box, some padding and a Fed Ex office to offload some hardware which I was having trouble justifying lugging around. I somehow ended up scoring some lovely sandals for M in the process, borrowing one from the shop to bring back to her to try on for size. The hotel staff only just tolerated our shenanigans but we came very close to getting chucked out when we did some rucksack reorganising. It all worked out well though, we downsized by another very expensive 10kg and made our way to the bus station through Buenos Aires at dusk. That city must have a serious incidence of bank robbery. The bank branches are all like mini Fort Knox with 2 layers of crash barriers plus all the shutters and usual security stuff. A couple of the banks on Florida – like Dublin’s Grafton Street – even had airport security X-ray machines at the door. Another side effect of the security issues is the sight of hundreds of armoured vans clogging the myriad side streets of the city at close of business, assisting in turning rush hour traffic into an even more static hornets nest with the angriest hornets in the nest, as usual, being the yellow and black taxis. The footpaths are decomposing, crap is falling out of the sky, people are queuing in all directions for the buses which don’t even bother stopping at the bus stops – you literally have to take a running jump and hope for the best as the drivers try to keep the too rare momentum going in the height of rush hour – tough luck if this happens to be at 35mph. From a distance you see the bus queues spontaneously breaking apart like baking tray gunge on a Mr Muscle commercial into the oncoming traffic as the bus approaches giving the commuters just enough time to figure out that yes, it is their bus and yes, they need to become airborne in the next 3 seconds if they want to catch it. It’s an interesting sight to see businessmen in beautifully tailored suits not even breaking a sweat as they launch themselves at their ride home like shit at a wall confident that when they do board the bus there’ll be standing room enough to get them home. And all of this in 30 degree heat after a feed of meat. I’m going to miss this town so bad.

Trellew, Chubut Province, Patagonia

When we got to the bus station it was even worse than we imagined it would be. There were guys openly scoping opportunities for bag snatching. And they always work in teams so you really need eyes in the back of your head to prevent a calamitous wallet malfunction. We were perhaps overly vigilant after our subway experience, my method of discouragement to prospective bag snatching suitors was to stare them down until they moved away. One guy took offence to my vigilance, cupped his crotch in a dramatically derogatory fashion and disappeared into the random population sample to seek a victim with less aggressive body language. M proved adept at matchmaking two random looking punters into teams, she’d watch one pretend to be on the phone, I’d watch the other pretend to be contemplating the Brownian motion of the crowd. No one contemplates Browninan motion in a dirty Boca Juniors shirt. They’d eventually depart within seconds of each other after arriving from opposite directions almost simultaneously – the walking definition of organised crime. We were extra relieved to board the bus with all our belongings intact and be on our way. We even, miraculously in a city this big, bumped into an cantankerous eccentric old couple who were at the table beside us at a Tango show the previous Friday night. They were boarding our bus! I recognised the old guy from his baby pony tail (imagine what putting your chest hair in a pony tail and holding it in place with gel would look like) one of the most visually upsetting hairstyles I’ve ever seen. The overnight bus journey to the seaside was hellish. Shorts and a tshirt, no blanket, no pillow and mucho air conditioning leaks made me a very windswept and sleep deprived traveller when we arrived in a truly windswept sandstorm in Monte Hermoso at 7:30am trying to see beyond the tumbleweeds with our sleep encrusted eyes to the true character of this seaside town. It reminded me instantly of Yabby Creek, not quite Summer Bay, not quite Hotton. Little did we know that through circumstances beyond our control, like fractured hands (beyond my control post impact anyway), rancid head colds, dodgy backs and the dreaded lurgy we’d end up spending a week here. It was an interesting antidote to the hustle and bustle in BA.

That's Ribena Ruairi

The guidebook recommended a campsite out of town about 5km up the beach because of it’s excellent facilities and quiet beach away from the main drag. Sounded peachy. What it actually turned out to be was Concentration Camping but in a good way. "You will be having ze crack in 18 minutes!" Fun family events are announced over the pre war loudspeakers and families dutifully flock towards the entertainment and thoroughly enjoy themselves before wandering back to their tents to await the next happy hour. When Argentineans go camping they really do take the kitchen sink with them. One old couple moved in to the site in front of us and it took them about 36 hours to get fully set up. Our setup was shockingly meagre in comparison. Camspites over here don’t come with the picnic table and chairs as standard like they do in Canada. Making sandwiches in your lap is not fun but we managed to remain fully fed as usual despite the obstacles. As a couple in this very family oriented campsite, we badly needed some kids to fit in and the fat stumpy baby rucksacks just wouldn’t cut it. I was wandering around with my hand bandaged up like King of the Knackers and a tshirt converted into a snot rag hanging over my shoulder, sunburned to a crisp, eyes bloodshot and facing in different directions from the headcold, and most detrimentally for making friends, completely without the language. You develop an unhealthy dose of paranoia when you don’t understand what people are saying around you. Are they laughing at you or ordering another beer? Did you just get insulted or asked the way to Amarillo? I was taught how to count to 14 by the girl at the bread counter she felt so sorry for me. Not even the kudos of a burgeoning mullet would make me fit in. A deep affection and appreciation for Hispanic soft rock would also have helped. As I have mentioned many times before, my Spanish wouldn’t be the best but I’m convinced I heard a love song blasted over the PA as I sweated away another afternoon in the tent, dedicated to a Parilla (a restaurant with a fire pit in the middle where all manner of animals are sacrificed daily). But it wasn’t all cross cultural doom and gloom. The campsite public address system also doubled as the daytime entertainment and generally had The Beatles on heavy rotation. There can be very few things as surreal as Happiness is a Warm Gun (in mono!! which means you’ll only hear half the instruments / backing vocals on a Beatles song) in an Argentinean Club Med campsite in 35 degree heat with a headcold. A very bizarre reggae cover album of Radiohead’s OK Computer kept appearing over the airwaves out of nowhere aswell. But anything would be better than hispanic soft rock accompanied by the middle aged female campsite residents singing the harmonies with *feeling*.

Monte Hermoso at night

The restaurant / pool room / function room showed constant reruns of the 1988 Olympics. Serious off season entertainment for someone who doesn’t know Ben Johnson was subsequently done for spandex enhancing drugs. The night time entertainment as far as we could make out consisted of resident’s kids and their party pieces. Young lads with Casio keyboards are superstars in Camping Americano. Jazz hands, jazz hands! Hit the play button to some pre programmed tango beats and the place was kickin’. All the drum fills were dropped in manually with the kind of showbiz aplomb you see in American Idol auditions. It’s funny though, the crowd seemed to react best to tango beats, so you had tacky classics like New York, New York, I Will Survive and various Stevie Wonder tunes all tangified and amplified to the max, hammered out to the kind of clamorous applause only family and close relations can provide. We saw this particular 14 year old casiotone prodigy wandering around the pool the next day with a coterie of fawning young wans in tow.

My hand still felt funny midweek so M forced me to see a doctor. We walked up the beach to the hospital, accidentally buzzed ourselves into the emergency room (accidents create emergencies after all) and I was taken to have my hand xrayed. Turns out the littlest knuckle is broken (aaaah). As I’d left it 10 days to get this fact diagnosed there was nothing they could do but, using the wonders of 21st century medical advancements, prop it up with a lollipop stick and some masking tape. We went back a couple of days later to a proper doctor who drew some abstract diagrams of broken bones and fingers facing the wrong direction, used the words impossible a few times and then strapped me up in a more manly contraption, throwing the lollipop stick in the bin with disdain. So it looks like I may have a dysfunctional little finger to go with my deformed “up for anything” little toe.

Dealing with the shock of my deformity

Monte Hermoso was the culinary equivalent of a town filled with Mrs Monaghan’s Harbour Hotels. Imagine Poldy’s pizza served in steel soup bowls. Resourceful as ever we did find a café which served as tasty tostadas, dulce de leche, cortadas and media lunas as we’ve had over here. Dulce de leche is a staple food group in Argentina. It’s sweeter than Golden Syrup, thicker than Peanut Butter, looks like melted Yorkshire Toffee and tastes so fine on toast. Dulce de Leche appears everywhere, ice cream, biscuits, alfajores, cakes, toast, media lunas – and all over my clothes after a tostada feast with a gammy hand. Its not an uncommon sight to see young people with their front teeth completely discoloured – sometimes missing completely, presumably a side effect of their affection for unlimited quantities of refined sugar and copious amounts of sweetened maté. Meat and Sweet pretty much defines the Argentinean diet.

A typical Argintinean Parilla

The meat eating was intense aswell with each family’s daily barbeque (or assado as it’s called here) kicking off around 11pm. These people have no respect for sensitive vegetarians. They even took to commandeering our barbeque pit when they realised we weren’t using it. The requirement for more bbq’ing real estate had more to do with the sheer volume of meat they were cooking than anything else. It was a common sight to see literally half a cow being dragged across the sandy floor of the campsite, thrown in under a tap and then propped up on the barbie to slowly char for a few hours, right under our noses. Distress. We even have meat grease on our tent, spat from our own barbeque from someone else’s meat. But thankfully for the duration of our experience we didn’t get bit once by mozzies, sand flys, chiggas, chuggas, black flies, deer flies or ticks.


And we did catch some amazing sunsets (Siamak – you should visit this place with your camera) while we were there. One of the main selling points of Monte Hermoso is the fact that you can apparently see the sun rise and set over the same stretch of beach. So all in all, just what we ordered – kinda. We were pretty rejuvenated when we left albeit 10kg heavier, carrying as we were, half a beach of sand around in our rucksacks and between our…… toes.

We were driven to the bus by Monte the Buenos Aires taxi driver, poolside botanist and saxophone player. So stressful is the life of a Buenos Aires taxi driver that it is his custom to spend December, January, February and some of March in Monte Hermoso, in the sun on the beach practising his saxophone.

We met 2 Irish kids at the Bus Terminal in Bahia Blanca – one from Down, the other from Limerick. There’s something about the Irish physiognomy, colouring and choice of clothing which makes us instantly spottable in a crowd. They were 4 weeks in to a year long spin around the world – 8 weeks in South America, 2 weeks in Fiji, 6 Weeks in New Zealand, 6 months in Oz and 2 months back home through Asia. We swapped stories and watched an old man cleave himself off the corner of a bus’s baggage door and bleed profusely from the head - all over coffee during a rainstorm in Bluebottle Colony Cafe. They were headed to Puerto Madryn as we were but on a different bus with a different company. We were catching the 23:30 overnight – again – to Puerto Madryn, a beautiful Patagonian seaside town located precariously between the expansive barrenness of the Patagonian steppe and the deep blue Atlantic ocean. It’s location would remind you of Clifden in Galway. There’s a very similar tourist industry here aswell with windsurfers and whale watchers all vying for space on the beach. Our bus journey was relatively hellish. The sunrise and the first hour of watching the Patagonian landscape unfurl like the Sally Gap albeit onto a much flatter canvas, were the highlights. Screaming babbies and burger eating and farting neighbours were definite lo lights.

Punto Tombo

Pretty much the main reason for stopping off here, in addition to breaking up the trip south, was to see Patagonian penguins. M was really the one who wanted to see penguins in their natural habitat and as it turned out the stop off was definitely worth our while. I’m not a big fan of the organised tour thing. I’d much prefer to hire a car and drive to our own timetable. Having a heavily bandaged hand is as much a hindrance as not having a credit card when trying to hire a car though, and add this to the really short notice in high season and the notorious ripoff tactics of the South American car hire companies and that made our decision for us.

The very rare Curly Haired Patagonian Zebra Penguin

We went on a tour booked by a man called Oscar. We’ve both been reading the Alchemist and it has taught us not to ignore omens. I’ll tell you why the name Oscar was an omen later. Anyways we payed our 90 pesos each (down from 125 – Oscar likes the Irish) and we were picked up outside our hotel at 7:30 am the next morning on our way 200km south to Punto Tombo a peninsula on the Atlantic ocean which hosts a colony of Magellenic Penguins.

A penguin in Patagonia - looks weird doesn't it?

There’s apparently upto 1 million penguins here from December to April because in addition to the migrating population of adults, the chicks have hatched and are learning how to be penguins in the relatively kind surroundings aswell. Punto Tombo is the largest penguin colony in all of South America and has been declared a reserve since 1979.

Punto Tombo

Getting there was interesting. The last 50km was on a well dicey gravel road and one woman in front of us upchucked slyly into a plastic bag such was her distress. I wouldn’t even have noticed had it not been for M’s supernatural smelling ability. Do you smell puke?.... I do now! Anyways, we eventually got to the “car park” and had to walk a further 2km to the beach. But it was so worth it. The tourguide had given us ample information in faltering English re the penguins (he pronounced it “ping-win”) breeding and mating habits, and why penguins are coloured the way they are - called counter shading (white bellies to confuse predators from the deep when swimming – a predator looks up and all it sees is white bellies and strong sunlight. Black backs to confuse predators from above, all they can see from the sky is the dark surface of the sea and black backs. Ingenious!).

Other evolutionary adaptation has resulted in their wings turning into flippers making them great swimmers and really crap at flying. He also explained how the male and female alternate incubating the eggs, the male goes swimming to find food for 10 days, returning to sit on the eggs while the female disappears to hunt for food. Fascinating stuff. The name penguin is said to originate from the Welsh words pen (head) and gwyn (white) even more interesting when you hear about the Welsh population in Patagonia. We were well rewarded for our efforts anyway.


There were thousands upon thousands of little, large, fat, thin, young, old, but universally smelly penguins lying in the shade of plants in the dunes up from the beach or running up and down from the beach after a swim. M was hilarious talking to them like they were kids, saying bless you when they sneezed and insulting the fat ones with chants of “who ate all the plankton?”.

Eliza Doolittle

It was pretty interesting at how close you could get to them. You were discouraged from actually touching them because they mate based on smell and infecting them with any human smell could cause massive confusion and even divorce apparently. All in all a really special experience. One of the highlights of our travels so far. As I stood on the cliff over the beach I was touched by how far the Linux mascot has come. If they keep breeding at these rates Linux will take over the world by Christmas.


Other people on our bus included 2 Brazilians who turned out to have spent 7 years living in Dublin – they both used the word “crap” profusely and with heavy Irish accents. There was also a slightly mad old guy who became my firm friend whether I liked it or not after I saved his life by passing him some water after he nearly choked to death on a complimentary sucky sweet. The next part of the trip consisted of a visit, including high tea, to a Welsh settlers town – in the heart of Patagonia. Apparently some high minded Welsh nationalists, so disgusted at the prospect of being assimilated completely into the British Empire, decided to go and seek a new frontier on which to settle and create a new Wales outside of Wales. They went first to America in the 1850s but there was a healthy presence of brits there too so that’s apparently what drove them to the wilds of Patagonia. And they are the wilds. Patagonia is what I imagine being on the moon is like. Arid, dry flat, no Starbucks. They arrived in Puerto Madryn in 1865, quickly realised there was no drinkable water, proceeded 200km south to where they encountered the first freshwater river and promptly settled there in a town called Trellew. They devised a clever and eventually effective means of irrigation using canals and became a self sufficient community living close to the teachings and in relative harmony with the native Indian population who taught them how to hunt, ride horses and grow bitchin’ mullets. There’s still a pocket of Welsh speakers to be found here although for the most part the language if not the traditions are dying out. Mad stuff altogether. M wondered whether they had brought rugby with them to Argentina but apparently that was the Brits in 1880.

Her Indoors

We had “Traditional Welsh Tea” in one of the tea houses in the town of Gamain. This was basically like having tea at your granny’s, bad lighting, dodgy patterned cups and saucers and strange smells. We had tea of course, jam tart, lemon meringue, black cake – a traditional Welsh recipe which is basically a less threatening Christmas cake – and very dainty cheese sandwiches. M thoroughly enjoyed the experience, being as it was her first ever High Tea. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough after a bout of fear enveloped me soon after the little house on the prairie waitress took our order in a welsh tinged spanish accent and I saw this tea cosy :

The Fear

Sorry for the length of these posts. I’m writing when and where I can in bus stations, cafes, hotel lobbies and anywhere there’s an unattended power outlet. Obviously I cant publish until I get wind of a wifi connection so I takes it when I gets it. Also obviously, I could do with an editor – a lot of the crap I’m writing about is interesting to us and makes us laugh or cry. How interesting it is for independent observers is debateable. In other news we’ve booked flights to Easter Island, hilariously through no fault of our own, over Easter. We cant wait. We’re leaving Puerto Madryn tomorrow on a 19 hour bus journey to Rio Gallegos where we need to arrange further transport to Ushuaia the town in Tierra del Fuego which is officially the end of the world (the most southerly town this side of the Antarctic). The travel is tough, especially with our accumulated sports injuries and large luggage family, but the rewards are high. We had to book into a hotel in Puerto Madryn to get a couple of nights on a proper bed in an environment where you don’t have to lock everything away before you leave. Interestingly this place had carpets up to waist level as M observed this morning over breakfast. Nice. So we’re fully reinvigorated and up for more adventures. Thanks to all for the email updates. They really mean a huge amount to us especially when the communication invariably isn’t reciprocated as quickly as maybe it should. 4 page blog entries are my way of saying thanks :) I’m hoping to getting around to some emailing tomorrow as we wait for the bus and maybe even a phonecall or two. Bear with us anyways is all I’m saying. We’re safe and well, having a great time and most importantly taking great care of each other. So ciao for now chicos . Next post will hopefully be from Chile.
Edit : quick update. We´ve both tried ringing home several times from several different locoturios (internet cafes with phone services) and for some reason no calls are getting through to landlines in Ireland at the moment. Calls to mobiles are something like 20 pesos a minute so we´ll stick to email and blogs until whatever the problem is sorts itself out or until we get to Chile. M says she loves and misses her family now that she can´t talk to them.

todo buen chicos?