Buenos Aires

Hi everyone,
The last five days have been fairly laid back, although we´ve covered alot of miles in between a couple of sights. We´ve decided that we really like the busses in Argentina. The people here aren´t an average of one foot shorter than us so there´s plenty of legroom. Most are double deckers, they are never full, and some even have self-serve coffee. Last night we had steak and rice. It´s not often that we get served a hot meal. And we watched Cellular for the third time. I tried, but with the combination of a full stomach at 11 pm and already knowing the end to the movie, I wasn´t able to stay awake through the whole thing. By the way, we are really getting used to this eating very late thing. It´s after midnight now, and we still haven´t had supper.
Anyways, we left Comodoro Rivadavia, right after posting our last blog, on a night bus for Puerto Madryn. Our guidebook, and everybody else, says this is the place to see marine wildlife, and they were right. Upon arriving we decided to rent a car, rather than paying a tour company twice as much to tell us which ones are sealions and which ones are orcas. Plus, we get the car for 24 hours. It wasn´t going to be ready till 6 pm, so we spent the day reading, writing postcards, drinking coffee (which by the way is real coffee here, not instant like everywhere else in Latin America; it´s the Italian influence), buying groceries, and I think we even fit a nap in there somewhere.
Our car was a VW Golf Rally Edition (not really, but we treated it like one.) It would be pretty nice to have a car all the time. We dropped off our laundry, then tried to locate another confluence (it´s a gps thing, where you stand on the spot where whole number latitudes and longitudes meet.) It was already getting dark, and we got on the wrong gravel road, so we just raced the car through the Argentine countryside instead, before heading to Puerto Piramides, an hour away on Peninsula Valdez. The peninsula is protected as a marine wildlife refuge. We had rice and lentils for supper and camped overnight. We got up around 7:30, and drove one hour to Punta Norte. As we walked down the path we saw a colony of sealions, about 100 metres away, and then another a little further. Each colony had 100 to 200 sealions. It wasn´t long before we saw four orcas off in the distance. They started swimming in our direction, along the beach, at one point only 50 metres away, and then swam on towards the point. We stayed here about four hours, and figure we saw seven orcas in total who kept going back and forth, in groups of four, along the beach. Each time they passed the sealions they inched closer to the shore, literally at the edge of the water. It seemed like they were eyeing the sealions, planning an attack, but the attack we were all waiting for never came, even though on a couple occasions it looked like it might.
We drove another hour to the next point. On the way, while Clay was napping, I got out to check out the edge of the ocean, which I thought would be cliffs. Instead, there was a beach of little pebbles, about 200 m wide. In the distance I saw a lone penguin. I went closer, and got so close I could touch him (but didn´t, not sure if they bite.) He looked at me, then continued scratching an ithy spot with his beak. At the next point, we saw some more penguins, and two colonies of elephant seals, both with a male and his harem of40 females. Being satisfied with our day we drove back to our campsite, and had rice and beans for supper. (Notice a pattern? We´re trying to eat for $5/day between the two of us, so we eat a lot of rice. We actually bought too much food today for $4.) After playing fetch with a stray dog, we drove back to Puerto Madryn. We gave the car back to the Italian rent-a-car clerk, who sounded exactly like Mr. Bean in that movie "Rat Race". You know: "Itsa a race-ah."
We took the night bus to Esquel and watched the "Butterfly Effect", a weird movie. There was only one thing to do in Esquel, take a bus to Cholila, and visit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's cabins. Yes, they, along with Etta Place, lived here from 1901 to 1907 and farmed sheep and cattle. In front of the cabins a family of gauchos (cowboys) was cooking a huge piece of meat over a woodfire. We must have looked hungry cause they invited us to eat with them. They gave us each a piece of meat, some bread, and a knife. They kept bringing salads but we had no plates or forks, and looking around we couldn't figure out how they ate it so we just took whatever they offered us and put it on our meat and ate it with our hands. It was some of the best meat I've ever had. They had spent the morning branding cattle, and this was their annual cattle branding feast. We visited as much as we could considering the language barrier, and the children were eager to show us their bare-back horse riding skills. It was one of those unplanned things that will probably turn out to be one of the best memories of our trip.
We went to a tea house, because we thought they had pictures of Butch and Sundance, but that was a different tea house. We came in and sat down. They asked us if we wanted tea and we said yes, but didn´t order anything else. She brought out the tea along with some toast and crumpets. Then she brought out ten pieces of different cakes and tarts. I guess that´s what British tea time is all about. We realized this was going to cost alot, at least 30 pesos. It was 40, that´s $13. There went our daily budget. We had to hurry back to the road, a km away, to catch the bus, the only bus that day. We knew we were late but the busses are always late down here. Not this time. Part of the family was on their way home and informed us that the bus had already gone by. They offered us a ride to the next town, and thankfully the bus was still stopped there. We were pretty embarrassed. Back in Esquel we camped for the night, and had, you guessed it, rice, this time just rice, for supper. Yesterday we left for Buenos Aires, and arrived here this morning. Yesterday afternoon there was a roadblock on the highway for teachers´wages. I asked a guy if that was normal, he said yes.
Clay and I had an argument the other day, the first big one. Some kind of communication problem. What? Pieter and Clay, communication problems? It´s all good now.
It´s really good to hear all your comments, especially from people we don´t expect. We´re kinda flattered. Thanks for reading.
Pieter