Tracy does something touristy...

Throughout my travels I find that I don’t need to do the normal touristy things… I often choose not to go to things that everyone else goes to, sometimes to save money, most often because I’m genuinely not interested in the typical tourist traps. I’m usually content to wander around towns and cities, and most of my adventures centre on the people I meet rather than the things I see.

After Santiago, I headed to a small city on the beach called ‘Valparaiso’. It is a gorgeous city, so picturesque and beautiful, that I could have wandered randomly around the town for days. It is a town that has been world heritage listed, and has a lot of gorgeous colonial buildings, that many would consider rustic and run down, but I just loved. Incidentally, I went on a day trip to nearby ‘Vina del Mar’ which is the more popular beach destination for Chileans, but I found it rather bland in comparison. I definitely preferred the colourful buildings and slightly worn out appearance of ‘Valpo’.

It was on my first day in Valparaiso that I encountered two English lads while wandering around the town. I overheard them discussing where to sit to have a coffee… The lady at my guest house had mentioned to me that the best views of the town were at a restaurant that was just near there. I guess I’m a pretty forward person by nature, so I introduced myself, and we chatted for a bit then went for coffee at the restaurant.

The coffee was dreadful, basically it was Nescafe, possibly with powdered cream! But the company was great, and the views were sensational. Paul and Jeff were so much fun that one thing led to another and I’m not sure exactly what happened… either they invited themselves along with me or I invited myself along with them, I’m not sure, but somehow this led to us spending the afternoon and evening together wandering around the sights of the town then having beer in a Chilean pub, and sharing a bottle of wine over pasta at an Italian restaurant.

They were totally cheeky and our time together seemed to consist mostly of them making fun of me, and long list of peculiar habits, but I don’t think I’d laughed so much in years! It turned out that we had independently booked ourselves on the same trek with the same company on the same day to Macchu Picchu, which is totally bizarre… Actually, I had to cancel the trek thanks to paypal and western union both deciding that I was trying to hack into my own accounts, so I may not be seeing them again after all...

Anyway, the boys gave me some great tips about Argentina. It was talking to them and hearing their stories of whale watching that made me inspired to come down here to Puerto Madryn. Originally my plan was to head straight north from BA, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to be just metres away from the Southern Right Whale, no matter how touristy it might be… I know there are places that you can see whales from Australia, I think they come to Warnambool at certain times of the year, but this was something else entirely.

You get on a boat, and go out a very short way into the boat, and whales literally come right up to the boat and swim around it, like they are playing with a small toy! It totally took my breath and my words away… I’d never seen a whale in real life before… so gigantic and majestic, but playful. Kind of like a really really big puppy in the water! And it felt like only minutes, but he had nearly an hour of watching the whale swim under and around the boat, then surface, time and time again. It really was like a dream fulfilled and I had to hold back tears as we left to go back to shore. I sat at the back of the boat, watching the whale surfacing until it disappeared from view….

So I ended up doing something totally touristy, and loving it. But despite this, it wasn’t the best thing about coming to Puerto Madryn. The best thing about Madryn was that I have been able to hang out with two of the most wonderful people… Luli and Jorge, my new Argentinean family. From the beginning I really connected with the two of them, and neither of them really spoke English so my Spanish really got a work out! But despite the communication difficulties we had so much fun, talking and laughing, drinking wine in the evenings, sharing meals…

Luli is a teacher, who teaches pottery in Puerto Madryn a couple of days a week, and in her village, which is 12 hours away, for the other couple of days a week. She travels backwards and forwards between her house and Puerto Madryn every week. She is such a lovely person… fun, artistic, friendly, warm, spontaneous…

Jorge is an investment banker from Buenos Aires and a true Argentinian gentleman… He is truly one of the nicest people I've ever known, caring, genuine, patient, humble, kind... He was so, so patient with my atrocious efforts to speak Spanish, and never tried to hurry me or correct me… He just let me speak at length, which meant I was in my element! Except for the fact that I can’t open my mouth in Spanish without messing up some conjugation, or forgetting some word, or just generally murdering the language by sounding like some sort of child. But despite my very basic language skills, we somehow managed to discuss the problems of the world, from the lack of respect for teachers endemic in the education system in the West, urban and rural poverty in Argentina, indigenous rights, marine biology…

We had to say goodbye to Luli early in the week when she went back to her village, so Jorge and I spent the rest of the week hanging out in Puerto Madryn. We went for a ride one day to the Sea Lion Colony that is 20km or so out of town… His bike was a bit sick, and needed a lot of TLC, but we made it. He smuggled me into the national park as his wife so I wouldn’t have to pay the ‘foreigner fee’ which is about 4 or 5 times as much as the locals have to pay! I had to close my mouth and let him do the talking, which was a bit unusual for me! He also smuggled me into the Ecocentre Marine Museum as well, where we learnt all about the whales at a lecture by a leading marine scientist… in Spanish! I didn’t understand much, although the pictures and graphs were kind of cool, but I did learn the word ‘promedia’ which means ‘average’ so I guess it was a useful 15 minutes!

Later on in the week I decided to do one more totally touristy thing, and went diving with sea lions, also known as sea wolves in Spanish (lobos marinos). It was phenomenal, a once in a lifetime experience. There were dozens of them, literally swimming around us, biting our arms, hands… Lots and lots of baby sea lions, as the mothers had just given birth. Their bites didn’t hurt a bit; they were more like love taps, their way of saying hello! They were so fast in the water, I was so surprised. And we were lucky to have a male sea lion join us as well. According to Patrick, the instructor, they are very rarely curious enough to come out to see what the fuss is all about when divers are in the water. The papa sea lion was HUGE… I know things are magnified in the water, but it was seriously like a small whale! It was something like 5 or 6 days of my budget for a one hour dive, and now I have to economise a bit more than anticipated, but it was well worth it.

I bought a ticket to leave on Wednesday, but as Wednesday came, I sat on the beach with the sun shining and felt such a sense of peace and contentment there, that I decided to extend and stay until Friday instead, when Jorge would also go back to Buenos Aires. It’s really quite peculiar to find yourself feeling such a connection to someone that you have known only a week, and can hardly even speak to… but in that short week he became one of the truest friends I’ve ever known. That is the world of travel I guess. So we took long walks on the beach, shared coffee and truly EVIL Argentinean sweets at Café Havanna, drank lots of Argentinean red wine (excellent and very, very cheap!) and talked about anything and everything…

I had to say goodbye to Jorge on Friday, but we’re going to email and who knows? Maybe I’ll see him again… I certainly hope so… I went to Puerto Madryn with the idea of staying a day to see the whales and then go again, like most tourists… but I ended up staying a week that was full of unique and rich experiences with locals, speaking a lot of Spanish, and finding a truly special friendship... So in the end, I guess didn’t do the normal touristy thing after all…