Parts of Patagonia, especially the inland area between Punta Tombo and, well, civilization, bear a filial resemblance to Wyoming. This is not strange in itself. Argentina is known for its gauchos; gauchos are like cowboys; cowboys are big on Wyoming. Therefore Argentina is like Wyoming. Q.E.D. Except for one thing: penguins. Punta Tombo is world famous—as far as fame for this sort of thing goes—for its penguins. There are thousands of them. Let me rephrase that: there are hundreds of thousands of Magellanic penguins (more commonly known, for their dulcet tones, as ‘jackass penguins’) who summer in Punta Tombo in order to do what all good beach goers do—get busy, lay eggs, raise fluff balls and waddle. They are smaller than the penguins made famous in a certain recent movie, and as they waddle forth, they looks less like emperor penguins (and all the elegant curiosity that that entails) than beings born from the illicit union of a mallard duck and a Chesapeake retriever. They two-feet tall burghers are as proud-chested as aquatic James Cagneys and their glistening coats look like neoprene wet suits (which in a sense they are). As they waddle unsurely, occasionally slipping on rocks, they look about themselves with squinting confusion, as if they might have left their glasses at home. And when they sleep—which they do with gusto—they do so sprawled flat on their stomachs, like face-planted drunks.
Something about these penguins make them seem cartoonish and comic, absentminded even. They look like they might make lovely pets, really, the kind you might want to kidnap—conservation laws be damned!—and take home. Except for one thing: they fight with a Mad Maxian “two-penguins-enter/one-penguin-leaves” intensity. We saw a penguin try to confiscate another’s egg. The battle royale that broke out—filmed by gawking humans from under three feet away—left the attempted kidnapper cowed and whimpering, streams of crimson blood shimmering on his white belly fur. They may look kindly as they poke their heads from the nests they dig in the ground, prairie-dog style, but the passion of a penguin is a fearsome thing.
But to return to my original thought: The mere fact that penguins vacation near Wyoming-like plains did not cause the oddness I felt. No. Rather, it is that the little beasts possess such wanderlust. They like to waddle…far. Driving inland from Punta Tombo, you can put a good half-mile between yourself and the sea—putting it fully out of sight—and while you’re contemplating the cowboy-ish dust, the scrabbly trees, the wandering sheep, BOOM there’s a penguin. As if he were on set on some Hollywood animal comedy and had gotten lost looking for the craft truck. Walking calmly along the shoulder, as if this was normal. I half expected the last one we saw to ask if where he could get a good falafel. Or perhaps, “Do you have any Grey Poupon?”
* * *
Flying into Patagonia was an oddly precise affair. Oddly precise, I say, because we were heading to the middle of nowhere, and on trips to nowhere I expect a little wiggle room on the schedule. But no. We stepped from our Buenos Aires apartment at exactly 5:15 a.m., immediately found a cab, picked up Cintra’s parents at their hotel ten minutes later, checked it without fuss at the airport (or the aeroparque, as they say here, which sounds so much nicer), had plenty of time for breakfast, lifted off for a lovely aerial spin over Buenos Aires and the Rio de la Plata, landed at
Trelew by 10 a.m., grabbed our rental car, and made it to our hotel in
Puerto Madryn less than an hour later. Within two hours from then, we’d driven out onto
Peninsula Valdés, a national park the size of god-knows-what—maybe only Rhode Island but big-feeling because it was so empty—and gotten onto a whale-chasing boat.
Almost immediately we drew alongside two grown right whales, one carrying a whale child piggy-back style. (While most people may be tempted to think of this as a straight whale couple raising their child, the time I spent in Park Slope led me to realize that this was a lesbian couple playing with its adopted Asian daughter.) The whales cavorted as if they knew where the cameras were, showing their tails when they dove, barrel-rolling next to the boat (which felt like a skiff in comparison), and breaching and snorting and bursting above the surf when surfacing from deep dives. (More pics
here.)
The boat—a clean, new affair—broke down at sea and had to be jerry-rigged to shore. Another boat, also newish, was offered as a replacement. It too refused to work. As David (Cintra’s dad) rightly noted, Argentine is a curious mix of the up-to-date punctuated by the run-down. Think of a lovely marble bathroom with all the modern conveniences. Hell, with a platinum bidet. And yet the toilet paper will be but only one ply.
But still, that was some damned efficient tourism.
* * *
The next day we circumnavigated Valdés, a place that should be world-renowned for its dust. It is flat and vast—Wyomingian, again—and circled by deep blue sea. As we sped around (well, considering the jarring bangs, it felt like sped, but it was more like a good 40 mph jostle), the first car that passed us shot up a pebble from the peninsula’s unpaved “rubble” road and cracked our windshield. At least we wouldn’t have to be holding our breath worrying about that any more. (Curiously, after we turned down extra insurance on the rental the very tidy agent lovingly caressed the car from end-to-end in search of bumps and scratches; but when we brought the car back—peddle-dinged and battle-scarred—he noticed nothing.) The peninsula itself was a starkly-beautiful compendium of furry animals. Tons of sheep—dim-looking but kind, as sheep are—walked the plains. They’d recently been roughly sheered, and gathered en masse as they were the flat planes and divots in their fur reminded me of a sink-full of peeled and de-eyed Idaho potatoes. Interspersed among them were groups of ñandús—which the English-prone might call ostriches—sticking their heads in the ground and such, as well as groups of wild llamas, called guanacos. These red-haired animals were apparently sponsored by Disney, because there can be no other explanation for their huge, cartoon-sensitive, doe eyes, which took up a good 40 percent of their little bambi heads.
The one on the right lost. Bad.On the far corner of Valdés, we stopped at Punta Norte to check out the wildlife. The Beachmaster—the toughest elephant seal of them all—guarded his harem from a bloody (i.e. recently-vanquished) rival who bleated a few feet away. I don’t know seal-speak, but he sounded bitter. Seals dotted the beach in a seemingly random fashion, apparently shoved from a plane, dead, a few hours earlier. Seals exhibit an aggressive laziness that seems almost irreversible. The lay puddled, as if someone had stolen their bones.
That night, we ate in a Puerto Madryn ‘sports bar’. I use sports bar in quotes because it was actually a pretty bistro with ten TVs tuned to soccer, which in a sense is just like any other restaurant here. A group of a dozen or so very tall men entered and climbed to a private mezzanine dining room, where they quickly devoured plates of milanesas (pounded, breaded chicken), French fries, and coke. Who two of them—the only two black men present—left speaking English, a woman at the table behind us said (oddly, in thickly-accented English),
Oh my goodness, as if she fallen into a closet-full of aliens. I grabbed our waiter as he passed.
Who are they? I asked.
Quilmes, he said and then when he saw my quizzical reaction to the name of a B.A. suburb (and the national beer).
The basketball team from Quilmes. They’re visiting to play a game against Deportivo Madryn tomorrow. We tried to imagine the life of the American expat baller—you graduate from University of Southern North Dakota or wherever and—too unknown to get drafted but too proud to give up—you take a chance on the first call you get, from a team in small town Argentina. There you try to learn the local food, leave meals when the strange language starts hurting your brain, and yearn for your Playstation. There’s a sitcom in this somewhere. (For those who read Spanish, here’s a
good article on Byron Wilson, the last player taken in the 1993 NBA draft; he found his way to Argentina and never really left.)
* * *
The next day found us moving inland from beachfront Puerto Madryn to the town of Trelew, a quiet, tidy town whose name is unpronounceable in all languages except Welsh. Which is fine, because the Welsh founded it. (In Argentina they pronounce it
tray-lay-oo.) There we stayed at what may be the most perfectly-preserved pre-WWII hotel on the planet:
Hotel Touring-Club. It is not, I feel moved to point out, an ironic re-created or a kitschy rehab. Rather, it was built before films had sound (in the 1910's), amended slightly over the years, and left as a museum piece from around 1960 forward.
The rooms are painted in classic 1950s lurid colors (our sulfuric green was brilliant) and sport chenille bedspreads and rocket-ship bedside lamps. The café/restaurant is a huge open hall with a Bogartian wood bar, classically peeling mirrors, and (as a final piece de resistance, it displays a beer-can collection). The bowlegged waiters roll their sleeves up over thick forearms—over which they smartly snap their towels—and occasionally make what I thought were ironic mini-bows. But as much as it was an international museum piece, it was also proudly, deeply Argentine.
What time do you serve breakfast? Ruth (Cintra’s mom) asked one evening, curious as to how early we could get our complimentary croissants and coffee.
From 7 a.m., the waiter proudly said,
until three in the afternoon. This country likes to eat late, does not adhere to schedules, and hates to be rushed. Nothing else epitomizes that better than the eight hour
desayuno.
As this is moving from diary to prattle, I’ll wrap up quickly. We drop to
Gaiman, in the Welsh triangle outside of Trelew, only to discover that there are apparently only 17 Welsh people left in the area, and they each own a
Traditional Welsh Teahouse. Which means that the tea is very expensive, the walls are covered with maps of Wales, and they are doilies. Many, many doilies.
I know nothing about Wales, but when I think of it I now imagine crowds of people with the face of Dylan Thomas, drinking tea while wearing doilies like ponchos. That may not be true, but it is an image I enjoy (so keep your truth to yourself). If we needed more evidence that the Welsh culture had been rooted out, we got in back in Trelew, where the Welsh cultural center had been converted into an especially high-tech bingo hall. Unless, of course, tea, doilies and bingo form Wales’s holy trinity.
The next day took us to Punta Tombo and its mobs of comic-yet-dangerous penguins. It was a brilliant, wonderful, beautiful trip, full of Argentine’s own brand of steak-fed weirdness (the fact that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came to Patagonia to hide provides the garnish on that). Thank you thank you David and Ruth.
But I’m stilling having nightmares about angry penguins.
Bye!
Kirchner (l) and Menem (r): "If I just pretend he's not there, maybe he'll go away." [Photo from La Nación]
