JamieSue

Get in the bloody water, baby sea lions!

Peninsula Valdes is a natural reserve that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. What does this mean? Mainly – restriction, restriction, restriction. And, it also means guaranteed amazing animals. I camp in the “town” inside the park, though the campground is officially closed for the season, the gate is still open and the bathrooms have running water. Driving through the campsites I discover why it remains open – there are full year residents who live in tin shanties or in tiny travel trailers with added tin or plywood rooms and direct TV satellites outside. In the dawn when I get up to wash and start the hour plus drive to where the animals actually are, the other residents are rising and washing in the sinks to walk the few blocks to town where they work in restaurants, whale watching tour operations, or snack kiosks.

From town, it is still an hour plus drive along gravel roads to a site for watching the animals – there are several sites – all an hour or more apart. The place is huge - and though it is a reserve, there are estancias (ranches) where farm animals graze. Driving in the morning means startling herds of sheep from their gray huddled groups.

Each of the park lookouts is manned by a small adobe park ranger building, a man with a walkie talkie, and perhaps a small restaurant selling Orca t-shirts and hot chocolate. The beach is roped off. The ocean is roped off. The hills. The fields. Everything is roped off and there were no trails of any significance. This, you can guess, pisses me off.

However, the animals are quite extraordinary. The rope stops at the edge of the beach and beyond it are several large sea lion colonies. The noise! They growl. They roar. They sounded like goats. Like bears. Like sheep.  Like Chewbacca. The range is phenomenal. In the mornings, they are active and they climbed from tidal pool to tidal pool, shoving their bodies awkwardly into the water where they become grace and speed. The babies call to their mothers from across the reef and the mother calls back and crawls toward them, then the babies call, and she calls, and more crawling and repeat until they find each other and waddle together. In the afternoons, the sea lions lay in a group, the young ones waddling over the sleeping adults until a male snaps at them and shews them away. The babies crawl over their mothers and the mothers roll dutifully over to expose their teats to the babies. I watch this from behind the rope. I watch with a giant set of binoculars attached to a pole. I watch through my camera. And I grow attached.  Then the Orcas (“killer whales”) come.

That’s when I meet Tony. He has been watching the sea lions and Orcas for several days already from this lookout.  With the underwater reefs the beach drops off quite rapidly and in this area people will often witness an Orca attack where the Orca is chasing a sea lion in the water and comes right up on to the beach to snag him. People are waiting to see this. To catch it on film. Tony has been waiting for days and he has seen one whale beach briefly in the distance.

“I don’t think I really want to see the Orca catch a sea lion,” I say.

“I’m not usually the sort to want to see some animal get it either, but you just wait – as soon as you see an  Orca coming closer to the beach you’re going to start thinking, ‘get in the bloody water baby sea lions!’” Tony says.

We chat and wait. Tony is a Brit who has been traveling for the last 9 years. He was a programmer. With a good job. And a house. And, when he was 32, he quit it all and started traveling. Sound familiar? Now, Tony has sold his house and he teaches scuba diving when he needs money or he works a night job in a ski town so he can snowboard during the day. I keep pressing him for regrets, but he would admit to none.

The whales come closer. They are amazing. There are five of them. Tony knows all of their names by their markings. Their giant fins move through the water so close to the shore that it seems impossible for them to be real. Until I see the reef the  next morning when the tide is low, I don’t understand how the Orcas could be so close. In my South Carolina mind, a gently sloping sand beach continued to be a gently sloping sand beach all the way into the middle of the ocean. I can’t comprehend that just under the water there are channels of deeper water cut into the reef (two shots below with water and reef are of the same spot on the beach). The Orcas patrol the beach in slow, patient groups. They come up to the surface in beautiful arching forms to spray from their blow holes.  As they come closer to the shore, my heart rate increases, my palms sweat, and I feel tense. I had spent all day watching the sea lions. I do not want to see any of them get eaten – amazing Orca on the beach or no.

“I’m nervous.” I say.

“See. When the Orcas come you just can’t help it,” Tony says.

“I don’t think you were right about the Orcas and me. My heart is racing. I don’t want to see any sea lions get eaten.”

Tony looks at me. “My heart is racing too but it’s because I think the Orca might get one.  You’re a woman. You can never tell how women will react to anything,” he says and he laughs. He’s only teasing. I immediately don’t want the animals eaten. He immediately does – and he’s a real granola type. “It’s natural. It’s the hunt,” he says. I nod, but I don’t get it. I don’t get boys. Even with my man hat on. Happily, I win and the Orcas stay patrolling the water.

On the other end of the beach, a British film crew spends the day laying in the sand behind a large log. They are waiting for an Orca attack also and filming the sea lions. I am jealous and frustrated because I want to hike along the beach, not be cooped up behind a rope. Tourist vans arrive sporadically throughout the day. They are painted with giant whales and sea lions with big weeping eyes. They pull into the parking lot and unload their group which is always the same: the old couple dressed in windbreakers, khakis, and leather shoes. The middle aged couple with the man who wears too much cologne, combs his hair before leaving the van and the woman in the fancy sweater and big hoop earrings. The group of young friends with their backpacks, ipods, and knit bright colored Peru hats. They stay for twenty minutes at maximum before they disappear without having seen anything. At one point, I turn around to see the man in the photo below.  With loud crunching noises, he has climbed on to a bush so he can get just a slightly better view – one head taller than the fellow next to him. The bush crunches and cracks under him. He crushes years of slow growth. And, my frustration with the restrictive ropes is resolved. I am glad the ropes are there. I am not glad the people are.

At other look out points, there are massive seals – the scale is lost in the photos but you can see in the drawing their bodies compared to a van. They do not amble around playfully like the sea lions. The seals are like a tube filled with blubber and every movement on land is a massive exertion. I watch for an hour as two of the largest challenge each other by forcing their bodies upright so that they are propped against each other, under belly to under belly, trying to push the other over. They remind me of weeble wobbles.   Armadillos wander up to me while I watch the beach. They sniff around for food and totter off when I get close. I used to snicker at all the Europeans who take dozens of pictures of the squirrels in central park. That’s fine. Argentines, go ahead and snicker, but y’all have cool pests.

I plan to stay at Peninsula Valdes for five days but I only stay for three. My last day there the weather becomes colder. I wear: a pink tank top. A green tank top. My grey Creaturesinmyhead.com shirt. A black shirt. A long sleeved green shirt. My gray flannel. My blue scarf which still smells like the perfume I wore in NYC. My man hat. A pair of sweat pants with jeans over top. Two pairs of socks and hiking boots. I am still cold. I sleep in these clothes and there is a storm. I wake up to a small puddle of water on my sleeping back and the sound of hail on the tent. The wind is so strong that I am the only thing holding the tent down and it blows from side to side around me. I can see my breath. I pack it all up and leave before dawn, turning on the heater in the car with a relish I have never known.

Tony is the first person I’ve spoken to in weeks. We had dinners together and talked for hours watching the animals. He took amazing pictures of the Orcas that I would love to have copies of but I did not get his last name. I did not ask for his email address. I left early in the morning unexpectedly without saying goodbye though he camped in the same campground as I did. Early on when we were talking he told me he was leaving in a few days to go back to England. His Dad has cancer and it has gotten to the worst stage. They’ve stopped the chemo. There is nothing they can do. I wanted to say something wise to him. To put my hand on his shoulder and say something from my own experience. To tell him something that would help. But, there’s nothing that helps. So, I just listened. And then snuck away quietly without getting his email. I don’t want to know what happens. Not this time.

The other photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157605072957879/show/with/2494102243/

Awkward in any language

I stop in Fitz Roy because I think it is close to the petrified forest and might have information. Fitz Roy is a town along the paved highway, though it has no pavement of its own. It does have  one gas station, a few business oriented buildings, and tiny houses with gravel yards. I go to the nice looking log office of Tourism for information. It’s 1 pm and the sign says Open Until 2pm. But, the office is closed. I walk to a dumpy  trailer also marked office of Tourism. Closed. I go to the gas station to buy a sandwich. Closed. It’s not even siesta time. I see a small concrete building with a sign in the window that says Restaurante so, half heartedly, I go there. The door actually opens and as I walk through it metal chimes ring from over the door and a mechanical stuffed parrot wolf whistles at me.

The room is dim. There is a counter and a register for selling snacks, an upright refrigerator, seven plastic tables and chairs, and a TV dubiously suspended from a wall in the corner. There are two men at one table. They stop talking and watch me.  I walk over to the table furthest away from them and sit down under the television. I wait. Eventually, a woman emerges from a doorway in one corner of the room. She is a short, blocky, older woman with her hair in a handkerchief and she walks slowly toward my table. She is wearing night slippers and she doesn’t pick up her feet so they make a slip slip slip slip noise all the way to me. I say hello and ask for a menu. She just stares at me and rattles off some very fast Spanish from which I am able to extract the words “salad” and “milenesa.”  There are other options but I don’t understand any of them, so I ask for the milenesa and salad. Still, the men are not talking.  The woman returns through the doorway that has three signs over it, all of which say “No Entrance”. Strategically placed around the corner there are many mirrors all perfectly angled so that, I assume, she can see into the dining area while she cooks.  The men have finally started talking very quietly and I get up to go to the bathroom.

The bathroom smells. The door does not close. There is no toilet paper. There is no way to flush the commode – believe me, I am now adept at finding the way to flush foreign commodes – the button on the top of the tank, the button on the wall, the peddle on the floor, the regular handle on the side, the string hanging from the tank suspended on the wall, the button on the tank suspended on the wall, and once – the bucket of water sitting next to the commode with a dipper in it which I could use to get water and put it into the commode. I know all the places to look. There is no way to flush this commode. 
I return to my table, sit down, and being reading my book. The woman returns and literally drops the bowl of salad on my table. It makes a loud clang and the men at the other table look over.  Surprisingly, the salad is very good. Just lettuce and tomatoes but it is all very very fresh.

The chimes ring again and the stuffed parrot wolf whistles as six more men come pouring through the door. They are all wearing hardhats. They are all midthirties. They are all very loud. They are laughing and shouting at each other. They see the two other men at the table and shout hello to them. They come in and slap them on the back. Rest their hands on their shoulders. It seems like the men are pouring in through the door for days. Like they will never be done coming in. But finally they are. The door swings shut and it is at that precise moment that they see me. Suddenly all of that loudness and commotion is silent. They are all looking at me. I am looking at my open book. I am not reading my book but I am intently looking at it.  The men shuffle toward the large table in the center of the room and they sit down. It is like I am a librarian. They are utterly silent. They take off their hats. They sit. They stare. After a few moments, they are all talking with muted voices. Soft words. Small snickering.

The angry cook returns to the dining area and greets the men warmly. Clearly they are regulars. She repeats the menu and this time I catch all of it – my other options were chicken soup and steak. One of the men orders the soup and when it arrives it is a yellow broth with a giant full chicken breast in the center of the bowl. The bowl of soup is not brought out by the angry cook woman. It is brought out by a young man, maybe 20 or maybe 25. It’s hard to tell because it’s obvious that he has some kind of mental handicap – perhaps a little down’s syndrome. It’s also obvious that he knows the men. When he comes out they’re all joking with him, grabbing his elbow, grinning, and, though I can’t understand them, they are talking in those voices that are softer than men use with other men. They’re picking on him, but they’re being kind. The young man brings their bread to them and he goes around the table pulling on their ears as he hands them a pieces of bread. He rounds my side of their big group and he notices me.

I don’t know why, but it is always me. In New York City if there was a homeless guy, or a crazy guy, or just somebody who had some kind of clear mental handicap, they always approached me. Often, it was an unpleasant situation involving them screaming something unintelligible at me. Once, I was reading a Susan Serandon book on the subway at rushhour and a guy just started SCREAMING “Susan Serandon …jesus christ…susan Serandon..that mother fuc…communist” and I won’t carry on after that. He screamed at me from across the subway for several minutes and the got off at the next stop. After that, the guy sitting next to me turned and said, “You know, I took care of Susan Serandon while she was dying.”   I wondered if the whole world was going nuts.  But, they’re not always that unpleasant.  Once, again during rush hour, a youngish man with an obvious mental problem said to me very loudly, “Wooooowww… you are the most booot-iful woman in the whole world.”  I was extremely embarrassed but I said thank you and he said, “you are more booot-tiful than Miss. America.” To which I said just smiled at him. We were both standing (it was rush hour after all) and holding on to the bar above and he just stared at me, from RIGHT next to me. Extremely uncomfortable.  So, I reached into my bag and pulled out a book and pretended to read, while holding on to the bar above and being jostled by all the other people standing around me. He continued to stare. I pretended to read while he stared at me for two more stops and then the woman sitting down in front of me said, “Would you like to sit, I’m getting off at the next stop anyway.” I said, “Yes. Thanks” as it got me just a little further from the guy staring at me. And she smirked and said, “It’s not often that I get to give up my seat to someone more beautiful than Ms. America.”  These situations are always awkward…and that’s when I actually speak the language.

The young man holding the bread bowl stops handing out the bread. In fact, he is still holding one piece of bread in mid air and he is just staring at me. The men notice this and one of them says something to him quietly in Spanish. I didn’t understand the words the man said, but I can recognize a verbal “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” when I hear one no matter what the language is.

The angry woman appears again and says something to the young man. One of the worker men says something to the young man and uses the word “novia” or girlfriend. All the men laugh quietly. He disappears into the kitchen. The angry woman drops my plate on my table. The milinesa (we’d call it chicken fried steak in the country. It’s a piece of steak that has been battered and fried in sandwich form) and I begin eating as quickly as I possibly can while staring down at my open book. It feels like the entire restaurant is full of men and me. Of course, I made the initial mistake of sitting under the television. I can feel all the men staring at me and when I look up from my book, they all look at the television. I look at my book, they look at me. I look at them, they look at the television. The synchronicity of them adverting their eyes all at the same second is funny and I almost get the giggles. 

The son reappears several times with the men’s food. I am half way through my sandwich when he approaches my table. He stands two feet away. He watches me eat. He doesn’t even have an excuse. He doesn’t have anything to say or to put on my table. He just stands there and watches me eat.  I nearly swallow the rest of my sandwich whole. I ask for the check. He brings it - $20 pesos. I give him $22. In Buenos Aires, 10% is standard but in these smaller towns I get the impression that people don’t usually tip. The young man is confused and calls for the woman. She comes out, looks at the check, looks at the money, takes the $20 and gives him the $2.  She says real loudly to him, “This is for you.”  One of the men says, “Ahhhh…something something something your girlfriend.” And he makes the international thumb rubbing forefinger sign for money. The young man gazes at me with awe and wonder and I practically run out of the restaurant. Literally, I bump into two empty tables in my frantic desire to escape. The restaurant is silent. I open the door. The chimes ring. The stuffed bird wolf whistles. I close the door behind me and hear the entire restaurant of men break into raucous Spanish, laughter, and noise.  I flee Fitz Roy so quickly it doesn’t even occur to me to take a picture of anything.

Petrified Forest

Driving Argentina has changed my relationship to distances. “Oh, look,” I say to myself, “the really BIG petrified forest is only 2 hours out of my way.  I’ll just hop down there. It’s probably better than the medium sized petrified forest that is on my way to my next destination.”  4 extra hours driving, no problem. In New York City, I often skipped my favorite ice cream because it was two blocks out of my way. I settled for my second favorite ice-cream which was on the way home.  4 hours? No problem. Oh, and 1.5 hours of that is on a gravel road. Hey, that’s fine.

The drive into the Petrified Forest is beautiful with hills made of rock and clay of many colors. The petrified trees themselves are amazing. I’ve always wanted to see a petrified forest and I wasn’t disappointed. The trees, er stones, are confusing. They still look so much like wood. They have wooden veins. They have wooden circles (rings). Some of them still extrude from the ground as stumps that look like the tree might have just been harvested for lumber. Some of them are huge old trees which have fallen and now lay in strange sections that look as though they were just recently chopped into manageable sections by a lumberjack.

The stones were not disappointing. The park was. The park is huge – but after 4 hours driving the only part I was allowed to actually walk in took me 20 minutes to walk through and take pictures. When I arrived at the park, I started up the marked trail without going in the park ranger’s office, and the ranger came out and whistled and gestured at me until I came back. I had to register. I gave him my name and he needed to see my passport. I didn’t have it on me but he made me go back to the car to get it. I went back to the car, back to the ranger, and showed him my passport. Then he told me I couldn’t take my tiny backpack with me. So I had to go back to my car again and leave the backpack. Then he watched me as I went up the path and I felt like he was watching me the entire time I was walking.  It was uncomfortable.

In general, I don’t recommend the actual reserves and parks of Argentina. I think you can see more of nature by just finding areas that are open. I wish I had gone to the smaller petrified forest because it wasn’t a national reserve so I’m sure it wouldn’t have been so restrictive. The parks here don’t seem to care about paths and hiking at all. They are only “parks” because they are restrictive areas meant to conserve. There are often roads to drive to miradors (lookouts) but not many or any paths to actually hike or interact with nature. The petrified part of the petrified forest was stunning – but it was no Cabo Blanco.

Other photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604963617548/show/