Ravens Travels

Okay so last time I was telling you about being sunburned in Sierra de la ventana. This caused us to spend a few more days then we originally intended on in the area. Luckily it’s a really nice peaceful place. The Hotel provincial we were in is just at the edge of town. To be honest we spoiled ourselves, its the most expensive in town at 92 pesos for a double room ensuite. Though both the interior and exterior are shabby and starting to fade it is still very apparent that this was a hotel of grandeur and style albeit a few years back...The breakfast is laid out by a silver haired, straight backed man who for all purposes reminds me of a butler from old English black and white movies. He also carries a look upon his face that tells you that he thinks he is too good for this and lo and behold at nighttime he works in the Casino in the back of the hotel. Here he looks more comfortable as he scans the crowd and money..., which changes hands quickly and in abundance! The casino appears to be the main breadwinner for the hotel and is a huge draw to the surrounding area up until its finish time of 4am...

From here we reached Bahia Blanca late in the evening. The bus was delayed... this is a trend that keeps reappearing time and time again. In our wisdom at 11.30pm we decided that it would be a great idea to walk around the town using our guidebook map to see if we could find the hotel ourselves rather then pay the few pesos for the taxi. After getting lost we arrived at our hotel sweaty and tired...Anyway the Hotel Las Vascos is near the run down train station. The room itself was like a mini apt with wooden floors and a ´look only´ balcony. Well at 60 pesos you could say we saw everything through rose tinted glasses. That night we managed to get badly attacked by mosquitoes.... and this is on top of the sunburn... This led to very tired people who had to kill a few hours before getting the bus out of town a few hours after check out time.... so we whiled the time strolling around (yes with the bags etc), and sitting in the park reading and people watching. At one stage there were three children, two girls and a boy playing across from us. The boy could have been an acrobat. He was throwing himself from the branches of trees without a care in the world. It appeared that he was throwing his flip-flops at leaves but after a few minutes it was apparent to see that he was trying to catch a young bird. After a few minutes he managed to get his flip-flop stuck in the tree but caught the bird (it was still very new to flying...) He brought the bird down to his sisters! Like a trophy from a ceremony. The youngest girl about 3-4 yrs old started petting it, as did the older girl. After a lot of attention the bird tried to escape... but unfortunately their affection caused wounded wings... feeling very guilty they started to score the park looking for twigs and leaves to make a nest for the bird to recover in..... For us the town was just a stopgap - a way to break up a journey....

From here we took a bus with the ´tramat´bus company for 163 pesos for 2 ´coche cama´seats for the 8/9 hour journey to Puerto Madryn. These were very comfortable large reclining leather seats.... what a way to travel... this bus was also delayed but as it meant we got to the town at a more reasonable hour of 7am we were happy. It made it easier to find a place to stay in the seaside town. After getting lost again and cursing our maps we got to our chosen hotel... Hotel Yanco.... its a stones throw from the beach front. This hotel has various types of rooms from luxurious beach facing ones to ones like ours, the back packers choice, the room though small was ensuite and very clean, even had a TV, (ended up watching Beverly hills 90210, are you jealous Ruth, Dylan was in it a lot ... )... anyway for 80 pesos in a very popular town we did pretty good, the staff in the hotel were very sweet and the owners grandparents were irish so he was even nicer to us when he saw the passport.... One of the days we tried a restaurant recommended in the guide book, ´Caccoras´, all i can say that was a major mistake... so the next day with bad stomachs we decided to hire bikes (50 pesos for two for a day) and cycle for just under 40k around the town and then on to Punta Tomba to see a permanent sea lion colony. The journey there wasn’t too bad, though the majority of it was on pebble filled, bumpy roads but it seemed down hill for most of it.... on the way back we encountered the famous local winds, going up or down hills was a nightmare as you were at a standstill, the wind seemed to come from all angles and yes being clumsy I fell.... but still we did and saw some great scenery and animals along the way.

For photos, well the look out point is 15m away and feels a lot further, especially when you can’t get a good shot with your 300mm lens... Luckily the day before we had walked the 5/6k roundtrip to the local ecocenter and understood a bit more about what we were looking at. The ecocenter is small but very laid out with very detailed explanations. It is well worth a look and shouldn’t be missed. On the third floor there is a viewing gallery with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the bay, which would be perfect to watch whales in the right season (dec), as it was we relaxed on the couches and browsed their extensive nature library.... The night of the cycle we decided that a good dinner was in order for energy etc so we tried out a fantastic restaurant on the beach itself. For the life of me I can’t remember the name but it began with a ´V´and is across the road from popular ´La Barra´. The V restaurant was so popular that people even waited to get tables, and I don’t blame them, The food was tasty and good value, for a large salad, two main courses (Arjan steak and chips, me - pasta), two deserts (yummmmmy), and a bottle of malbec norton wine it cost about 89 pesos, I’m getting hungry just writing this, aghhhhh... as the town is popular with cruise ships you here a lot of north and central American accents which is really strange for us as we hadn’t heard any English in a few days, the phrase book and dictionary are getting a lot of use at the moment !!! When we checked out of the hotel after two days we were a ´thank you for your stay little presentation pack of shells in a bow, its the little things that’s make you smile and so far they haven’t broken....

From here we traveled about one hour to the town of Trelew for 7.50 pesos each, the hotel here - residential argentin´- served a purpose as in it has a bed, the good stuff the staff seemed relaxed, the bad it wasn’t a clean place and not very well maintained.... put it this way when you’re handy washing clothes in the sink its a bit dodgy that the basin keeps moving away from the wall... this was the cheapest place in town that was available at 80 pesos...we used this town as a gateway to nearby welsh settlement Gaiman and the penguin colony Punta Tombo.......