Buenos Aires rocks! But first a quick summary of our journey here. Our last blog was from Ushuaia, the worlds most southerly city. Dates and times have a certain amount of irelevance in our current situation on the tour as everything is taken care of for us. We are told to be at a certain place the day after to leave and we do so. Dates have very little meaning as we don´t need to know them so please excuse me if I can´t be accurate with when we left Ushuaia but leave we did. Shortly after breakfast we stopped at a bakers outside town. It reminded me of those 50s diners from America that you see on TV and it was quite busy. The walls where covered with pictures of a short balding and bearded gentleman, whom I assume to be the owner, and various people I can only assume are Argentinas famous and feted. The Empanadas they served there were excellent but the most fun thing about the place was that it had a huge aviary in the back of the shop where I found myself eye to orange eye with a Toucan. At first I thought it was a cuddly toy, then it turned to look at me. That bird looks like a cartoon and is all the more amazing for it. There was a couple of toucans in the aviary along with a couple of macaws, parrots and another bird that looked ike a green starling with a blue head and yellow eyes. There was also a very large iguan relaxing on top of the radiator. Greggs the Bakers this place aint. I had been woken to visit it so unfortunatley I hadn´t the presence of mind to record the places name as I would very much recommend it for its cakes, empanadas and aviary.

Our next port of call (after a rough crossing of the Magellan Straits where our ferry missed its landing point and nearly missed it on the retry too) was Puerto Madryn. PM is where in the early 1800s Welsh settlers landed to start a new life away from The Crown and its repression. There is a small monument to these brave people on top of the bluff overlooking the grey smelly beach of PM. You could imagine the pleasant surprise of the arriving Welsh. Having come from a very wet and windy place, endured an ocean crossing that was even wetter and windier to arrive in a place where there was but a gentle breeze and the temperature was never really less than 20 degrees. One thing that struck me about the names on the monument was the fact that there appeared to be a great proportion of single women considering the time and attitudes of the era.

The Welsh have certainly left their mark on this part of Argentina. Before we came in to PM we visited a small welsh village (it was St Davids Day) where we had stopped for sfternoon tea in a welsh Teashop that had the look and atmosphere of a rural grannys living room. It was very pleasant, we were served a decent cup of tea and a huge pile of cakes and bread and butter whilst being surrounded by old photos of Welsh ancestors, trinkets and items of interest from the recent history of the Welsh settlements. We have Jude and Liz on our tour who both happen to be Welsh and Jude speaks a bit too. The owner of the tearoom was delighted to have a chat with Jude in Welsh and the girls had been very excited driving in to town trying to spot as many Welsh flags as they could.

So Puerto Madryn did not have much to hold our interest but we did do a day trip to the Valdez Peninsular. The VP is one of those peculiarities of nature that South America so often throws up. The peninsula is unique in that it has a great number of shallow and sheltered bays which provide refuge from the rough south Atlantic seas for all sorts of creatures that usually would only be found elsewhere and/or further south. Also there is a collision of cold and warmer currents just off short that stirs nutrients from the seabed which creates a very rich feeding environment for larger sea mammals. We were assured that there was a pod of Southern right whales in the area and we would definatley see sealions, elephant seals and Magellanic penguins. We took a boat out into the bay and the captain dutifully drove us round in circles and made frequent and urgent viewings through his binoculars before announcing that we would not see any whales today. We suspected that this would be the case as whale calfing season ended some weeks ago and we only had the word of the whalewatching company owners that whales had been spotted this late in the season. So after a slight detour to see a fossilized whale jawbone in a cliff (so I suppose you could say we saw a whale but it felt like being offered chocolate but given cocoa powder) we went to see the rockeries to view the sealions and their hareems.

We had seen a stray couple of sealions on the beach before we went out in our boat and they were magnificent but seeing the hordes of them that lived on the rocks beneath the cliffs in the bay was staggering. The bulls must wheigh at least 350 pounds and have a thick dark "mane" over their dark brown or black hide. Their eyes and ears are very pronounced as is their snout. The females are a bit smaller, perhaps 150 to 200 pounds and lack the mane. There is usually one male surrounded by females and depending on the number of mates he has shows how preeminent he is. So we saw bulls with just one mate like on the beach, and then we saw bulls surrounded by 20 females and their cubs. The young males who did not have a mate had to be content with posing with their noses in the air in the hope of tempting a female to them. Some bore the scars of trying to get a mate that as already spoken for. The noise was immense, the males grumble and complain and growl and roar just like their land based counterparts.

After the sealions we were allowed to snorkel in a little sealionless bay. It is the first time I have snorkelled and despite a few early errors in my breathing that gave me a nose full of water I loved it. The snsation is what I would imagine flying to be like, looking down on a world about which I know next to nothing. This time I only saw a few crabs scuttling about and a couple of surprised looking fish, so next time I snorkel I´d like to go somewhere where there is more to see.

Back on land again and it was in to the us to be taken to see elephant seals and Magellanic penguins.

I have to say that the seals where a little dissappointing. Again we were out of season and the only seals left on the beach where females in small groups who had to finish moulting before they could return to the water and leave. Maria, our guide, is very passionate about these creatures and explained that this particular group where unique in that the rest of their species chose the Falkland Islands for all the significant periods of their lifecycle yet the group that came to Valdez each year was the same individuals. These animals can dive up to mile deep and stay submerged for a number of hours. But when we saw them they exhibited non of this to us and just lay there peeling and occassionally flicking a flipper. We were all hoping that we would see an orca attack. These do occur where an orca will launch itself in an arc in to the very shallow waters of the shore hoping to grab a young seal before dissappearing back into the surf. Again no joy.

On the way back we stopped of to see a colony of magellanic penguins. These are exactly the same penguins as we saw in Ushuaia but these ones at Valdez seem to prefer the warmer climate. We viewed them from the top of a cliff from where we could better see their burrows. The penguins weren´t alarmed by our presence so we were able to observe them from very close. Most of them seemed to be sunbathing and there wasn´t the curiosity that we had seen on the Beagle Channel. I could still have sat and watched them for hours though.

So on the 15th we arrived in Buenos Aires. I have definatley fallen in love with this city. The Tango is everywhere. We have had it in the street while we ate lunch in La Boca and we have been to a Tango show in the 100 year old Tortoni Cafe. It is a beautiful and very sexy dance which Laura and I have vowed to get lessons in (Laura is out buying a new dress and some tango shoes as I write) when we return after the Rio Carnival. The food is very good if limited. We have been to a fabulous steak resteraunt called Desnivel in St Telmo twice (once through our own choice and then the next night for a "group" meal before the tango show) and the T-bone steak with chimichirri sauce was to die for, so I had it both times. Just wandering around produces all sorts of wonders. La Boca is the poor quarter but is painted in vibrant primary colours with comic statues standing on balconies or hanging from painted windows. St Telmo has fabulous resteraunts and a street that is lined with antique shops where you can buy anything from mate mugs and decanters to classic motorbikes and marble statues. The Plaza de Mayo has a permanent protest on and is where we watched the Mothers of the Dissappeared parade. We visited Evitas tomb and marveled at some of the stone monuments people have built for themselves to be in once they die before we realised we were about to get locked in and had to dash to the gate. Last night we visited a Jazz club call Notorius and watched a band which we both agreed was ruined by its own horn section. And there is yet more to come. We leave here tomorrow morning for Trinida in Paraguay and we plan to dance through the night and sleep on the bus.

Chris