almost the end of the world

rode a tour bus down the coast. first, to trelew then on to rawson and the port there for a guided boat excursion to see a bit of Commerson´s Dolphins. these little ones are about 5 or 6 feet in length and have a striking black and white coloring not unlike the mighty orca. they behave somewhat like playful dogs around our boat; come over to check us out, follow for a while, then swim off. very cute and amazing to watch darting through the water, breaking out of the waves, and snorting at us through their blowholes.

continuing on to punta tombo where a clan of some one million magellin penguins make their summer habitat. penguin facts: they return to the same nest to mate if they hgad a sucessful mating season last year, they can also go gay, they sneeze, they see and swim well in the water but are nearly blind and waddle on the land, and are very much fun to watch.

went out this morning to garner some coin of the land without much success. my visa and debit cards both have been hijacked in the past month and i do not have a working PIN. i went first to the banco national only to be told that the french bank was the only one to perform a cash advance on a credit card. banco frances then tells me that, no, they don´t do that either. maybe in buenos aires, only. not here, or in the rest of argentina.

i feel sick, absolutely distraught.

here, in a foreign place, no cash, and no access to cash. i returned to tam and the hostel in near panic.

we brainstromed on the problem and then ultimately calling the card company, had a new PIN arranged for then and there. problem solved. off to the bank again.

due to some sort of monetary policies, individual ATM transactions in argentina are limeted to $320 pesos. that translated to about us$106.

four -transactions- later, i am a much happier camper.

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sitting in a pub for lunch.

note that 90% of all argentine menus are exactly the same: ham & cheese sandwiches, french fries, pizza, beer (two kinds), wine, and maybe cocktails. sometimes hamburgers.

not much for the traveling vegan.

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jan 3 - (argentina means "no")

much of yesterday became a frustrating wild goose chase from one end of the business district and back again. the missions we put ourselves to as mundane as buying shoelaces to important as securing airline tix from the end of the world back to buenos aires.

all became epic in their scale to confound and confuse in this background of foriegn landscape.

communication was not the problem, suprisingly. rather, the issue became that we could just not do the thing we wanted to do. shoelaces? si, go to the kiosk. kiosk - no shoelaces - go to the shoestore. shoestore - closed. airline reservations? yes, but can you come back in half an hour? and only if you are residing in argentina. and, no, not on the days you want. internets? yes, but we take too long.

as it turned out, running this gauntlet of impossible tasks left no time in the day for the things we actually wanted to do, and we eventually surrendered to the situation, settling in for a fine evening meal at the restaurant picador where tam ate fish out of the sheer boredom of pizza and pasta dishes.

our major chores undone, we slip off to bed, procrastinated into the next day. we must leave puerto madryn somehow.

it is amazing anything gets done here at all. seriously. when your morning hours are from 9 to noon and it takes one full hour to complete one (yes, one) transaction for a pair of seats on an airplane... well, you begin to see the frustrations borne of this comedy begin. the conversations ultimately end with them agreeing with you that they know exactly what you want but the answer is simply "no". we don´t do it that way.

in any case, we got it done. leaving puerto madryn this afternoon bound for rio gallego, an overnight affiar of about 14 hours in a bus. did i mention that argentina is big? hopefully we get a bus to el calafate upon arrival and have several days there to settle in. unfortunately, time is getting short before we have to return to buenos aires and we will not make usuaia, tiera del fuego.

its the "almost the end of the world" trip.