Punta Tombo: close encounters of the bird kind

We did it!! We saw penguins and so much more. But it wasn't easy.

During long stretches of riding, Chris and I each had different songs that kept recurring in our heads. Hers was "Country road, take me home" and mine was "Born to be wild", which probably says a little something about our personalities.

I thought it ironic that mine started with "get your motor running...", but it turned out to be just a little foreshadowing.
(And not just of how huge old rock songs are down here!)

The hills went up...










The hills went down...

It all felt pretty much the same because of the wind.

We have yet to experience the wind at our backs! Even one day when we left our stuff in one town and rode out to a little beach town for the day, we had a headwind on the way there and were pretty excited at getting a tailwind on the way home. But, no, the wind turned while we were having lunch and it was a headwind on the way home, too!

It's been pretty rainy at times, too. Here's me taking shelter in a bus stop...

People have been so nice to us, though. One particularly hard day, as we were stopped on the side of the road, a car pulled up and the man inside said that he had driven by us and thought we looked pretty tired, so he went into town and bought us Coca-Cola!

People have also offered us a lot of rides, as well, and sometimes we didn't say 'no'.

In fact, we decided to officially call this the "Planes, trains, busses, trucks and boats" bike trip.

We have ridden a little more than 500 km since arriving, which is pretty paltry for a bike tour, but we have worked hard for every single kilometer.

On the day we took this ride, I told Chris that the combination of the wind and the barren landscape that day had made me "tired in my soul". We laughed really hard in a "I can't believe we're doing this for fun!" kind of way, then felt a lot better.

We let go of our goal of trying to ride 100km each day, and decided that we had only one objective - penguins!

So we jumped on a bus to the Peninsula Valdes.

The bus turned out to be way more of a hassle than getting rides, though. I paid a ridiculous amount of money for this man to "box" my bike, which really involved just taping many pieces of cardboard onto the bike.

This is how it arrived in Puerto Madryn.
We rode our bikes out onto the Peninsula Valdes.

Sadly, we discovered that the only penguins on the peninsula were down a gravel road that had been closed due to recent torrential rain.


So we went whale watching.

There were mom and baby Franca Austral whales (Southern Right whales) swimming really near to the boat and putting on quite a show for us.




The whales were breaching (jumping almost entirely out of the water) in order to communicate with the other whales in their group about the annual migration they would all soon be heading off on. Usually the mom would jump first, followed by the baby. It was pretty breathtaking to be so close to such big animals. At one point in time, the baby was riding along in its' mom's back!

We heard that the largest colony of Magellanic penguins was a bit further south, so we headed as far as we could by bike, then hitched down the remaining gravel road to Punta Tombo, a world heritage site. We ended up getting a ride home with the park ranger, Miguel, which was great because he kept stopping to point out and educate us about animals in the reserve including maras (patagonian hares), choiques (small ostrich-like birds) and their young, a zorro (grey fox), patagonian weasels, eagles, hawks and a ton more birds.

He also invited us to come back with him two days later when the baby penguins were hatching. Of course we said 'yes'.

This is a penguin in its nest with an egg that the baby penguin is just starting to bust out of (you can see a tiny hole).

We could only see the baby penguins for a second at a time when the penguins would lift up, so didn't get any decent photos, but they were so adorable! They were only a day or so old and really little and grey and fluffy.

The male and female penguins take turns incubating the eggs and feeding the young while the other goes swimming and fishing.

Shift change.

Because we were the first people there in the morning, we saw a lot of other wildlife as well. These guanacos were running all around us, eating and snorting loudly.

There was some strange mixing of animals, as well. Here are sheep, guanacos and penguins, not the three species I most expected to be hanging out together.

I was pretty smitten with the penguins.

And in true Argentinian fashion, Miguel took us home at the end of the day to meet his family, eat homemade empanadas and drink maté before we jumped on an overnight bus for the Andes.

Argentina: back in the saddle

Chris and I were in Buenos Aires for nearly a week, saying every day that we were leaving tomorrow. But somehow, the city kept holding us there.

First, there was all the social events. We stayed with a super guy named Ezequiel that we met through "couchsurfing", who took us out almost very night. The first night, 'Team Canada' ended up coming in second place in a "beer pong" contest. We won a free night's stay in a hostel somewhere in South America!

Then our errands were hampered by a national election. A woman named Christina won but, luckily, it wasn't our dear Chris.

Finally, I got all my extra stuff (climbing gear mostly) sent off to Santiago for when I meet Nelson there. The man at the post office sewed my bag up with much care. Apparently, there is about a 50% chance of it actually arriving.

We discovered that young Argentinians do the same things we do, like play jungle speed and slackline.

And then, of course, there was the tango!! We took lessons with Ezequiel and a bunch of his friends.

Stop looking at your feet, Lynda! And no counting out loud!!

We saw some real tango happen on the metro. Zowee!

Tomorrow finally came and we left Buenos Aires. What better way to start a bike trip than by taking a train? We thought it best to get out past all the ´burbs and slums of the capital before starting to ride.

We headed out along the coastal highway but we didn't see the ocean for 4 days. It was cool to see the other side of the Atlantic, though, after dreaming about it for months.

Generally, our experience of Argentina so far is that it is very similar to Canada. The first few days riding through farmland, we could have been in the Peace Country. We took this route because Damien recommended it - he forgot to mention that cyclists weren't allowed on parts of it, though!!

The people here are perhaps even nicer than Canadians. We have been welcomed to camp in peoples' backyards, offered meals, coffee, hot water, whatever we need. These two gentleman gave me my first taste of maté in Argentina, a tea-like drink that is a whole social phenomenon here in Argentina.

The one on the left wanted to marry Chris and have her stay and milk his cows! If I had a nickel for every marriage proposal I've had to translate for Chris...


Peoples´vehicles all have maté holders in them, the same way we have coffee cup holders. (Okay, we haven't ridden the whole way, but it's been way windier and rainier than we expected!)

This is the maté aisle in the supermarket!

Chris with a new baby kitten from one of the farms we camped on. I don´t know who's cuter!

We saw a few kids dressed up and trick or treating but generally Argentinians don't celebrate Halloween. As Canadians, we had to, though.

Chris and I dressed up as each other.

We've decided that, although we like biking, we don't want to spend our bike trip just biking. So we went shopping! I found a dress for the wedding, but it's not this one. I thought it made me look a little too much like it was going to be a shotgun wedding (which it's not!!). Just a bit too much dulce de leche (another tasty Argentinian phenomenon).

We're in Mar del Plata now, a pretty beach town. We are going to continue to work our way down the coast to the Valdes Peninsula, where I will hopefully get my first glimpse of penguins in the wild...

Morocco: chaos and beauty

I don´t really know where to begin in describing Morocco, so I´ll begin at the beginning. Arriving all alone in Marrakesh at night was all that I had feared - dirty, noisy, hot and completely overwhelming. I loved it instantly. I was grateful that I had taken the unusual step (for me) of booking a room ahead. But my hostel was in the heart of the old city where cars can´t go, so the minute I was dropped off at the city walls, I was lost. I looked around to see only men, and to hear a few of them offer to guide me to where I wanted to go. There was nothing to do but say "non, merci" and stride confidently off in a random direction as though I knew exactly where I was going. The streets were narrow and winding, had no signs on them, and the moment I hesitated at a corner, I was again descended upon with offers to show me the way. I´m not entirely sure why I refused - stubborness, perhaps, or because I had no local currency yet to pay them. Probably the latter was just an excuse for the former. I just kept ducking into shops where the people looked nice and using my pitiful french to get pointed in the right direction. I felt like I was getting close when the proprietor of a carpet shop I asked for directions from told me to follow him - through a maze of even darker and narrower streets. Either I wasn´t even close to my hostel before or I was about to get robbed. Fortunately, it was the former and he delivered me safely to the front door of my riad.

According to the dictionary, "riad" (Arabic: رياض) is a traditional Moroccan palace with an interior garden. And palace it was! When the door opened, my jaw hit the carpet. I have never stayed in a place so luxurious in my life. There´s nothing worse than people who go on vacation and come back and describe their hotel in excrutiating detail, so I will spare you except to say that it was such a relaxing juxtaposition to the chaos outside its doors. It was full of wonderful people, both working and staying there, and it would be my oasis for the next few weeks.

The next morning, the street to my riad felt much friendlier when I went out to explore the "souqs", or Moroccan markets.

You can buy anything you want in the souqs of Marrakesh.

Spices.

!

Make-up. The grey stuff is for charcoaling your eyelids and the red stuff is lipstick.

Teapots. Fresh mint tea is huge here.

!!

Natural dyes for clothing and rugs.

Metalwork.

You can also find a few things you might not want.

During Ramadan, people aren´t eating or drinking anything (not even water) during daytime hours. Needless to say, the night it ended, and for days afterward, it was a huge celebration.

I was finally able to find an alcoholic beverage.
I had to wait three days for this beer but, when I did, it was a truly Moroccan experience.

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world...

They served really tasty, cheap food in the market at night and it was such an experience to be there, especially after Ramadan.

The tastiest food by far, though, was in our riad. This is called a ´tagine´and takes hours to cook.

It is a traditional Moroccan tofu dish. Just kidding, I haven´t been particularly vegetarian here, but am not too sad about it.

On the other end of the food spectrum...

After a few days in Marrakesh, I headed for the beach town of Essouira, on the Atlantic coast of north Africa, with Jimmy and Graeme, a couple of fantastic folks I´d met at the riad.

Same same, different different.

The next day, we went through the mountains to a Unesco world heritage site called Ait Ben Haddou. It is an ancient city but six families still live in it. Part of the film ´Gladiator´was also filmed here.

Newer towns don´t look much different and are all the same colour as the surrounding hillsides, since they are made out of them.

After returning to Marrakesh, I decided it was time to partake in another essential Moroccan experience: the hammam. Eschewing the modern westernized spas, I headed for a traditional bathhouse (the building with the pink arches). I won´t go into the details, but I got SCRUBBED! I have never felt cleaner or more relaxed in my life. On the way back to the riad, these little boys asked me what I was searching for and I was honestly able to say "je cherche pour rien". I was very content.

Relaxing on the roof of the riad after my hammam.

After a week in and around Marrakesh, a few of us headed through the mountians for the Sahara desert.

On the way, we stopped to have tea with a Berber (desert nomad) family.

Fatima makes rugs out of silk, sheep and camel wool that take 6 months to make.

This is one of her carpets, made of camel wool.

The Berber symbol for equality in marriage embroidered into a rug.

Some graffiti we saw along the way. It looks like beautiful art on the side of the road, and I love that it probably says "Grad ´95" or "Fatima and Mohammed 4ever"

Dates on a donkey. They were delicious.

We rode camels into the desert. Mine was named "hammer".

Justin, who I travelled with for a bit, and who made me proud to also be Canadian.

Camel train.

Our camp in the desert.

The berbers who led us out there played drums and traditional songs for us, then asked us to share songs from our respective countries.

The guys from New Zealand did the Haka, a traditional Maori chant.

Justin and I sang Summer of ´69 by Bryan Adams, of course. Luckily everyone else there knew the words and drowned me out.

We slept out under the stars then watched the sun rise over the Sahara.

On the way back, we stopped at the Todra Gorge for the afternoon. I met a wonderful local named Ali, and was able to do a bit of climbing. He calls it paradise, and I have to agree.

We caught a ride back into town in the back of a dump truck.

Although a bit sad to be away from home for my birthday, I had a wonderful day. I had a bath in the riad and felt like quite the princess. Marty, Ireland´s hottest up and coming artist, gave me a drawing lesson.

And then it was time to leave.

Last night while waiting for my plane to board, I wrote this in my journal: "I´m leaving Marrakesh and leaving a piece of my heart here in the chaos and beauty that is Morocco. What is so sad is that it will never be the same. I can come back here, and I will to climb in the paradise that is the Todra Gorge, but the same confluence of people and experiences won´t happen again. A different one will, and it will be good, but this has been so unique and special it just makes me want to cry. What a beautiful reminder of the importance of embracing what frightens you - to be alone, the unknown, not speaking the language, not understanding the culture. Because, in the end, people are the same everywhere and you can always learn to say "hello" and "thank you" and a lot can be communicated through these two simple phrases. Salaam aleikum and choukran Morocco. I will miss you.