Southern Exposure

Tuesday, April 7

After the last two days of stress and worry we decided that a sleep in was in order and didn’t get out of bed before 10 am. Looking out the window, we were greeted by bright sunshine, clear blue skies and pretty green trees lining the main street of the town. After a quick breakfast of a cup of coffee and a toast we headed to Parque El Desafio (“The Challenge Park”), leaving our bikes and bags at the hostel. I have to mention that we were not charged for the ruined curtain by the hostel owners, for which we were very grateful, and took it as a sign of a good day to come.

The park was just down the road from the hosteria, and it was an incredibly whimsical place, nothing like I had ever seen or been to before. It covered a large territory, and every square inch of it was filled with art pieces made of all kinds of recycled objects and reincarnated rubbish: bottles, tin cans, plastic bags, remains of automobiles.

Joaquin Alonso, the artist, now 80 years old, originally began this park as a playground for his kids, and 30 years later it grew into a vast eccentric outdoor gallery, where a mini Taj Mahal stands under a rainbow canopy made from flower-shaped plastic, a mythical cat walks among friendly African inhabitants talking on his cell phone, a green-bottle tower reaches for the skies, and satirical commentary mixed with words of wisdom accompany every piece of art. Being there was like walking through a surreal forest. It was hard to believe that all of it was a work of one man.

The park is called “The Challenge Park” because when Alonso decided on the idea, nobody took him seriously or believed that he could pull it together, which probably motivated him even more to keep going. The park is a testament to his unsurpassable creativity and perseverance; he is even referred to as the Argentinean Salvador Dali by locals. What an incredible legacy to leave behind for others to enjoy and admire for generations to come!

I only had one complaint for the artist. The welcome board that had the word “welcome” written in different languages had one in Russian, but the translation and the writing was not even close to the Russian language. That made me wonder how correct the other translations were.

After the park visit I was set on having afternoon tea at one of the casas de te in town. Gaiman was founded at the end of the 19th century by settlers from Wales, and today most locals still have cottage gardens and serve high-tea at 2 pm at the numerous tea houses. It was just a bit after 12 noon and I was concerned all tea houses would be closed, but the hostel owner recommended one casa that was apparently open all day. When we got there, the sign said “open”, but he door was locked. I knocked, no one answered. I was not going to give up my cup of tea, so we stood there for a few minutes, ringing the door bell until the owner women let us in. Although Matt did not share my high tea obsession, and even compared it to the excitement of going to a Coca Cola museum, he did seem a bit more pleased when a mountain of cakes of all varieties showed up in front of us.

With our bellies filled to the max with cakes and tea we headed back to the hosteria, packed the bikes and were on our way to the town of Puerto Madryn. We heard it was a nice place to spend an afternoon and it served as a base for trips to Peninsula Valdez, an ecological reserve we planned on visiting the next day in hopes of seeing some whales and/or penguins.

It was a short and easy ride through the familiar and unexceptional pampa scenery. Taking the exit for Puerto Madryn off Ruta 3 afforded sweeping views of the city, set along the beautiful expanse of Golfo Nuevo, complete with stately high rises and refreshingly white and neat buildings.

We checked out a few places and settled on a decent hostel with a kitchen. After doing some bike maintenance, cleaning and adjusting the chains, we headed to the store to get ingredients for tonight’s home cooked meal.

In the meantime, we also found out from the hostel manager that there were currently no whales or penguins on the Valdez Peninsula, and in general most tourists with high expectations of seeing wild life on the Peninsula came back disappointed. Our Galapagos trip was as good as it gets for wild life watching, but still, I had not satisfied my desire to see the penguins. By this time I pretty much gave up on seeing the penguins, as we were told in March in April they migrate elsewhere from the east coast of Argentina. It was good news for us though – if we wanted to see the penguins we could go back south to Punta Tombo, the largest colony of Maggelanic penguins on the continent, 500,000 in high season! At the moment there were about 300,000 penguins there beginning to vacate their nesting sites, and now I was determined to see them whatever it took.

We did not want to ride our bikes to Punto Tombo for two reasons: one – we had very little tire left and were concerned about not having enough to last us to Buenos Aires, and two – we had been on this road before, it was extremely boring, windy, and not very pleasant on the bike. The hostel manager said she would arrange the transportation for us. It turned out to be cheaper to rent a car instead of joining a tour. At dinner we were approached by an American woman Jackie who had been backpacking through South America for 11 months, and she asked if she could share a ride with us. We could use some company and why would we ever say no to budget savings?

The owner of the car rental place showed up after dinner and delivered the car right to the hostel door. We took care of the reservation and retired to our room, dreaming about our visit to the penguins tomorrow. That night Matt got up a couple of times to check on the bikes which we parked on the street outside of the hostel. We were worried mainly about the heavy winds knocking them over.