Vegan heaven, Spanish lessons and wildlife

Arriving in Buenas Aires was a bit of a shock after all the beaches and small towns. It took me a few hours to adjust. But when I realized I arrived in vegan heaven everything was ok😊 Everywhere I looked I saw vegan places like pizzeria, restaurants, cakes, supermarkets, bakeries even an icecream shop, think i must have gained some kilo’s in a few days.

Like most big cities also in Buenas Aires (BA) never a dull day. So I decided to just go and see 2 things and I picked the streetart and the famous cemetery of Relcoletta. For the rest I just strolled down the streets, little markets and the vegan places.There is a lot of street art in Buenos Aires especially in Palermo (the neighbourhood I was staying in), as you already saw in the pictures. I took a tour to see the art and get the explanation behind it, that was really interesting. Most streetart has a political message and a lot revers back to the dictatorship. The cemetrey of Recoletta is also very interesting with the famous and important people that are burried there, amongst them Evita. A lot of the graves are decorated with statues and other things. And there are quite some stories to be told there… :

-        like the girl that was burried twice. The story goes that the girl was preparing herself for her 18th birthday party and when she still was not ready, her mum went to her room and found her dead. She buried her the next day. After a while the people from the cemetery noticed something strange with the grave, the coffin had moved and called the mother to see if things were missing. When they opened the coffin the body had moved and they found scratch marks on the inside of the coffin. By the time they opened the girl died for the second time. In that time science did not know yet about the condition were you seem to be dead but are not or other conditions that might look like you are dead.

-        and the statue of a girl and a dog and the believe is that if you touch the nose of the dog it brings good luck. So many people have touched his nose it completely turned a different colour.

On the Sunday I was BA the big football final was going to be. I have been told it is comparable with the champion league and the 2 clubs that were left are both from Buenas Aires. Called BOCA and RIVER. So we decided to go to a bar around the corner and watch the game, as the neighbourhood where we were was not from either club. While we were sitting there we got a live stream of what happend. The river fans had attacked the players bus of Boca and managed to break some windows and a few players got glass in their faces and had other problems. First they postponed the game as the players needed to go to hospital, And 2 hours later the whole game got cancelled. Riots broke out close to the stadium. As they play 2 finals here one in each groups stadium a lot of river fans were really angry as now the football authorities were saying they were not going to do the final in Argentina anymore. In the end the final was played in Spain 2 weeks later. I left Buenos Aires just before G20 started and it was a challenge to get to the busstation, but managed in the end. After 20 hours on the bus I arrived in Puerto Madryn, the northern part of Patagonia on the coast…

The reason I came here was to see the southern right whales that come here to give birth and prepare their babies for the big ocean. And as my toe was not doing great I decided to follow spanish classes here and be close to the wildlife at the same time. The first weekend I went to the Peninsula with a tour and on the way we saw a patagonian skunk carrying a baby in her mouth. Me and the guide were the only 2 people getting excited about it hahahaha. As we had to be in time for the whale watching tour we could not stay too long☹

The whale watching was amazing, the companies respect the whales and were interpreting their behaviour and than decided if we would stop or not and than they would stop 100 meters away from them and it was up to the whale to approach or not. What I also liked is that they were refering to the sadness of dolfinaria and other aquaria  and saying the animals we saw were preforming out of free will etc etc. I am not sure if a lot of people got what he was trying to say but I complimented him on it. Some of the whales came really close, watch the video and I have to say no more😊 We even got to see dolphins, sealions and whales all together.

After the whale tour we continued on the peninsula and saw mara’s, guanco’s, nandoes, pinguins, sealions and sea elephants (not the big males as they are already back in the sea) and all with babies as its spring/ beginning of summer here. And as the cherry on the cake we saw a group of 8 orka’s. The killer whales in this area are famous as they beach themselves to hunt sealion babies. Its crazy how close they were swimming to the shore patrolling, watch the video and look at the pictures and you know what i mean. At the end they even started doing the beaching behaviour. Later I heard that after we left they caught one sealion. And as its practising season now they played around with the poor thing for more than 2 hours… I am not sad I missed this as apparantly the screaming of the baby and the blood everywhere were not a plesant sight. I was incredibly lucky to see the killer whales as they only see them sometimes. The tour dropped me off in the peninsula were I stayed one more night and on Sunday I made my own way back to Puerto Madryn.

Before I traveled down here I emailed all the hostels to see if they had a free bed available for a few hours of work or a special rate and one hostel replied that I could come, so I made my way down there on Sunday. The next day my Spanish lessons started and I was the only student so got private lessons. I get along really well with my teacher, he is also a tourguide and very interested in the wildlife and we have the same political ideas, so thats cool.

In another weekend I went down to a place called playa union to see the commersons dolphin, this dolphin is endamic to patagonia as it needs access to fresh and salt water, so there are only 6 places in patagonia were you can see them. Its a small dolphin that looks a bit like a killer whale in the way they are marked. We saw them and the boat played with them creating big waves that they were racing in. Very nice, but as my battery died i do not have to many photos.

When I am not following Spanish lessons or studying, I am at the beach, socialising with the other backpackers, working in the hostel, sorting out the rest of my travel and really enjoying Puerto Madryn. To my surprise there are quite a few options here for vegans, and even vegan mayonaise in the supermarket! And of course my life would not be complete if there were not some animals involved. After I was here already for 5 days I realized there was a turtle in a very filthy, small aquarium. So I took action cleaned the aquarium, took pictures of the turtle and asked several people which species it was. Through my teacher I got in contact with people that are going to help me rehome the animal. As I did have some talks with the owner and he agreed to give up the animals. He also has an axelote, which we are going to rehome. And a cat and I am his best friend right now😊

After 3 weeks of spanish lessons its time to continue on Friday, I will be taking the patagonia train to Bariloche.