11/19/05
PUERTO MADRYN, ARG.

Plans changed for elephant seals. Puerto Madryn is a wind-blasted beach town in Patagonia just south of Reserva Faunística Península Valdés. The peninsula is almost an island and draws elephant seals, sea lions, Magellanic penguins, right whales, and orcas. A whale-watching boat proved worth the money when a mother and calf eased underneath, multicolored and enormous. The slow, oily curl of a whale´s tail over the water is so perfect that it renders irrelevant whatever is on your mind. I couldn´t even take a picture.

The elephant seals are great. They don´t move much, but when one does, waves of blubber roll along its body, like when you nudge a water balloon. Fat grunting sounds come from the pile, and occasionally a male rears up and bellows-- a throat-flapping belch that must tire him out immediately. Another male might do the same, but it´s a short spat. Mating season is still a couple months away.

Penguins are even more watchable than we´ve been led to believe. They wobble uphill with their wings out, and to get into their burrows (?!) they just stoop down and waddle. They hoot together. They wander around. They stand if they´ve forgotten something. Then one flops into the water and becomes a torpedo. One paralleled the shore and shot out of the water three times. How have I never seen footage of an airborne penguin before?

Puerto Madryn has big, whooshing eucalyptus trees and a tide that lays jellyfish across the beach. Locals got me to try yerba mate, a bitter tea thick with tongue-in-cheek superstitions-- spilling some down your shirt means your mother-in-law is crying. Backpackers swap stories over beers: a Canadian 40-year-old farmboy wide-eyed about Chilean fishing, two either Mexican-Israeli or Israeli-Mexican women, an Irishman who ends his sentences with things like, ¨bless 'er cotton socks¨ (this about the woman who gave him tuberculosis).

Today is another bus day-- fifteen hours south to Río Gallegos. Thankfully, the ómnibuses are cushy affairs. They´re good for scenery, the phrasebook, and weird naps.