Lobos

Mar del Plata is one of the major fishing ports in Argentina, which the Sea Lions are big fans of. The harbor in Mar del Plata is home to a harem of Sea Lions that pretty much has free run of the place. They lay around and sun themselves, and the fisherman just walk around them. It's pretty crazy. We were able to get super close, as you can see in the photos.




The larger part of the group hung out on the rocks, but there was only a fence separating us from them. The smell was out of this world...absolutely disgusting!





Note: Sea Lions are called "Lobos del Mar", which actually means Sea Wolves.

Mar del Plata

The second stop on our trip was in Bahia Blanca. We won't say much about it because we were there for less than 24 hours. But...interesting fact...we stayed in Manu Ginobili's hotel (he is from Bahia Blanca).

The third, and final, stop on this contract was in Mar del Plata, a major resort destination for Porteños (residents of Buenos Aires). We stayed in a great location with another oceanview...we can get used to this! To follow in our normal obsession with bathrooms...check out the view from the shower!

Left

Center

Right

We have walked a lot while in Argentina...which is great with all the cheese and bread we have been eating! The following are pictures from one of our after-lunch strolls:

A typical Mar del Plata beach home.

A regular sight in the cities are stray dogs, which doesn't seem to bother anyone. In general, Argentines seem to be dog-lovers. This one followed us for about a mile. We were sad that we couldn't clean him up and take him home. (I think Sarah's frown looks more like she just tasted some bitter beer...what do you think?)

The Budweiser of Argentina (sign right outside of our hotel).

A Shipyard.

Fishing Boats. The colors were so beautiful in person.

The Supporting Cast of Aforementioned Whale Excursion

Guanacos - Llama-type animals

Penguins

Maras - A smaller cousin of the Capybara

Sheep (everywhere!)

And...the missed opportunity: This is the site in which Orcas jump up onto shore to chase the sea lions. Unfortunately (or fortunately...it depends on who you ask), this feeding frenzy does not start until November.

Puerto Madryn - Bellenas (Whales everywhere!)

Our first overnight stop was in the beautiful coastal city of Puerto Madryn. We had an amazing view of the ocean from our hotel window...and soon found out that we also had an amazing view of a dozen or so whales. There were whale backs, tails, bellies, and water spouting from blowholes in every direction that we looked. It was so surreal! We had come to Puerto Madryn in the middle of the Southern Right Whale migration/mating season and we didn't even know it! During our two days in the city, there was never a time that we looked out on the harbor without seeing one of these huge whales.

Our first morning in Puerto Madryn, Sarah went on a whale watching excursion. Unfortunately, Nathanael could not go along because he had to stay with the helicopter...but she took enough pictures (800 or so) to chronicle the day. Here are just a couple of the pictures:

Look how close to the shore the whales were!

The back of a Southern Right Whale in the ultra-blue southern Atlantic Ocean.

A couple of whales swam right under the boat! Here is one just before he surfaced.

So close!!

Not the cutest little guy. But it was really cool to see his eye, baleen, blowholes, and multiple callosities (the barnacle-looking things).

Kind of like sea world...he waved goodbye.

And the fluke.

Later in the day, we stopped at another beach to watch them as they came in really close. Sarah probably saw over 100 whales that day!

A pod of three whales were jumping...this was exciting because mostly these whales seem to just lay around.



And lastly...this was at the final stop of the excursion. Commentary by Olaf, German pilot extraordinaire.

The Exodus

The contract with the oil company, YPF, ended two days after Sarah arrived in Comodoro. This meant that the helicopters would not be needed to ferry people back and forth from the oil rig. However, YPF asked Helicopteros Marinos (the company that Nathanael is working with down here) to follow the oil rig up the coast until it reached Uraguay. The helicopter would be used for any possible medical evacuations from the oil rig as it moved.

Note: The oil rig moves at a whopping 3 mph.

So, we loaded up 6 pilots, 2 mechanics, and 1 wife into the helicopter and headed north. There would be 3 stops (Puerto Madryn, Bahia Blanca, and Mar del Plata) and a total of 7 days of travel. We will be posting later with details on each of these cities. For now, here are some pictures of the first leg of the trip.

Strapped in and ready to go!

Diego and Nathanael livin' the dream!

Coastline between Comodoro and Puerto Madryn.

Hills outside of Puerto Madryn.

Pilots and mechanics working together to tie down the helicopter...what a beautiful sight!

Amigos Nuevos!

We have been blessed to find some good friends in Comodoro. When Sarah arrived, Diego (an Argentine mechanic) had asked his girlfriend from Rio Gallegos to come visit. So, the four of us enjoyed a couple of adventures...the first one being a large communication barrier. We have found it much harder to understand Argentine Spanish than we had originally expected. It has been said that an Argentine is a Spaniard who speaks like an Italian and dresses like a Frenchman...in the words of Brian Reagan, "how true that is!" Now bear with us or skip to the end of this paragraph if you are not interested in language. Argentines use a lot of slang that has filtered into their modern day language from previous tribal language. This slang is called "lunfardo". They also use vos instead of tu, but not vosotros as we had been prepping for. Vosotros is a verb form in which the subject is similar to ya'll in English. Voseo...well we're still not 100% sure who all it includes...at least the infomal you (which is tu in most of Latin America and Spain). Ustedes is still used as the plural you. For those Wycliffe Bible Translators out there...we are sorry for butchering the proper linguistic terminology!

Our second adventure with Diego and Silvana was a car ride through the outskirts of Comodoro on restricted gravel roads looking for a wind farm. After an hour of flipping u-eys (yes, I made that spelling up) and stopping to ask some locals in a nearby town for directions, we could not find it. However, we did manage to get close to a single windmill.




After we had abandoned our wind farm hunt, we went to an overlook of Comodoro just after sunset.



We have made more friends since...one Scottish, one German, a couple American, and several Argentines. I'm sure they will make appearances in later posts.

Coming to Comodoro

Sarah's epic journey to Comodoro Rivadavia began at 3:15 p.m. on Sunday, July 26th. Her flight left Charlotte at 5:30 p.m. and after a stop in Atlanta, she arrived in Buenos Aires at 8:00 a.m. on Monday. Now this is where it got interesting. There are no flights from Buenos Aires to Comodoro from the airport that she flew into. Thus, she had to find a way to another airport 42 kilometers away. Luckily, a customs agent was nice enough to point her to the correct bus. And after an hour bus ride she arrived at the aeroparque correcto with 12 1/2 hours to spare in her lay over!

Meanwhile...Nathanael was making his way north from Comodoro in a helicopter that was being ferried to Brazil, via Buenos Aires. At around 6:00 p.m., he tapped Sarah on the shoulder as she had her nose burried in a Spanish-English dictionary trying to read the local newspaper. The remaining 3 1/2 hours of the lay-over they spent together in the airport over sushi and cerveza. There was one hitch...Nathanael had a ticket in business class and Sarah was in banished to cattle class. Once Nathanael had received his free booze and all other accoutrements, the flight attendants did allow her to rub elbows with those more priveleged (Nathanael was the only person in business class)! We arrived in Comodoro at 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning (which, if we have counted correctly, was 33 hours from the time Sarah left her parents' house in Charlotte)...bluck!!