Buenos Aires

It´s warm for January. 30 degrees C at midnight. Oh for the cooling caress of a Ben Nevis spindrift avalanche. The sensible portenos (locals) come out at night.

We arrived yesterday by way of two remarkably similar overnight bus journeys. Stereo snorers directly behind and a ´courting´couple directly in front on both nights, the only difference being on the first journey Kirsty didn´t set about the snorers with the complimentary pillow. Oh, and the young lovers actually knew each other before the first journey started.

We spent the day between buses in a bit of real Patagonia. Ask tourists what they know of Patagonia and we´ll reel off lakes, glaciers and peaks. However, the vast majority of Patagonia is flat, featureless former sea-bed between the Andes and the Atlantic. Miles and miles of nothing. ´If nowhere is a place, Patagonia is nowhere.´ On our day we took a fossil trail across a bit of it. Shadeless, dusty-hot and we´re looking at a 15 million year old Penguin skeleton. An hour later, down at the Atlantic, in similarly arid conditions we´re in the middle of the largest Penguin colony in South America. Half a million Magellanic penguins in burrows, under bushes, on the beach, in the sea, under foot, not one of them related to our fossilised friend apparently, and not an iceberg in sight.

We´re in transit just now and after a special night of Tango stories, open air opera and midnight dining, today Kirsty flew homeward and I´ve another nightbus on the cards.