Beyond the Pampas by Imogen Herrad

Author:Imogen Herrad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seren
Published: 2012-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

34

IT’S ONLY HALF PAST EIGHT as I walk out of Madryn’s coach terminal, and I’m feeling cold and tired and excited.

Madryn’s streets are wide and straight, laid out in grid pattern. They’re lined with two- and three-storey houses with red brick or stuccoed fronts in pastel colours. Most buildings are low, so that even in the middle of the city I can see the sky without having to look up.

Souvenir shops, cafés and restaurants line the streets downtown, together with a surprising number of ice-cream parlours. All of which are open, despite this being the middle of winter. Lots of businesses offer excursions to Península Valdés to see the wildlife. As I walk, I can see the seafront at every intersection. It puts me in a holiday mood.

The hostel at which I’m staying is basic but beautifully cheap, and the staff are friendly. There is also, I discover, an added bonus. Julián has blond hair and melting brown eyes and a sweet disposition. Intelligence is not his strong suit, but he has a way of jumping up and licking people’s faces that would charm a stone. Julián is a golden labrador.

‘Our watchdog,’ says the woman in the hostel, with an eyeroll and a laugh, and drags an over-enthusiastic Julián back by his collar.

I dig out an extra fleece and stuff my bag under my bunk bed by way of unpacking. I meant to go for a coffee to warm up, but instead I find my feet carrying me to the beach. There’s a chance that I might spot a whale – a slim chance, the woman in the hostel has warned me: they tend not to come into the bay much when it’s overcast. There are excursions, of course, boatloads of people go out every day to whale-watch. But although all the trip organisers stress that they give the whales a wide enough berth so as not to bother them, I’m not sure that they do. I prefer to take my chance from the beach, where I won’t get in their way.

Ballenas, whales, are big in Puerto Madryn: the gift shops along the seafront sell whale T-shirts and whale mugs, whale-shaped knitted hats, whale soft toys and whale calendars. A photo shop sports a neon whale over the door to advertise its one-hour developing service. One sweet shop even sells whale fluke-shaped chocolates filled with that most wonderful of Argentine inventions, dulce de leche. I think that chocolate filled with caramel must surely be a horrendously sweet affair, and buy a cola de ballena (‘whale tail’) to find out.

Happily I am wrong. The ‘whale tails’ are delicious, and – together with ice cream and coffee – will form the basis of my diet over the next couple of days.

The beachfront is lined with multi-storey buildings for as far as I can see. It’s not exactly Miami, most of them are just five or six storeys. The majority seem to contain holiday apartments. Big colourful hoardings advertise special mid-winter deals: Whale-watching

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