Buenos Aires - East Patagonia: The man with the mirror

11 september 2016 - Puerto Madryn, Argentinië

A week after Frank went home my father would arrive in Buenos Aires. Probably with a sign with his name, because I was not sure if we would recognize each other after one and a half year. I had a week to scrub the tattoos off my body, to shave my beard and to cut my dreadlocks. After I did this, I had some time left to visit Uruguay.

After my metamorphosis I went by boat from Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay. A crossing of an hour plus a few minutes to collect two stamps at the customs. The most memorable thing about Colonia was that I could hear the birds chirping. Not that that is so special, but I realized therefore that the past two week the honking of cars and the endless talk of Argentines had barred my ear canals.

I took the bus to Montevideo and was curious about the lifestyle in this city, because Montevideo has many similarities with Amsterdam. The cities have the same size, a famous and old city center, a law that legalizes marijuana and soccer as their most popular sport. I've only been in Amsterdam three times, so by visiting Montevideo I hoped to get to know the capital of my country better. Strange enough the temperature in Montevideo felt ten degrees lower than in the southern Buenos Aires. If the principle that it gets warmer as you go further from the equator also works for Amsterdam, then I will start a business tomorrow that brings tourists with submarines from Amsterdam to Reykjavik.

I stayed in a hostel in Montevideo with five owners and two customers. I studied economics and after I graduated I found out what the difference is between profit and revenue, but I do not see how five owners can make enough profit to live with 2 x 10 euros per day. Even if profit and revenue are the same. Just when I almost calculated the profit with three customers a day, they took  me to a weed exposition. I fantasized about a market with a lot of different kind of weed, where you could make your own weed cocktail and then could go to a room where you could hallucinate until the early morning. My imagination was too positive. The weed exhibition took place in a neglected building where you first had to walk through five dark, empty rooms before you came out in the backyard. Here, seventy men were swaying back and forth to the music of a one-man band. At a small table in the corner were a few marijuana plants, where they very useful wrote down in Latin the exact name of the plant. I kept my lips closed, before the stabbed a plant in my mouth and walked stoically across the backyard, swayed a few times back and forth to feel what it is like and quickly went to the exit of the maze.

I found Montevideo a very relaxing town. The Rambla, a walkway along the coast that is often filled with shops selling knick-knacks, is packed with people drinking tea, at the pier the bingo club is waiting all day for a fish to bite in their fishing rod and the younger men are working hard at the soccer pitch, inside as well outside the lines. Despite the fact that many streets have a bench every five meter you have to stand in line to get a seat. Once you have a seat you don’t leave for the next two hours. You sit as widely as possible to catch as much sun as possible and talk about things that you do not have to think about. As long as sound comes out of your throat you can stay on your seat. In Montevideo you get through the application process when you can talk more than thirty minutes uninterrupted.

After my visit to Montevideo I was ready for my trip with my dad. In our daily lives we don’t talk much to each other and it rarely happens that we do something together. We live our own lives and therefore there are many things we don’t know about each other. I wanted to change that, so I asked my father six months ago to travel together through South America with a motorbike. He immediately said yes and since then I am looking forward to our trip, because it can give our relationship a boost. Before the trip we only talked about the destination; Patagonia. The next message I got was a screenshot of his flight ticket and I spoke to him over the phone the next contact was a hug at the airport.

During our first two days in Buenos Aires we did a walking tour through the city, but were too stubborn to follow the guide for more than twenty minutes. Then we visited a museum, where my father wanted to go to a restaurant when I was still looking at the first painting. After a few drinks we went to a tango show where we were nodding after a few rounds. We left sleepy and forgot to take our bags, so we could see more tango the next day.
Buenos Aires had little things that interested us both, so we visited a number of villages near Buenos Aires with a local bus , also called '' lechero '. Families, school children and sales man constantly step in and out of the bus. At each stop it was a surprise if screaming babies, walking backpacks or a bag of vegetables would come inside. While the tomatoes were rolling out of the bus there was a piano waiting to enter the bus and block the walkway. Such a bus is never boring and that is why we both wanted to go to Patagonia with this bus. Unfortunately, two hours later and twenty kilometers the bus trip ended .

In our first week together, I learned that we have a lot of similarities. We like to sit on a terrace three times a day, schedule as little as possible and to get off the beaten track. We are both clumsy, we regularly bump our head and trip over curbs, and know after we walked five times through the same area still not where we are. I try to solve this with Google Maps, my father thinks he is smarter than Google by looking at the position of the sun. I call this a generation gap. My father also speaks French in a Spanish speaking country, eats or drinks only ten things, gets in busses where he has no ticket for, walks around in a Minion jumper and buys a book that he can’t read the letters off. After a long day, he plops down in the bed of someone else or falls off his chair in a fancy restaurant in which he takes two tables, ten wine glasses and a coffee with him. All the people in the restaurant jump out of their chair, but my father laconically says; '' Ah, this is not the first time this has happened. "" His crazy moves make me laugh and I actually like the uniqueness.
Also my father tells me about the obstacles in his youth, his passion and the concerns he had about me. From a driven, disciplined primary school boy I turned into a more lazy guy when I got older that shifted his priorities to work and partying. My father saw how I failed for my studies and had to helplessly watch how I had difficulties to get my college degree, had I didn’t pass the first year of my university and how I nearly got pulled out of the tennis program that I was in. My father could not understand why I made the choices that I made and I closed myself off for my environment. As a result I did not have a close relationship with my father for a long time. That is why I it feels so good to me that during this trip we are opening up to each other. I finally understand what’s going on in my father’s mind and I feel that my father has trust in me and supports what I am doing. The scars from the past rapidly heal. I recognize a lot of my father in myself, try what to do something with his thoughtful advice and see in my father a mirror of a wise, beautiful version of my future self.


A 14-hour train journey took us from Buenos Aires to Bahia Blanca. After we sat a night upright in a hard chair my father felt ten years older in one night. Luckily a cup of coffee made him feel like he was twenty years younger, so we could visit the port of Bahia Blanca. We were sent a number of times in the wrong direction and got on the wrong bus, but after some wandering, we reached the harbor anyway. It was a port with only one ship and birds falling out of the trees of dullness, not very impressive. Sometimes the journey to your destination is more exciting than the destination itself, which was right for this case.
Near Bahia Blanca lies the mountain village of Sierra de la Ventana that we explored by bike. By bus we drove hours through the countryside, which looks like an arid plain without vegetation and here and there a cow, sheep, dried shrub or tree without leaves. The difference with cycling is that you feel the hills in your legs, you scare the cows and you are able to jump off the bike and pick corn. You're totally free, but must work hard to get where you want.
After the bike ride we walked to the golf club where we quickly stood with a golf club and a basket with balls at the driving range. We tried to copy the swing, grip and position of the body from the man next to us, to show the park manager that we were skilled and that he didn’t have to worry about his driving range. After the man next door hit his ball 150 meters away, two pieces of earth flew through the air and two people looked bewildered at their ball that was still in the same place. After five minutes, the man's basket was empty and we were doing our 86th warmup swing before my father touched the ball for the first time. The grass beneath my feet quickly changed into earth and my balls seemed to be filled with lead. Only at the last hit I got some height in the ball, while my father made one after another hit. The good thing is that I have plowed the land already for the grass seeds that will be planted in five years. My father was so pleased with his performance that he ran a lap over the trail in which he wanted to run over every hole. In his headphones he heard the sound of a applause for the Dutch national soccer team that manages to qualify for the European Championships and without his glasses trees and people are the same for my father. Swaying, giving hand kisses and jumping around he visited every hole of the golf course until he got a phone call from his son two hours later who told him that his bus back to reality was leaving in ten minutes.

Our journey through Patagonia started in Puerto Madryn, popular by people who want to visit the wildlife at the nearby Peninsula Valdes. With a car and Daniela, a woman from the hostel who dared to come with us, we went out in search of whales, sea lions and elephant seals. On the beach of Puerto Madryn I saw with joy the first whale in my life. This was only the beginning of our whale hunting. At each viewing spot along the coastal route swam a group of whales and I was admired by the size and playfulness of the whale. We went down to the beach until I was 15 meters from a few whales. The distance between me and the whale was as big as the whale itself. They drew no attention to my presence, played together and showed me their bodies. Time stood still and my world revolved around the whales in front of me, what a beautiful animal!
Meanwhile, I found out that Argentines are quite lazy. Outside the cities there is no shop open at 9 am, during the 2 hour lunch no one is working and ideally the lunch is followed with a siesta. Add to that the endless discussions that lead nowhere plus a low work rate and you can conclude that the Argentines are not very productive. Most Argentinians won’t visit the whales, sea lions and elephant seals in one day, because that is too stressful.

We had a quick Dutch pace and were on the way to the sea lions around noon. Daniela had never had such an active morning. A 80km long bumpy road led us to the whereabouts of a group of hundreds of sea lions. Most were asleep, but some were playing. The game '' If I hit you, you have to pretend you're dead '' was popular and also the game '' you can’t come on my rock '' was played a lot. I followed the spectacle with pleasure. They should put a spotlight above the berth of the sea lions that automatically follows the active sea lions, build a stand with a good view of the rock and an outdoor theater can be opened.
We were too early to see penguins, luckily the elephants had already taken their spot on the beach. With a fat content of 80% they have difficulties getting out of the water and plop down a few meters from the water. We saw seven large sausages lying on the beach, with a private space of at least 10 meters, which all seemed to be dead. I had the idea that elephant seals were lazy and boring animals, until I read the following thing ‘’A male elephant seal may have a harem of 130 females and the breeding period is one month. We were there just at the breeding time. Now I could understand why the elephant seals were so exhausted. For weeks they had sex four times a day. That is hard work, especially if you're so fat. If I was a dominant elephant seals I would have given a few females to the 129 males that haven’t had sex for years, instead of going for gold four times per day.


The next three weeks I travel with my father along the famous route 40 north to Santiago. Along the way we encountered some very beautiful spots, my father walks for the first time with crampons and I learn to make Argentinian tea. Interested in my next story? Follow my blog then.

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