We left Ushuaia behind in our wake as we wended our way through the islands back out into the Pacific and headed north towards the Antarctic, towards the real end of South America – the horn of South America. The sea was rough with huge swells of six metres as the two oceans clashed in their endless battle. Hornos island came into sight and we pitched, yawed and rolled forward. It was incredible to think of those old wooden schooners heading into this gale and high seas. They were either brave or foolhardy. To think of those huge waves crashing over ships so that sailors actually tied themselves to masts to prevent them being washed overboard. This was summer, there was a storm brewing but I dread to think what it might have been like in winter.
We sailed away from Hornos Island and back north towards the calm of Argentina – next stop Puerto Madryn. The small town on the Patagonian plains was an interesting stop. Set up by a small Welsh community, and having a very Welsh town called Gaiman, where they still speak Welsh, it was quite an idiosyncratic destination.
We drove off to a typical sheep ranch. The Patagonian plain was interesting and different. The whole area was a dry desert of yellow flowered shrubs. It was so dry that the vegetation and soil was specialised to deal with the aridity. There were birds, lizards and armadillos but most of them were nocturnal and burrowed deeply to escape the heat. Large animals included the large flightless rheas, llama-like guanacos, and even the odd puma.
We saw a pet guanaco and plenty of sheep. The sheep ran wild in the Patagonian plain managing, with the help of a little assistance from imported water, to scrounge a living from the leathery vegetation.
We watched a display of sheep-shearing carried out by a pseudo-gaucho. There were a pair of burrowing owls in the rafters who viewed us with suspicion while the guanaco looked very tame and went round attempting to beg morsels of food.
Amazingly, in this land of desiccation, where there is never the slightest precipitation, it was raining.
We headed off back to the coast to sea-lion cove. Unfortunately we’d come at the wrong time of year for the whale breeding in the bay. The place was famous for the brilliant southern right whale and orcas. Unfortunately that was between June and December and this was February. They’d all buggered off to the Antarctic to feed.
However the Emperor cormorants and sea-lions were still up for a bit of breeding. The cove was a very pretty rock formation with underlying caves.
The large emperor cormorants precariously clung to the rock ledges. It was hard to believe that they could lay eggs and bring up their young on such narrow ledges. If someone had put me in charge of an egg in such a dangerous place I know it would have ended up on the rocks below in a matter of minutes. Cormorants are obviously a lot more adept than I would be. How do they control their errant offspring?
Below in the caves was the land of the sea-lions. The huge male beachmasters patrolled their patch of beach and kept an eye on their harems while the cute little baby sea-lions frolicked in the waves. Those giant males, with their huge orange fur ruffs looked just like lions and when they raised themselves up on all fours it was easy to see how they had gained their name. Every now or then one of the males would encroach and there would be a noisy crashing of heads and blubber. They were fearsome creatures and incredibly wonderful. It seemed such a tragedy the way they were slaughtered in their thousands by those early sailors. They were majestic animals.
Back in town we walked around the shops and found tourist tat and mate. There was a very neglected central square with a very grimy and rather shabby church. It looked as if it was once the original mission. We stood in the drizzle and imagined the scene from a hundred years ago when tourists were unheard of, the mission was alone, and not surrounded by tacky twentieth century slums, and the square was green and a focus of human activity. It must have looked and felt vibrant. How times change – and rarely for the better.
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Nothing is for the better in this World. Love the crashing Seas, so much of life one can see in it.
Wow Anna – you sound really down. There is lots of beauty and many great people. There are lots of things that are bad – the overpopulation, pollution, environmental damage, war, terrorism. They need opposing and putting right but there is the other side too.
We have to work to bring the love, beauty and care to the fore. We have to make the world more loving and tolerant.
I like and admire you Opher, I think you know that but sometimes I wonder do you honestly believe all you say, you know how it will all be not love and peace and harmony. Unless we destroy the destroyer we will be destroyed that’s the truth – maybe today is the day for some truths.
I do believe that love is stronger than hate.
I do not agree with your black and white analysis. I do not agree with destroying people. If you want an all-out war against Islam then we will have another world war. Nobody would win and it wouldn’t be thirty people in Belgium; it would be millions. War does not, and never has solved problems – it creates them. The hatred lasts generations. My father and grandfather were traumatised by war.
I do not think that blowing the hell out of people works. There are far better ways that are far more productive.
The hatred in Germany from the first World War created the second World War. It was only the foresight of the setting up of restoration, education and the European Union that prevented the cycle of war in Europe. On that front it worked.
We won’t be destroyed by ISIS. I think we have to keep it in proportion. They may produce a few years of terrorism and kill hundreds in Britain, but they cannot win and they will be destroyed. It is how we beat them without escalating this into a bigger conflict that will draw in more and more terrorists and create a war that will kill millions of us. We did not kick all the Irish out of England because some of them were planting bombs. We found ways forward. We didn’t bomb the IRA into defeat.
That is what I believe.
The bigger problem is the population explosion and the destruction of nature.
I want a strong, global United Nations that solves all the problems. I do believe we can do it.
The road you are describing is one filled with mangled babies, rape and blood. I am opposed to that.
I do not despair. I think we have to find a way forward.
Fascinating about the birds on the ledges. Great question. Do you know why the sheep had red paint down its face? What an interesting community to find plopped down there.
They were dyed so that if they strayed on to adjacent ranches they could be recognised and returned. It was branding.
They still speak Welsh!
Oh! Gotcha. That makes sense. A regular brand sure wouldn’t work. Thanks for that little tid bit of info!
You’re welcome
No what I see is the truth and what the majority of the people see, they have had enough they want action. Let’s get one thing straight when the bombs went off here via the IRA I worked in London and I saw at first hand the hatred of the English for the Irish, my Mother would come home crying every night because those “friends” she worked with would take it out on her every time a bomb went off. I worked with a woman who came from Newry Northern Ireland/Catholic and I saw and heard and argued with those bitches who would put things on her desk who would abuse her because bombs had gone off. I did not condone the IRA they had no cause after they acepted right or wrong their Freedom from the Told you this before my Father’s eldest Brother was blown to pieces by those fucking bastards the Black and Tans after Ireland accepted its Freedom from the British.
There is plenty of action going on.
That was not a universal response to Irish people. Not everybody hated Irish people.
Right now completely innocent Muslim people are experiencing that same suspicion and hatred.
I pressed something that sent the above, when Ireland accepted their Freedom Michael Collins paid with his life, at the hands of his own on the orders of De Valera. I had to put up with abuse and so called jokes because of my Irish background, so called educated English would call me stupid, ask had I been on holiday to the Boglands, even my own future husband. The IRA made fools of this lot, Blair and the rest allowed murdering IRA to come out of Prison. Corbyn’s right hand man is a massive campaigner and sympathiser, don’t believe what he now says. My Uncle was a POW of the Japs he lived and died with all they did to him. Do you know Opher when you have to say the road I am describing if “filled with mangled babies rape and blood” you have lost the argument for that is just SO over the top. What they hell do you think was on the floor of Belgium’s Airport yesterday, headless bodies, arms. legs. A husband and wife each lost a leg, a Policeman went over to help them, only then realizing he had lost a leg – that’s the reality. You say casualties yes there always are and who caused them? You want a fantasy World that no longer exists. I want a Churchyard at the top of my road that a few months ago, maybe just weeks ago I could walk through and feel safe now there are signs warning of thieves/muggings a Police Station across the road but the bastards are too lazy to come out, thats reality. I want a Country as it was in the fifties when I was small and growing up but it is not going to happen. What we have is a fight on our hands and you may not want to admit to that, but there is no other option, talking of love and peace, please they will cut your head off first. The Germans after the First World War saw the rise of Hitler not because they lost the First War but because the poor Germans saw how how the Jews had it all and they were raised by the Nazi Party because of what they saw as the Jews taking from the German people.
Brussels was thirty mangled bodies – a tragedy. Syria has so far been 500,000.
War is not counted in ten but hundreds of thousands. The majority are innocent people. That is what I mean – a Brussels, Paris, London and New York every minute.
The people who carried that out need hunting down and locking up.
ISIS is being defeated. They are driving them back and wiping them out. We need to back the Arabs doing that. It takes time. We were slow off the mark.
We need more funding for public services, more police and better policing. But England is not decaying into lawlessness. There are a minority who cause the trouble. They need bringing to justice.
The Jews weren’t the reason. They were used by the fascists. Hitler wanted to prove Germany strong again, a force to be reckoned with. He wanted an Empire.
Your dialogues with your most frequent responder are eye-opening in every way! As for this episode of your travelogue, this has your usual keen eye and lively curiosity.
It is useful to examine what you believe and why. No comments?
I’m glad you are enjoying the travelogue. They take a bit of time. I will follow your suggestion and tidy them up to put into a book with the photos. It might work.
It’s such an unusual journey with plenty of variety. And I like reading your Comment Page discussions, argued with passion from both sides, though I do find myself tending towards your point of view in the main. Good stuff, though, we need more debate like this!
It’s all a bit time consuming and draining. I think I need a holiday!
Debate is always good. It certainly is passionate. It makes you think and coalesce your thoughts. That can’t be bad.
Reblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
A great place for wildlife. I’d like to go back when the whales are there!