The Voyage Pt. 15 – Argentina – Puerto Madryn – sheep and sea-lions

Posted on by Opher

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Amazingly, in this land of desiccation, where there is never the slightest precipitation, it was raining.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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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The Band – Opher’s World pays tribute to genius.

Posted on by Opher

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The Band started life as the Hawks – Ronnie Hawkins backing band. Ronnie was a Canadian Rock ‘n’ Roller who roamed the planet with minor success but had a whale of a time. He is supposed to have hired them with the immortal lines ‘You won’t make any money but you’ll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.’
He was obviously wrong.
In the mid-sixties they broke away from Ronnie and Dylan ended up using them as his backing band. They took over from Paul Butterfield Blues Band who Dylan used for his scorching electric set that upset a lot of people at the Newport Folk Festival but generated a whole new type of music. But that’s something else.
After Dylan’s legendary motorbike accident they set up home in a big pink house in Woodstock and during Dylan’s recuperation they constantly fooled around, playing and rehearsing in the basement. They were obviously fun sessions with no particulate purpose in mind apart from the joy of jamming and playing music together with absolutely no pressure but they were recorded for posterity and became known as the Basement Tapes.
The type of music they were playing was totally different to the stuff any of them had played before. Instead of Rock ‘n’ Roll or the mercurial sound Dylan had created on Blonde on Blonde they were playing old jazz and R&B classics with a bit of Country thrown into the mix. At the time nobody else was doing that sort of thing but now it’s called Americana. In the process they created that new sound and started a new genre. Even the new songs sounded like the others. The Band even looked like outlaw cowboys from the old West.
For me I was too enamoured with the Basement Tapes when I heard them. I wanted more of the vibrant Dylan Electric Highway 61 period with its snarling bullets for lyrics. This was far too gentle and soft for my liking. I didn’t go for mellow.
At the time Acid Rock, Psychedelia, Progressuive Rock and nascent Heavy Metal was setting the pace. The Band, as they were now known, released an album aptly called Music from Big Pink, which, because of the big departure from the style of the time, caused quite a stir. This new style was complex and brilliantly played. The music was melodic and interesting, harked back to the olden days and it captured your attention. I was particularly attracted to the Dylan covers. I liked the album. Eric Clapton saw it as game changing. It was one of the reasons he left Cream. He saw the music as superior to anything Cream were producing and thought it heralded in a new age.
I wouldn’t go so far. The Band were seasoned musicians. The songs were beautifully crafted and the genre spawned a lot of imitators but It was no better than the others, just different.
The Band went on to record a series of great albums and put themselves in the top hierarchy of Rock Bands.