Pic 1 Naval musuem.
Pic 2 Monument for Las Malvinas (Falklands) hero.
Pic 3 old locomotives graveyard in the harbour.
Pic 4 Hotel Colonia Pic 5 rusting old locomotive Pic 6 My van Gogh like room Pic 6 and 7 luxury bus
Staying here tonight. Bus to Ushuaia tomorrow at 8am.This is the place every guidebook tells you to avoid, but it´s easy to get stuck for a day waiting for the next bus. Ah, well, it´s actually very like Burntisland. Just walked along the links. Been to the Naval Museum which has a lot about the Falklands - I made sure the woman saw me put that I was from Holland in the guestbook... :-) I missed the trip to see the penguins at Capo Virgenes, which left at 11 so basically this is a good day to do my blog. Shame there doesn´t seem to be a USB port because I have a few photos. Anyway, just realised that the cable I need is in my bag at the hotel... Hotel Colonia, garish pink, single room 80AR$ (about 22 euro). Just what I need. Washed the clothes I´ve worn so far and they´re drying on the radiator. It´s good to get out and walking after 36 hours on the bus. Very luxurious bus though. I had a semi-cama seat. Half-bed - the seat tilts back to about 30 degrees - next time I´d like to try the full bed version but they´re not on every bus. Come to thinkof it,I booked the bus to Ushuaia this morning and never even thought to ask what kind of seats they had. It´s only 13 to 19 hours this time though (depends on waits at the Chilean borders). Food and films were provided too. Slept or read through 2 of the films and was glad of my earplugs to shut out the compulsory muzak a lot of the time but watched most of Blackjack with Kevin Spacey. Off to see if there´s any mail now.
Thanks to everyone who´s sent reactions via the mail. I don´t really have timeto answer everyone as I´m usually just so glad to have found a place to internet and where the keyboard works reasonably well. But nice to know someone´s actually reading this and that I´m not just typing away in these places for nothing :-)
I don´t really have as much time for reading as I´d imagined I would. There´s always something else to be done - maps to study, guidebooks to look things up in. And I think I´m letting Chatwin go a little. It´s enough that his book got me here, but he had his own journey to follow and mine is going to be different. Have read about 100 pages of The Buenos Aires Quintet though and it´s not bad. Lots about The Disappeared. Must admit I couldn´t help thinking of this when the various police checks took place on the bus at various random points along the way. Are these officious looking types checking the bus (for what?) the offspring of the ´pardoned´ ones from the 70´s??
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Still have some time. Weather here is clearly cooler than up North. and the famous Patagonian wind was blowing like mad when I walked along the shore this morning. Strange juicy springy sort of plant carpeting much of the muddy coloured sand. Lots of short legged dogs everywhere. I suspect the Welsh influence has flooded the country with crossbred Corgis. There are baskets on poles in front of the houses. I thought they were a bit of a precarious
looking sort of post box but then saw one with a bag of rubbish in it. They are there so that the rubbish doesn´t get left on the ground to be torn open by maurading animals. Good idea. The town is still pretty messy though. There are some showy houses along the seafront but the rest of the place is generally scruffy. Oh, I´ve just worked out what the numbers at the bottomof the screen mean,I´ve got 3 minutes left. Could pay for another hour I suppose but the sun has just broken through the cloud and I have to go and be a tourist again I think. Next time I write I hope to have been up a glacier at least.
