On Thursday the 24^th we walk the 30 minutes to the bus station. This was Autumn’s first time carrying her 35lb bag for a long period of time. Due to the fact that we had no idea what to do once at the bus station and coordinating tickets it turned into 1.25 hours instead of 30mins. Great way to break her in! The block surrounding the bus/train station was insanely busy, very dirty, and quite confusing. Luckily, we got it all figured out and eventually made it into an area that was more like an airport terminal instead of the ghetto that we had been standing in. The bus was delayed 2 hours, so we ended up spending 4 hours there instead of 2, but not a big deal because we are learning patience! I would call this “island time.”

South American busses are double deckers with different classes. We choose the middle class which is “Cama Ejecutivo”….this means the chairs recline to 140 degrees, we get blankets/pillows, numerous meals, wine, and movies. We didn’t think it would be THAT BAD, even if the trip was 18 hours. Autumn thought it was pretty bad. The bus was borderline warm (which when riding in a vehicle is never good), the food was pretty terrible, the movies were played in the front & middle with the sound coming from the back, and I’m pretty sure the sign in the bathroom “this toilet only recycles liquids” means that we can’t take a crap the entire time. It sounds worse than it was and, all-in-all, it’s a decent & inexpensive way to travel in South America, so we are just going to have to deal!

Around 1:00pm on Friday we arrive in Puerto Madryn. It is much bigger than we expected (population 100,000), but still fabulous! It is clean, feels very safe, the beach is HUGE, we can see whales spouting in the distance, and there are happy, stray dogs hanging out everywhere. Seriously, they have golden retrievers, black labs, and other random dog mixes EVERYWHERE! We were eating lunch out on a patio overlooking the beach and three super sweet dogs roamed up and down the aisles. Our hostel is only 2 blocks from the beach, so we took full advantage once we checked in.

The hostel we stayed at was named Hi Patagonia. This was our first experience with a hostel. The place itself was really clean (in fact their bathtub is definitely cleaner than ours at home), there was a large community kitchen/dining/living area, breakfast was included, and the hosts graciously helped us to book tours and answered all of our questions with ease. We were a little disappointed to find out that our 4-person room had two bunk-beds with both of the bottom beds already taken. I’m 6’6 and sleeping on the top bunk didn’t seem like the best option. We did it for the first night and we survived! After that our bunkmates moved on and we were able to sleep on the bottom (thank goodness). Definitely not ideal, but since it was only 2 nights it wasn’t that big of a deal. We will definitely being getting private rooms if we stay at hostels from here on out.

In order to soak up as much of the area as we could, we decided to do a tour of Peninsula Valdes. We were excited because the tour guarantees you will see whales. We were sold! This was a very adventurous day, so I will lay it out piece by piece.

1^st Stop was Doradilla Bay: This was actually one of the highlights of the day. The bus pulls up to a rocky beach and we can already see numerous batches of whales jumping, spouting, & diving in the water. The tour guide was intending to give us some information before he opened the doors, but we all basically pushed past him in order to run to the water. Whales were EVERYWHERE! Female Southern Right Whales enter these waters to mate and to have babies from August through December. Which means there were lots of baby whales!! Autumn and I were in complete awe of how close these huge animals were to the shore maybe 50 yards or so at the closest. Mama whales were teaching their babies to roll over on their backs, slap their tails, and other whale tricks. It was amazing 🙂

2^nd Stop was Puerto Piramides: It is called this because when sailing into the bay there are rock cliffs that look similar to pyramids. The “Pyramids” have begun eroding over time, but from a distance you can see it. Puerto Piramides is where we donned our life vests and boarded a boat for our on-the-water whale watching excursion. Since the Peninsula Valdes is a National Park, the only place you can get on a boat to view whales is in this town. Interestingly enough, the bay is quite shallow and can’t accommodate a pier, so we boarded the boat on a trailer about 100 yards out of the water and then were backed into the water with a tractor. Whatever works I guess. The bay is beautiful, but the totally awesome part is you can see whales spouting and jumping EVERYWHERE! There were probably ten boats in the bay, but no one had to share a set of whales. You’d be watching a pair of whales 50 feet from the boat and in the background you could enjoy the large splashes from other playful whales. So cool!!! After 1.5 hours on the water it was back to town to grab a bite to eat and jump back on the tour bus.

3^rd Stop was Delgada: This is where we viewed the Elephant Seals. We were able to see them laying on the beach while we were standing on a cliff. Very cool to see, but they sleep most of the time. The few that weren’t sleeping were amusing to watch as they tried to move their fat bodies from place to place. The males are massive and some were quite loud sleepers. There were many cute, black pups hanging out close to their mamas. All in all the scenery was awesome, the seals were cool, but we missed the action of the whales!

4th Stop was Punta Cantor: Penguins!! There is a small colony of Patagonian Penguins that come to this particular beach to nest. They were literally right next to the boardwalk. The only thing between us and the penguins was a small fence and probably 2 feet. The male penguins arrive on the beach a couple of weeks before the females to get the nests ready. Apparently they use the same nest year after year. A few of the females had arrived, but there were still some males getting their nests ready for babies (sadly no babies yet…they won’t hatch until November). We were instructed not to cross the fence or touch the penguins even though they were right there. It was crazy, they didn’t give a shit about the people 2 feet away talking and taking pictures; they just kept doing their thing. Mostly the penguins were busy sleeping, squaking, flinging rocks out of their nests, or just hanging out. Even though they were wild, it almost felt like we were in a zoo because they were so close and calm. Definitely a neat opportunity to be up close and personal with penguins.

The bus journey along the way: We were probably on the bus for about 3 hours total during the trip and were lucky enough to see a lot of other wildlife. We saw their version of a rabbit, Mara. It had a bigger body, smaller ears, and basically a beard. They also had Choique (like an ostrich) awkwardly running around all over the place. The Guanaco is similar to a llama/alpaca and they hung out in crowds of from as small as 3 to herds of 20+. There were also lots of sheep with their lambs and a few random horses/cows. The sheep, horses, and cows were property of one of the many estancias (ranches) on the peninsula. Random side note, they sheer the sheep once a year and make $25US per sheep. Scale certainly helps.

So, it turns out we really fricking like whales, so after booking our next bus/flight/Airbnb we decided we’d go to lunch and then planned to taxi out to a local beach to see the whales one last time before we left Puerto Madryn. On our walk back from lunch we saw a large group of whales causing a lot of commotion. This wasn’t far from the water’s edge, so we went to explore. We were informed that it was likely a group of males trying to mate with a female. The ladies apparently don’t really like the loving, so the boys team up. The female will flip on to her back in order to prevent penetration. The males will then work together to get her flipped back, so they can each have their turn. Luckily for them, and unluckily for the female the male has a 2+ meter long penis. Yup. That’s. Right. Now don’t think that we actually saw a whale penis. I’m not sure Autumn could handle that image….but we did get an awesome show regardless. We hadn’t even taxied to the whale watching bay and we were already seeing some cool shit.

We shared a taxi with another couple from the hostel (turns our they are awesome and are just finishing their 11 month RTW trip that’s basically the same as ours, but backwards….they gave us so much great advice!). It was a 15 minute trip, really inexpensive, and probably the best part of our trip as of yet! We went back to Doradillo Bay, but this time there were many other people with the same idea. Basically, the locals and/or smart people bring their lawn chairs, food, beverages, and find a spot to hang out. Whales were once again everywhere and so close!! The beach is really long, so we had a hard time deciding where the best spot would be to view the whales. Turns out every spot was good. Autumn was FOMOing pretty hard, so we’d be way on the left side enjoying a set of whales and then book it over to the other side because those whales were closer. We were there for 3 hours and she eventually settled down and realized that all spots were good spots. There was even an albino baby!!! He loved slapping his tail in the water….seriously obsessed with it and didn’t stop for like 10 or 15 minutes. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Whales are so amazing, majestic, huge, incredible, etc. We feel so lucky to have been in Puerto Madryn at just the right time!!!!

We got back to the hostel to talk more with our new “travel agent” friends, so they could give us advice and share stories about their awesome trip. Their guidance was unbelievably helpful and reassuring. WE CAN DO THIS!!!!

We boarded the 10pm bus to Comodoro Rivadavia, It arrived at 4:30am and we were expected to board our flight for Calafate at 8:00. It was delayed for two hours. We boarded it, the plane started up, while we were taxiing we both feel asleep. Unfortunately, not for long. The engines stopped and we were asked to get off the plane, so they could fix an issue. Great. We eventually boarded and it was still better than riding on a bus for 24 hours. It was basically the same price to bus/fly than it was to bus 24 hours. We’re not ready for that yet! But, it will soon be a reality. We are currently in Calafate hiding in an Airbnb: doing laundry, relaxing, and doing as little as possible for 2 days. Then, we will reunite with the hostel life and get back into making memories 🙂

After our T&T adventure, we signed ourselves up for some serious travel. We had a pair of loooooooong flights; the first from Tobago to Sao Paulo, Brazil (via Barbados) and then from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires. Given that we were due to arrive in Buenos Aires at midnight, we decided to make things easy and book a room at the Holiday Inn close to the airport. It was a great idea. But before we get into our Argentina travels, a few comments about the day of traveling to get here. First (and most important), when planning on traveling for 16 hours in planes and airports make sure you have a good travel partner. Having done quite a bit of traveling, shit is bound to come up and if you are your travel partner can roll with it, then everything is good. I will tell you that Autumn is a great travel partner. She rolls with the punches well and we balance each other out well. For example, when we landed in Sao Paulo we were funneled in the direction of very different areas. I wouldn’t normally have had a concern about the options, but when we were leaving Tobago they suggested we check baggage claim in Sao Paulo to ensure our bags made it on our next flight. Not a good idea. To get to baggage claim we would have had to leave the terminal, clear customs, and show our Brazilian Visa which we didn’t have. So, onto option #2 which was passing through another security gate, then trying to figure out which terminal and gate we were due to fly out of. The information on our boarding passes was little to no help. To make matters more difficult the national language of Brazil is Portuguese which Autumn and I can’t understand a word of. After passing through security we made our way to terminal 2, which seemed correct except for one small detail. Our gate was behind a closed door which clearly said (in Portuguese) “Wait for the door to open.” Um… WTF does that mean? We are standing in front of the door and nothing is happening. And we are not the only ones. There are a lot of people trying to do the same thing we are without any luck. When you have a 3.5 hour layover in a country where you don’t speak the language, you’re not sure if your luggage is stuck in baggage claim, and you have a Harry Potter like portal in your way…..the only thing that comes to mind is: SHIT! After an impatient two hours the door opens and we are able to get to our gate. Much ado about nothing as they as. I guess it is another lesson for us to learn to go with the flow. At the end of the day we made it safely to Buenos Aires AND our luggage did too 🙂 🙂

After out lovely (actually lovely) night at the Holiday Inn, by the airport, we hopped in a Taxi to go into Buenos Aires proper. Just like the Fresh Price, I could tell that this cab was rare cause it was playing awesome 80s throw backs in English (She’s like the wind, Betty Davis eyes, and more) making us feel right at home! Our Airbnb was in the Recoleta neighborhood, a very nice area with lots of restaurants/beautiful apartment buildings/shopping. Buenos Aires has A TON of people: 8-9 million people in/around it. Unfortunately, for us it was rainy, windy and about 50 F the entire time we were there! Even though we aren’t really foodies, we did hit a few of the recommended food to-dos. We had amazing steak( both in its taste and the cheap price), delicious Medialunas (a sugary croissant), Panchos (hotdogs with crunchy fries & other crazy condiments), and empanadas of many flavors. We didn’t spend all day eating, but we felt pretty good about our choices.

Our favorite attraction while there was the cemetery, Cemeterio De Recoleta. This is Buenos Aires’ first public cemetery which means that people have private ownership of the mausoleums and they can be bought and sold. We were able to clarify that when they are sold they are sold without the current residents. Hey, we had to ask. There were hundreds of mausoleums! Some of them were huge, others were intricate, and some were completely falling apart (aka crusty). The history and beauty could be seen everywhere. We had a wonderful tour guide who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, & English and explained many important people who were buried there…most well-known to us Americans would be Evita or Eva Peron. The main level of the mausoleums had a prayer station and sometimes a tomb. Then, there is a set of stairs that leads down to the other crypts. Families are buried in the same mausoleum and you could see some of the other crypts and/or urns as you looked down the stairs from above. AWESOME!

Given the uncooperative weather, we tried to find things to do indoors as much as possible. That said, when we did go outside we had to stare at the sidewalk in order to avoid the huge puddles, uneven sidewalks, and the massive piles of dog shit. They don’t have strict “cleanup after your dog” rules.

Sticking with our theme of trying to find indoor activities, we decided to visit the MALBA, which is the Latin American Art Museum. Sounds great right? NOPE! This was an awful experience of Modern Art. Autumn and I appreciate art. Art that looks like an adult created it!!!!!!! This was not the case. We went through room after room of circles painted in different colors, random lines crossing each other, and paint splattered on a canvas. But, these things were not the highlight…luckily we saved the basement for last. Playing on large screens were projections of beautiful, serene prairies/mountains with mostly NAKED LADIES, pole dancing. Obviously, they put a green screen up at Phipp’s and then decided to call that art. Needless to say we were not impressed and the Mother with her very curious 5 year old daughter was not either.

Las Violetas, Macos, and Parrilla Pena were all delicious choices for our dining experiences. We are on a budget (God knows if we have been following it), so we are trying to eat in for at least half of our meals. This means we aren’t counting the super cheap bottles of wine, delicious cheese, or yummy market meats in this section.

We were in Buenos Aires for technically 3.5 days, but it felt like less due to the weird airport hotel. In all, we’ve decided that while we enjoy large cities, we would much rather spend time exploring smaller cities while in South America. On to Puerto Madryn!!!

I am inclined to think that our trip to Tobago was meant to be. We had not planned on spending any time in Tobago, but it was fantastic. Our original itinerary had us flying from Trinidad to Tobago on Sunday morning at 6:30am then catching our flight to Argentina via Barbados and Sao Paulo, Brazil. As chance would have it our Airbnb host happened to work at Caribbean Airlines, which was the airline for the first leg of our trip. She was able to reschedule the Tobago leg of our trip to Friday afternoon at 1:35pm. What a wonderful culmination of circumstances! We made the 18 minute flight to Tobago and landed on an island that I would put in the bucket “the real Caribbean.” Not only is it a much smaller, safer, and more laid back version of Trinidad, but the beaches are incredible. From our guesthouse there were two different beaches each within a 4 minute walk. I will elaborate more in a bit, but I want to tell you about our guesthouse.

We stayed in the fishing village of Boccoo. When we were researching places to stay it fit the criteria of being out of the way, quaint, yet still close enough to the airport for our Sunday morning flight. We found the guesthouse on booking.com and were able to book it to check in Friday and check out Sunday for a reasonable price. When we arrived in Tobago, there was a taxi waiting for us at the airport to take us to the Fish Tobago Guesthouse. So far so good right? Here’s the rest of the story… Upon arriving at the guesthouse we were met by the proprietor, Brandon. Brandon promptly informed us that they had a minimum of a 3 night stay and we were not able to check-in. His recommendation was that we call booking.com and cancel the reservation and once that was complete then he could talk to us about maybe staying at the guesthouse. Apparently booking.com has been getting this wrong a lot and we were the people that were to help him take a stand. I won’t get into the dirty details, but after about a half hour trying to get a hold of booking.com we were able to cancel or reservation. Our natural response: Shit. Now what?

Brandon, to his credit, was very accommodating post our conversation with booking.com. He let us stay for the 2 nights (for less than we were planning on paying) and said he would definitely make it worth our while for the inconvenience. He wasn’t lying. As soon as we got past the check-in shenanigans we hopped in his car for a little tour of the island. The first stop was Pigeon Point. What a great spot! It is a beach/park with a handful of bars and trinket shops for the tourists. The sand was incredibly soft and white and wrapped around the point on all three sides. Throw in a rum and ginger ale and a beer for Autumn and we definitely started to relax. We did a quick drive back to Boccoo and Autumn and I walked from the guesthouse to Boccoo Beach to watch the sunset. Had we been thinking ahead we would have worn our swim suits and taken in the sunset from the water. A beer at a beach bar capped what had already been an eventful day.

We were warned by Brandon that since we were only here for 1.5 days he wanted to make it up to us by keeping us busy on Saturday; mission accomplished. Our day started off with an 8:30am wake up call for fresh smoothies and coffee in the front yard. Not a bad way to start the day. Apparently one of the other tour guides stayed out too late on Friday night and decided not to show up at the scheduled time. No problems. It is the island and we were definitely running on island time. When the second car finally showed up around 11am we were off on our Tobago adventure. First stop was the Highland Waterfall. During the easy 45 minute hike to the waterfall, we were treated to fresh mangoes and guava right off the trees. Not a bad snack break! To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect from this “waterfall.” Tobago does has some elevation, but not a ton so I was not expecting much. Once again, I was pleasantly surprised. After the hike and the weather in general (93, humid, and not much breeze) we had definitely earned a swim.

After the waterfall hike it was back to Boccoo for some lunch and to get ready for fishing. I haven’t mentioned yet that Brandon kept talking about a Bar-B-Que Saturday evening and we were to help provide dinner. That meant getting out on the water and fishing for Blackfin Tuna that had been biting well. Once again, Brandon didn’t disappoint. There were five of us in the boat, but only three of us were doing the fishing. Brandon was the guide and Autumn played the role of the paparazzi. So fishing… there was only one fishing rod that was put in the boat, which I found a little strange, but I soon found out why. Turns out we were fishing with hand lines! Sweet! I haven’t hand line fished in the ocean before, but I will say that ice fishing prepared me at least a little (thank you tip-ups!). It took approximately 1.5 minutes for the guide to yell, “Fire! Fire!” and for me to hook my first (and only) Tuna. Actually, another gentleman on the boat had one on at the same time, so our boat had two tunas right off the bat. It all happened so fast and the result was an 11 lb. tuna for me. Not too shabby! We ended up catching four Tuna, a King Fish, and a Trout. Not a bad haul for an hour on the water. We feast tonight!

I mentioned above that we wore shorts instead of our swimsuits on Friday evening when watching the sunset. I am happy to report that we didn’t make that same mistake Saturday evening. The water felt great and the sunset was beautiful. Autumn commented on how fast the sun goes down. I would guess the time it took to go from when the sun’s bottom first hit the horizon until it slipped away to the far side of the world was less than 1 minute. Pretty neat.

Once the sun was down we made our way back to the guesthouse for the fish feast. What a great experience. We ate freshly caught fish, veggies, and pasta, with a group that included people from Trinidad, Tobago, US, Venezuela, and Belgium. Along with a delicious dinner Autumn and I got a chance to practice our Spanish with a family from Venezuela. My abilities are still very much a work in progress. Fortunately for me, Rum is a universal language and the father Freddy and I definitely bonded over shots of Diplimatico. 1-2-3-4. Sault! Me Gusta!

After a much too short trip to Tobago the adventure continues with a day of travel to Argentina. Stay tuned!

The blocks have been removed from under the tires of the plane and in a flash we are gone. While most of you were sleeping, Autumn and I began our journey this morning. I’m not sure what exactly it is about travel that makes me feel so energized, but a 3am wake-up call was all I needed to be ready to take on a day of traveling. While I was able to sleep soundly last night, my wife was not so fortunate. It’s a good thing she can curl up and sleep just about anywhere. 🙂

In an effort at full disclosure I will tell you that both Autumn and I agree that this feels almost surreal. We are physically on a plane flying to the tropical island of Trinidad and yet both of us have yet to mentally detach ourselves from our previous day-to-day. My strong prediction is that when we land and see the faces of our friends Zahra and Marvin, things will start to sink in. Nothing like old friends in a new location to snap you into the present moment.

Until we are able to step foot off the plane in Trinidad, and while we zoom across the Caribbean at 530mph, we going to watch some shows we downloaded from Amazon Prime and work on letting the reality of our new life start to sink it.