Buenos Aires Luau

Even though we are thousands of miles from Hawaii we have a few friends here from the islands, and like all Hawaii-born transplants we have a hankering for the yummy food we all grew up on (btw, Erin and I were in Barrio Chino a few days ago and found crack seed on the shelves of Casa China, one of our favorite haunts!). Apparently, last year Cat and Maren, who grew up on Maui, got together and had (made?) a luau, so when we all had lunch together way back in July we talked about another one when spring arrived and the weather warmed up.

So once primavera arrived the emails started flying. Cat volunteered the terrace outside her apartment - a quiet potted-plant-filled area open to the sun - and we all decided on food assignments. Erin volunteered to make banana bread and cocoa mochi, and I somehow got assigned to make a salad and lomi lomi salmon (most likely because I'm such a fan of salmon and chopping tomatoes into small pieces with a steak knife...). Maren & Juan Pablo (and Nico) made kalua pig & cabbage and mac salad, and Cat & Bruno made ginger chicken, chicken long rice and white rice.

Needless to say, we had a feast! We couldn't have enjoyed a sunnier (and hotter!) day, and it seemed like all the trees in the city and the plants on the terrace had sprouted bright new flowers just for the special afternoon. The food was delicious, especially the amazing lomi lomi salmon, and the beer (unfortunately there wasn't any Primo beer to be found in the city) tasted great in the hot sun. One of Cat and Bruno's friends, Ben, came to bask in the Aloha Spirit (and eat the food), and we all enjoyed sharing our love of Hawaii with him. The boys ran around Cat and Bruno's apartment until Bruno once again kindly entertained Quinn with another Kung Fu lesson while Jack sat and drew with colored pens and pencils. Juan Pablo told jokes in Spanish that I was surprised I understood, and by the time the sun had passed over the building and left us in the cooler shade we were all stuffed and ready to run to the beach for a refreshing swim (since the river is a distance from San Telmo and not at all as refreshing as the Pacific, we passed on the swim).

As the afternoon turned to early evening we crowded into the kitchen, split the leftovers up, and said our goodbyes. Cat and Bruno will soon be heading to the islands to spend a few months on the other side of the world, and we all hope to see Juan Pablo, Maren and Nico someday soon on Maui or Oahu.

Hana hou!!!

Haircuts

Six months is too long to go without a haircut, so the boys got to experience going to a barber for the first time in their lives. They've always gotten their hair cut by their grandmother, Puna, in Lanikai, and even the offer to sit in the cool kiddie chairs at the barbershop at the top of Waialae Ave. at home has fallen on deaf ears in favor of their familiar Puna haircuts.

But Jack especially needed a cut, so Erin took them to the barber for niños on Av. Scalabrini Ortiz. I've only seen the shop through the window from the street and I stayed home for the haircut outing, so I was pleasantly surprised by the first of the few pictures Erin emailed me from the salon (even at the barbershop there is free wifi in Buenos Aires. Apparently there is a video game station for the lucky brother who isn't in the barber's seat...and a play area with the plastic ball "swimming pool" usually reserved for the play room for kids at a restaurant or Fun Factory back home.

Puna, you may have lost your business from the Maretzki boys unless you can get some entertainment into your salon ASAP.

And even if you get the video game station set up on the lanai, and an area to dive in a swim with the plastic balls just off the potted plants, you'll need to situate the barber's chair near the television so whoever is under the scissors can keep an eye on the television...

Super 6 Water Polo Tournament

Last weekend was the final weekend in the top division for men and women, culminating in the Super 6 tournament for the men and a Super 4 tournament for women. I missed the final day to see a fútbol game (more later) but this was the best pool I refereed at in Argentina - all deep and 30m. It's at an athletic training center called CeNARD (Centro Nacional de Alto Rendimiento Deportivo), one like the one I stayed at in August at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra or the US training center in Colorado Springs. None are architectural dreams, but I like the athletic dreams that fill these little sports villages. The other thing I like about this pool's location is that there's a nice view of River Plate's stadium on the walk in to the pool building, which I saw at sunset all three nights I whistled there.

I'll definitely miss games here. I met a lot of people I hope to stay in touch with, and I learned a lot about refereeing water polo here. I hear the men's national team is training in the United States sometime next year...

Peninsula Valdes - Day 3

When we visited the tour company office in the afternoon on the first day in Puerto Madryn we organized an individual tour to see the commerson's dolphins near Rowson and the magellanic penguins at Punto Tombo. Our guide, Lucas, picked us up at our hotel at 10am (getting to wake up later was advantage to booking an individual tour) and after putting our bags in the back we climbed into the small van and Lucas started the 1 1/2 hour drive to Rowson.

The view out the window on the drive to Rowson was pretty much the same one we looked at on Peninsula Valdes the day before, without the views of the gulf below sandy cliffs. The low bushes sped by our window, spread out against the dry, windswept soil we could see in all directions, with a few hills here and there to break up the view. Lucas was friendly and informative, so by the time we got to Rowson we had learned a little about Patagonia's history, and Erin had managed as she always does to lay bare details about Lucas's family.

Once we reached Rowson Lucas drove to the harbor which was filled with tens of the same orange-colored fishing boats, all docked together like double parked cars waiting for 3rd and 4th grade pickup around 2:20pm any weekday afternoon. The sky was gray and the air was chilly so we bundled up as we waited for our turn to board a zodiac and head out to sea to search for commerson's dolphins. A few fishermen walked the decks of the silent fishing boats, and Jack and I stood watching three workmen pour cement for the new pier they were building.

When it was our turn to leave we walked a half block to the zodiac with about ten other people and climbed aboard. A young boy helped everyone aboard and the captain started the engines and motored us out through the gray water. Along the jetties different seabirds watched us go by, and when we hit the open water a cold breeze came over the bow and fully woke us up. Bundled in our jackets and sweatshirts, and bound tightly in the life preserver, we scanned the water for signs of the dolphins. Commerson's dolphins are white and black, their markings somewhat reminiscent of the orca's markings but are of course much smaller fish in comparison. After having such an easy time spotting the whales the day before I started to think finding dolphins in the ocean would be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. Both the captain and his young helper scanned the water expertly until the young guy finally shouted to the captain that the dolphins were in sight.

A small group of three of four dolphins suddenly surfaced near the zodiac, slicing through an ocean swell and across our bow. They were quick and hard for Jack and me to see at first, but with everyone on the boat helping each other out, we soon caught sight of their fins in the water. Unlike the whales who almost languished in the water next to the boat, lingering while we videoed and photographed them to our hearts' delight, the dolphins zoomed around. We'd speed after them, catch up, and then slow our engines while they zipped past us occasionally leaping from the water or even doing little back flips.

We watched the dolphins for about a half hour before turning back and heading back to the harbor. On the way in we saw a seal turning somersaults and sitting in the swells watching us, happy to have company on the cold afternoon. After docking we returned to the office, shed our life preservers and headed to the fish restaurant next door for a meal of grilled shrimp, oysters, calamari, a salad and Jack's usual suprema. After postres we were back on the road traveling to Punta Tombo to see the magellanic penguins.

The only remarkable detail from the drive to Punta Tombo was the dirt road that we traveled for the last forty minutes. The road went through private property, the grazing land for an estancia we never ended up seeing from the van. We bumped along toward the ocean, and by the time we reached the actual penguin sanctuary it was late afternoon, a cold wind came off the water, and the sun would soon sink below the few hills we could see. The single penguin who "met" our van driving into the parking lot watched us pile out of the van and waddle our way toward the bathroom for a pre-penguin shi-shi break. The cries and groans off the penguins nesting with their eggs and their mates who were hollering to find them sailed through the air from the direction of the beach and the sand/soil dunes.

The penguin sanctuary set out a wooden walkway winding through the penguins' nesting ground, which allowed us to walk past the nests dug into the dirt, always giving the penguins right of way - they appear to be the only pedestrians in Argentina given this right. Because the female penguins return to the nests they left the previous season, there were a few forlorn nest-and-mate-seeking birds wending their way almost to the parking lot, like this guy who at least had gravity in his favor in this direction.

The cries of penguins seeking their mates sound like kazoo hoots, a few sharp ones followed by a last, long, drawn-out honk. Down on the beach the waves were coming in, their crashes gusting in on the cold blasts of wind also coming across the dark water. The penguins pattered along the wooden walkway, through a bed of stones, or across the dirt, seeking their little dugout nests. Sometimes fights broke out, and we heard the clatter of their beaks until one bird backed down.

Deep in their nests, the females (mostly) sat atop white eggs, keeping them warm and safe from intruders such as the big birds circling overhead and the Quicksilver sweatshirt clad kids who kept leaning over and peering into the holes trying to make friends. Apparently, since his classmates at Lange Ley speak little English, Jack has been working on effective non-verbal communication.

This had to have been Jack's favorite stop the whole weekend. He towered - like, twice as tall - over most of the penguins and had no trouble keeping pace with them.

After hanging for about thirty minutes with the penguins we had to get back on the road and bump our way through a hurried van ride back to Trelew and the airport. We watched an amazing sunset fall along the horizon ahead and around us before Lucas dropped us off at the airport. Though our flight was delayed, we were buzzing with excitement as we walked out across the tarmac to our flight. And neither the twenty-month-old boy drinking Coca Cola in the seat next to me at midnight, nor the taxi line we stood in for forty-five minutes until 2:00 could ruin our memory of such an amazing and wonderful trip.

And Now a Song from Jack

Before Jack's class eats their morning snack, which their teacher, Flopi, calls breakfast, they sing a little song. Last night at dinner Jack sang it for us, with an extra verse he tacked on at the end, and a few words in Jackanese rather than Castellano.

We Interrupt this Story for a Brief Message...

Before I continue the Peninsula Valdes story it seems important to mention that the ex-president, Néstor Kirchner, husband of the current president, Cristina Kirchner, died last Wednesday, the day of the census. The story, as one might imagine, was all over the news, displacing the usual non-stop story about the murder/traffic accident/theft of the day (all television news producers must attend the same training schools).

The next day almost every sidewalk billboard I passed was plastered with this image:


Mr. Kirchner was expected to run for president next term, perhaps setting off a series of leapfrog style let's-keep-it-in-the-family runs by him and his wife, so now there are many questions about what Cristina will do with the remainder of her term, whether she'll be able to maintain the political alliances her husband had forged, etc.

I think the poster makes her look too reliant upon Néstor - you know, the literal leaning on his shoulder image doesn't bode well when one is suddenly required to stand on one's own - but we're not exactly talking about my area of expertise (which is what, by the way?).

There were a couple days of public mourning at a gathering along the big avenue 9 de Julio, which I was sorta planning to see on Friday but cold rain kept me in. Yeah, wimpy!

Okay, back to the Peninsula Valdes story.

Peninsula Valdes - Days 1 & 2

One of the sales pitches we used to inspire Quinn and Jack to follow us to Buenos Aires is that we would arrive in winter and soon after take a trip to see snow (one of the other pitches was that Dad would donate his store of United miles to upgrade to business class and the lie-flat seats, which [full disclosure] is really one of the sales pitches said Dad uses to get the family to allow me to travel so much to referee, but you should see the cool, gray socks you get in the goody bags - Erin's a sucker for anything that keeps her toes warm!). Alas, when we arrived we realized that a trip to see snow wouldn't be great schedule-wise, somewhat because of the school schedule, but also because - of course - I went on another referee trip to Australia in August, not four or so weeks after we arrived. So we turned our sights toward a trip planned later in the school year for the boys.

So turning our sights away from snow, we planned a trip in the fall to Peninsula Valdes in Patagonia. If you've ever seen those Discovery Channel videos of orcas surfing waves onto the beach to chomp baby seals you were seeing Peninsula Valdes. It's the only place in the world where the orcas use this specific feeding strategy. The peninsula juts out from the mainland but then curls back around on both sides toward the mainland, forming two large bays, one on the north side, Golfo San José, and another on the south side of the peninsula, Golfo Nuevo, both of which have narrow openings to the Atlantic Ocean. It was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999 and there is much wildlife and flora protected there.

Our adventure began with a 6:05am Aerolinas Argentinas flight out of Aeroparque Jorge Newberry, the domestic airport that is, thankfully, only a 10 minute taxi ride from our apartment. After sitting in an airport cafe and waking up with café con leche and some medialunas dulces, we boarded our flight and took off to Trelew. 1 1/2 hours later we landed in stiff, cold winds whipping along the arid, low-bush dotted Patagonian landscape in Trelew. From there we boarded a bus for drive to Puerto Madryn, along the shore of Golfo Nuevo.

We had booked a room at a hotel on the outskirts of town, on the beach, with a view of the gulf through our main and bathroom windows. Since we didn't have any tours planned for the first day, knowing the early wake-up time was going to leave us exhausted, we took a long nap and then headed into town to book a trip on our last day to Punta Tombo to see commerson's dolphins and magellanic penguins, and to make sure our tour the next morning was led by a bi-lingual guide. Once we had taken care of those appointments we wandered into a pharmacy. I had (have) been having lower back tightness/pain (undoubtedly caused by the stress of four work-less months in Argentina) and wanted to purchase something that would get me through the next day's tour; however, once we got in there, Erin smartly asked if we could purchase some antibiotics that would cure Jack's frequent ear infections and other flu attacks on the rest of us. No doctor's prescription, no worries; we walked out of there with medicine for my back and an armful of antibiotics that should last us until the end of 2013! After a stop for fruit smoothies and my daily doble in a mini-mall we had pizza and pasta dinner while watching the first of the Chilean miners ride to safety, then headed back to our hotel to sleep.

Our first day-long tour began at 8:00am with a few loops through town to pick up all the other tourists before we headed out of Puerto Madryn and along the shore of Golfo Nuevo toward Puerto Piramides and the Southern Right whale boat tour. The Patagonian landscape on the peninsula is mostly flat, filled with low bushes that hide maras, small rat/guinea-pig rodents that perch on their hind legs; guanacos, relatives of llamas; and rheas, big brown birds that resemble ostriches. The ride took a couple hours, but while we drove the guide told us about the history of the area and pointed out wildlife hiding in the bushes (and running when we stopped to take the blurry pictures we've included). The shoreline became elevated, so when we arrived at Puerto Piramides we descended to the small beach town in an arroyo between sandy cliffs and stopped near the water's edge. We were outfitted in life preservers, led to the beached boat, pushed backward into the water by a tractor much like an airplane being driven backward from the gate, and after the captain spun us 180º we motored out to the whales.

It didn't take long before we were seeing whale spouts in several places. The captain steered us toward a mother and her calf, and soon we pulled up right next to our first southern right whales. The most prominent feature of the whale are the callouses on their heads, and we got super close-up looks at the barnacle covered whales. The whales surfaced near the boat, posed calmly for pictures, and then dove, sometimes gliding just under us and over the other side. The whales were so peaceful that I had to squash the urge to jump in the water and swim with them by reminding myself that the water was freezing cold. Sometimes both mother and calf would offer a tail or a fluke for photos, but mostly they tolerated our presence, with the mothers being careful to stay between their babies and our boat.

We were on the water for about an hour or so before turning back to shore to shed our life preservers and board the bus and drive toward lunch and the elephant seals.

The tour company wisely breaks up the long driving day with stops along the way every hour-and-a-half or so. Lunch came at an estancia far out on the peninsula, where lamb seemed to be the featured offering, but after seeing so many sheep grazing alongside alcortas and maras Quinn and I opted for beef dishes so we didn't have to encounter relatives of our meal when we took off toward the elephant seals (every once in a while Jack expresses his sadness that animals have to die for us to eat, but soon the ol' "out of sight, out of mind" saying kicks in and we all eat guilt free).

By the time we reached the beach where the elephant seals sunbathe it was roughly 3pm. The beach lay below some pretty steep sand/clay cliffs, which we traversed by following a switchback trail three quarters of the way down. Jack was freaked out since it felt like we were clinging to the face of a cliff (which we kinda were, though for some reason it was perfectly safe) so I ended up carrying him down until we hit a spot where everyone could sit and observe the crowd of sleepy walrus-looking seals and their pups. Most of the animals lay motionless on the wet sand, conserving their energy after long swims from wherever it is they come. My understanding is that when they get hungry they have to swim miles for food, and there was a constant trickle of elephant seals surfing in to the beach to waddle through and sometimes over the other sunbathers, which elicited loud grunts and snorts of consternation but little actual effort to retaliate or move out of the way. They seemed to know that we were watching them from above - sometimes one would open an eye and peer up at us, but for the most part they couldn't have cared less. Conservation of energy, I guess.

With so much bus riding to do my concern was expenditure of energy, the boys' energy. So once back on top of the cliffs I set the boys off on laps around and through the bushes near the bus, timing them with exactitude that kept inspiring a subsequent effort, as each time they ran their times reflected a miraculous improvement, sometimes by tenths of a second. Amazing! After a pee break that included a lesson in aiming with and not into the stiff winds we were back on the bus for our last observation, a small colony of magellanic penguins. Since we saw a much larger colony the next day at Punta Tombo, I'm saving the penguins for the next post.



By the time we returned to Puerto Madryn we were tired but filled with chatter about all the wildlife we had seen. Opting for dinner at the hotel so we could shower the boys right away and fold them into bed, Erin and I cracked our books for only a few minutes before we, too, crashed hard like two worn and wasted elefantos marinos.