Argentina by Daniele Somenzi

Argentina by Somenzi Daniele At customs everything's OK. On the stretch of no-man's land we come across snow that at the roadside reaches 4 metres high; a few photos and then off towards the other customs, the Argentine one.

We arrive towards evening in Bariloche, the city where they had captured Erich Priebke (the Nazi).

We sleep in a bed and breakfast with a couple of Argentines with an Italian surname, very kind.

Thanks to their directions, we take a slightly longer road but certainly faster, and with hindsight, truly stupendous, surrounded by enchanting landscapes: mountains, hills, steppes, rivers — exactly the opposite of what I expected, namely the absolute flatness for hundreds of km.

We also mistakenly took a short dirt short-cut of about a hundred km, which however then turned out to be very beautiful and full of wildlife: the guanaco, flamingos, armadillo, ducks of every kind, and little South American ostriches.

After a couple of days by car we arrive in Trelew; shopping at Carrefour (it's here too????), and then off to the Valdés peninsula, not far away, as far as the village of Puerto Pirámides, from where the boat tours for whale watching depart.

They warn us that the next day the sea would have been very rough and the boats wouldn't go out, so we immediately book the last tour of the day. At 4.30 we set off with a modern 50-seat dinghy with a rigid hull; fortunately there were about twenty of us so we could move around freely. In the bay that day there were an estimated 110 right whales; in fact, as soon as we had gone 100 metres from the shore into the bay, 2 immense whales welcome us.

15 metres long and various tonnes of tonnage, they caused a small tsunami with beautiful waves when they leapt out of the water; a spectacle seen and filmed various times. The tail, just before it dives, is the moment when photos are taken in bursts. In three hours of excursion, we saw 21 whales, and came close to touching 2; Giuseppe was a metre from its snout and I was at 2. An experience worth the trip.

In my personal ranking of the most beautiful things seen, I'd put Antarctica in first place, the Iguazu falls, and then the whales.

Giuseppe insisted on visiting by car also the eastern part of the Valdés peninsula, where we saw the place where orcas snatch seals out of the water for breakfast, a documentary already seen by Piero Angela. Offshore, another right whale that was enjoying leaping out of the water, the little rascal.

An inquisitive little bird came close to the car door where I was sitting at the wheel; having opened the door, the little thing was so clever that not only did it come in without knocking, but at the offer of a crumb of bread it perched on my hand without any problem — a little rascal this one too.

Returning towards Trelew, a group of guanacos came towards us, which I filmed with great joy.

Giuseppe and I decided to return to Chile by going back the same road rather than taking the more northern one; we didn't know what the other was like, but this one we'd just done, yes, namely very beautiful and fast. We sleep in the same place where we had been 2 evenings earlier, in a room without a TV; Giuseppe and I watched on the little DVD video player lent to us by Donato the discs of trips we'd made previously, and in this case, of when we'd been in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Incredible, we were homesick for a trip and at that moment we were on a trip. Maybe then, at home, we'll be homesick for when, while travelling, we watched another trip, and I assure you that now here in Cinquale, while I'm writing, I'm very homesick for that moment.

Bad luck wills that here in Argentina the next day there's a petrol-station strike precisely in the 2 cities we have to reach next, and we're running on reserve. So we wait in front of the petrol station, like many others, for the arrival of the tanker truck. 4 hours later here it finally is, so we can continue to the border with Chile over the Andes mountains. bye bye