Trelew and the Dinosaurs

Trelew is an industrial town. Puerto Madryn is the town for tourists, with its whale-watching ships and sea lions ashore. We may make it there, but Trelew is closer to the penguin colony at Punta Tumbo and the Welsh village of Gaiman, which we hope to see tomorrow. Yes, Welsh. I guess a bunch of Welsh moved here with an agreement with the Argentine government that they could preserve their language and culture because they were tired of the English trying to change it all.

Paco and I slept until about 9AM after going to bed closer to 12:30. Steve woke up preoccupied about parking the car and was up from about  7, organizing things and figuring out where stuff was. After a decent snack in the breakfast are downstairs, (where, I was so flattered, some Argentine woman thought I was Spanish, HA! She must not have heard me say much) we headed out to drop off the laundry and head to the paleontology museum. Steve and I were dying in the heat. Pushing the stroller 6 blocks killed me! It is not even that hot, but it seems like one of those repressive summer days in Sacramento where it is over 80 degrees in the mornings. We headed over to the paleontology museum. Small, but wonderful, Paco walked through it 3 times in total. Steve and I took turns enjoying coffee in the café. Once again I was flattered because the dude at the café thought I was Portugese (not Spanish, but still better than gringa). Steve can add more on this later, but it was pretty amazing, and is considered the best science museum in South America. The lab where they clean the fossils has huge windows and you can watch the technicians work on the bones. Pretty cool. Paco just announced to me that it was the biggest dinosaur he ever saw in his whole life! However, it was clear that we are all sick and Paco especially had developed a fever again last night. So we headed back and the boys have been sleeping since for 3 hours. I had 2 coffees so I am kind of out of luck, I think. We needed this flop day! The WiFi at the hotel is spotty at best, so I am writing in Word  to paste in later. I am sick, but I do love Argentina. The penguins, however, can wait until tomorrow.

Must go, Paco woke up and is singing in bed. That is a good sign.

So the boys woke up and we were all starving. So we walked around a bit, but Paco was a mess (snotty, grumpy, tired) so we ended up at a café called Mi Ciudad, my city. I had asked at the front desk (not the friendliest place, for sure) if there was a McDonalds in town (it is a city of about 100,000) but the guy there and the nice guy at My City had no idea what I was talking about.. Still the café was nice and Paco ate an omlette with ham and cheese and his personality changed. Steve and I shared the gnocchi with Bolognese sauce. I had ordered the house salad, which when it came I immediately handed over to Steve. It was shredded carrots, eggs, and a ton of beets. I mean a ton of beets. Yuck.

We headed to the park and the pharmacy (we needed lip balm). The park, alas, had no play structure and Paco not much energy. So we opted for ice cream instead. In typical Argentine fashion, the man behind the counter gave Paco a huuuge amount of vanilla and in Paco fashion he ate it all. Then we popped into a camera store because our camera weirdly broke yesterday. It  is just the lens cover, but still. The man told me that he knew of no one who could fix a digital camera in Trelew. He also had no digital cameras for sale. Then Paco and I came back into the hotel to rest and watch TV while Steve went to retrieve the laundry and head to the market for more apples and water.

Steve commented that Trelew seemed very poor, and that it was trapped in a world about a decade older. In fact, when I read about Trelew in Wikipedia, I found the phrase "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_miseria" to refer to a sort of shanty town that exists on the ourskirts. I saw the same in Mendoza and the polarity of the very rich with the very poor is definitely something to note. I know Buenos Aires too, has major areas of these shanty towns.

Paco seems to be burning up again, but we are going to let the fever do its job since Paco is not acting listless, just tired.

I just got back from the store where again, there are no coins. All over Mendoza there were signs that said they would round up or round down to the nearest bill. And here, it seems like no one has coins either. I wonder what is behind it? Is it a lack of distribution because this is not a tourist center? The problem did not exist in El Calafate and Bariloche? Is it a sign of an economic crash? I don't know, I just find it unsettling.

Note about jeans: I was pleased today to see a store called "La Vaqueria". Where one goes to buy their jeans or rather their pantalones vaqueros!
 
Hopeufully, the penguin excursion will go well tomorrow! Love, Erin