Puerto Madryn Mark II

Sorry to overload everyone with blogtime but today has been also very exciting and being a bear of very little brain, if I don't write then I will forget.

So, as I said, I have been adopted by Argentinian divorcee Veronika who, to be honest, I may strangle, if she does not show signs of comprehending 'time to oneself', and today was the day for scuba diving, so off we went to the diving place and chatted to a very nice looking Frederico who got us into our wetsuits (a sexier thing, you will not see in all your life) and then gave us our lesson: bite the regulater, seal with lips, breathe deeply, you are able to cough, spit, vomit down the regulator, just as long as you don't take it out of your mouth, this is the sign for 'ok', 'I'm cold', 'my ears hurt', 'I'm scared I'm going to die, please help me' and remember to pop your ears when the instructor tells you to.

Then we drive off in his truck along the coast until a little man called Julio bobbed up in his boat and we jumped in and sailed to THE PLATFORM where Julio, who was convinced I understood everything he was saying (didn´t), manhandled me into all the equipment, and let me tell you, you need to stand in a very compromising position to get the weighted belt onto you (don't worry, I saw him do it to a grown man before he did it to me, so I figured all was kosher, unless he and this man were very, very good friends). So, wetsuit: check, gimp hat: check, flippers: check, weighted belt to help me drown faster: check, really heavy oxygen that will apparently float in water (I think: yeah right, whatever): check, super hot goggles: check, Doctor Zoidberg gloves: check. Then I, who knows absolutely nothing about scuba diving, jumps into this FREEZING water - look on the map, we are near Antarctica down here - and I remember an English boy telling me yesterday 'Ah, a cold water dive, that'll be cool, not a lot of people do them'. Why? Because it is COLD!

But no, really, you don't feel it after a while, I am just being dramatic for literary effect. So, Mathias, my instructor once again explains everything in Spanish, but by this time I have a regulator in my mouth which I must never, under any circumstances, remove, so I just stare at him with panicked eyes that I hope say PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH, WE ARE ABOUT TO GO UNDER A LOT OF WATER, but he does not see them because I have goggles on. So orrff we go, down, down, down the rope, popping our ears a total of four times on the way. Then Matthias takes my hand and we go for a magical journey under the sea and I feel like Ariel and any minute now, Sebastian will pop up and we will have a crazy underwater feria.

In the real world (i.e. not in my mind), I saw such beautiful things: luminous green anemonas and pink ones and silvery grey ones and - I'm not sure if this would be allowed in places like Australia where everything is protected in a serious way - but I was allowed to touch them so they got embarrassed and retracted themselves, then we saw lots of big fish who got curious of us and one stared at me for a really long time and we achieved zen together, then we picked up some starfish and a sea urchin and then Matthias showed me how to smash open a mussel to feed the fish! How cool is that!

Then we came back to the surface and I gracefully stumbled all over the platform trying to get out of the water and get my stuff off and then we went back to the beach on the boat and had soupa with Matthias and ran through the water like Pamela Anderson (did I mention how sexy these wet suits are)?

Okay, so that is all. I will try to leave a gap before I next throw stories at you.

Lots of love!