Meat and other friends

Meat. What can one say? Well, for the first time in a long time it has inspired me to take up my quill and pen a poem. Here goes...

"MEAT" by Samuel Richard O'Brien McNabb, B.A. (Hons)

Meat,
Meat meat meat meat meat
Meat meat
Meat meat meat.
How wondrous thou art
With thy ways.
Meat meat meat,
Meat meat.
Meat .
Meat.
O meat.

I hope that didn't reduce anyone to tears. Although, to be honest, a better tribute are my irreparably grease-splattered trousers. There are 2 special meat events we have encountered thus far. First, you have the Parrilada, where your hombre brings you a sizzling platter of beef, lamb, sausages, mindblowingly juicy black pudding (morcilla), and various innards - intestine, kidneys, cow's bottom and so forth. And the whole thing is phenomenal. Then you have the "Tenedor Libre" where you pay a set fee and load up on all sorts of delicious goodness, meaty and otherwise. There's parilla as well as various other meaty casserole type things and salad, if you're into to that sort of thing. Marvellous. Elizabeth's Spanish has advanced so far she can now say "please don't put the parrilla there, if you put it there he will eat it all so put it here instead" flawlessly, and I seem to have developed a special rapport with the parriladeros (or whatever they're called) - I approach empty plate in hand, Oliver-style, mouth agape and jaws aslaver, and they grinningly load me up with buckets of the stuff. Hooray! Right, I will hand over to my colleague now who will tell you about the other things we have got up to....

Hello there. I think Sam left you last time in Ushuaia where it was very very cold - it seems a long time ago now, we are currently staying in a resort called Villa Gesell on the scorching Atlantic coast about 5 hours south of Buenos Aires. Apparently everyone from BA escapes down here for their holidays in January and February which explains why it's like an Argentinian version of Blackpool. The weather is significantly better and you can't get mushy peas with your fish and chips but otherwise there's not much in it.

We much preferred Northern Patagonia, the area originally settled by Welsh immigrants in the 1850s and now populated by their rather obviously fair skinned descendants who make really good tea and cake and run B and B´s in true Welsh style - dolls wearing Welsh national costume, plastic daffodils, framed tea towels of Welsh castles on the wall etc etc. We stayed in Puerto Madryn first of all, with a lovely jolly lady called Gladys. We didn't do much there except for a day trip to Peninsula Valdes, famous for it's whale watching, but unfortunately we were there at the wrong time for whales and had to make do with comatose elephant seals and sealions, and a few slightly more perky penguins. We also saw an armadillo in the car park. Quite amusing watching it scuttling around with Sam scuttling after it trying to get a good photo. We then pootled off inland to Gaiman, also one of the original Welsh villages, not much to see apart from a typically ugly and austere little Methodist chapel, but you can see why they chose it. It was very beautifully set on the Chubut river and really green and lovely compared to the rest of barren and windswept Patagonia. And did I mention the great teas?

Our other little trip in Patagonia was to El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno glacier, this was after Ushuaia and before the Welsh, sorry, I will probably get told off now for not keeping to a strict chronological order but, hey ho, it's good to mix it up a bit sometimes. So, anyway, the glacier - that was great. It's one of the largest and most active in South America so there were about 5 million other people there to see it, but it was worth the elbow fighting just to stand and gaze in awe at the creaking and groaning iciness of it all. Occasionally big chunks fall off into the lake below splashing onlookers, we didn't have the pleasure of seeing that but it was still amazing and we took lots of photos which are now on the website for you to view at your leisure.

No doubt we will write more in a few days with tales of our exciting tango exploits on the dance floors of Buenos Aires....hmmm.