Chapter 25

The day I got into the El Calafate I began walking around the place to see what it had to offer, then just as I was heading to the bus terminal to find a map of the town I ran into two of my friends from my former university in Buenos Aires. They freaked out since they had not heard from me in quite a while and they were blown away that we ran into each other.

I looked at the girls and thought to myself, “I don't know if you guys don't read La Nueva Provincia or what, but meeting you is nothing special.” I then proceeded to have a good time with them for the next 48 hours.

I also made it to Glacier Perrito Moreno. It was pretty.

Just as exciting, once again my Buenos Aires student ID saved me 44 pesos on the park entry fee. Saving me a grand total of 70 pesos, which using a very conservative 3-1 exchange rate, saved me 23 USD on the trip. Practically paying for the 2,200 USD I threw away on a tuition I did not use.

Then I bounced to El Chalten an even smaller town that looks like this:

I did a lot of hiking. Drank some glacier water from the glacier pictured below.

Then I had a one-man picnic in this field.

Then I took some pictures that had an even stronger yellow colors.


By some miracle of God my hostel had NBA league pass for just one of the nights I was there and the only game I was able to watch was a Charlotte Bobcats and Minnesota Timberwolves match-up, two teams which should have been relegated four years ago. But I was still happy to watch NBA basketball and to get to watch Gerald Wallace and Kevin Love from the bottom of the world.

After three days of hiking I took the long bus ride back to Puerto Madryn again just to break up my time on a bus.

I checked back in to my same hostel and then fired off some quick e-mails before I went to the bus terminal to buy a ticket to Bahía Blanca. I had a few e-mails waiting for me all letting me know my wonderland of Bahía Blanca had disappeared in the week since I had left it.

Marquitos told me he was going to be out of town for the entire weekend I planned on returning to Bahia and in the end of his e-mail he added one minor detail. Paul McPherson had already been cut from the team.

I also got an e-mail from Nene informing me of the same grim news. Then I scoured the web and confirmed for a third time that P-Mac had indeed left Bahía Blanca, as well as learning that El Nacional lost their opening game in the Super 8 Tournament I initially planned on attending.

I didn't know how to cope with all this bad news so I went to the bus terminal and bought a bus ticket back home to Buenos Aires. Then I began drowning my fake sorrows in cheap Argentine beer. I sat on the roof of the hostel and watched the sun set over the ocean. I reflected on all my travels and thought about realized that maybe one day with P-Mac was more than enough.

I walked back in to the hostel, checked my e-mail and found this gem waiting for me:

Hi, Justin.

Dropping you a line to let you know that I have awarded your BA in degree in Journalism, back dated to May 2008.

Your diploma will be ordered next Wednesday and will be mailed to you.

Congratulations!!!

OK, so I was drunk sitting on top of a roof in Puerto Madryn, Argentina and now they are throwing me a college degree. I can't be upset with that.

Then I kept drinking with my eclectic posse at the hostel. There were the odd hostel employees, a bald-headed woman and the guy who ran the desk, but always wore doctor's scrubs, some Argentines who traveled the country selling crafts in artesian markets, the token Israeli who is at every hostel, a couple from Australia, a German girl who grew up in the same town as Dirk Nowitzki and an older man who was the talent scout for Club Independiente, the third biggest football team in Argentina.

The talent scout for Independiente showed the local newspaper and revealed a huge picture of himself next to an article about him scouting players in Puerto Madryn. I then pulled out my newspaper from Bahía Blanca, displayed my article and let him know my paper was for a bigger town and therefore superior.

As we all sat in the tiny hostel kitchen one of the local Argentines began jamming on his guitar singing some classic Rolling Stones' songs. Then for no reason at all I grabbed the guitar and spat an accompanying battle rap against the Independiente coach mocking him and his team. Even though I can't play guitar nor rap in Spanish I still lyrically murdered him. The coach took the guitar from me and thought for a few seconds about his retaliation. He then froze up. I finally had my B. Rabbit moment and I had found Paul McPherson. It was a pretty successful trip.

El fin.

Chapter 24

After the El Nacional game and my lighthouse experience I had done everything that needed to be done in Monte Hermosa. I walked back to Nené's house and chatted with for an hour to kill time until I caught the return bus to Bahía Blanca. I learned that Nené was a celebrity in the town as she hosted a radio show for eight years before her husband passed away.

Then I returned to Bahía Blanca and sat in the bus terminal with a 45-year-old wild backpacker, Christain, before I took a bus ride to Puerto Madryn. I asked Christain how long he had been travelin for and he told me 25 years. He had lived on every continent and had all his life's belongings in a single backpack. He was merely traveling South America until he found a suitable city to set up shop and try to teach English.

Eighteen hours later I made it to the marine-life-rich town of Puerto Madryn. Unfortunately boat rides to see massive right whales or day excursions to the Peninsula Valdés, the home of thousands of penguins and sea lions, were out of the budget so I just kicked it within the town.

I took the cheap alternative and found a nice museum in the town. My favorite exhibit featured a hallway of hanging rope you had to walk through to enter a dark rectangular room, which was covered in small smooth rocks. The room was completely dark, except for six soft lights which illuminated the room enough so you could see the eight speakers which emitted whale sounds. Alone in the exhibit I laid on my back in the center of the rocks listening to the whales sounds for 10 minutes until a family came in, to which I awkwardly got up, said nothing and walked out.


Then I walked up stairs and found a room which overlooked the ocean and was full of couches. Also relaxing. I ended my museum tour in the kids room where I took this picture because I like the stuffed octopus a lot.

I found a good hostel that was not listed in the guidebooks and subsequently was not as crowded. At night I was eating my dinner and watching “8 Mile” when some other guests entered the room and asked to change the channel. Not wanting to admit that I was closely watching the movie for the third time in my life, I let them change it to “The Last King of Scotland,” which frustrated me because I was wanted to see B. Rabbit battle rap and not watch Forest Whitaker kill 300,000 Ugandans.

In a silent protest of films which could actually teach me something I walked out of the room and hit the computer to send P-Mac an e-mail thanking him for his time. I told him of my plans to return to Bahía Blanca and let him know I'd contact him again when I got back in town.

I got a prompt reply from mailer-daemon@googlemail.com telling me:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

pmcpherson@yahoo.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 554 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (pmcpherson@yahoo.com) [-5] - mta594.mail.mud.yahoo.com (state 18).

Well that's just great. Part of me believes P-Mac was not smart enough to remember his own e-mail, another part of me thinks maybe he was just too paranoid to give me his real e-mail address. And then there is the logical side of me which believes P-Mac is part of a larger government conspiracy and its to the United States' advantage that P-Mac's whereabouts remain a mystery.