Mar Del Plata

Mar del Plata is a sunny, metropolitan, Argentinean adventure. The first image that comes to mind is Leonardo de Caprio brooding beachside in Romeo and Juliet. Da da dow dow( you know the song) Traditionally this place is famous for its vast beaches packed with porteños and scarcely a spot for a towel on any beach. Luckily Juli and I are just a little early for the summer season and have managed to score the good weather, beach space and spare the billions of people. That said there are people everywhere tanning, and jogging, and generally looking good. Except the ones that dont and are totally something about mary´ing all over the beach, and street, and plazas for that matter.


The weather has been sunny and windy, sunny and perfect, and windy and torrential downpour, in that order. We explored the vast beaches and perfectly blooming purple flowers and aloe that flank them the first day. And yesterday we traipsed on over to the port so that Juli could get cat called at like no other, fisherman and sailors, and juli..... interesting combo. Anyways at the port are tons of cutesy seafood restaurants and millions of souveniers, literally-- owls made of sea shells and peg leg pirates galore. And SEA LIONS! Big ass beasties slothily lazing about their selected area of repose. There are about 80 or so males that hang out past the puerto to nap in the sun and mouth fight, and lay in the water with their heads reaching up to the sky smiling. The only problem is their smell. Like rotting flesh that has been picked at and the pus has been left out in the scorching sun for months and then right before i got there, someone peed on it. DISGUSTING! But we did happen to catch a couple belly flopping gracefully into the water off of their pier, and a few even found a good tanning spot on the end of some rusty ship wreckage.

And we did have some interesting Argentinean roommates, one of which tried to climb into Juli´s bed twice, sin success, and kept whispering psst Julia... Tienes un novio? Psst. Julia, no puedo dormir! Quite hillarious.


Also, here we have been eating. A lot. Helado de pistachio y dulce de leche granizado y mente granizado y coco, y mucho mucho! And churros rellenos with dulce de leche and chocolate and crema tambien! And the best empañada place that is only a few blocks from the hostel that even has a chart of all the empañadas that they make that you get with your comida para llevar to desipher which type you are about to enjoy! It is magical!

And we went to the Museo del Mar today which houses one man´s collection of something like 30,000 seashells. From every beach and island and country that ever could have seashells. Tiny purple cones and bright orange shells and enormous ariel style ones and intricately designed artsy ones and seashells for everyone pretty much.

Today we also went to a super busy beach to enjoy the sun and as soon as we sat down. Clouds. Rain. INSANE RAIN. So we had to go and get more churros and café con crema to wait it out. oh well. Tomorrow we bus it back to Buenos Aires and are going to explore San Telmo and perhaps pop into Uruguay for a day, and then on thursday...Australia... stay tuned!