Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

One of the great things about traveling is the people you meet.  We have a great group with us on the Patagonia trip.  We have lots of time during meals and bus rides to get to know each other.  Because we’re on a trip half way around the world, it’s a safe bet that we will be with people that share a love of traveling.  This group is unbelievable, though.  I thought that Dave and I were pretty well traveled, but once I started talking to the people on this trip, I started feeling inadequate.  Probably not unlike a guy who compares himself to another guy who was better endowed.  Not that I would know what that would feel like.  But it brings up an interesting story.

The company we’re traveling with sent us a little book full of information to help us prepare for our trip.  Packing lists, helpful tips about currency and weather, etc.  It also had a section on the wildlife that is endemic to the areas we’re visiting.  The area we’re in now (Peninsula Valdes) has a lot of Southern Right Whales that migrate here for breeding from August through December.  This little book we received has information on the Southern Right Whales’ geographic range, feeding habits, behavior, etc.  I was reading this section during the flight down to Buenos Aires.  After a very dry and pseudo-scientific description of the whale’s dermis and fat content, I read the following sentence:

“One interesting fact about this species is that the male right whales have the largest testes in the animal kingdom.  Each pair weighs about 1 ton, the same weight as a newborn right whale.”

Okay, now seriously.  That is what it said.  And in fact, I *did* find it to be an interesting fact.  And as I mentioned earlier, I’m not a guy, so I don’t really know what this would feel like, but I ask the men reading this blog posting how you would feel if you were walking around with 1 ton testes.  Or, let’s even try the relative size thing - how would you feel walking around with 8 or 9 pound testes (the weight of a newborn baby)?

What does this have to do with our newfound friends on our Patagonia trip?  Well, I was able to assess by day two that the people on this trip, in addition to being well traveled, have a great sense of humor.  So I asked one of the guys at dinner on Saturday whether he had read the pre-trip briefing book.  Perfect dinner conversation, obviously.  Whale balls are *really* funny after a couple glasses of Argentinian red wine.  And I learned a new word from our newfound friends: schwanz.  Look it up.  It’s yiddish.

I´ve never seen roadkill happen before. As we drove to the town of El Chalten, a bus approached us from the other direction at the same time an armadillo decided to cross the road. He stopped at a point where the bus would have missed him just fine. But then he freaked out and started to run back to where he came from. I expected a simple pancake. What we got was an explosion. Meredith and I let out a simultaneous, “WHOA!” This is one of those things where I am supposed to act grossed out, but what I´m not telling other people on the trip is that I thought it was really cool.