On our fourth night in Puerto Madryn, we were sitting in a restaurant
with our good friends Stuart and Gemma, and their new friends Bo and
Cogi. The four of them had spent most of the day driving a rental car
around the gravel roads of Peninsula Valdés, and I asked them if they’d
had any luck spotting an orca.
Stuart’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, we did. Not up on the beach, but out at sea.
But that’s not all we saw!” And he pulled out his digital camera, and
started playing a video for me.
The four of them had arrived at Punta Norte rather early, it turned out,
and so they had a lot of time to kill. (Orcas mostly appear around high
tide.) Among the wildlife you can see on the peninsula is the
armadillo: they’re everywhere, absolutely adorable and a lot hairier
than you might expect. One of them had evidently run across Stuart’s
path, so he had fired up his camera and chased after it.
The video showed the armadillo fleeing from the demented Scotsman, and
leading him into the little parking lot before disappearing beneath a
large van. The video then pans over to the man standing next to the
van.
Stuart is sitting besides me, beaming. He leans over to me and says
proudly, “Johnny fucking Knoxville.”
Those unfamiliar with MTV’s gross-out smash-hit Jackass might remember
Johnny Knoxville as the bad guy from the film Men in Black II.
What the former stuntman is most famous for, of course, is doing things
like “testing” a protective cup and getting attacked by guard dogs while
wearing a bunny suit. To a fan of Jackass, such as Stuart,
running into Johnny Knoxville is like meeting a rock star. Running into
him in Patagonia is, well, a bit surreal.
Stuart told me he had a film crew with him, that they were setting up to
do some stunt.
I couldn’t figure out what on earth Knoxville could have had planned for
Punta Norte, and said as much to Stuart. He shrugged.
“Trying to get eaten by killer whales, I guess.”
At the end of the 19th century, Welsh settlers arrived in Patagonia.
Among the towns they founded was Gaiman, which we toured while in Puerto
Madryn. Gaiman is a curious little place, where ditches alongside the streets irrigate trees native to Wales, where you’re more likely to hear Welsh
being spoken than Spanish (the residents are all bilingual), where
you’re more likely to run into scones than empanadas.
On August 31, 1995, Princess Di famously visited here. She had tea at a
place called “Ty Te Caerdydd” and was serenaded in Welsh by the local
children’s chior. When she died, a little shrine was built to her, one
which residents adorn with flowers every August 31st.
Our tour stopped at a similar little teahouse, called “Ty Gwyn”, and we
all piled in. Inside, it really did feel like we had left Patagonia and
stepped onto the British Isles. The walls were stone and oak, there was
a fire burning in the fireplace, and bagpipe music was quietly playing
(yes, I said “bagpipes” and “quietly” in the same sentence).
If Jessica and I were excited for the tea and cakes we were about to
enjoy, the four Irish girls on the tour with us (whose names we didn’t
catch) were ecstatic. The six of us sat at a table together and were
happily going about the business of becoming friends when it happened.
Over to our table ambled the proprieter, a round little woman with a
broad, friendly smile. Her Spanish had a fascinating lilt, which I
realized must be a touch of a Welsh accent. She was making the standard
waitress small talk, noting that their were six of us, and had begun asking us another question when, out of nowhere, she was cut off by one of the Irish girls.
“English,” the girl demanded, in the contemptous tone you might use if you were addressing a very badly-behaved child.
The woman blanched, as if struck, and then gave us all a
heart-breakingly apologetic look before starting over in English.
I felt sick. Jessica looked furious. The other three Irish girls
nodded approvingly at their friend.
We wanted desperately to swtich tables all of a sudden, but contented
ourselves by making sure to speak nothing but Spanish to the poor woman
the rest of the time we were there. I only speak a handful of words in
Spanish, myself: hola, gracias, sí, and so on. But
I stuck with them, trying with my limited vocabulary to distance myself
from how shockingly rude the Irish girl had been.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve begun many a conversation with “¿Por
favor, hablas Inglés?” I mean, I’m working on my Spanish, but right now
I usually just panic and figure that it’s at least worth checking
whether the other person speaks English.
But to just say “English!” as if she need to be scolded for
speaking Spanish, oh my. There are no words.
No words at all.
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