From the archives: Bahía Blanca: an alternative city break
Part of the reason for my Big Rush to get down to Argentina was to go whale watching in Puerto Madryn, a fun and touristy seaside town on the south-east coast. It’s known for having one of the highest populations of visiting whales in the world, and the highest number of Southern Right whales, which come right into the bay to eat, breed and chill out for a bit between June and November. To break up the journey, we decided to stop for a couple of nights halfway down the coast from Buenos Aires in a town called Bahia Blanca.
I’d planned this stop – one of the few things planned in advance – from my kitchen table in London, working out that it was almost exactly halfway between BA and Puerto Madryn, and figuring that with a name like “white bay” and its spot on the coast, it had to be a pretty spot with a beach to visit if nothing else.
Having seen it now, I would describe Bahia Blanca as neither pretty nor beachy. In fact, it’s pretty heavily industrialised, with an air quality to match the roads full of enormous American Chevvies tinkered to run on cooking oil (this is a fact). What Bahia Blanca does have is cheap accommodation, and we had the pleasure of staying in an Airbnb for £12 a night, hosted by a very lovely man called Sebastian, (more on whom later).
The flat had decent wifi and the largest TV I’ve ever seen, an arrangement that suited both me and Dave well: I had some work to send off and was happy to hole up for a couple of nights after a busy week in Buenos Aires; it also happened to be Halloween, and given that there’s not a huge amount to do at night in Bahia Blanca city, Dave giddily lined up something deeply disturbing for us to watch on the 100-inch TV at night. (Apostle, zero stars) He also cooked us some much needed vegetables, possibly the first plate of veg I’d had in a month.
Still in tourist mode, we made a plan to find the coast as soon as we’d checked in. As it turned out, we were a little early but Sebastian kindly let us dump our bags in the apartment while the cleaner finished up. He seemed confused by our plan to walk to the coast, and suggested instead that we go down to the port on the bus. There we would find two museums and some “interesting views” – something backed up by the guide book and I’m sure more than one travel blog which referred to the port as the “main tourist attraction” and something visited by “many porteños” (Buenos Aires natives) at the weekends. Huh.
The bus took us further and further out of town, through increasingly suburban low-rise streets. I was struck by how many very young mothers got on board –Dave thinks I’m exaggerating but honestly some of them could have been 13 or 14. Mostly, the contrast between here and the dynamic, international vibe of the capital was wild.
As the port came into view, a sudden queasiness washed over me and with it the fear that if we got off the bus now, we wouldn’t make it back into town ever again. It was completely deserted, a tangle of smoke and disused buildings and forgotten bits of machinery. But we’d come all this way to see Bahia Blanca’s biggest tourist attraction… and so we stepped off the bus and watched it drive away, wondering what to do next. The museum, presumably.
The direction signs weren’t obvious. But through an open gate we spied a building that could be a museum, if not a crack den. I was about to suggest we look through the windows first, but Dave had already opened a door and come face to face with a very surprised but friendly looking man in some kind of staff uniform. He welcomed us inside, and so, being polite Brits, we obliged. He then promptly disappeared, leaving us with three confused looking women drinking mate around a table.
I am always amazed at how, when faced with no alternative, I am willing to risk complete humiliation by speaking idiot Spanish at length simply to avoid awkward silences, even and especially with these people, who not expecting visitors – would sooner have expected aliens to drop by than two unwashed Brits smiling nervously with nothing to say and no excuse for being there. There’s a very funny essay by the New Yorker columnist David Sedaris which brilliantly captures the ridiculousness of trying to communicate in a language when you only speak every two or three of the words for every five needed – I’ve thought of it often this month during moments like this.
I think the women in the building, which was not a museum, but not a community space (one of them kept refuting this whenever I suggested it might be), were volunteers. I think they used the old printing machines in the building for crafting purposes. I know that they spent time there on Mondays, Tuesday mornings, and sometimes Saturdays. We tried desperately to find some common ground as one of the women showed us around the small room full of old printers, but when I tried to explain that we were journalists, previously for a newspaper that had once used machines sort of like this, she just smiled and nodded with a “why are you telling me this” expression on her face. I could hardly blame her.
Eventually the youngest woman, who I think had learning difficulties, asked me some questions that fortunately would fit quite nicely into a level 2 Spanish workbook and I could happily answer. Unfortunately, after 10 minutes, or what felt like 10 hours of leaving me to drown, this was about the point in the conversation when Dave’s confidence started kicking into gear, backed by his solid two-hour history of Duo Lingo practice. The conversation went a little like this:
“Where are you from?” The youngest woman asked us (quite rightly). “England!” (Inglaterra) I told her. “And this guy as well?” Yes, I told her, this guy as well. This is Dave, my boyfriend, and I am Rachael and we are tourists from London. “Did you come here on an aeroplane?” She asked. Yes, we did, it is very far. “What are you doing here?” She asked, a good question for which I had no answer. “Yes, England!” Dave chipped in after a pause, which distracted her enough to ask me another question: “Did you get married in England?” And Dave, whose ears had pricked up at the country he recognised, said the following: “I am England!” Truly haunting.
“This is Dave,” I found myself saying again by way of response. And then I made some excuses about the time and we headed for the exit, all five of us waving and smiling, utterly bewildered.
We turned a corner and found the museum. A museum, it turns out, entirely dedicated to the history of the railway in Bahia Blanca, a now redundant piece of engineering built by the British in the early 1900s before the locals booted them out for being terrible. “Did you enjoy our museum?” The first woman asked me as she saw us leaving. I am England, indeed.