I waited around the bus stop for an hour before hopping another bus back north. It cost approximately $2.25. When I finally reached Puerto Madryn, I wandered into the bus terminal to find that it proudly displayed a reassembled dinosaur skeleton discovered in the region, one of a six to seven-foot predator related to the Carnosaurus that lived in Patagonia approximately 140 million years ago. Patagonia is dinosaur country, numerous skeletons having been discovered here.

Exhausted, I staggered outside and wandered down a quiet two-lane street toward the shoreline. I found a small, affordable hotel where I settled in, showered and changed. I then spent the next several hours exploring the city. With few buildings above two stories in height and a wealth of tourist and clothing shops, Puerto Madryn seemed relaxed and quiet, particularly after coming from Buenos Aires. A boardwalk ran along the waterfront where a few brave tourists played on the beach (it was perhaps 65 degrees out and fairly gray) and an enormous cruise ship lay docked to a several hundred foot long pier. The water was turquoise. It looked cold, but I wanted to go diving ASAP.

I had lunch at a seafood restaurant across from the boardwalk. After Bolivia and steak-crazed Buenos Aires, I couldn`t wait for fresh shellfish. I wasn`t disappointed. The shrimp in garlic sauce with saffron rice came with more garlic than perhaps any other meal I have ever had in my life. There was probably an entire bulb of minced white garlic spooned over the shrimp. Take that, Emeril Lagasse. BAM! Moron.

I stumbled back to my hotel with the intention of taking a two-hour siesta. However, I overslept slightly and woke up five hours later. My unexciting evening consisted of dinner at a local grill (I ordered the shrimp with garlic sauce --- again) and several hours in a cafe finishing up the immense historical epic Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Anthony Beevor. Detailing the advance of the Red Army into the disintegrating center of Nazi Germany, the book reads like a classic novel, albeit a not-very-uplifting classic novel. Emphasizing the destruction and cost in lives wrought both by Hitler`s insane refusal to capitulate in the loss of certain defeat and Stalin`s willingness to sacrifice his soldiers by the tens of thousands to ensure that Berlin (and its nuclear research facilities) could be seized by the Russians before the deceived and generally naive (Eisenhower far more than Churchill) Western Allies, the book is also filled with grim details of atrocities committed by both sides. Some might wonder why Beevor seems so concerned with pointing out the crimes (particularly rape) perpetrated on German civilians by the Russians, but he often mentions (without excusing what transpired) that the anger and hatred the Russians bore the Germans stemmed from the barbaric treatment the Russians suffered during the German invasion of the USSR. Indeed, numerous German generals who led the campaign against the USSR were obsessed with transferring forces from the West of Berlin to the East, in the hopes that they could forestall the Red Army and surrender to the US. In any event, the completion of the book left me free to start some more light reading the next day, namely Simon Sebag-Montefiore`s 600+ page Stalin: Court of the Red Czar and Timothy Garton Ash`s We the People: The Revolution of `89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin and Prague. This would probably be the time to mention that the best English-language bookstore in central Buenos Aires is, for whatever reason, stacked full of World War II and Cold War treatises. I could have just sucked it in and finally read The DaVinci Code, but I`m still holding out.

Because I slept late on Sunday, I didn`t sort anything out for Monday. However, I spent Monday remedying the situation, in part by organizing a diving trip on Tuesday. The woman working at the dive center "Scuba Duba" asked me if I had experience diving in cold water. When I mentioned I had dived over 20 times in the Galapagos, she immediately made it clear I would have no problem here. The water is approximately the same temperature, the same (7 mm) wetsuits are used, and the currents are not nearly as strong (whereas visibility is probably better). I was pleasantly surprised to find that the cost of two dives, including all equipment, would be just under $58. The exhorbitant price in the Galapagos had conditioned me to expect something closer to $100 as a minimum.

I stopped at various agencies to collect information on trips (perhaps on Wednesday or Thursday) to Peninsula Valdez and Punta Tumbo (home to about 500,000 penguins, more than anywhere else in the world outside of Antarctica). Then I checked into flights back to Buenos Aires because I didn`t want to waste another 20 hours heading back up north (perhaps waking up somewhere in Brazil, as well).

The rest of the day was spent reading up on Mr. Personality, Joe Stalin, as well as taking in more of the excellent seafood here. In the evening I ran into Mark and Emma, a couple (he´s South African and she`s a New Zealander, but they both live in London) I have been running into all across South America, to the point where their last e-mail to me begged me to believe that they weren`t stalking me ("You`re in Puerto Madryn now? We just got here today..."). I met them and dived with them in the Galapagos, then saw them in southern Ecuador and in Copacabana, La Paz, Rurrenabaque and Uyuni in Bolivia. I traveled with them from Uyuni down to Salta, Argentina, then ran into them again in Puerto Iguazu. Now, after receiving an e-mail on Monday afternoon, I bumped into them later in the evening in a drugstore in Patagonia. "You have excellent taste in travel itineraries," I once told them. It seems they still do. We made plans to meet for drinks the next day.

Wrapping this up at 11 PM on Monday night in an internet cafe just off of the boardwalk, I have to note again that Argentinians do not seem to need much sleep. People are out in droves, although I suppose most here are vacationing and do not need to head to work in the morning. Nonetheless, the restaurants are just beginning to fill up and the bars are just beginning to receive a few early patrons. I have a boat to catch at 9 AM, so I won`t be staying up too late, but I`m still impressed that even the smaller cities in Argentina stay up later on weeknights than cities in the US (even New York) do on weekends.