Apart from Tim Rice’s “Don’t cry for me Argentina”, originally sung by Julie Covington and more recently Madonna, I hadn’t come across too many popular songs that make reference to the second largest country in South America. Admittedly it wasn’t a subject I had spent much time thinking about. Although if I had, I would have probably known about the Jimmy Buffett song playing on the radio as I drove to London Heathrow’s Terminal 5.
“we’ll be rocking in Ushuai, it’s a party at the end, you simply must attend, the party at the end of the world”
I had every intention of attending. This was only my second trip to the southern hemisphere and my first to South America. It was hard to believe I was on my way to Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego to fish for Sea Trout on the Rio Grande arguably the best river for Sea Trout fishing on the planet. P A A A R T Y!!
Heathrow to My ultimate destination would take 30 hours and comprise a flight to Buenos Aires, an over night stay, an internal flight to the worlds most southernly city, Ushuaia and then a 4 hour drive to the famous Kau Tapen lodge where hopefully I’d have the party of a life time.
Kau Tapen a welcome sign
I can’t deny I was slightly apprehensive about visiting Argentina, as I am about most countries where there has been some kind of fracas with England. I accept there aren’t many places in the world where this isn’t the case, but the Falkland Islands invasion and the hand of god incident were real events in my life time. Furthermore, Argentina has been a popular emigration destiny for the Scottish for quite sometime and we all know how well the English and the Scottish get on.
Ironically it was two Scots that inspired me to make this trip. The first being John Goodhall a Scottish immigrant and manager of the sheep farming Menendez Estate. The story goes that in the 1930′s Mr Goodhall took it upon himself to release some Brown Trout fingerlings into the Rio Grande for the purpose of establishing a Brown Trout population. Fishing romantics may like to think it was about creating the opportunity to fly fish again. Personally, I think it was more to do with being sick and tired of his Donor Kebab diet. Little did he know that his aspiration for an alternative evening meal would create what would become one of the greatest Sea Trout rivers of all time.
The second Scot is Paul Young. Actor, one time Radio Scotland Pirate Radio DJ and presenter of the BAFTA award winning “Hooked On” fishing series. It was whilst watching his Latin Sea Trout Lovers episode that the balance tipped between that would be nice to do, to I’ve absolutely got to go and do this. Two maxed out credit cards later and I was on my next fishing adventure.
BA0247 took off on Thursday evening just before 10.00pm and arrived in Buenos Aires mid morning on Friday following a one hour stop off in San Salvador, Brazil.
The stop over gave us a chance to stretch our legs and it wasn’t long before the “fishdar” kicked in (fishdar: the supposed ability of a person, especially a fisherman, to sense whether or not someone else is a fisherman). Two seats back were a couple of Guy’s on their way to fly fish for Dorado. We talked a load of bollocks (as you do) about each others fishing exploits, wished each other tight lines and before long we had taken off again and landed in Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires Architecture
Buenos Aires architecture
Our 20 minute journey to our hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, was pretty painless thanks to the local agent, Sabrina. Our route took us past the famous River Plate football stadium and through an eclectic architectural mix where you could be forgiven for thinking you were either in Barcelona, Paris, Madrid or the New York Bronx.
We stayed at the Loi Suites Recoleta hotel in the exclusive Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires adjacent to the famous La Recoleta Cemetery which contains the graves of important Argentines, such as Eva Perón, Raúl Alfonsín, and several other presidents of Argentina. It’s difficult to fault this hotel, it’s clean, courteous and efficient if not a touch pretentious. It’s not an expensive hotel. Applying the gin and tonic price test, we were charged 30 Argentinian Pesos (ARS) about £4.88 (GBP) or $7.62 (USD) for a G&T including the requisite ice and a slice.
Las Nazarenas an authentic Asador
With our flight to Ushuaia early next morning we decided a good lunch was called for. With more luck than judgement our taxi dropped us outside Las Nazarenas. Now I’ve eaten at several top notch steakhouses in both New York and London but they really do pale into insignificance compared with Las Nazarenas. Why? First and foremost the restaurant was an authentic Asador, or grill bar, where your steak is expertly cooked on a spit over a fire actually in the restaurant. The moment we walked in the door the staff were welcoming, friendly and attentive and we were instantly taken by the wonderfully relaxed atmosphere. A further plus was discovering Las Nazarenas extensive wine cellar which housed more than 900 Argentinian wines. We were encouraged to take a tour of the cellar and had all of our questions answered in excellent English. To this day my red wine preference is for the Malbec grape grown in Argentinas Mendoza region, it is absolutely superb. Two significant steaks, with starters, sweet and a couple of cracking bottles of Malbec was $556 Argentinian Pesos, about ninety quid or one hundred and forty dollars.
The reliable Sabrina was waiting for us in reception early next morning with our transport to the airport. The true value of the local agent role was demonstrated on this morning. Another group who were also flying to Ushuaia but on an earlier flight had made their own travel arrangements. They were panicking as their transport hadn’t turned up and were in the process of attempting to bribe the driver of our transport to take their party instead of us. Neither any member of this group or the driver were any match for Sabrina who promptly dealt with the situation with a magnificent bout of traditional latin arm waving accompanied with a mixture of Argentinian and English expletives. Our luggage was quickly loaded by the driver as we pondered at least for a nano second whether to offer a lift to our fellow travellers. The consensus was no, but we were courteous enough to wave them goodbye as we departed the hotel. Harvey Smith would have been proud of us.
Organising transport in Buenos Aires is a breeze compared with the complexity of navigating the ticketing and boarding process of a domestic flight with Aerolineas Argentina. The departure gates was a million miles away from check-in and as far as I can tell in a completely different building, possibly town. Not a problem when you have a Sabrina though, otherwise a potential nightmare. Reasonably relaxed we were on our way to Ushuaia and the Kau Tapen Lodge.
For those with knowledge of such matters, yes there is an airport closer to Kau Tapen than Ushuaia. It is in Rio Grande City. Most fishermen will fly to this airport and we would have done too. However, as it was February, summer in the Southern Hemisphere and a popular time for visiting the region, all flights to Rio Grande (RGA) were fully booked. Consequently the next nearest (only other) airport was Ushuaia (USH).
Looking down on the Ushuaia Malvinas Argentinas International Airport or in Spanish the Aeropuerto Internacional de Ushuaia – Malvinas (yes everything in this neck of the woods was branded Malvinas) Argentinas, you just sense frontier. It is the gateway to the Anartica. With the Martial Mountain range to the north, the Beagle Channel to the south and several Antartica supply ships in the bay, it shouts remoteness. The fact that you are 8,313 miles from London registers hard and all that seems to be missing is Captain Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctica) and or Ernest Henry Shackleton feeding the packs of Huskeys that loiter on nearly every street corner.
We had arrived at a time of heightened sensitivity as a British company, Desire Petroleum PLC, had commenced a programme of exploratory drilling around the Falkland Islands. Understandably this had pissed off the Argentine Government and consequently security had been increased. Although difficult to comprehend my fishing rods must have been mistaken as either weapons of mass destruction or illegally imported oil drill bits as the padlocks on my bag had been cut off and the zips on the bag left open. Having got over the initial fear of something missing, I got a little angry as the padlocks were of the TAS type (designed to be removed and replaced by airport security staff without knowing the lock combination).
After approximately three and a half hours and a 150 mile drive I was pretty glad to see our ultimate destination, the Kau Tapen Lodge. It wasn’t so much the length of the journey, moreover, I had annoyingly got a line of Dusty Springfield’s song “In the middle of nowhere” stuck in my head and couldn’t remember the rest of the lyrics. Prompted every few minutes by the bland scenery it became quite tedious.
The other guests were out fishing by the time we arrived. So after a quick slurp of more wonderful Malbec, it was only a matter of minutes before we were sufficiently unpacked, in our waders and rigged up for our first session on the famous Rio Grande.
High and coloured water not ideal
It was blowing an absolute gale, at least a Force 8. The water was high and was already coloured. The prospects of catching a fish of a life time and having a party at the end of the world seemed as far away as my family and home. It got worse, the guide turned his nose up at all my specially bought Tierra del Fuego Sea Trout flies that had cost a small fortune and had been recommended by the specialist angling travel company that we had booked the trip with. I begun to wonder whether they had any idea, whether they had actually fished here themselves. It was confirmed as most unlikely when I attempted to cast my 10 weight Helios into a wind that even Lefty Kreh would struggle with. The travel company literature had suggested that a single handed rod would be fine. Thankfully the guide knew better and had bought a ready rigged double handed rod with him. 10 minutes later I had learnt to Spey cast well enough to get the (guides) fly covering the water. There’s a moral here and that is don’t rely on travel company information. The truth is they probably don’t know, or their information is out of date, too general, or simply just made up.
The Rio Grande at dusk
Dinner that evening and every evening was around 11.00pm. Yes, very late for most Brits but it was okay once in the routine. Thankfully the day started with a first class breakfast at about 9.00am. The first fishing session of the day began around 10.00am and ended at 1.00pm with a Michelin star quality lunch (in my opinion).
The lodge staff, guides and some of the guests retired for siesta after lunch. Initially I couldn’t get my head around why anybody would want to miss out on 3 or 4 daylight hours of fishing. In fact on day 2 I’m glad I did ignore siesta as I caught the biggest Sea Trout of my life. However, on day 3 the river was to coloured to fish, so I too took to my bed for siesta. I then realised that having a kip for about 3 hours each afternoon really works. In fact there are times now whilst in the office in the UK that I wish I could just the same. After tea and cakes about 4.30pm we were back out and reenergised for the main fishing session of the day.
Another Rio Grande Sea Trout
At dinner we joined our fellow guests to discuss the day’s fishing and share our fishing stories. We were an eclectic bunch from a variety of backgrounds and countries although predominantly the US and UK. Included in our ranks a retired senior US secret service operative, the grandson of a famous author, two brain surgeons, a retired British sheep farmer who lived in Australia, an English Estate Agent owner and an English CEO in the IT industry living in California.
Henrik Mortenson, a highly regarded Salmon and Sea Trout fisherman was also at the lodge. Henrik was there to film his sixth DVD, Patterns of Patagonia. Unfortunately his film crew had struggled to get a flight from Buenos Aires and didn’t arrive until the middle of the week causing a delay to the filming schedule.
The Kau Tapen Lodge
For a wooden hut “in the middle of nowhere” (there’s that bloody Dusty Springfield song again) we were very warm, extremely comfortable and very well equipped including WiFi through a satellite internet connection. The staff were excellent, unbelievably helpful and provided a quality professional service spoken with good english. The Chef in particular would warrant a return trip just for the food he produced.
Head guide Max with fellow guest
Guides were rotated over the week with a different guide at each session. Head guide was Max, a Russian, who seemed to spend his life guiding at one lodge or another around the world. Good company, extremely knowledgable and a passionate fishermen and like many Russians enjoyed a drop of vodka now and again. Having succeeded in getting him a little, shall we say tipsy, one night, we also witnessed extraordinary powers of recovery. Most of the guides were good, with some better company than others, but without doubt they were all characters and added to the enjoyment of the trip. I shall never forget being in the back of a 4X4 being driven at break neck speeds on a dirt road in the Patagonia with AC DC’s Highway to Hell being played at full blast – surreal.
The Tierra del Fuego sky at night
All to soon our week at Kau Tapen was over and it was time to pack, say goodbye to our fishing companions and the wonderful Kau Tapen lodge staff.
We weren’t really prepared for the “extra” bill at the end of our stay. First you have to pay for the flies provided by the guides, which are about $5 each and then the expected tip. The policy at Kau Tapen is that you don’t tip individuals, you pay one tip that is shared amongst all the staff and guides. The expectation is $500 per week. This as you can imagine caused quite a discussion amongst the other guests, especially our American colleagues who normally wouldn’t pay nowhere as much when fishing for Cutthroat.
On a more positive note I wasn’t required to pay for, or contribute to the replacement of the borrowed G Loomis rod that broke when my fly smashed against it. Although I more than paid for the rod at the departure lounge at Ushuaia airport having bought two plates of chips and four beers. Bloody outrageous tourist tax, so much so I’m to embarrassed to say how much it was.
And then following our internal flight to Buenos Aires a stop over in a nondescript hotel and our flight back to London we were back home, 7.30am Sunday morning.
My largest ever Sea Trout
Did I have my party at the end of the world? You bet. Argentinean, people, food and wine are amongst the best in the world. I caught some massive fish and I have the memories, photos and a new favourite song about Argentina to boot.
“There’s a place you can go called Tierra del Fuego, down in the southern hemisphere, It’s kinda Troy without Helen, past the straits of Magellan, things are always looking up down here.”
Party at the End of the World lyrics by Jimmy Buffett from the album Take the Weather with You. Songwriters: Jimmy Buffett, Peter Hagen Mayer, Roger Edwin Guth, William Adams Kimbrough
