Notes from a Babymoon aka a leave-baby-at-home vacation

Editor’s Note: Blogger Amod Chopra writes a letter to his little one upon taking a “babymoon” as opposed to a honeymoon. That means baby stays with grandma while mom and dad get to spend some quality time in some lovely location, in this case, Argentina. Except the thing is you never really leave baby behind.

Hola Karam,

Mummy and I finally took our babymoon. We also found out why one doesn’t take a babymoon after the baby is born.

Well Babyo, Buenos Aires was my romantico. We slept in every day. We had, after all, left our precious little alarm clock with grandma. We spent the nights hanging out at cafes and restaurants. No bottle of Malbec was safe from us.

It is all about the beef here. If I was a chicken, I would move to Buenos Aires. Which part of the cow would you like? Excuse me, do you have a Hindu vegetarian meal? No, no, the ensalada is for the Hombre moderno and the carne is for the Chica.

We visited the Recoletta cemetery where Eva Peron is buried. Everybody calls it a must-see. I thought it was a bit creepy. I did mention it was a cemetery, right? The mausoleums are so ornate and grandiose. Did I mention it was a cemetery? Must be the Hindu in me. We don’t hang out at cemeteries!

We spent the second week in Patagonia at El Calafate, where the glaciers are awesome. You would hear this large thunderous noise and then see a section of the ice falling off the glacier, into the water. We put on these clamp like shoes and went trekking on the Glacier Perito Moreno. The ice was a lot harder than it looked. We managed to keep up with all the youngsters on this two-hour trek across a part of the glacier, well mostly. We were walking like ducks, because of sore calves, for the next four days.

Next stop was Peninsula Valdes. The whale watching here was amazing. One of the whales did come right up to the boat. She was huge, and this was the baby. She blew out her spout and I had whale snot all over me.

The last day in Patagonia was spent in the Penguin colony. Now, Patagonia is known as a giant wind tunnel, one of the windiest places on Earth. It has strong winds over 300 days of the year. Something to do with the thermal contrast between the South Pole and the Equator. On this day, the wind was blowing at 50-60 kmph. When I would put a foot forward, all 90 kilos of me would be thrown off balance. Your mummy, half my weight, pulled a rib muscle resisting the wind. The next few days I was forbidden from joking.

The penguins, so many of them, were all hunkered down in their holes looking up at me trying to photograph them. Their cute walk reminded me of you when you try to run around the dining table in your little diaper. Clumsy, unsteady, looking like you are about to fall, but so adorable.

Karmito, Iguazu was amazing. Way more impressive than Niagara falls. These falls are in the middle of a jungle. There are huge rock outcroppings and canyons with waterfalls at many different levels and of course, the jungle battling to take back over. We got on a little train and both mummy and I said “Karam Choo Choo” and got misty-eyed.

Good thing you are fair-skinned and light-eyed, Karam. You would fit in here. Unlike the rest of South America, the population is not mixed at all. The real reason why is that during the wars, the black slaves were sent to the frontline first. Locals try to explain it as years of inter-mixing. Please!

I must say that we missed you to pieces. I have begun a countdown as to how many hours before I see you and cover you with kisses. I have shown your picture on my phone to everybody who is willing to see it. Mummy has had to hold me back from kissing other people’s children on the street.

Mummy doesn’t show it but she misses you almost as much as me. She follows me around all day asking me if I need this or that. She keeps pulling out these baby wipes and handing them to me. I had to draw the line at her wiping my mouth after a messy meal. Baby-O, no more vacations with Mummy without you.

Daddy