South America!!!

I’ve got a lot of ground to cover for the past month, so I’ll try to keep it different/interesting/note worthy.

Pics of Santiago, Chile are here:
Pics of the Lake District are here:
Pics of Buenos Aires are here:
Pics of Northern Argentina are here:

Chile and Crossing the Andes to Argentina

After 20 hours of traveling and 4 countries to pass through, we arrived in the Santiago Airport at 2am to find out that Americans are charged a “Reciprocity Tax” of $131 each, just for entering the country. Apparently, that’s what we charge Chileans to enter the US, so we just had to bend over and take it up the credit card. Ouch. We were unbelievably jet-lagged so we crossed the street from the Airport to the Holiday Inn, where we had reservations with my Dad and Susan the next evening, and begged them to let us have our room early. They wouldn’t give it to us, but said we could sleep on the couches in the lobby. It was a bit awkward, but we crashed on their comfy couches and around 6am were let into our rooms for a real bit of rest (probably out of sympathy for looking so pathetic). It was such a treat to final meet up with my parents, get my goody package of clothes, art supplies and cliff bars that they so generously collected and brought half way down the world. We had a fairly uneventful but interesting day exploring Santiago and trying to adjust to the new time (the sun now set after 9pm). If you ever get the chance to go to Santiago…don’t. It’s ugly and Chile has much more attractive places to go.

We got some rest and the next day flew to Puerto Monte, a 2 hour flight South, where we the sun sets even later, the lakes are plentiful and beautiful and the mountains are spectacular. Flying along the Andes was incredibly beautiful too. We got a rental car and drove to Puerto Varas, a town much like Tahoe, except there’s a huge snow covered volcano in the background. Apparently January and February is big travel time for Argentines because it’s their summer…so the crowds were plentiful and the traffic busy. In the area we got to do a few adventurous activities: a challenging but rewarding hike along the base of the volcano and white water rafting down class 3 rapids along a river nearby. A trend was set early on for us to have low lows and high highs that fluctuated frequently. For example, on the hike it was incredibly hard to find since there are no signs for trails and the Chilean accent is SO hard to understand (this was a bit depressing at first because we could barely understand people…go figure, Chile is surrounded by the Andes to the East, the Atlantic Ocean to the West, desert to the North and Antarctica to the South…so they speak a very different Spanish). Once we were on the trail it provide gorgeous views and we had this amazing bit of nature all to ourselves. Then, we are bombarded by horse flies, the last of their season (apparently there are hoards of them in January and we go the tail end). So as we forced to enjoy the incredible mountain and lake views constantly swatting at the largest and most annoying flies I have every encountered. So these intense frustrating bits allow for high contrast when they are removed and we are left with amazing views, great company, a comfortable hotel, fun activities and so on.

White water rafter was really special, and it was a blast to do it all together, especially since it was Susan’s first time. It was the perfect amount of rigor, fear of rapids, calm swimming in cool water on a hot day, and being able to soak up the pretty landscape.

That night I probably wouldn’t have appreciated my hotel room so much if I hadn’t had to sit in 2 hours of traffic for what should have been a 30 min card ride. Thus the contrast I’m talking about. Our last morning we woke up a little earlier and got on a tour bus to start what would be our most interesting, trying, beautiful, and exhausting travel day of the trip: crossing the Andes by 4 buses and 3 boats. The journey itself took 14 hours to travel from our hotel in Puerto Varas, Chile to Bariloche, Argentina. It was full of some of the best views on our entire trip and the most crowded and obnoxious traveling with way too many tourists. The frequency of highs to lows and back to highs on this day felt like something you could read of a Richter scale.

Highs include: Beautiful cascading waterfalls, many spectacular views of the snow capped Andes complete with glaciers, having a tasty lunch outside, enjoying each other’s company for the day.

Lows include: The bilingual and loquacious tour guide on the first half who wouldn’t shut up, way too many people so that every bus and boat ride we had to jockey for seats, dealing with the idiosyncrasies of two countries and a boarder crossing, watching tourists feed the seagulls crackers and avoid being pooped on, and it just being such a long day.

 

It was really interesting to see that tourists in South America are pretty much just like tourists every where else. Much of Argentina and Chile feels just like the US, only speaking Spanish. We ended the long day in Bariloche, the pinnacle city of the lake district of Argentina. Even though we didn’t arrive until 10:30pm we were just in time for dinner. The schedule in the summer, down here, is quite difficult to get used to. We didn’t start eating dinner until after 10pm or 11pm each night. I was really looking forward to the late sunsets of the south, but I actually found it really hard to get used to. It was strange to wake up late, dilly dally for the morning and then start a long hike in the afternoon, and many hours later the sun is still beating over our heads. I thought I was prepared for the sun after Central America, but I was still getting sun burned down here. He had two really nice days to spend in the Lake District. One was taking a ferry to both a unique forest of “cinnamon trees” and then to a national park on an island, where we got off the beaten track and walked around for half the day. We found a lovely beach with a chilly lake where we heated up on the rocks and quickly cooled off by jumping into the brisk water.

Argentina is known for its grass fed cows and succulent steaks, and we sure tested as many restaurants as we could to see if this was true. One of the hardest things about constantly changing countries is that the names of the food and dishes are different. We keep having to relearn what we want to order. It’s actually quite fun, when feeling adventurous, to just pick something out and see what shows up on your plate. More often than not it’s delicious.

The next day, after having lunch in too popular down town area, we took a bus to the local mountain, Cerro Otto, and then a gondola to the top. We had perfect weather and impressive views.

 

 

After walking around the top and enjoying the views, my dad and Susan took the gondola back and Erin and I walked home. It was 2 and a half hot hours in the exposed sun, and again, I would have never believed it was 7:30pm when we got home and the sun still was high in the sky and hot on my skin.

Buenos Aires

For our last leg of the journey together we took a flight to Buenos Aires. We had a driver pick us up at the airport and waiting on the steps of our luxury apartment was Mr. Dan T, my friend from San Francisco. We had planned to meet up on BA, but it was a pleasant surprise to start Day 1 with him! That day all of us explored the famous cemetery, walking distance from our place in the Recoleta district.

 

 

 

Being walking distance in BA is a true privilege. The city is enormous…when landing on our flight there all I could see in every direction was concrete. 16 million people live there. In our 4 days of exploration we only tapped a small percentage of the more popular neighborhoods. We shopped, had nice food, saw a tango show, shopped, explored funky districts, and shopped. I have to say, BA wasn’t my favorite, of course I didn’t have the insiders perspective, but on this trip Erin and I have really taken a liking to smaller and quaint towns. I did enjoy the colorful neighborhood of the trendy La Boca.

 

 

On our last day with my Dad and Susan we said our goodbyes, transferred into a hostel (which wasn’t easy) and went to a futbol match (we couldn’t get seats in the crazy and noisy section but it sure was fun). While traveling together for the past 10 days the luxury we had, when compared to what we were used to, almost felt excessive…but we sure missed it when it was gone!

 

 

 

Our last day in BA, before taking an over night bus to Cordoba, we all spent separately. Erin spent the afternoon in the botanical gardens and I went across the street to zoo. I was shocked by what I saw: everyone feeds the animals, a chimp panhandling for peanuts, sad monkeys pressed against the cage, a mother mandrill monkey carrying around it’s dead baby, a hippo mashing it’s teeth close up so I got a good look, and lastly a group of parrots all sitting on a pedestal pecking at a giant antelope leg that was given to them to eat. Now where are the pictures of all of this you ask? Sadly, our camera broke that day. I cried on the inside.

Cordoba, La Cumbre and Yaca Yura

Dan, Erin and reconvened and took the overnight bus, “cama class” - which is the more comfortable mode of traveling, and we were pretty surprised by how comfy it was (aside from being forced to watch Robbie Williams live in Berlin.

 

 

We arrived early the next morning, walked up to the ticket counter and asked for 3 tickets to the cutest and smallest town up north. We ended up 3 hours later in the town of La Cumbre. We lucked out. It was exactly what we needed, small, quaint, tourist friendly and authentically Argentine town hugging the Western Sierras in a dry and beautiful atmosphere. We found a lovely hostel run by a friendly family, complete with thousands of antiques and their own home brewed beer (DanT was happy). We took 2 days to really soak up the relaxing and beautiful atmosphere before heading to an organic farm to volunteer at. We spent one day on a serious 20km mountain bike ride where we rode to the top of a peek for a sweet look out and ended up paragliding with condors!

 

 

After the flight we hopped back on our bikes. A stinging insect flew into my mouth and stung my tongue and lip. Ouch. We rode down a steep 3 mile section to a beautiful stream where we cooled off. By this time my lip was a little swollen.

 

 

It was much harder to bike back, but it was rewarding and so much fun. By the end of the day my butt was so sore.

 

The next day we took a bus 40km north where we were let off on the side of the road, at km 103. It was such a strange experience to just be standing on the side of the road with our packs in the middle of the desert. We hiked in 3km to a small “farm” (and you’ll see why I’m using quotes in a minute). We found these guys on the WWOOF site (willing workers on organic farms). We thought doing some gardening and eating organic food in nature would be pretty special. We popped out of the sandy and cactus strewn path on an irrigated bit of land with a large overgrown garden. We were welcomed in and had a delicious lunch. The people we extremely friendly and we were pretty excited to be there. We found out pretty quickly that some thing was off. That night we went to their special yurt and did awkward chanting and circle dancing till midnight. The next morning, after a rough night’s sleep because of the stagnant air and mosquitoes, we did more circle dancing and singing before our 4 hours of labor a day. We came expecting to work, but we spent more time participating in the airy fairy hippy culture than anything else. The food started to run out and the place was in shambles. We learned that they just live off the land and the money that comes in from visitors. The farm is actually a bit of unkempt garden that sorely needed help. The irrigation of the place was stagnant, thus fostering mosquitoes. The place itself was truly beautiful, and the people who both lived there and visited were really a lot of fun to hang with. It just wasn’t a fit.

 

 

We decided to leave early, no surprise there, but had one more day of work before a day of rest (and we were psyched to enjoy the nature and walk to the neighboring village). Erin and I were able to do our work outside watering the garden. I must have stepped in a nest of biting ants, because all of a sudden my foot was covered in them and shortly after felt like it was on fire. Shortly after my foot started to swell and I felt really itchy. Really itchy. I took a shower and when I got out and looked in the mirror my face was swollen and I was a bit wheezy. It was kind of scary actually. I loaded up on Benedryl and took a nap. I felt much better afterwards but my foot was swollen for days. Our last day at the farm, named Yaca Yuri which is Quetchua for Clear Water, was a favorite. We left. We walked with our British friend, Dave, who led us 3 hours through the desert until we arrived to the super duper authentically hippy town of San Marco Sierra. We had a great lunch after jumping in the river to cool off. Afterwards we walked to the center of town, where I saw something totally new: we went to an ice cream shop and British Dave ordered a triple scoop cone. Everyone else ordered ice cream and by the time we finished ordering British Dave finished his and ordered another three scoop cone. We walked to the square a block a way and in 3 minutes he got up for another cone. We basked in the sun waiting for a shuttle to take us to the local river to go swimming. British Dave decided to just go back to the farm, but on his way out he got another 3 scoop ice cream cone! Too bad he left cause we went to one of the prettiest rivers I have ever been too. The water temperature was perfect, and there were Argentine hippies lounging in rocks. We had the afternoon to lounge and relax before getting picked up and taken back to the farm.

 

 

Walking the last 3km in the moon light was really nice. The desert has been a magical place for us, and when it’s just us in the quiet of the night it feels extra special. Our last morning we had yet another hippy circle dance and laborious chanting session before we said goodbye. A massive storm was brewing and we missed our opportunity to avoid it because we spent the morning singing and frolicking to the tune of some Hindu song. So Dan, Erin and I hid in our room will the sky opened up and dumped. We decided we couldn’t hide all morning so we got our raincoats out and changed into our bathing suits to hike back to the highway. A scorpion crawled out of Erin’s bag, and we joked that with my insect luck I should have been stung. Luckily I wasn’t. We hiked in flip flops and not much more, with our packs wrapped in plastic bags, through the torrents of flash floods that crossed through the desert. It was an incredible experience. Soggy and excited to be back on the road we took a bus south to Cordoba before taking a long 13 hour overnight bus north to the colonial town of Salta.

 

Northern Argentina

We arrived in a very damp and dreary Salta the next day. The storms covered all of Northern Argentina, leaving floods in many areas. We found a fantastic hostel with an eccentric owner hyper on mate (a tea with a stimulant like caffeine). Erin set us up on a wonderful day trip where we were picked up by a local, Francisco, who took us 30km out of the city to ride mountain bikes for the day. The area was stunning. We followed the train tracks of the now closed town “train to the clouds,” stopped at waterfalls, and walked over precarious bridges, as well as chased goats on our bikes.

 

 

 

Since the ride was a slow and steady up hill we thoroughly enjoyed the 10km down hill on the way back. We lounged in the park with Francisco and had snacks before returning home and looking for the famous coca leaves (used to make cocaine) of Bolivia. The leaves are very popular to make tea and chew on to prevent altitude sickness, prevent hunger, and to be an all around stimulant. We were remarking how the three of were traveling really well together. For being three people, Dan fit in really well without feeling too much like a third wheel. Erin and I were interested in doing different types of adventure ecotourism for the following days so we decided to split up for 2 days (first time apart!). She went on a solo tour of the mountains in the area with a guide (she’ll post about that soon), and Dan and I decided to do a sight-seeing/hiking tour of the farther north where there is more desert, mountains and the famous salt flats. We spent an exhausting afternoon searching for a 2 day private trip to take us where we wanted. We settled on a company who picked us up the next day at 7am, while Erin slept in to leave at 10am for her trip. Dan and I learned pretty quickly that the woman who sold us the trip communicated nothing about we were specifically looking for to the guide. We really wanted to do lots of trekking and the guide was prepared to take us to all the tourist spots. However, we made the best of it and saw some incredible places. Our highlight was walking through the banded and colorful mountains of Purmamarca, the blaring and stark white salt flats and the ride home to Purmamarca, where Dan and I booked a hostel, through an incredible canyon of cactus and eroded dirt and rocks.

 

(courtesy of Erin with our new camera from the bus on her way up north to meet me)

 

We had a blast speaking only in Spanish with the guide. All the amazing pics of the adventure are on Dan’s camera, so you’ll have to wait till he posts his pictures to see them. We realized we over paid for the trip so we actually abandoned our own private tour. We told the guide thanks for a great day but we’re not interested in Day 2. So we were left in the tiny and dusty village of Purmamarca. That night I saw the most impressive lightning storm of my life. Dan and I sat under a shallow awning in our raincoats watching the storm only 200 meters away blasting away at the mountain. We even saw a cactus catch on fire. The following day the bus to our destination north was sold out so we pittered around town in the drizzle for the morning before going our separate ways. Dan took the afternoon bus to eventually fly out of Buenos Aires, and I took the local bus 2 hours north to the last noteworthy northern town in Argentina, Humahuaca.

 

I had so much fun exploring and being by myself, making friends with the hostel owners, drawing the landscape, watching an impressive sunset over the white desert mountain, and eating diner alone while reading my book. I tried food I had never heard of. By the way, Llama meat is delicious. Northern Argentina’s food and traditions start to blend amount Bolivia’s. Buenos Aires is almost completely of European decent, but the north is more indigenous people. I am drawn closer to them and have been looking forward to see what Bolivia is like. Having the day alone had me be able to slow down and appreciate all that has been going on, and I really relished my personal space as well as missed Erin at the same time. The next morning we met at the bus station and hot tailed it to the Bolivian Border (watching ‘Forest Gump’ in Spanish). The ride to the border was pretty impressive too.

 

You made it! We’re currently in Bolivia. That blog will come soon.