In some ways, the last two weeks of the trip were the most exotic of all. We had to figure out a way to get back to Nicaragua and we didn't want to fly. Machu Picchu ended up being the last official "place" we visited. From there we wanted to go to Iquitos in Northern Peru, but were told we would have to take a bus to Lima first to get there. Well, I looked on a map and saw that there was a road from Cusco to Yurimaguas, and then there was a boat that went from Yurimaguas to Iquitos. Iquitos is the largest city in the world that you cannot reach by road! So, even though we were told that we couldn't do it, I was determined to find a way.
In order to get to Yurimaguas, we had to take a bus from small city to small city. Each time we reached a city, we were told that there were no buses to the next one. But, we always searched around and we would find a bus! We went from Cusco to Ayacucho, to Huancayo, to Huanuco, to Tingo Maria to Tarapoto to Yurimaguas!!! It took a week, but we did the impossible! We went directly from Cusco by bus to Yurimaguas without going to Lima!
When we arrived in Yurimaguas at 11 am, we went to the pier and discovered that there was a cargo ship leaving for Iquitos in one hour! I had read that we needed to have our own hammocks, bowls and spoons. So we quickly ran around with a moto taxi driver to get what we needed and we got right on the cargo ship! It is an interesting ride. We went to the top level of the boat (there are 3 levels, the bottom for cargo, the next level for people and the top level for people). We were now in the Amazon and it was VERY hot, so we decided to go to the top level where we thought it would be a little cooler. Each person brings a hammock and hangs them up across the deck. If there are a lot of people like on this boat, the hammocks are practically on top of each other! This boat also had a room with a big table where you could eat or play cards with other tourists, which is what we did. But most of the people on the boat were from Peru, Bolivia or Brazil. The food was terrible. One night we had white rice and pasta. No sauce of any kind. Just white rice and pasta. We hadn't brought any food with us because we were told that food was provided, but we didn't realize just how bad the food would be. We met tourists from Israel, Australia, Belgium and Holland and we had a lot of great conversations and we spent the evenings teaching each other new card games.
We arrived in Iquitos, which is a large city and expensive because everything has to be brought in by ship or plane. We ended up finding a pretty reasonable hotel, but it looked like Dracula's castle! Our plan was to go from this city to Ecuador by cargo boat, then take a bus through Colombia to its border with Panama, cross over by foot and then get a bus or a plane to Panama City. However, when we went to the Colombian Embassy the next day, we were told by the Embassy that under NO circumstances should a person with an American passport attempt to cross that border! WAY TOO DANGEROUS! I figured if the Embassy was telling us that about their own border, it must be true. But I was bummed, because I wanted to do that and write about it afterwards since it seemed that no Americans had ever done it! The Embassy said that the border there is not really officially open (because of the danger of guerillas, drug traffickers, and crazies) and that you actually have to contract with a Panamanian "Coyote" to take you across! And they said the Panama side was just as dangerous! So now we had no choice but to go from Iquitos to Leticia, Colombia and then FLY to Panama City! Iquitos was an interesting place and had fruits and vegetables in their market that neither Josue or I had ever seen! We were looking for two things to try. Bat soup and the famous white worms that you've all seen on the Discovery Channel. We didn't find the soup, but we DID find the worms! They weren't really worms..more like big white maggots with their eyes still attached! You could eat them live, baked, or grilled. We chose grilled just because those looked better than the others. And forget eating them live! I ate three, Josue had two. They tasted OK (and not like chicken). We were proud of ourselves. Then...about 15 minutes later, our minds started working and waged a big battle with our stomachs. "What? You ate worms?" our minds said. "Yeah, they were OK, stop bothering me" said stomachs. "Ewww...worms....think about it" our minds continued. And it wasn't too long before we were both feeling kind of sick. Mind over matter they say.
To get from Iquitos to Leticia, we took another cargo ship, this time right down the AMAZON! It was amazing.....the Amazon is so wide and surprisingly, the water was brown, as it was in most of South America! Funny, I had a different picture of it in my mind. This time the ship was smaller than the other one, but they packed just as many people on! We spent our days and nights sitting in our hammocks, reading,Josue played the guitar, etc. The only tourists we met on this ship was a young couple from New York and Boston. Katlyn and Reed spent the next couple of days with us once we got to Leticia. Leticia is in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and the temperature was 115 degrees and 100% humidity! Almost too hot for me! Katlyn had a hard time the next morning when she fainted at breakfast! She hadn't been feeling too well for the two previous days and was severely dehydrated. Without an appetite and the hot weather draining her even further, she ended up spending the day in the hospital where several IV drips put her back in great shape! We went to a lake that they said had very cold water. Couldn't believe that anything would be cold there, but it was true!!!! It was actually part of the river but at this particular point, the water was very cold and a welcome relief to the hot, hot weather! We never found out how the shallow water could be so cold! We had a great piranha dinner one night and I won $45 USD at the casino and just spent $2 USD! Since we were in such an exotic place, I thought it interesting that they sold poison dart blow guns, so I got one as a souvenir. The natives here (we didn't see any) put needles through their cheeks as adornments.
The flight from Leticia to Panama City was interesting. It consisted of three flights. The first one went to Bogota, where we had to spend the night. The second flew to Caragena, where we had to spend the entire day. Not too bad, because we went to the old section of town, where we had fun eating sushi (yep! every now and then I get a craving for sushi!) and walked around. We were supposed to meet Katlyn and Reed here, but it didn't work out. Also, I wish I had had Tia Monica's number, but that was stolen along with all my other phone numbers and we couldn't call her. That night we flew to Panama City.
The next day we went to the Costa Rican Embassy to get a visa for Josue so he could take the bus back through Panama to Costa Rica to Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the nasty immigration people of Costa Rica would not give him a visa for the 5 hours it would take for him to pass through Costa Rica by bus! So he had to fly back to Managua and I took the two-day bus trip alone. But it was fine.
And now I'm back in San Juan del Sur, happy to be here. My house is rented right now, so I am renting a room in town in someone's house for the time being. I arrived on Sunday, which was mother's day in Nicaragua, and ran into Loli and Yader and Loli's family and we spent some time together with Donna and then went to Crazy Crab dancing! Finally I'm back in a country where they play the music I like and there are always people to dance with. After my fabulous GREAT SOUTH AMERICAN TRIP, I still like my Nicaragua, Nicaraguita best! Hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did!!!! To view photos of this section, click HERE.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Machu Picchu
Hello
This blog is different. I will let the photos speak for themselves. Every one of us has a special place we want to visit in our lifetimes. Well, Machu Picchu was mine, the number one place I wanted to see. It was overwhelming after I walked up the 2000 steps at 4 am in the dark by myself and crossed through the entrance and saw this magnificent city there before me. There really aren´t words. So...I hope you enjoy the photos and can get even the tiniest sense of how I felt to be here. Click HERE to see the photos.
Bonnie
This blog is different. I will let the photos speak for themselves. Every one of us has a special place we want to visit in our lifetimes. Well, Machu Picchu was mine, the number one place I wanted to see. It was overwhelming after I walked up the 2000 steps at 4 am in the dark by myself and crossed through the entrance and saw this magnificent city there before me. There really aren´t words. So...I hope you enjoy the photos and can get even the tiniest sense of how I felt to be here. Click HERE to see the photos.
Bonnie
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Bolivia Part 2: The Demonstration, the Death Road, La Paz again and Lake Titicaca
Last blog I left you off in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia. We were about to head to Coroico to enjoy that beautiful Andes city AND ride down the most DANGEROUS ROAD IN THE WORLD, also known as Bolivia´s famous Death Road. But, unbeknownst to us at the time...we were set to be on a real adventure..before ever reaching the Death Road. We got on a bus that was going to Coroico. At 7 pm, the bus suddenly stopped. The driver told us there was some kind of demonstration and we would have to stop there and sleep in the bus that night. Other buses and trucks were coming up to this point and also had to stop. After all, some people had cut down trees and they were now laying across the road! In the morning we learned that this demonstration could last three to five days!!!! We were parked in the road where there was one (not so nice) outhouse and a couple little shops that sold soda, crackers, cookies, etc. I certainly did not want to stay there! Josué and I were the only tourists on the bus. We decided to walk to the next town, about 5 miles away. It was raining lightly, the dirt road was now muddy and slippery, and we were carrying heavy packs and the guitar. We passed the groups of people in the road where they congregated at the places where trees had been dropped to stop traffic. But at this point, we didn´t know what the demonstration was about. When we reached the town of Caranavi, a taxi driver told us that he couldn´t take us the rest of the way to Coroico...he could just take us as far as the next blockade (about 3 miles). As the taxi crossed the bridge and approached the blockade where many people were milling around, we were shocked to see a bunch of them running toward us. Suddenly, eight men were attacking our taxi...rocking it back and forth. They hauled the driver out of the car and started beating him with sticks and whips and rocks! Well, I was scared! We jumped out of the taxi, not knowing quite what to do. A well-dressed Bolivian man told us to come with him. We ran....and I unfortunately left my beautiful guitar in the taxi, along with the walking stick Mario had made me on our jungle tour! But the guitar is not worth my getting hurt! The Bolivian man took us under his wing and told us to walk fast past the blockade, without looking or speaking to anyone. He found a truck full of indigenous people in the back..the kind of truck made of wooden slats so you can´t see into it very well. He told the people to let us get up in the truck with them. Some said no. He said we were in danger and we were tourists so please let us up and they did. Within a minute, four Israelis also jumped up on the truck and we were off. A little way down the road, the truck was stopped and someone yelled, Are there any people from the United States on that truck? The people told me to duck down so they couldn´t see my red hair and said no. And they let the truck go. When we got to the next blockade, we found out that there were no more taxis going between the blockades because people were starting to get violent..obviously they were angry that the taxi drivers were helping people travel down the road. So we had to walk VERY FAST with our packs about 20 miles to get to a town in another province that was not involved in the strike. And we found out what the strike was about. The government had announced that they were going to build a large citrus factory in one city. Another city was angry because the wanted the citrus factory! So they blocked the road (there´s only one) between the two cities, exactly where we were headed! We finally made it to Coroico, dead tired and hurting. We were rewarded by staying at a hotel another tourist had suggested...it was on the top of a smaller mountain, but this mountain was nestled within the Andes...with mountains surrounding the town that were 6,000 meters high! The views, the smell of jasmine, the colonial town of Coroico...it was all so beautiful. Again, a room was just $11 USD. Private cabins at the very top of the property were about $35 USD!
The next day we chose to go back to La Paz via the Death Road. There is no longer public transportation on that road as the government has fixed most of it and there is now a super highway from Coroico to La Paz (about 2 hours). So we had to get a taxi driver to take us. I think that the road will be closed to all traffic very soon, so we were glad to get a 50 mile glimpse of it. It´s hard to explain, but some parts of the road are only 6 feet wide. So in the past, when two vehicles met that had to pass, one of the vehicles had to back up to a wider spot so they could do it. Again, no railings and when it rained chunks of the road would just disintegrate and fall. Though I remember riding in a bus near Banos, Ecuador on a road just as bad years ago (Ecuador has also upgraded all of its old roads), Wikipedia and all other sources said this road in Bolivia is the worst. Unfortunately, two-dimensional photographs don´t quite show you what we were seeing from the car. There is now the extreme sport of bicycling down the road which many tourists are foolish enough to do. With the roads twists and turns and slippery mud, you can go off the edge in a heartbeat...and many have! Riding in a taxi was scary enough for me! Our taxi almost hit one poor biker. Her riding tour group had been told to always ride on the right, so when they were going down fast, they would be on the mountain side. Unfortunately, the traffic on that road drives on the left side by law. So..imagine, she was coming down on the right and we were going up on the left and we got to the same 90· curve at the same time. Well she saw us, panicked, lost control of her bike and fell off, bringing the bike with her. Luckily for her, she slid toward the mountain instead of away from it. A 4-foot slide toward the edge would have been the END of her! So we did the Death Road. But wait ´till you read the next blog, about the Andes roads in Peru! I think Wikipedia and the rest need to designate a new road the Death Road. More about that later.
We got back to La Paz and our same hotel in the Witch´s Market (the hotel was holding all of our stuff while we went to the jungle) and we felt the altitude slightly. We were both fine with the altitude during the entire trip although we noted it when we walked fast. I had decided to look for musical instruments and I wanted to replace the guitar I had lost in the taxi at the demonstration. We found a wonderful music store and I got a great deal on a guitar, a zampoña (pan flutes), and a quena (another type of flute). They also had a new percussion instrument I had not seen before, and since I hope to continue playing percussion with the bands in San Juan del Sur, I got that too. Josué also bought a guitar...they are so cheap here! We ran into some tourists that Josué had met (Cedric from Germany and Alisa from Chicago) while he was in Uyuni and I was on the salt flats tour and enjoyed llama curry that night with them in an Indian restaurant they found. We were fortunate to be able to enjoy some Afro-Bolivian music at another restaurant they knew about, and finally after midnight, we went to a disco that played LATIN MUSIC!! Hooray! We have been going out to the peñas too, these are like restaurant-coffee houses where they have folkloric dancing and singing shows. They are wonderful...colorful and happy with Andes music and extravagant costumes. The next night Josué and I went dancing to another disco that was fun too! Hooray...good dancing two nights in a row!
We spent a couple more days in La Paz doing this and that. I want to report that I used Bolivia´s socialized medicine system to have a minor eye operation and was very pleased! Apparently a month earlier I had had an eye infection that I didn´t know about or ignored and suddenly an abscess grew on my eye! As it was getting bigger and it was pretty painful, I went to the EYE hospital. That´s right...they have a public hospital that is only for eyes. To make a long story short, the doctor (a woman about 25 years old) told me they had to rem ove it and I went and had a 30-minute operation. I won´t go into details about the operation and how anesthetics like novacaine and the like don´t work very well on redheads and make a big difference if they are not working during an operation), but let´s just say she did the operation and it seems that I´m fine now! Tourists and Bolivians are treated and charged alike. I paid $1.50 USD for the doctor consultation and a whopping $5.50 USD for the operation!!! Except for the waiting, which was about two and a half hours (I´ve waited just as long for a doctor in the U.S. when I had an appointment!), everything went OK. As soon as the Doc gave me the OK (I had to go back for a follow-up), we headed for Lake Titicaca.
We took the bus from La Paz to a town called Copacabana, which is a lovely little pueblo nestled in the mountains overlooking the lake. We immediately signed up for the ferry to Lake Titicaca early the next morning. (Josué only had a 30-day visa in Bolivia, and we had already been there for 28 days, so we had to leave the country. I was given a 5-year visa, but I had to pay $135.00 USD for it- Josué´s was FREE.) We went to Isla del Sol, where the Inca civilization began. I even got to touch the SACRED ROCK of the Inca´s, where the sun god first appeared. We had a good group on the ferry and became acquainted with a couple from Buenos Aires, a woman from China, and another woman from France named Corine (you´ll hear more about her later). We walked from one end of the island to the other (8 kilometers) in the heat of the day, at about 3800 meters in the hot, hot sun. Even though we were approximately 12,467 feet high, it was HOT! It was a lovely walk, where we got to see the famous Lake Titicaca (highest navigable lake in the world) from all sorts of vistas. A vivid blue, the lake provies a sharp contrast to the mountains, especially the ones that are snow-capped. We spent the whole day hiking, looking at the Inca ruins, talking with our new friends, sharing maté tea, and having a wonderful time.
We got back to Copacabana in the early evening and were out of cash. Unfortunately for us, there were no ATMs in the city and the banks were closed. But we had to eat dinner!!! Was there a restaurant in town that took credit cards? Only one, one of the better ones in town. That´s OK! We already had our bus tickets for that night, so we just needed to eat. We walked in and said YES, they DID take credit cards, but their chef never showed up and right now they only had drinks. When would the chef be coming, we asked. In about an hour….it´s happy hour. Why don´t you wait and have drinks? No problem we said. After about 3 capirinhas each (Brazilian drink….rum, lime juice, sugar and soda)and 3 hours later, and still no chef, we noticed that they were making ice cream crepes for people. We´ll take two of those ice cream crepes, thanks, we said. Just after eating those, the chef showed up and we ordered chicken soup for dinner. What a strange last dinner in Bolivia! It was all good though.
That night we hopped onto an overnight bus to go to Cusco and then Machu Picchu, which had recently re-opened after the horrible flooding in February at the beginning of our trip. Peru….here we come….AGAIN!!!!! To see photos for this section, click HERE.
The next day we chose to go back to La Paz via the Death Road. There is no longer public transportation on that road as the government has fixed most of it and there is now a super highway from Coroico to La Paz (about 2 hours). So we had to get a taxi driver to take us. I think that the road will be closed to all traffic very soon, so we were glad to get a 50 mile glimpse of it. It´s hard to explain, but some parts of the road are only 6 feet wide. So in the past, when two vehicles met that had to pass, one of the vehicles had to back up to a wider spot so they could do it. Again, no railings and when it rained chunks of the road would just disintegrate and fall. Though I remember riding in a bus near Banos, Ecuador on a road just as bad years ago (Ecuador has also upgraded all of its old roads), Wikipedia and all other sources said this road in Bolivia is the worst. Unfortunately, two-dimensional photographs don´t quite show you what we were seeing from the car. There is now the extreme sport of bicycling down the road which many tourists are foolish enough to do. With the roads twists and turns and slippery mud, you can go off the edge in a heartbeat...and many have! Riding in a taxi was scary enough for me! Our taxi almost hit one poor biker. Her riding tour group had been told to always ride on the right, so when they were going down fast, they would be on the mountain side. Unfortunately, the traffic on that road drives on the left side by law. So..imagine, she was coming down on the right and we were going up on the left and we got to the same 90· curve at the same time. Well she saw us, panicked, lost control of her bike and fell off, bringing the bike with her. Luckily for her, she slid toward the mountain instead of away from it. A 4-foot slide toward the edge would have been the END of her! So we did the Death Road. But wait ´till you read the next blog, about the Andes roads in Peru! I think Wikipedia and the rest need to designate a new road the Death Road. More about that later.
We got back to La Paz and our same hotel in the Witch´s Market (the hotel was holding all of our stuff while we went to the jungle) and we felt the altitude slightly. We were both fine with the altitude during the entire trip although we noted it when we walked fast. I had decided to look for musical instruments and I wanted to replace the guitar I had lost in the taxi at the demonstration. We found a wonderful music store and I got a great deal on a guitar, a zampoña (pan flutes), and a quena (another type of flute). They also had a new percussion instrument I had not seen before, and since I hope to continue playing percussion with the bands in San Juan del Sur, I got that too. Josué also bought a guitar...they are so cheap here! We ran into some tourists that Josué had met (Cedric from Germany and Alisa from Chicago) while he was in Uyuni and I was on the salt flats tour and enjoyed llama curry that night with them in an Indian restaurant they found. We were fortunate to be able to enjoy some Afro-Bolivian music at another restaurant they knew about, and finally after midnight, we went to a disco that played LATIN MUSIC!! Hooray! We have been going out to the peñas too, these are like restaurant-coffee houses where they have folkloric dancing and singing shows. They are wonderful...colorful and happy with Andes music and extravagant costumes. The next night Josué and I went dancing to another disco that was fun too! Hooray...good dancing two nights in a row!
We spent a couple more days in La Paz doing this and that. I want to report that I used Bolivia´s socialized medicine system to have a minor eye operation and was very pleased! Apparently a month earlier I had had an eye infection that I didn´t know about or ignored and suddenly an abscess grew on my eye! As it was getting bigger and it was pretty painful, I went to the EYE hospital. That´s right...they have a public hospital that is only for eyes. To make a long story short, the doctor (a woman about 25 years old) told me they had to rem ove it and I went and had a 30-minute operation. I won´t go into details about the operation and how anesthetics like novacaine and the like don´t work very well on redheads and make a big difference if they are not working during an operation), but let´s just say she did the operation and it seems that I´m fine now! Tourists and Bolivians are treated and charged alike. I paid $1.50 USD for the doctor consultation and a whopping $5.50 USD for the operation!!! Except for the waiting, which was about two and a half hours (I´ve waited just as long for a doctor in the U.S. when I had an appointment!), everything went OK. As soon as the Doc gave me the OK (I had to go back for a follow-up), we headed for Lake Titicaca.
We took the bus from La Paz to a town called Copacabana, which is a lovely little pueblo nestled in the mountains overlooking the lake. We immediately signed up for the ferry to Lake Titicaca early the next morning. (Josué only had a 30-day visa in Bolivia, and we had already been there for 28 days, so we had to leave the country. I was given a 5-year visa, but I had to pay $135.00 USD for it- Josué´s was FREE.) We went to Isla del Sol, where the Inca civilization began. I even got to touch the SACRED ROCK of the Inca´s, where the sun god first appeared. We had a good group on the ferry and became acquainted with a couple from Buenos Aires, a woman from China, and another woman from France named Corine (you´ll hear more about her later). We walked from one end of the island to the other (8 kilometers) in the heat of the day, at about 3800 meters in the hot, hot sun. Even though we were approximately 12,467 feet high, it was HOT! It was a lovely walk, where we got to see the famous Lake Titicaca (highest navigable lake in the world) from all sorts of vistas. A vivid blue, the lake provies a sharp contrast to the mountains, especially the ones that are snow-capped. We spent the whole day hiking, looking at the Inca ruins, talking with our new friends, sharing maté tea, and having a wonderful time.
We got back to Copacabana in the early evening and were out of cash. Unfortunately for us, there were no ATMs in the city and the banks were closed. But we had to eat dinner!!! Was there a restaurant in town that took credit cards? Only one, one of the better ones in town. That´s OK! We already had our bus tickets for that night, so we just needed to eat. We walked in and said YES, they DID take credit cards, but their chef never showed up and right now they only had drinks. When would the chef be coming, we asked. In about an hour….it´s happy hour. Why don´t you wait and have drinks? No problem we said. After about 3 capirinhas each (Brazilian drink….rum, lime juice, sugar and soda)and 3 hours later, and still no chef, we noticed that they were making ice cream crepes for people. We´ll take two of those ice cream crepes, thanks, we said. Just after eating those, the chef showed up and we ordered chicken soup for dinner. What a strange last dinner in Bolivia! It was all good though.
That night we hopped onto an overnight bus to go to Cusco and then Machu Picchu, which had recently re-opened after the horrible flooding in February at the beginning of our trip. Peru….here we come….AGAIN!!!!! To see photos for this section, click HERE.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Bolivia Part 1: Salt Flats, Jungle and La Paz
Bolivia ROCKS!!!! It is by far the most exotic and adventurous country on my trip so far. It has everything I like...fascinating sites, a strong indigenous culture, folkloric music, singing and dancing, Latin music at the discos; the hot, steamy Amazon jungle; the incredible Andes mountains; and the people are wonderful!!! I could live here for sure, except that Bolivia is landlocked...no beautiful beaches like there are in San Juan del Sur.
The border crossing from Argentina to Bolivia was a breeze...we got our visas back in Buenos Aires (Josue´s was free, I had to pay $135 USD!) and just walked across. Suddenly everything was about a tenth of the price in comparison to Argentina. There was a great market at the border, but we were taking the train to Uyuni, so we didn´t do much there. Uyuni is the town that lies on the edge of the largest salt flats in the world, and certainly they were something to see! Josue stayed back in Uyuni while I signed up for a tour. I don´t like tours, but in this case there was no choice because if you drive onto the flats yourself, you would probably end up lost, stuck on the flats and dead (it has happened.) The driver told us of a story about a friend of his who was driving across the flats and his car broke down. He had to walk 10 hours in the sun and by the time he reached his destination, he was completely blind. That is how white the salt is....with the sun reflecting off that, you can imagine the intensity. You MUST use sun block and have good sunglasses with you. It is hard to describe what it looks like to see nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. You´ll have to look at the photos. But it was incredible! In the middle of the flats there is an island, like an oasis, only it is very dry and has bunches of saguaro cacti and other desert scrub growing. Of course you walk up to the top and the view is just white, white, white. There are no roads on the flat, so you have to know where you are going. The experienced drivers determine their route according to the distant mountains. During this tour, I did several neat things. I stayed in a hotel that was completely made of salt. The outside was salt blocks, the inside had a salt floor, salt furniture and salt chandeliers. The salt flats are very high, around 4000 meters (13,123 feet) so you can´t move too quickly. We visited several lakes with flocks of flamingos, and one lake had red water!!!! That certainly was something to see. But I think the highlight was the sunrise I watched at 5:30 am at 5000 meters (16,500 feet!) in natural thermal waters while the temperature outside was 0 degrees! No one in my tour group would go in...but I´m glad I did. The sun rose over the mountains while I was sitting in a Bolivian natural bath tub. Fabulous! It was a little disconcerting when I got out and found out there was nowhere to change clothes and about 50 people milling around the baths!!!! You´d be surprised how creative you can be with a towel!
After Uyuni, Josue and I went to Potosí, the highest city in the world (according to Lonely Planet and in dispute in Wikipedia) at 4,067 meters (13,343 feet)! Potosi is a great place to buy indigenous musical instruments. One of my goals on this trip was to buy different Andes instruments. Many of my friends in Nicaragua are musicians and it´s always fun to have them over to my house and listen to them play. Not only do I want to have the instruments for these wonderful jam sessions, I also want to learn how to play the pan flute, or zampoña, as it is called in Spanish. Unfortunately, I did not buy instruments in Potosi, because I thought they would be cheaper in La Paz. But we did some fun things in the highest city in the world....we sang Karaoke and went out dancing. Bolivia plays Latin music (the kind I like) in its discos. For those of you who know Nicaragua and its famous, great, smooth rum Flor de Caña, Bolivia sells it! What a treat!
Next we went to Sucre where all the buildings downtown are white, the city itself was quite pretty. We just spent the day there, looking at the markets, eating an interesting lunch in the market that cost $1.00 USD. Just to let you know, we´ve been eating food in the local markets and off the streets, and we´ve been just fine. Sometimes that is the most interesting food. We´re back to eating llama, but I still prefer alpaca. Bolivia also serves a lot of vegetables and salads. If you go to a tourist type restaurant, of course you will spend more, maybe $10 USD each, including wine. There were also lots of musical instruments in Sucre, but I was dismayed to see that they were 2-3 times the price of the instruments in Potosí! I was worried that I had made a big mistake not buying them there. After our quick tour of Sucre, we hopped on the bus at night to La Paz.
Many tourists told us they didn´t like La Paz. Yes, it´s dirty and the traffic is terrible. But it is lively, colorful, musical, and an IN YOUR FACE city, kind of like Bangkok. It has a wonderful indigenous market, actually streets full of weavings, sweaters and other clothing made of alpaca, and all sorts of things. Our hotel was centrally located right between that artists´market and the Witch´s Market where you can buy llama fetuses (to put under your house for good luck), all types of potions to attract love, get rich, have good luck, or maybe other potions that you can use for the not-so-nice type of witchcraft! It was fascinating asking questions and looking over all the goods. Witchcraft is a big thing in Bolivia! The people are very superstitious.
All about Coca: Coca leaves are legal (not cocaine or marijuana!) in Bolivia and Peru. They are illegal in the other countries, though people sell the leaves openly in the streets of northern Argentina! There is a very interesting small museum dedicated to coca in La Paz. They go through its history, even telling how the original coca cola in the United States used coca leaves in its recipe. And how Sigmund Freud was the first important person to use the new chemically made cocaine, which he used until he developed nose cancer! The museum gives you all sorts of little interesting tidbits about the use of coca leaves and how the cocaine industry developed. You will be very interested to know that it is Bolivia, not Colombia, that is the biggest producer of coca in the world. I find it fascinating that the U.S. is concentrating so hard on eradicating the coca fields in Colombia, but has absolutely nothing to do with it here. In fact, years ago the U.S. asked Bolivia to join the world organization against coca production and the Bolivian president said no. So that´s where they left it. It is Bolivia´s biggest export. So why the drug war with Colombia and not Bolivia? Something to think about. On top of the museum they have a restaurant with items made from coca. Like green coca beer, coca cheescake (fabulous!), cookies, alcholic beverages, coca liquor, coca chocolate cake, etc. It is all so interesting. We bought a bag of coca leaves and learned from natives how to ¨masticate¨(not chew) the leaves on the side of your mouth. Contrary to what you may think, coca leaves do not give you a high. It is more of an anesthetic and it numbs the areas where you are masticating (usually the side of your tongue and the inside of your cheek). It also gives you energy, so if you do it at night you are probably not going to sleep very well, kind of like the effect of strong caffeine. We only tried this because it is legal here and a new experience. But the flavor is not so great, so they have other things you can add to enhance the flavor. They gave me banana ashes, which are moistened and rather sweet. You just put that in your mouth with the rest of the leaves and it tastes better. This is not something we are doing all the time, it was just interesting to see what all the hubbub is about coca leaves. Really nothing as far as I´m concerned.
Anyway, after 3 fun days in La Paz, we decided to head to the Amazon basin. Since La Paz is the highest capital in the world (at 3,600 meters or 11,811 feet) there was going to be a big temperature change when we took the bus down to 0 meters! The bus ride was a mere 16 hours and we got the thrill (terror?) of our lives when a pretty long stretch of the road was about 10 feet wide, no railings, and about a 2000 foot drop down into the canyon! And this was not even the Death Road (more about that later)! At times the bus tires were literally 6 inches from the edge.... Of course we saw this around dusk and then it got dark and we kept going! Crazy! We decided to go to sleep and forget about where we were driving. We arrived safe and sound at the charming jungle town of Rurrenabaque at around 7 am.
A Bolivian man came up to us immediately and asked if we wanted to go on a tour to the Pampas (another place you can´t really go yourself unless you buy a boat). Usually we NEVER go with someone who does that, but we were tired, he was promising extra perks like a discounted hotel, free drinks at a local bar, so at 9 am we were off on a tour with 6 other people. Benjamin from France, Georgette and Reynaldo also from France, and a family....Valerie from England, her husband Alfonso from Spain and their 31 year old son Martin. The people were all great! The tour was for three days and two nights and included all meals, sleeping accommodations, several trips in the motorized canoe to go animal sighting by day and night, fishing for piranhas, swimming with wild river dolphins, etc. All for $55 a person! Pretty cheap! Yes, you needed tons of sun block and DEET. Although the mosquitoes weren´t as bad as I thought they´d be in the Amazon! And we DID see tons of animals, birds and reptiles! The place where we stayed had its own alligator and giant black caiman swimming around freely, so we decided not to swim right there. But that didn´t stop me the next day from swimming in the river downstream, home to those very same alligators, caimans and crocodiles, not to mention those man-eating piranhas! One of the highlights was swimming with the wild river dolphins....they came up to me in the water and I would put my arms around their middle or hold onto their tails and they´d give me a ride! Then they would flip their tails and I´d let go and they´d come back to do it again. Most of the people chose NOT to go swimming in a potentially dangerous tributary of the Amazon. They weren´t just worried about the creatures in the water, but also the illnesses in the water that I won´t go into here, but which are pretty gross. Anyway, we saw all sorts of monkeys..howlers, spider monkeys, the cute tiny yellow ones with the big eyes, capuchins, etc. We also saw many alligators and crocodiles, big turtles, two anacondas (not too big), bright red and blue macaws, toucans, the famous (and tallest flying bird in the world, often 5 feet high) Jabiru stork in its huge 6 foot nest, and many Capybaras (the largest rodent in the world). It was a successful animal and bird-watching tour!
Back in Rurrenabaque we enjoyed the hot weather, had a great hotel for $11 USD with private bath, TV, all other amenities as well. Bolivia certainly is cheap! I had a hankering to go into the jungle, so we hired a private guide for two days and a night. Mario, our guide, was from the Tacana tribe and gave us a very interesting tour through the jungle, pointing out different plants, flowers and trees and giving an explanation of the medicinal properties of each. Unfortunately, this information will be lost when he is gone as he explained that the kids today aren´t interested in these things and now when they get sick they go to the pharmacy and get a pill. So Mario is the last generation of people who know which red and white flower to use and how to use it to stop alcoholism! (Yes, he claims that it works!!!!) At night we slept in hammocks with attached mosquito nets. In the middle of the night something put its front paws on my hammock because the hammock moved and I woke up suddenly, frightening whatever it was away. When I asked Mario the next day he said it was probably a jaguar or one of the other large cats!!!! Mario made our meals which were simple, but delicious. We ate them along side a bubbling creek. It was a great trip. And now time to say good-bye to the jungle, because we were headed to the Death Road. Couldn´t leave Bolivia without going on the MOST DANGEROUS ROAD IN THE WORLD!!!!! To see photos of this section, click here.
The border crossing from Argentina to Bolivia was a breeze...we got our visas back in Buenos Aires (Josue´s was free, I had to pay $135 USD!) and just walked across. Suddenly everything was about a tenth of the price in comparison to Argentina. There was a great market at the border, but we were taking the train to Uyuni, so we didn´t do much there. Uyuni is the town that lies on the edge of the largest salt flats in the world, and certainly they were something to see! Josue stayed back in Uyuni while I signed up for a tour. I don´t like tours, but in this case there was no choice because if you drive onto the flats yourself, you would probably end up lost, stuck on the flats and dead (it has happened.) The driver told us of a story about a friend of his who was driving across the flats and his car broke down. He had to walk 10 hours in the sun and by the time he reached his destination, he was completely blind. That is how white the salt is....with the sun reflecting off that, you can imagine the intensity. You MUST use sun block and have good sunglasses with you. It is hard to describe what it looks like to see nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. You´ll have to look at the photos. But it was incredible! In the middle of the flats there is an island, like an oasis, only it is very dry and has bunches of saguaro cacti and other desert scrub growing. Of course you walk up to the top and the view is just white, white, white. There are no roads on the flat, so you have to know where you are going. The experienced drivers determine their route according to the distant mountains. During this tour, I did several neat things. I stayed in a hotel that was completely made of salt. The outside was salt blocks, the inside had a salt floor, salt furniture and salt chandeliers. The salt flats are very high, around 4000 meters (13,123 feet) so you can´t move too quickly. We visited several lakes with flocks of flamingos, and one lake had red water!!!! That certainly was something to see. But I think the highlight was the sunrise I watched at 5:30 am at 5000 meters (16,500 feet!) in natural thermal waters while the temperature outside was 0 degrees! No one in my tour group would go in...but I´m glad I did. The sun rose over the mountains while I was sitting in a Bolivian natural bath tub. Fabulous! It was a little disconcerting when I got out and found out there was nowhere to change clothes and about 50 people milling around the baths!!!! You´d be surprised how creative you can be with a towel!
After Uyuni, Josue and I went to Potosí, the highest city in the world (according to Lonely Planet and in dispute in Wikipedia) at 4,067 meters (13,343 feet)! Potosi is a great place to buy indigenous musical instruments. One of my goals on this trip was to buy different Andes instruments. Many of my friends in Nicaragua are musicians and it´s always fun to have them over to my house and listen to them play. Not only do I want to have the instruments for these wonderful jam sessions, I also want to learn how to play the pan flute, or zampoña, as it is called in Spanish. Unfortunately, I did not buy instruments in Potosi, because I thought they would be cheaper in La Paz. But we did some fun things in the highest city in the world....we sang Karaoke and went out dancing. Bolivia plays Latin music (the kind I like) in its discos. For those of you who know Nicaragua and its famous, great, smooth rum Flor de Caña, Bolivia sells it! What a treat!
Next we went to Sucre where all the buildings downtown are white, the city itself was quite pretty. We just spent the day there, looking at the markets, eating an interesting lunch in the market that cost $1.00 USD. Just to let you know, we´ve been eating food in the local markets and off the streets, and we´ve been just fine. Sometimes that is the most interesting food. We´re back to eating llama, but I still prefer alpaca. Bolivia also serves a lot of vegetables and salads. If you go to a tourist type restaurant, of course you will spend more, maybe $10 USD each, including wine. There were also lots of musical instruments in Sucre, but I was dismayed to see that they were 2-3 times the price of the instruments in Potosí! I was worried that I had made a big mistake not buying them there. After our quick tour of Sucre, we hopped on the bus at night to La Paz.
Many tourists told us they didn´t like La Paz. Yes, it´s dirty and the traffic is terrible. But it is lively, colorful, musical, and an IN YOUR FACE city, kind of like Bangkok. It has a wonderful indigenous market, actually streets full of weavings, sweaters and other clothing made of alpaca, and all sorts of things. Our hotel was centrally located right between that artists´market and the Witch´s Market where you can buy llama fetuses (to put under your house for good luck), all types of potions to attract love, get rich, have good luck, or maybe other potions that you can use for the not-so-nice type of witchcraft! It was fascinating asking questions and looking over all the goods. Witchcraft is a big thing in Bolivia! The people are very superstitious.
All about Coca: Coca leaves are legal (not cocaine or marijuana!) in Bolivia and Peru. They are illegal in the other countries, though people sell the leaves openly in the streets of northern Argentina! There is a very interesting small museum dedicated to coca in La Paz. They go through its history, even telling how the original coca cola in the United States used coca leaves in its recipe. And how Sigmund Freud was the first important person to use the new chemically made cocaine, which he used until he developed nose cancer! The museum gives you all sorts of little interesting tidbits about the use of coca leaves and how the cocaine industry developed. You will be very interested to know that it is Bolivia, not Colombia, that is the biggest producer of coca in the world. I find it fascinating that the U.S. is concentrating so hard on eradicating the coca fields in Colombia, but has absolutely nothing to do with it here. In fact, years ago the U.S. asked Bolivia to join the world organization against coca production and the Bolivian president said no. So that´s where they left it. It is Bolivia´s biggest export. So why the drug war with Colombia and not Bolivia? Something to think about. On top of the museum they have a restaurant with items made from coca. Like green coca beer, coca cheescake (fabulous!), cookies, alcholic beverages, coca liquor, coca chocolate cake, etc. It is all so interesting. We bought a bag of coca leaves and learned from natives how to ¨masticate¨(not chew) the leaves on the side of your mouth. Contrary to what you may think, coca leaves do not give you a high. It is more of an anesthetic and it numbs the areas where you are masticating (usually the side of your tongue and the inside of your cheek). It also gives you energy, so if you do it at night you are probably not going to sleep very well, kind of like the effect of strong caffeine. We only tried this because it is legal here and a new experience. But the flavor is not so great, so they have other things you can add to enhance the flavor. They gave me banana ashes, which are moistened and rather sweet. You just put that in your mouth with the rest of the leaves and it tastes better. This is not something we are doing all the time, it was just interesting to see what all the hubbub is about coca leaves. Really nothing as far as I´m concerned.
Anyway, after 3 fun days in La Paz, we decided to head to the Amazon basin. Since La Paz is the highest capital in the world (at 3,600 meters or 11,811 feet) there was going to be a big temperature change when we took the bus down to 0 meters! The bus ride was a mere 16 hours and we got the thrill (terror?) of our lives when a pretty long stretch of the road was about 10 feet wide, no railings, and about a 2000 foot drop down into the canyon! And this was not even the Death Road (more about that later)! At times the bus tires were literally 6 inches from the edge.... Of course we saw this around dusk and then it got dark and we kept going! Crazy! We decided to go to sleep and forget about where we were driving. We arrived safe and sound at the charming jungle town of Rurrenabaque at around 7 am.
A Bolivian man came up to us immediately and asked if we wanted to go on a tour to the Pampas (another place you can´t really go yourself unless you buy a boat). Usually we NEVER go with someone who does that, but we were tired, he was promising extra perks like a discounted hotel, free drinks at a local bar, so at 9 am we were off on a tour with 6 other people. Benjamin from France, Georgette and Reynaldo also from France, and a family....Valerie from England, her husband Alfonso from Spain and their 31 year old son Martin. The people were all great! The tour was for three days and two nights and included all meals, sleeping accommodations, several trips in the motorized canoe to go animal sighting by day and night, fishing for piranhas, swimming with wild river dolphins, etc. All for $55 a person! Pretty cheap! Yes, you needed tons of sun block and DEET. Although the mosquitoes weren´t as bad as I thought they´d be in the Amazon! And we DID see tons of animals, birds and reptiles! The place where we stayed had its own alligator and giant black caiman swimming around freely, so we decided not to swim right there. But that didn´t stop me the next day from swimming in the river downstream, home to those very same alligators, caimans and crocodiles, not to mention those man-eating piranhas! One of the highlights was swimming with the wild river dolphins....they came up to me in the water and I would put my arms around their middle or hold onto their tails and they´d give me a ride! Then they would flip their tails and I´d let go and they´d come back to do it again. Most of the people chose NOT to go swimming in a potentially dangerous tributary of the Amazon. They weren´t just worried about the creatures in the water, but also the illnesses in the water that I won´t go into here, but which are pretty gross. Anyway, we saw all sorts of monkeys..howlers, spider monkeys, the cute tiny yellow ones with the big eyes, capuchins, etc. We also saw many alligators and crocodiles, big turtles, two anacondas (not too big), bright red and blue macaws, toucans, the famous (and tallest flying bird in the world, often 5 feet high) Jabiru stork in its huge 6 foot nest, and many Capybaras (the largest rodent in the world). It was a successful animal and bird-watching tour!
Back in Rurrenabaque we enjoyed the hot weather, had a great hotel for $11 USD with private bath, TV, all other amenities as well. Bolivia certainly is cheap! I had a hankering to go into the jungle, so we hired a private guide for two days and a night. Mario, our guide, was from the Tacana tribe and gave us a very interesting tour through the jungle, pointing out different plants, flowers and trees and giving an explanation of the medicinal properties of each. Unfortunately, this information will be lost when he is gone as he explained that the kids today aren´t interested in these things and now when they get sick they go to the pharmacy and get a pill. So Mario is the last generation of people who know which red and white flower to use and how to use it to stop alcoholism! (Yes, he claims that it works!!!!) At night we slept in hammocks with attached mosquito nets. In the middle of the night something put its front paws on my hammock because the hammock moved and I woke up suddenly, frightening whatever it was away. When I asked Mario the next day he said it was probably a jaguar or one of the other large cats!!!! Mario made our meals which were simple, but delicious. We ate them along side a bubbling creek. It was a great trip. And now time to say good-bye to the jungle, because we were headed to the Death Road. Couldn´t leave Bolivia without going on the MOST DANGEROUS ROAD IN THE WORLD!!!!! To see photos of this section, click here.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Argentina Part 3: Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls and the Northern Cities
Buenos Aires is huge, Huge, HUGE!!! Almost 20 million people they tell us. It is an exciting, edgy city with all the amenities you would ever want. Beautiful, upscale areas, fabulous restaurants, great public transportation including a subway and a train! It appears that a life in this city includes eating wonderful meat dishes, watching soccer games, drinking wine and spending time with friends. For those who love the tango, that is also included. What Buenos Aires also has is “traffic in crisis” (like Los Angeles at rush hour), significant air pollution and a helter-skelter rushing around lifestyle, also much like Los Angeles. And watch out for the dog poops that are left all over the sidewalks and the smoking that is allowed inside almost every building, including the guy sitting next to you at the Internet cafe. But don´t get me wrong...I´m just being honest here. We had a fabulous time in Buenos Aires. It is certainly a city to visit!
We were so fortunate to be staying with our friends Rodrigo (from Mexico) and Florencia (from Argentina) who I had met and befriended in my town of San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua. They describe themselves as a nomadic couple. They make gorgeous jewelry (silver, copper, macramé, etc.) and move around to different countries selling their pieces. They are seeing the world, making lots of friends from all over, and they are two of the nicest people I have ever met! Planning on just staying with them 2-3 nights, we ended up staying 8 nights, totally disrupting their work lives. But to them it wasn´t important. It was all about being with friends and they were wonderful hosts! They introduced us to the San Telmo area where impromptu tango abounds. Pointed us in the direction of a great disco (finally) that played salsa and reggaeton. Hooray! Florencia spent countless hours writing out instructions on which buses, trains or subways to take to get to certain places when they had to work. They were staying on the very outskirts of the city in an area called Liniers, which was an hour and a half by public transportation ($.50 USD by bus or train or a $30 USD cab ride) to the Buenos Aires city center.
And guess who else was there? You´re right! Stacy´s BAAACK!!!! This is the third time our schedules matched and there we were, together again. Stacy had just finished up her trip to the Antarctic and was going back to Buenos Aires to wait for her friends Lyn and Don to arrive. Lyn is also my good friend, in fact, the person who introduced me to Stacy 3 years ago! We thought we would be way past Buenos Aires by the time she got there, but we spent a couple of extra days here and there and arrived the day after she did! We couldn´t see Stacy every day because we were staying so far away, but we did manage to meet for dinner and spend the evening drinking and dancing to live Salsa music in San Telmo, a day and early dinner at a kind of Indian restaurant (I say kind of because it wasn´t exactly an Indian restaurant), and she spent our last day there at Rodrigo´s and Florencia´s for the wonderful famous Argentina Parillada (or grilled meats). I ate blood sausage and intestines!!! Stacy also had fun making new friends in Buenos Aires. Due to conflicting schedules, we were unable to meet any of the new people she met, but we know she had fun with them.
Back to Rodrigo and Florencia. I want to wish them congratulations – they got married on April 7th and unfortunately, we couldn´t be there as we had to move on. But we wish them everything wonderful and know we will see them again, somewhere. I had them make some beautiful pieces for me and the girls (you´ll see them in December Shanna and Talia!). We had the greatest time eating, drinking, spending time with them and getting to know them better. Thanks so much Rodrigo and Florencia!
What other things did we see in Buenos Aires? We saw the cemetery (I was wondering why I would go see a cemetery until I actually SAW the cemetery).... WOW! I´ve never seen anything like it...hope you can get the idea in our photos. We spent a lot of time in the San Telmo area where all the impromptu tango is, also great food. We saw Recoleta, Palermo, lots of parks and spent a whole day in La Boca, fascinating place. Lots of tango there as well, outdoor restaurants, colorful buildings. This is the artists´haven and there are many booths of jewelry, weavings, leather products, etc. Simply a very fun place to be. Colorful, exciting, quirky, my kind of place! We went to lots of artists´fairs, heard lots of music and visited with our friends. While I loved Buenos Aires, I wouldn´t live there because it has many of the exact same things that made me leave the United States. But I certainly see the allure.
While talking to Rodrigo and Florencia, we discovered that you don´t HAVE to go to the Brazil side of the border to see Iguazu Falls. We were avoiding this trip because everyone has to pay $135 USD each to cross the border into Brazil to see the panoramic view of the falls. But the falls are IN Argentina, and you can go to the national park there for an entrance fee of about $20 USD each. PLUS, there was an even more important reason to go...while Stacy and I were talking, we realized that we could be there at the same time! They were flying on the following Monday. We then planned to take the 30-hour train, the half-hour bus from the train station to the other bus, and then the 6-hour bus to arrive in Iguazu Falls ourselves! (Much, much cheaper....) Since Stacy was going there with her friends Lyn and Don, we decided to make it a surprise for Lyn. Daughter Shanna had visited Lyn the weekend before in San Diego and Lyn lamented that it was sad that she was going to Argentina and was going to miss me by only a few days. Originally we were supposed to go to Macchu Pichu together, but couldn´t because it was closed due to flooding. So, Stacy invited us to stay in their two floor apartment with them and we were going to check in first and surprise Lyn. Well, it all worked like a charm. You can´t IMAGINE how surprised she was (but I have a photo to prove it...wait ´till you see it)! We set up a little wine and cheese party to greet them and Stacy knew to let Lyn open the door. There I was on the other side with Josue. She had also heard a lot about him from Stacy so she was doubly happy. We spent the next 3 days with them and if I may speak for all of us, we had a FABULOUS time together! And Don, poor Don, didn´t know a thing about this either. I had met Don a couple of times briefly in San Diego, but I have to say he´s a great guy and I really think he had fun too!
We spent one whole day in Iguazu falls...incredible! We were lucky because it had been an especially wet rainy season and the falls were at their impactful best. Even San Martin was closed and the ecological boat ride because there was too much water. But we didn´t mind. We saw so much that day! The water in Argentina in most places is brown in color, not blue. It´s due to the color of the earth, not to dirt. We took the little boat ride under the falls and got soaked to the skin. You will see all of this in the pictures. We decided that the rather large coatis (kind of like a cross between a rat and a raccoon) that were so cute when we first glimpsed one, were more like pests after we had seen tons of them, sometimes a bunch together. They are too big for that! But the falls thrilled. The piece de resistance was the Devil´s Throat! It appeared to be a HUGE hole that the water rushed into with such force it didn´t even look like water! It looked like the water was going in slow motion, or as Lyn thought, it looked like fur. Whatever, it was spell-binding and the force of the water on that hot, hot day made you kind of feel like jumping in. Thank goodness no one did that, but the water going over the edge was very compelling. And the way the park has situated the catwalks, you are VERY, VERY close to the water. Exciting! We passed a place with a zillion butterflies. You´ll see the photos of that too. I´m not going to go into the details of Stacy´s bee bite, but Don was a hero, and Lyn and Josue and I (and Stacy and Don too) were laughing for hours afterwards! Ask Stacy about this story. She´s the only one who can share it properly. One night we sat by the pool drinking wine and talking. The next night we played a mean game of UNO for about 4 hours, also drinking wine. We thought the fight was between Don and Lyn, but a sneaky Stacy ran right by everyone and won the tournament. I don´t even think I scored. The third night we had a terrific dinner of grilled fish (the 4 kinds of river fish found in the area) and grilled meat (I just HAD to have some more of those intestines!!!). After that we found a disco that played Latin music! HOORAY!!!!! I know everyone was tired and that they stayed there for my sake, but we all danced and I think they all had a great time, even though they are not necessarily used to leaving the bar at 3:30 am. We left after they played my two favorite reggaeton songs, LOW and ZOOMBAH (that´s not the title..I don´t know what the title is, but Pitbull sings it). On Thursday morning we all sadly said good-bye to each other and they returned to Buenos Aires and Josue and I hopped on a 23-hour bus to Salta, Argentina for Semana Santa weekend.
The plan was to see some of Argentina´s lovely northern cities before heading into Bolivia. Salta seemed like a good place since it is one of the most popular vacation destinations for Argentinians. It IS a lovely city....tree-lined streets, great restaurants, lots of upscale shopping for clothes and local artist wares. Nice parks, great people, tons of hotels and hostals. Only it was Semana Santa weekend and we didn´t have reservations. We spent the first two hours after our arrival dragging our luggage throught the streets looking for a place to stay. Every place was full. We were starting to get worried when a dormitory (where we don´t stay unless we have to) said they had two beds. We took those and made the best of it. I guess I´m kind of past the dormitory days. At least it was really cheap. Now that we were close to indigenous Bolivia, suddenly we found that Salta had all sorts of Penas, or folkloric restaurant/bars, so we went out that night and saw a great show with dancers and a folkloric band. Finally!!! Music and dance that I came to South America to see. I told the manager that Josue was also a musician and he got to get up there and play and sing three of his Nicaraguan folksongs. The crowd loved it! We also had a chance to dance as the professional dancers asked us to get up and dance with them. What fun! If I´m dancing, I´m very happy!
The next day surprised us with rain, so we couldn´t go to Cachi and past three mountains that were 22,000 feet high! Everything was shrouded in fog. So I spent 5 hours at the Internet that day working on this blog and selecting photos. Our next stop was Jujuy. Suddenly we were in a different Argentina. In the rest of the country, people are tall, light-skinned and as I said, the place reminded me of the United States. Now, we had arrived at probably the only area in Argentina that had indigenous people. Prices plummeted (that was good), and now we had interesting food choices. We went out to dinner to have chicharron con mote (pig skin with big corn kernels – not the sweet corn we are used to) and peanut soup. Both good. The next day we hopped on a 2-hour bus to another little town, Humahuaca, a completely Quechua town. Now even the architecture had changed. Rather than homes made of wood, brick and stone, all of the structures were made of adobe, so the town has a walled-in feeling. We had a fabulous dinner that night of llama in creamed herb sauce, potatoes in some kind of Andean sauce and a terrific Andean salad....goat cheese, greens, walnuts, tomatoes and bulghur wheat (quinoa in Spanish), which is a big staple in northern Argentina and Bolivia. We weren´t spending a lot of time in these towns because we wanted to get to Bolivia, so the next day we took a two-day trip to Iruya (pronounced ee-ru-zha) because everyone we had met who went to this area recommended this city. The six-hour trip wound around mountains and was all pretty typical desert with saguaro cactus until the last curve. What a picture! Mountains, gullies, and the small town of Iruya tucked into a little valley. It was like we had gone back in time. The town had cobblestoned streets all leading UP, and at a pretty high altitude (of about 3500 meters), all Quechua people and a few tourists. It was a lovely city, but I have to say that there wasn´t much to do there. We had a great dinner of lamb stew and a huge salad and waited for the next day when we could go back to Humahuaca, where they were storing our luggage. Arrived back to Humahuaca the next day and got the bus to the border with Bolivia. All together, we had spent 6 wonderful weeks in Argentina! What a great country! Now let´s see about Bolivia...... To see the photos for this blog, click here.
We were so fortunate to be staying with our friends Rodrigo (from Mexico) and Florencia (from Argentina) who I had met and befriended in my town of San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua. They describe themselves as a nomadic couple. They make gorgeous jewelry (silver, copper, macramé, etc.) and move around to different countries selling their pieces. They are seeing the world, making lots of friends from all over, and they are two of the nicest people I have ever met! Planning on just staying with them 2-3 nights, we ended up staying 8 nights, totally disrupting their work lives. But to them it wasn´t important. It was all about being with friends and they were wonderful hosts! They introduced us to the San Telmo area where impromptu tango abounds. Pointed us in the direction of a great disco (finally) that played salsa and reggaeton. Hooray! Florencia spent countless hours writing out instructions on which buses, trains or subways to take to get to certain places when they had to work. They were staying on the very outskirts of the city in an area called Liniers, which was an hour and a half by public transportation ($.50 USD by bus or train or a $30 USD cab ride) to the Buenos Aires city center.
And guess who else was there? You´re right! Stacy´s BAAACK!!!! This is the third time our schedules matched and there we were, together again. Stacy had just finished up her trip to the Antarctic and was going back to Buenos Aires to wait for her friends Lyn and Don to arrive. Lyn is also my good friend, in fact, the person who introduced me to Stacy 3 years ago! We thought we would be way past Buenos Aires by the time she got there, but we spent a couple of extra days here and there and arrived the day after she did! We couldn´t see Stacy every day because we were staying so far away, but we did manage to meet for dinner and spend the evening drinking and dancing to live Salsa music in San Telmo, a day and early dinner at a kind of Indian restaurant (I say kind of because it wasn´t exactly an Indian restaurant), and she spent our last day there at Rodrigo´s and Florencia´s for the wonderful famous Argentina Parillada (or grilled meats). I ate blood sausage and intestines!!! Stacy also had fun making new friends in Buenos Aires. Due to conflicting schedules, we were unable to meet any of the new people she met, but we know she had fun with them.
Back to Rodrigo and Florencia. I want to wish them congratulations – they got married on April 7th and unfortunately, we couldn´t be there as we had to move on. But we wish them everything wonderful and know we will see them again, somewhere. I had them make some beautiful pieces for me and the girls (you´ll see them in December Shanna and Talia!). We had the greatest time eating, drinking, spending time with them and getting to know them better. Thanks so much Rodrigo and Florencia!
What other things did we see in Buenos Aires? We saw the cemetery (I was wondering why I would go see a cemetery until I actually SAW the cemetery).... WOW! I´ve never seen anything like it...hope you can get the idea in our photos. We spent a lot of time in the San Telmo area where all the impromptu tango is, also great food. We saw Recoleta, Palermo, lots of parks and spent a whole day in La Boca, fascinating place. Lots of tango there as well, outdoor restaurants, colorful buildings. This is the artists´haven and there are many booths of jewelry, weavings, leather products, etc. Simply a very fun place to be. Colorful, exciting, quirky, my kind of place! We went to lots of artists´fairs, heard lots of music and visited with our friends. While I loved Buenos Aires, I wouldn´t live there because it has many of the exact same things that made me leave the United States. But I certainly see the allure.
While talking to Rodrigo and Florencia, we discovered that you don´t HAVE to go to the Brazil side of the border to see Iguazu Falls. We were avoiding this trip because everyone has to pay $135 USD each to cross the border into Brazil to see the panoramic view of the falls. But the falls are IN Argentina, and you can go to the national park there for an entrance fee of about $20 USD each. PLUS, there was an even more important reason to go...while Stacy and I were talking, we realized that we could be there at the same time! They were flying on the following Monday. We then planned to take the 30-hour train, the half-hour bus from the train station to the other bus, and then the 6-hour bus to arrive in Iguazu Falls ourselves! (Much, much cheaper....) Since Stacy was going there with her friends Lyn and Don, we decided to make it a surprise for Lyn. Daughter Shanna had visited Lyn the weekend before in San Diego and Lyn lamented that it was sad that she was going to Argentina and was going to miss me by only a few days. Originally we were supposed to go to Macchu Pichu together, but couldn´t because it was closed due to flooding. So, Stacy invited us to stay in their two floor apartment with them and we were going to check in first and surprise Lyn. Well, it all worked like a charm. You can´t IMAGINE how surprised she was (but I have a photo to prove it...wait ´till you see it)! We set up a little wine and cheese party to greet them and Stacy knew to let Lyn open the door. There I was on the other side with Josue. She had also heard a lot about him from Stacy so she was doubly happy. We spent the next 3 days with them and if I may speak for all of us, we had a FABULOUS time together! And Don, poor Don, didn´t know a thing about this either. I had met Don a couple of times briefly in San Diego, but I have to say he´s a great guy and I really think he had fun too!
We spent one whole day in Iguazu falls...incredible! We were lucky because it had been an especially wet rainy season and the falls were at their impactful best. Even San Martin was closed and the ecological boat ride because there was too much water. But we didn´t mind. We saw so much that day! The water in Argentina in most places is brown in color, not blue. It´s due to the color of the earth, not to dirt. We took the little boat ride under the falls and got soaked to the skin. You will see all of this in the pictures. We decided that the rather large coatis (kind of like a cross between a rat and a raccoon) that were so cute when we first glimpsed one, were more like pests after we had seen tons of them, sometimes a bunch together. They are too big for that! But the falls thrilled. The piece de resistance was the Devil´s Throat! It appeared to be a HUGE hole that the water rushed into with such force it didn´t even look like water! It looked like the water was going in slow motion, or as Lyn thought, it looked like fur. Whatever, it was spell-binding and the force of the water on that hot, hot day made you kind of feel like jumping in. Thank goodness no one did that, but the water going over the edge was very compelling. And the way the park has situated the catwalks, you are VERY, VERY close to the water. Exciting! We passed a place with a zillion butterflies. You´ll see the photos of that too. I´m not going to go into the details of Stacy´s bee bite, but Don was a hero, and Lyn and Josue and I (and Stacy and Don too) were laughing for hours afterwards! Ask Stacy about this story. She´s the only one who can share it properly. One night we sat by the pool drinking wine and talking. The next night we played a mean game of UNO for about 4 hours, also drinking wine. We thought the fight was between Don and Lyn, but a sneaky Stacy ran right by everyone and won the tournament. I don´t even think I scored. The third night we had a terrific dinner of grilled fish (the 4 kinds of river fish found in the area) and grilled meat (I just HAD to have some more of those intestines!!!). After that we found a disco that played Latin music! HOORAY!!!!! I know everyone was tired and that they stayed there for my sake, but we all danced and I think they all had a great time, even though they are not necessarily used to leaving the bar at 3:30 am. We left after they played my two favorite reggaeton songs, LOW and ZOOMBAH (that´s not the title..I don´t know what the title is, but Pitbull sings it). On Thursday morning we all sadly said good-bye to each other and they returned to Buenos Aires and Josue and I hopped on a 23-hour bus to Salta, Argentina for Semana Santa weekend.
The plan was to see some of Argentina´s lovely northern cities before heading into Bolivia. Salta seemed like a good place since it is one of the most popular vacation destinations for Argentinians. It IS a lovely city....tree-lined streets, great restaurants, lots of upscale shopping for clothes and local artist wares. Nice parks, great people, tons of hotels and hostals. Only it was Semana Santa weekend and we didn´t have reservations. We spent the first two hours after our arrival dragging our luggage throught the streets looking for a place to stay. Every place was full. We were starting to get worried when a dormitory (where we don´t stay unless we have to) said they had two beds. We took those and made the best of it. I guess I´m kind of past the dormitory days. At least it was really cheap. Now that we were close to indigenous Bolivia, suddenly we found that Salta had all sorts of Penas, or folkloric restaurant/bars, so we went out that night and saw a great show with dancers and a folkloric band. Finally!!! Music and dance that I came to South America to see. I told the manager that Josue was also a musician and he got to get up there and play and sing three of his Nicaraguan folksongs. The crowd loved it! We also had a chance to dance as the professional dancers asked us to get up and dance with them. What fun! If I´m dancing, I´m very happy!
The next day surprised us with rain, so we couldn´t go to Cachi and past three mountains that were 22,000 feet high! Everything was shrouded in fog. So I spent 5 hours at the Internet that day working on this blog and selecting photos. Our next stop was Jujuy. Suddenly we were in a different Argentina. In the rest of the country, people are tall, light-skinned and as I said, the place reminded me of the United States. Now, we had arrived at probably the only area in Argentina that had indigenous people. Prices plummeted (that was good), and now we had interesting food choices. We went out to dinner to have chicharron con mote (pig skin with big corn kernels – not the sweet corn we are used to) and peanut soup. Both good. The next day we hopped on a 2-hour bus to another little town, Humahuaca, a completely Quechua town. Now even the architecture had changed. Rather than homes made of wood, brick and stone, all of the structures were made of adobe, so the town has a walled-in feeling. We had a fabulous dinner that night of llama in creamed herb sauce, potatoes in some kind of Andean sauce and a terrific Andean salad....goat cheese, greens, walnuts, tomatoes and bulghur wheat (quinoa in Spanish), which is a big staple in northern Argentina and Bolivia. We weren´t spending a lot of time in these towns because we wanted to get to Bolivia, so the next day we took a two-day trip to Iruya (pronounced ee-ru-zha) because everyone we had met who went to this area recommended this city. The six-hour trip wound around mountains and was all pretty typical desert with saguaro cactus until the last curve. What a picture! Mountains, gullies, and the small town of Iruya tucked into a little valley. It was like we had gone back in time. The town had cobblestoned streets all leading UP, and at a pretty high altitude (of about 3500 meters), all Quechua people and a few tourists. It was a lovely city, but I have to say that there wasn´t much to do there. We had a great dinner of lamb stew and a huge salad and waited for the next day when we could go back to Humahuaca, where they were storing our luggage. Arrived back to Humahuaca the next day and got the bus to the border with Bolivia. All together, we had spent 6 wonderful weeks in Argentina! What a great country! Now let´s see about Bolivia...... To see the photos for this blog, click here.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Argentina Part 2: Patagonia, the END OF THE WORLD and penguins
Well, we took our 30-hour bus ride from El Bolson to el Chaltén! The longest bus ride so far! Crazy thing about the buses. You never know if they are going to provide food or not – even if you ask. The long-distance buses are not chicken buses. They are plush Greyhound-type buses, usually double-decker, with bathroom, fresh coffee (sometimes tea) and semi-cama (reclining seats) or full-cama (seats go all the way down), depending on how much you want to pay. In Ecuador and Peru, these buses were cheap. In Colombia, Chile and Argentina they are not. On some shorter buses (we always take them at night to avoid the additional cost of a hotel, and also to have the daytime to do things), they gave us a snack when we got on, a dinner, and breakfast the next morning. On this super-long bus ride, they gave us NOTHING!!! Thank goodness they made a stop in the small town of Perito Moreno (not the glacier) so we could get something to eat during that time, so we were OK.
We got to El Chaltén at 7 am, too early to get hotels and hostels to open, as we soon found out! And it was extremely cold – the coldest we had experienced so far. We waited out on a bench until about 8:30 am, when we finally got a hotel to let us in. El Chalten looks like a little Swiss village nestled in at the bottom of one of the most dramatic mountain ranges you will ever see – the Fitz Roy! The outline of these mountains serves as the logo for the Patagonia clothing line and was the inspiration of several scenes in The Little Prince, when Antoine Saint Exupéry worked in El Chaltén as a postal worker! Patagonia, and specifically el Chaltén, is known for its trekking opportunities. And we didn´t waste any time. With a few crackers to fortify us (because the restaurants and food stores were not open yet) we took off on our trek through the bottom of the mountain range and Lake Paine. The scenery was spectacular! We walked through grasslands, forests, passes a milky turquoise glacial river, all with unbelievable views of the famous Fitz Roy mountains (see photos). The hike was ONLY 17 miles round trip (yes! I did it!) We ran out of water and didn´t have food except for the crackers and some dulce de leche (caramel) spread. Not smart of us. And strange – we are always prepared! But we made it! Exhausted and with legs hurting us at the end of the day, it was still worth it! We celebrated with a great dinner of grilled chicken and lamb stew with half a pinguino! Pinguino is Spanish for penguin and in this case a pinguino is the house red wine served in a ceramic penguin pitcher.
Our next stop was Calafate, the cute little tourist town that you go to if you want to see the absolutely mind-blowing, more than spectacular Perito Moreno glacier. This is the largest stable (not receding yet) glacier in the world. I had seen plenty of glaciers when I lived in Alaska, but nothing like this!!! Words can´t really describe it and the photos are never as good as the view you see with your very own eyes. We did not go on the tour (we never do). We took the regular bus and spent almost 6 hours gazing at this phenomenon! Thanks to Josue…he managed to capture three great photos of the glacier calving. A huge skyscraper hunk fell off with a deafening roar. We witnessed about eight of those that day and about 50 small ones. The ¨tunnel¨that forms had recently fallen and this year has been declared an active year for the glacier. We brought a nice picnic lunch and so enjoyed our Malbec and sausage and cheese sandwiches with fresh apples and grapes while we continued to stare at this awesome thing. A little bird joined our picnic! Perito Moreno glacier was truly a highlight on the trip so far. Near our hostel in Calafate we found a bird reserve so we took the short hike there to see colonies of flamingos and lots of birds we didn´t know.
Next stop: the END OF THE WORLD, a town called Ushuaia. The hardship of this trip was that the bus left at 3 am! It left at this odd time for the crazy immigration thing that happens. The 13-hour bus ride passes through Chile for a very short distance – and you guessed it – we have to LEAVE Argentina, ENTER Chile, then LEAVE Chile and ENTER Argentina again. We even get a ferry ride with the bus on the ferry! This process (and hauling your stuff on and off the bus) itself takes about 2-3 hours. At one point in the crossing, Josue was called off the bus. We are always worried about his Nicaraguan passport because so far at each border crossing, people say they´ve never had a Nicaraguan cross the border! Every time Josue says he is from Nicaragua to ANYONE, they are shocked. So we didn´t know what they wanted. Apparently, they had not had a Nicaraguan pass through before and asked him where his visa was and where did he pay for it. Well, he doesn´t need a visa and the immigration officials didn´t even know it. They had to look it up! As soon as they realized that, Josue came back on the bus. But that wasn´t the only encounter with the immigration officials. We had bought a ton of food in Argentina and were told we couldn´t pass it through the Chilean border. So we ate as much as we could, but still had apples, peaches, packaged meat and cheese, etc. When we go to the border, I decided it was best to tell the truth. I told the Chilean immigration officer that I had the stuff and he said OK and kept going through the bus. The next thing I knew I was hauled off the bus by another officer and interrogated. I just explained that we had spend our money on food to eat for the trip and since we were going right back into Argentina – we should be able to keep it. They didn´t agree and opened my backback and confiscated everything. Someone was going to have a feast that night. At least they didn´t give me a fine or put me in jail (there was a huge poster of someone holding an apple in his hand while his hands were handcuffed together)!
We got to Ushuaia around 8 pm. It was FREEZING and really windy. We went to the first place we found – a dormitory! We had kitchen privileges, so while we were there we cooked and ate there. Except for one meal. We had tried lamb four times in Patagonia so far (Patagonia is famous for its lamb) and we liked it, but couldn´t say we raved about it. Lamb is SO fatty. But there was a restaurant in Ushuaia that specialized in lamb and served it 20 different ways. We had spit-roasted lamb in orange sauce. It was fabulous! The best we´d had so far! Ushuaia is a port town nestled between some mountains – not the highest we´ve seen so far. But the city is pretty and has one main tourist street and that´s it. Tierra del Fuego is actually an island below the mainland of Argentina and Ushuaia is on the bottom of the island if you look at a map. It is the southernmost city on the planet and is truly the END OF THE WORLD. We planned to trek in Tierra del Fuego National Park the next day, but a bad cold (mine) and a freezing, rainy day stopped us in our tracks. This was the first day of real rain on the whole trip so far, but it poured! So we had to go. At least I can say I went to the END OF THE WORLD.
We left Ushuaia and had to go back through Rio Gallegos in order to head up the east coast of Argentina. Rio Gallegos is the second biggest city in Argentina. It is a regular city, so there is nothing much to take note of except that there was a disco two doors from our hotel and it played Latin music! The first we had seen in Argentina!!! HOORAY! This disco, called Metropolis, only played cumbia and merengue, but hey! We were happy. Of course we couldn´t go until 2 am, so we had to sleep in the evening and wake up at 1:30 in order to get ready to go. Crazy hours! Had a great time dancing though.
After Rio Gallegos we headed for Trelew and the Punta Tomba penguin reserve. This particular reserve has the largest colony of penguins outside of Antarctica. It was the end of the season and just before the penguins leave for colder places, but we were lucky to see so many. Everyone supposes that penguins are cute birds, and we weren´t disappointed. They are! They seem to have personalities. Some of them didn´t like people and would waddle away when we approached. But others were more curious and would actually walk up to us and turn their heads this way and that to get a good look at us. We enjoyed our day at the penguin reserve. We also saw wild Guanacos (an Argentinian llama). After that, we drove to a small Welsh (that´s right!) town called Gaiman. This pretty place was known for its tea houses and high tea ritual. So that´s where we went…to have tea and cakes. Yummy, but way too many sweets! We were buzzing for hours after with all that sugar. The next day we boarded a 22-hour bus to Buenos Aires, where my friends Rodrigo and Florencia and (yep, you guessed it!) Stacy (who was returning from her trip) were waiting for us. Click here to see photos of this section.
We got to El Chaltén at 7 am, too early to get hotels and hostels to open, as we soon found out! And it was extremely cold – the coldest we had experienced so far. We waited out on a bench until about 8:30 am, when we finally got a hotel to let us in. El Chalten looks like a little Swiss village nestled in at the bottom of one of the most dramatic mountain ranges you will ever see – the Fitz Roy! The outline of these mountains serves as the logo for the Patagonia clothing line and was the inspiration of several scenes in The Little Prince, when Antoine Saint Exupéry worked in El Chaltén as a postal worker! Patagonia, and specifically el Chaltén, is known for its trekking opportunities. And we didn´t waste any time. With a few crackers to fortify us (because the restaurants and food stores were not open yet) we took off on our trek through the bottom of the mountain range and Lake Paine. The scenery was spectacular! We walked through grasslands, forests, passes a milky turquoise glacial river, all with unbelievable views of the famous Fitz Roy mountains (see photos). The hike was ONLY 17 miles round trip (yes! I did it!) We ran out of water and didn´t have food except for the crackers and some dulce de leche (caramel) spread. Not smart of us. And strange – we are always prepared! But we made it! Exhausted and with legs hurting us at the end of the day, it was still worth it! We celebrated with a great dinner of grilled chicken and lamb stew with half a pinguino! Pinguino is Spanish for penguin and in this case a pinguino is the house red wine served in a ceramic penguin pitcher.
Our next stop was Calafate, the cute little tourist town that you go to if you want to see the absolutely mind-blowing, more than spectacular Perito Moreno glacier. This is the largest stable (not receding yet) glacier in the world. I had seen plenty of glaciers when I lived in Alaska, but nothing like this!!! Words can´t really describe it and the photos are never as good as the view you see with your very own eyes. We did not go on the tour (we never do). We took the regular bus and spent almost 6 hours gazing at this phenomenon! Thanks to Josue…he managed to capture three great photos of the glacier calving. A huge skyscraper hunk fell off with a deafening roar. We witnessed about eight of those that day and about 50 small ones. The ¨tunnel¨that forms had recently fallen and this year has been declared an active year for the glacier. We brought a nice picnic lunch and so enjoyed our Malbec and sausage and cheese sandwiches with fresh apples and grapes while we continued to stare at this awesome thing. A little bird joined our picnic! Perito Moreno glacier was truly a highlight on the trip so far. Near our hostel in Calafate we found a bird reserve so we took the short hike there to see colonies of flamingos and lots of birds we didn´t know.
Next stop: the END OF THE WORLD, a town called Ushuaia. The hardship of this trip was that the bus left at 3 am! It left at this odd time for the crazy immigration thing that happens. The 13-hour bus ride passes through Chile for a very short distance – and you guessed it – we have to LEAVE Argentina, ENTER Chile, then LEAVE Chile and ENTER Argentina again. We even get a ferry ride with the bus on the ferry! This process (and hauling your stuff on and off the bus) itself takes about 2-3 hours. At one point in the crossing, Josue was called off the bus. We are always worried about his Nicaraguan passport because so far at each border crossing, people say they´ve never had a Nicaraguan cross the border! Every time Josue says he is from Nicaragua to ANYONE, they are shocked. So we didn´t know what they wanted. Apparently, they had not had a Nicaraguan pass through before and asked him where his visa was and where did he pay for it. Well, he doesn´t need a visa and the immigration officials didn´t even know it. They had to look it up! As soon as they realized that, Josue came back on the bus. But that wasn´t the only encounter with the immigration officials. We had bought a ton of food in Argentina and were told we couldn´t pass it through the Chilean border. So we ate as much as we could, but still had apples, peaches, packaged meat and cheese, etc. When we go to the border, I decided it was best to tell the truth. I told the Chilean immigration officer that I had the stuff and he said OK and kept going through the bus. The next thing I knew I was hauled off the bus by another officer and interrogated. I just explained that we had spend our money on food to eat for the trip and since we were going right back into Argentina – we should be able to keep it. They didn´t agree and opened my backback and confiscated everything. Someone was going to have a feast that night. At least they didn´t give me a fine or put me in jail (there was a huge poster of someone holding an apple in his hand while his hands were handcuffed together)!
We got to Ushuaia around 8 pm. It was FREEZING and really windy. We went to the first place we found – a dormitory! We had kitchen privileges, so while we were there we cooked and ate there. Except for one meal. We had tried lamb four times in Patagonia so far (Patagonia is famous for its lamb) and we liked it, but couldn´t say we raved about it. Lamb is SO fatty. But there was a restaurant in Ushuaia that specialized in lamb and served it 20 different ways. We had spit-roasted lamb in orange sauce. It was fabulous! The best we´d had so far! Ushuaia is a port town nestled between some mountains – not the highest we´ve seen so far. But the city is pretty and has one main tourist street and that´s it. Tierra del Fuego is actually an island below the mainland of Argentina and Ushuaia is on the bottom of the island if you look at a map. It is the southernmost city on the planet and is truly the END OF THE WORLD. We planned to trek in Tierra del Fuego National Park the next day, but a bad cold (mine) and a freezing, rainy day stopped us in our tracks. This was the first day of real rain on the whole trip so far, but it poured! So we had to go. At least I can say I went to the END OF THE WORLD.
We left Ushuaia and had to go back through Rio Gallegos in order to head up the east coast of Argentina. Rio Gallegos is the second biggest city in Argentina. It is a regular city, so there is nothing much to take note of except that there was a disco two doors from our hotel and it played Latin music! The first we had seen in Argentina!!! HOORAY! This disco, called Metropolis, only played cumbia and merengue, but hey! We were happy. Of course we couldn´t go until 2 am, so we had to sleep in the evening and wake up at 1:30 in order to get ready to go. Crazy hours! Had a great time dancing though.
After Rio Gallegos we headed for Trelew and the Punta Tomba penguin reserve. This particular reserve has the largest colony of penguins outside of Antarctica. It was the end of the season and just before the penguins leave for colder places, but we were lucky to see so many. Everyone supposes that penguins are cute birds, and we weren´t disappointed. They are! They seem to have personalities. Some of them didn´t like people and would waddle away when we approached. But others were more curious and would actually walk up to us and turn their heads this way and that to get a good look at us. We enjoyed our day at the penguin reserve. We also saw wild Guanacos (an Argentinian llama). After that, we drove to a small Welsh (that´s right!) town called Gaiman. This pretty place was known for its tea houses and high tea ritual. So that´s where we went…to have tea and cakes. Yummy, but way too many sweets! We were buzzing for hours after with all that sugar. The next day we boarded a 22-hour bus to Buenos Aires, where my friends Rodrigo and Florencia and (yep, you guessed it!) Stacy (who was returning from her trip) were waiting for us. Click here to see photos of this section.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Argentina Part 1: Wine country and the lake district
While taking the 8-hour bus from Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina, we passed the highest mountain in the western hemisphere, Aconcagua, which is 6962 meters high (22,841 feet!). Unfortunately, we took a night bus, so we were unable to see it. We arrived in Mendoza around 7 am, found a hotel and went to the central market. Usually we spend our first day in a city just walking around and feeling it out, without actually looking for anything in particular. We decided that there must be a park, so we´d go to the market, get food and wine and have a pinic at lunch time. You can tell a lot about a town by visiting the central market and we made a habit of doing that. The Mendoza market was spotlessly clean - as was most of the city. We bought local sausage, cheese, home-made bread, green and black olives, grilled veggies, suckling pig, baguettes of bread, and red grapes. And don´t forget the wine- we bought a bottle of locally made Malbec (the Mendoza area produces 70% of all wine in Argentina). We found a beautiful little park, of which Mendoza has several, sat down and began our wonderful picnic. We weren´t sure if we could open the wine and drink it right there in the park, but the three policemen who came by and stood by us didn´t seem to mind. In fact, maybe they were protecting us.
Mendoza is one the most beautiful mid-sized towns I´ve ever seen. Devastated by an earthquake in the 1800s, the town decided to build wide boulevards in case the people needed a place to run from future earthquakes. The streets are all tree-lined with oaks and even maple trees, much like the east coast of the U.S. The center of town is filled with shops, restaurants, and bistros with chairs outside everywhere for serious people watching! It feels like Europe and it looks like Europe. Other attractive factors – it has many parks, and a huge one with a lake and a zoo. And of course the wine! If you want to live in Argentina, this would be the place. Prices are considerably less than in the U.S.
One strange thing about Argentina though, and we found this throughout Argentina, and something that would probably prevent me from living here..there is no indigenous culture, so there is no music. Yes, Argentina has the tango, but that is more of a show dance than a club dance. In other words - we did not hear a bit of Latin music anywhere, not in the restaurants, the clubs, the streets, the buses – nowhere! The Argentines are happier listening to American rock and country (they love Creedence Clearwater Revival!) At times, especially in the lake district, (you´ll read about that soon), I felt like I was sitting in the U.S. When we DID go to nightclubs, it was rock, rock and more rock. Even the live bands played our old rock songs. We DID hear one reggae band one night and felt fortunate about that. So…those of you who know me well and know that I go out dancing in Nicargua four nights a week to the sounds of salsa, merengue, bachata, cumbia and reggaeton, well you know how disappointed I am in the music here.
The next day we took a city bus to Argentina wine country. No tours for us! We rented bicycles and had the most fabulous day riding around from one winery to another—getting the scoop on how they made their wines and of course tasting! We liked one place in particular called La Rural. We saw their wines all over Argentina, but they don´t distribute their wine to other countries. Too bad, but if you happen to be in Stacy´s presence when she opens one of her two bottles of Collector´s vintage, you will be one lucky person! We finished up our day of wine tasting at a chocolate factory. Willy Wonka wasn´t there, nor was Johnny Depp (too bad), but fabulous chocolates, liquors, and marmalades were also ours for the tasting. We even had a liqueur made of rose petals, and drank Absinthe - that famous original French poison that is illegal in the U.S., Canada, and most of Europe today. We can see why - that stuff stings all the way down! When we went back to return our bikes, the delightful owner, Mr. Hugo gave us each three water glasses full of red wine. He also gave it to our new friends, four fellows from Poland who were also staying at our hotel. After a whole day of tasting a lot of wine, we all went back home together and decided to have a party on the roof! The Polish guys were there, Stacy, me, Josue and a couple from Chile. Everyone brought something and we had a feast of bread, grilled beef, beer and wine. Josue played the guitar for us and everyone was dancing ´til 4 in the morning! What a riot...wine country was certainly a hit! And I must say that the local people were extremely nice to us.
Next we decided to go to the Lake District of Argentina. Most tourists miss this area due to lack of time, but that is too bad. (I recommend a vacation of JUST going to Mendoza and wine country, skipping Buenos Aires if there is no time and selecting a few of the tiny cities in the lake district to visit.) Each small town is next to or affiliated with a lake and/or a National Park. There are wonderful hiking opportunities here. Walking between huge mountains through gorgeous flowering meadows. The towns reminded me of towns in the Adirondacks, or those in ski country in Colorado, or around Banff. In fact, I did feel like I was in the U.S. in these places, which may be a positive or negative depending on what you are looking for. Argentina is feeling more and more like the U.S. to me. Again, the American rock and country music ruled the roost and there were NO places to dance in these little towns. So we appreciated their beauty during the day and relaxed with long dinners with lamb and Malbecs at night. Yes, I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. NO DANCING! I was wondering if that was going to be the case throughout all of Argentina.
We did a lot of hiking during these days. I´m not talking about a one-mile easy hike to see a view. I´m talking about 10-15 mile hikes to a lake for a picnic, or a beautiful waterfall, through a forest from one end of a peninsula to the other. We visited the following towns: Neuquen, Junin de los Andes (and Parque Nacional Lanin for two days), San Martin de los Andes (and a dusty but spectacular hike to Mirador Bandurias to get a view of Lago Lacar), Villa La Angostura (to walk the Peninsula Quetrihue in Parque Nacional Los Arrayanas), Bariloche (to hang out and eat well at the largest of the lake cities), and El Bolson (the ¨hippie¨ lake town that had cheap hotels and a unique artist´s fair on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Opinions? We were most disappointed in Bariloche, which becomes a hopping ski resort in the winter. For some reason, this city built the tourist district in town, not near the lake. In fact, you can´t even see the lake from the places where you would dine or shop. When you go to the lake itself, which is a pretty lake, you see a sad little beach, government buildings and apartments. The city of Bariloche is just a regular city, not cute and homey like the smaller towns. San Martin de los Andes however, was a tidy, upscale town with a gorgeous lake at one end. Fishing, boating, and shopping in town at pricey, but perfectly decorated upscale stores might entice you here. This town was totally out of my budget, so we didn´t stay. Got on a bus to La Angostura, which was only two hours away. Took a beautiful hike there. Next to Bariloche. After a couple of days in Bariloche, we said good-bye to Stacy, as she left for Buenos Aires to meet her friend Paul and begin her adventure to Antarctica!
Josue and I made our way to El Bolson and lucked out on a place to stay. When we got off the bus an older woman came up to us and asked if we wanted to stay in a house. We don´t usually listen to the people who come up to us at the bus stops, but the price was very cheap and we decided to take a look. We said yes to this cute A-frame cabin complete with kitchen, dining room and TV for only $23 a night! We cooked our own meals, went to the artist´s fair twice. My only purchase was a hand-made mate cup, created from a gourd. Every person in Argentina has his or her own mate cup to drink mate. We bought some mate at the supermarket, asked people what you are supposed to do and tried mate for the first time. Josue didn´t like it. I think you have to get used to it and I am going to keep trying. We stayed in El Bolson extra time because the buses to the heart of Patagonia did not run every day. But El Bolson was a nice place to be stuck.
Our next destinations were El Chalten and the Fitz Roy mountain range, El Calafate and the magnificent Perito Moreno glacier, and then Tierra del Fuego and the town of Ushuaia, the END OF THE WORLD! Our first bus took 30 hours! There were a couple of stops along the way but these long travel buses are plush semi-bed, two level buses. They show a ton of movies and some are even nice enough to put the English subtitles on when I ask. All of the movies are from the U.S. Food is included and usually hot coffee. So imagine....this 30-hour bus leaves on Thursday night and gets to El Chalten on Saturday morning! Since the bus left at night and we had to check out of our cabin, we left all of our gear at the bus station, which they suggested we do so we could walk around town all day. One thing they DIDN´T tell us though, was that the bus terminal closed at 8 pm! When we went back there at 10:30 pm to pick up our stuff for our 11:15 bus ride, the place was locked up and our things were sitting there inside! We tried banging on the windows to trip an alarm or something, hoping the police would come by and help us out. But there were no alarms. We had already paid for our tickets and knew that if we missed this bus, we would have to pay again (and not cheap tickets because the ride was so long!). There was no way we could ask them to send our things on the next bus.....too risky. We just stood there until the bus arrived so we could ask the driver what to do. The driver was nice and told us that someone had alerted him that some tourists left their things at the terminal and someone would show up at 11:15 to open the terminal! And they did. That´s just how nice people are in Argentina! Now Josue and I were on our way to Patagonia!
Things you may not know about Argentina. I didn´t. (This commentary does not include Buenos Aires).
1. OK, you know this one by now. They don´t play Latin music except the tango. And they love U.S. country and rock.
2. Everything is closed during the week between 1 and 5, when they take their siesta. Everything is closed on Sunday until 6 pm, when the cities re-open for business!
3. When people DO go out to nightclubs, they don´t go to the club until 2 a.m.! That´s right. If a live band is playing, that is when the music STARTS. And I thought Nicaragua was bad because the people don´t go out until 12:30 a.m.!
4. EVERYONE SMOKES CIGARETTES! That is one other reason for not living here. There are no smoke-free zones. I think if the government tried to do that, there would be a revolution here! Internet cafes, restaurants, of course bars, offices, etc. Smoke, smoke smoke!!!!
5. You can´t find eggs for breakfast anywhere but the hotels for North Americans. The restaurants don´t have them. People in Argentina don´t eat eggs for breakfast!
6. Nothing opens until about 9 am in the morning, so don´t rush to wake up.
7. Since people from Israel seem to be the number 1 tourists in Argentina, signs are in Spanish and Hebrew ALL OVER Argentina! (And not necessarily in English in some places!)
Click here to see the photos for this section.
Mendoza is one the most beautiful mid-sized towns I´ve ever seen. Devastated by an earthquake in the 1800s, the town decided to build wide boulevards in case the people needed a place to run from future earthquakes. The streets are all tree-lined with oaks and even maple trees, much like the east coast of the U.S. The center of town is filled with shops, restaurants, and bistros with chairs outside everywhere for serious people watching! It feels like Europe and it looks like Europe. Other attractive factors – it has many parks, and a huge one with a lake and a zoo. And of course the wine! If you want to live in Argentina, this would be the place. Prices are considerably less than in the U.S.
One strange thing about Argentina though, and we found this throughout Argentina, and something that would probably prevent me from living here..there is no indigenous culture, so there is no music. Yes, Argentina has the tango, but that is more of a show dance than a club dance. In other words - we did not hear a bit of Latin music anywhere, not in the restaurants, the clubs, the streets, the buses – nowhere! The Argentines are happier listening to American rock and country (they love Creedence Clearwater Revival!) At times, especially in the lake district, (you´ll read about that soon), I felt like I was sitting in the U.S. When we DID go to nightclubs, it was rock, rock and more rock. Even the live bands played our old rock songs. We DID hear one reggae band one night and felt fortunate about that. So…those of you who know me well and know that I go out dancing in Nicargua four nights a week to the sounds of salsa, merengue, bachata, cumbia and reggaeton, well you know how disappointed I am in the music here.
The next day we took a city bus to Argentina wine country. No tours for us! We rented bicycles and had the most fabulous day riding around from one winery to another—getting the scoop on how they made their wines and of course tasting! We liked one place in particular called La Rural. We saw their wines all over Argentina, but they don´t distribute their wine to other countries. Too bad, but if you happen to be in Stacy´s presence when she opens one of her two bottles of Collector´s vintage, you will be one lucky person! We finished up our day of wine tasting at a chocolate factory. Willy Wonka wasn´t there, nor was Johnny Depp (too bad), but fabulous chocolates, liquors, and marmalades were also ours for the tasting. We even had a liqueur made of rose petals, and drank Absinthe - that famous original French poison that is illegal in the U.S., Canada, and most of Europe today. We can see why - that stuff stings all the way down! When we went back to return our bikes, the delightful owner, Mr. Hugo gave us each three water glasses full of red wine. He also gave it to our new friends, four fellows from Poland who were also staying at our hotel. After a whole day of tasting a lot of wine, we all went back home together and decided to have a party on the roof! The Polish guys were there, Stacy, me, Josue and a couple from Chile. Everyone brought something and we had a feast of bread, grilled beef, beer and wine. Josue played the guitar for us and everyone was dancing ´til 4 in the morning! What a riot...wine country was certainly a hit! And I must say that the local people were extremely nice to us.
Next we decided to go to the Lake District of Argentina. Most tourists miss this area due to lack of time, but that is too bad. (I recommend a vacation of JUST going to Mendoza and wine country, skipping Buenos Aires if there is no time and selecting a few of the tiny cities in the lake district to visit.) Each small town is next to or affiliated with a lake and/or a National Park. There are wonderful hiking opportunities here. Walking between huge mountains through gorgeous flowering meadows. The towns reminded me of towns in the Adirondacks, or those in ski country in Colorado, or around Banff. In fact, I did feel like I was in the U.S. in these places, which may be a positive or negative depending on what you are looking for. Argentina is feeling more and more like the U.S. to me. Again, the American rock and country music ruled the roost and there were NO places to dance in these little towns. So we appreciated their beauty during the day and relaxed with long dinners with lamb and Malbecs at night. Yes, I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. NO DANCING! I was wondering if that was going to be the case throughout all of Argentina.
We did a lot of hiking during these days. I´m not talking about a one-mile easy hike to see a view. I´m talking about 10-15 mile hikes to a lake for a picnic, or a beautiful waterfall, through a forest from one end of a peninsula to the other. We visited the following towns: Neuquen, Junin de los Andes (and Parque Nacional Lanin for two days), San Martin de los Andes (and a dusty but spectacular hike to Mirador Bandurias to get a view of Lago Lacar), Villa La Angostura (to walk the Peninsula Quetrihue in Parque Nacional Los Arrayanas), Bariloche (to hang out and eat well at the largest of the lake cities), and El Bolson (the ¨hippie¨ lake town that had cheap hotels and a unique artist´s fair on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Opinions? We were most disappointed in Bariloche, which becomes a hopping ski resort in the winter. For some reason, this city built the tourist district in town, not near the lake. In fact, you can´t even see the lake from the places where you would dine or shop. When you go to the lake itself, which is a pretty lake, you see a sad little beach, government buildings and apartments. The city of Bariloche is just a regular city, not cute and homey like the smaller towns. San Martin de los Andes however, was a tidy, upscale town with a gorgeous lake at one end. Fishing, boating, and shopping in town at pricey, but perfectly decorated upscale stores might entice you here. This town was totally out of my budget, so we didn´t stay. Got on a bus to La Angostura, which was only two hours away. Took a beautiful hike there. Next to Bariloche. After a couple of days in Bariloche, we said good-bye to Stacy, as she left for Buenos Aires to meet her friend Paul and begin her adventure to Antarctica!
Josue and I made our way to El Bolson and lucked out on a place to stay. When we got off the bus an older woman came up to us and asked if we wanted to stay in a house. We don´t usually listen to the people who come up to us at the bus stops, but the price was very cheap and we decided to take a look. We said yes to this cute A-frame cabin complete with kitchen, dining room and TV for only $23 a night! We cooked our own meals, went to the artist´s fair twice. My only purchase was a hand-made mate cup, created from a gourd. Every person in Argentina has his or her own mate cup to drink mate. We bought some mate at the supermarket, asked people what you are supposed to do and tried mate for the first time. Josue didn´t like it. I think you have to get used to it and I am going to keep trying. We stayed in El Bolson extra time because the buses to the heart of Patagonia did not run every day. But El Bolson was a nice place to be stuck.
Our next destinations were El Chalten and the Fitz Roy mountain range, El Calafate and the magnificent Perito Moreno glacier, and then Tierra del Fuego and the town of Ushuaia, the END OF THE WORLD! Our first bus took 30 hours! There were a couple of stops along the way but these long travel buses are plush semi-bed, two level buses. They show a ton of movies and some are even nice enough to put the English subtitles on when I ask. All of the movies are from the U.S. Food is included and usually hot coffee. So imagine....this 30-hour bus leaves on Thursday night and gets to El Chalten on Saturday morning! Since the bus left at night and we had to check out of our cabin, we left all of our gear at the bus station, which they suggested we do so we could walk around town all day. One thing they DIDN´T tell us though, was that the bus terminal closed at 8 pm! When we went back there at 10:30 pm to pick up our stuff for our 11:15 bus ride, the place was locked up and our things were sitting there inside! We tried banging on the windows to trip an alarm or something, hoping the police would come by and help us out. But there were no alarms. We had already paid for our tickets and knew that if we missed this bus, we would have to pay again (and not cheap tickets because the ride was so long!). There was no way we could ask them to send our things on the next bus.....too risky. We just stood there until the bus arrived so we could ask the driver what to do. The driver was nice and told us that someone had alerted him that some tourists left their things at the terminal and someone would show up at 11:15 to open the terminal! And they did. That´s just how nice people are in Argentina! Now Josue and I were on our way to Patagonia!
Things you may not know about Argentina. I didn´t. (This commentary does not include Buenos Aires).
1. OK, you know this one by now. They don´t play Latin music except the tango. And they love U.S. country and rock.
2. Everything is closed during the week between 1 and 5, when they take their siesta. Everything is closed on Sunday until 6 pm, when the cities re-open for business!
3. When people DO go out to nightclubs, they don´t go to the club until 2 a.m.! That´s right. If a live band is playing, that is when the music STARTS. And I thought Nicaragua was bad because the people don´t go out until 12:30 a.m.!
4. EVERYONE SMOKES CIGARETTES! That is one other reason for not living here. There are no smoke-free zones. I think if the government tried to do that, there would be a revolution here! Internet cafes, restaurants, of course bars, offices, etc. Smoke, smoke smoke!!!!
5. You can´t find eggs for breakfast anywhere but the hotels for North Americans. The restaurants don´t have them. People in Argentina don´t eat eggs for breakfast!
6. Nothing opens until about 9 am in the morning, so don´t rush to wake up.
7. Since people from Israel seem to be the number 1 tourists in Argentina, signs are in Spanish and Hebrew ALL OVER Argentina! (And not necessarily in English in some places!)
Click here to see the photos for this section.
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