Sunday, January 17, 2010

A Quick Update

Greetings All,

Just wanted to let you all know that we are safe and well. Clearly our trek was pretty intense as it has taken me two days to drag myself across the floor to the computer to let you all know. I hope to be posting a more in-depth entry on our adventure soon. I will be covering the 2nd day dinner fiasco through our safe return. For the first part of the journey you will need to read Cyndi and Doug's blogs (I will provide links when I hear that they have actually completed their entries . . . we're all a little worn out).

At any rate, I will supply you with a quick overview of our upcoming week in case I am unable to get back to you.

Monday: Go to bus station, finagle some tickets from the bus company that we already bought them from online. Hopefully try and take make a trip up the gondola here in Bariloche to do the hike and see the vista they call the 17 Kilometer. It's supposed to be one of the best views around. If it's not clear enough for that, we will take a ferry to one of the islands out here that has a cinnamon forest. All the trees are very red in color and it was the forest that inspired the forest in the famous Disney classic Bambi.

Tuesday: Hang out until our night bus for Comodoro Ridavia (or something like that). Bus to Comodoro

Wednesday: Arrive in Comodoro at 8 am. Wait for our bus to Rio Gallegos which leaves at 12:30. Get in to Rio Gallegos at 11:59pm

Thursday: 12:15 am set up guard station in bus station, take shifts keeping watch, sleep when you can. 8:30 am catch third and final bus to Ushuaia (the southern most Argentinian city on the tip of Tierra del Fuego). Arrive at 8:00 pm. Find a hostel.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep you posted but travel days usually mean no interwebs. Again, I'll try and post on the trek soon and include links to Cyndi and Doug's blogs. In the meantime, enjoy some of the new photos I've posted on Shutterfly.

Love to all!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

South America Adventure . . . So it begins

Click here to view these pictures larger

One More Thing

Our last few days have been incandescently beautiful and extremely difficult due to a number of personal and family tragedies. I know the spirit of this blog is usually cheerful/comedic/completely and utterly ridiculous but I'd like to take this moment to encourage each of you to think about how fortunate you are. Life is precious. This is something that is too often forgotten. Treasure your loved ones and live your dreams. Here and now.

Peace and Love

B is for Bariloche, the most incredible place ever







Greetings Loyal Readers,

I apologize for the delay in posting. It
has been a pretty amazing week. I think my last post may have left some of you with the impression that I was not having a spectacular time. Allow me now to correct this grave misconception: this trip is the greatest thing I have ever done. There, that should take care of any doubt.

Now to catch you up. When last I posted Doug, Cyndi and I had narrowly escaped the clutches of the Piramedes midnight motorcycle monster and returned safely to Puerto Madryn. Very good. Having decided that our week was completely
shot, the three of us decided it was time to get the heck outta Dodge so we began to check on our plans to take a bus to Viedma where we would catch a train to Bariloche. Now, Cyndi and I were really, and I mean really, excited about the train. It was going to be our mental salvation. Our bus to Viedma was scheduled to leave around one. Luckily for us, that morning we decided to call the train company to check on the status of the reservations we had made. Turns out not only were there no reservations, there was no train. It was only running a few days this month and rather than let us know that our reservations could not be made due to lack of trains (or that there were no reservations in the first place) they chose to remain silent on the matter. As if the situation required any more stress, my wisdom tooth decided this would be a good time to begin its descent. Yes, that's right, I'm teething.

Naturally, this (being the train, not my wisdom tooth) caused a brief but fierce panic as we now had no reason to go to Viedma and no way out once we got there. Cyndi and I headed down to the bus stations to try and get our tickets refunded. Unfortunately refunds are not a common thing down here. We did however manage to change our tickets (with a small service fee) from Viedma to Bariloche. The only problem was there was only one spot on the bus that night, two of us would have to remain in it's Puerto Madryn and take the bus the next evening. Okay, a day is fine we figured and asked the agent to set us up for the tickets the following day. As she was making our reservations she noticed that we would be unable to make the necessary bus change in Nuequen and therefore would have to stay the night there to wait for the bus to Bariloche or remain in Puerto Madryn an additional two nights. We figured what's another two days at the beach?

It was decided, two of us would remain in Puerto Madryn and the other would go on a scouting mission to Bariloche. After much discussion over lunch it was decided that Doug would go on ahead and Cyndi and I would remain. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening swimming and enjoying the beach. Doug make his bus and Cyndi and I walked back to our hostel under one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen (sorry, no pictures). Our next two days were spent resting up, enjoying daily trips to the beach and equally frequent trips to the heladeria (ice cream shop) near our hostel. N
ow, I should take this opportunity to say that our hostel was awesome, quiet, clean, and affordable. It is called Hostel Punta Ballena and I would recommend it to anyone. Also they had two amazing dogs that kept Cyndi and I company during our time there. Their names are Fanny and Julian (I think that was his name, I just called him Tank). I have tried to include a photo but it doesn't due the Tank justice. He was quite hefty.

Unfortunately, our time at the beach came to an end and it was time for us to begin to make our way south. On Saturday evening Cyndi and I made our way to the bus station and loaded up for our overnight bus to Nuequen. I didn't sleep much but was relieved not to miss our
transfer. The morning passed swiftly, watching bad movies and knitting (Cyndi is teaching me). The morning was spent driving through desert that was actually quite reminiscent of the Pawnee. By 10:30 we were seeing some hills and were able to identify a few rock shelters. Around noon we began to see water. Massive bright blue lacks, incredibly turquoise rivers clear to the bottom, and fly fishermen galore (Dad, you need to live here, we should just move here)!! Our arrival in Bariloche was breathtaking. Doug met us at the bus station and we walked to our hostel.
Bariloche is a lot like Breckenridge or even Vail but with the most beautiful lakes and way more impressive mountains. It was founded by the Swiss and is still known for chocolate and st. bernards, of which I still have seen none (St. Bernards that is. I have seen chocolates . . . lots and lots of chocolates, mmmm).

Our hostel here is incredible. Definitely the best one yet. It's a small family run hostel that takes its quiet hours seriously. The common areas and kitchen are locked around midnight and there is a separate entrance for travelers coming and going after hours. The family are wonderfully sweet and always around. Our heater in our room broke and within five minutes of letting them know, it was being repaired. The hostel is on the outskirts of the main town so you do have to walk 5-10 minutes to get into the main part of town, which is a ski/mountain tourists dream. For us that is of course perfect. It also happens to be one of the cheapest hostels in town. Oh and did I mention the view from the kitchen/eating area? It's pretty spectacular. Today we have begun to prepare for a three day trek. We leave tomorrow and will return on Friday. Expect more posts and pictures on Saturday. Also, I have posted a shutterfly album with many of my recent photos. Enjoy.

Love to all.


Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Penguins, Piramides and . . . Motorcycles?


Greetings All,

Today I'd like to talk about expectations and travel. Expectations can really make or break your travel experience. For example, we have spent the last three days and quite a bit of money to get ourselves out to the Valdez Peninsula, famous for Orcas who eat seals off the beach and rare right whales. Sounds pretty awesome right? Maybe in December. Right about now, the only town on the peninsula, Puerto Piramedes is a wasteland, there are no whales and it will cost you an arm and a leg to drive 70 mph down a gravel road, slipping and sliding the whole way, only to catch a fleeting glimpse of an ornery Magellan penguin as it waddles away to some more desirable location (See above).

Now, should you arrive at Puerto Piramides expecting a shanty-town instead of a campground, complete with all night drum circles and midnight motorcycle rallies, you will be thrilled with what you find there. You may even have the time of your life. It took some re-adjusting of our expectations but in the end Puerto Piramides was not really so bad. And, it certainly made our splurge on a hostel here in Puerto Madryn seem extra awesome (wifi and running water . . . both incredible luxuries).

Tomorrow we take a six hour bus ride to Viedma where we will catch a Friday train to Bariloche. Now there is something I'm excited about. Also tried to include photos of Doug, Recoleta Cemetery, and Sea Lions but the Internet is not working so well. Hopefully I can have a photo post tomorrow!

Until then!

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Moving on Down

Greetings all,

I apologize for not writing so frequently but things have been pretty busy around here preparing for our jump off to Patagonia. We leave this afternoon (20 hour bus ride, yeck). In the last few days I have been getting used to life here at my hostel: the public bathrooms, the hot sweaty nights, and the all night parties that the Brazilians staying in the hostel have literally right outside our door until 7 in the morning. Now I must say goodbye to all of it, at least for now as we begin treking southward.

We leave tonight at 8:00 pm and will be taking a bus from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn. We will spend tomorrow night in Puerto Madryn and then head into Peninsula Valdez, a park famous for oodles of penguins and orcas that eat sea lions right off the beach. We should be in the park tuesday and wednesday. Thursday we will be busing to Viedma where we will stay until we take the train on friday evening heading to Bariloche in western Argentina (beginning of the Lakes District). I´m letting you all know in case I have no internet for the next week and am unable to blog.

I will try and post some pictures from my recent visit to the Recoleta Cemetery. It was incredibly beautiful and incredibly creepy.

Cheers for now!

Friday, January 1, 2010

G is for Gringo



For those of you who don't know, Gringo is an "endearing" term for white people/tourists/non-Spanish speakers/people without street sense/the other by Spanish speakers throughout Latin America. It isn't really offensive, it's usually just the truth so one of the important things about traveling in Latin America is recognizing and acknowledging yourself as a gringo. Gringo can be only skin deep or you can fool everyone with your looks and then open your mouth and prove yourself a complete and utter gringo.

The place I feel the most like a gringo is always in airports. The people who work in airports are usually pretty fluent in their native language and in English so you're gringohood status rests on whether or not these people choose to speak to you in Spanish. There's nothing more exciting than walking up to the ticket counter passport in hand just hoping to here "Buenos dias" instead of "Good morning." Should you be identified as a Spanish speaker you must then face the perils of carrying out a complete conversation in Spanish while retaining your non-gringo status. I was lucky enough to make it all the way through the check in to our flight gringo free when the lovely woman at the ticket counter requested to see my carry on items. I reluctantly handed my bag over and received a giant red tag reading "G" (see above). I guess I'm just a gringo after all.

It's been an exhausting few days. We left Sacramento on the 29th around seven pm. Our flight to LA was delayed due to snow in Portland so we didn't arrive until just after midnight. After picking up our bags we trudged to the international terminal and set up camp amongst twenty five other vagabonds in various stages of decaying consciousness. We may have managed a few hours of sleep before we began the long haul to Terminal Two to check in to our Aeromexico flight. The flight was sleepfilled and generally uneventful. The Mexico City Airport is kind of like being in a large white egg carton. The walls are covered in a sort of white stucco with pieces of quartz crystal which looks okay but is no good for leaning against.

Time spent during layovers can be the true test of a traveler's gusto. For an interesting list of things to do during layovers see Doug's blog at http://dougsouthamerica.blogspot.com. As for me, a few of the highlights of my layover include the following:
  • Dodging cops on segways
  • Watching "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" online
  • Checking email at least 50 times
  • Being used as a pillow by traveling partner
  • Eating the peanuts you saved from the plane as a snack cause you're cheap
  • Peeling and putting on layers of clothing to deal with insane temperature fluctuations in different parts of the airport
  • Trying various perfumes at the duty free store
Needless to say, eventually we made it onto the plane and to Buenos Aires. So here we are, planning the next month of our trip and enjoying the freedom that is afforded only to those who leave there worries at home and explore the world with reckless abandon. Okay, well, that last bit may have been too much but it sounded good.

Until, tomorrow!