Colonia del Sacramento is a quant town with coble stone streets and tons of mom & pop style restaurants with dining areas that spill out onto the sidewalk. We enjoyed people watching – wealthy folks from Buenos Aires totting Tory Birch bags and wearing Hermes scarves dinned at cafes besides North Face clad backpackers like us. If we’d had money to burn we could have stayed for several days dining on steak and pasta, but we decided to move farther north along the coast.

Our target was Punta del Diablo via Punta del Este (Uruguay’s infamous beach town where bare buns of the rich and famous roam). The weather in April though wasn’t warm enough to entice crowds and we had the beaches entirely to ourselves.

We rented a car in Punta del Este and drove up the coast at our own pace, stopping along the way. We climbed the windy staircase at Jose Ignacio’s lighthouse, but missed out on dining at the town’s restaurant La Huella that we’d heard so much about on the Food Network. Foiled again by South America’s strange eating patterns.

Lucas and I at the top of the lighthouse in Jose Ignacio

   The staircase was cramped and steep – and traffic was flowing up and down.

Another view of the light house. It definitely was a scenic picnic spot along the route.

We didn’t really know what to expect of Punta del Diablo. A couple of German girls we’d met the week before turned us on to the place. They said it had beautiful beaches, an easy vibe and was more affordable that Punta del Este and some of the other towns farther south.  What we found was a sleepy fishing village with loamy white sand and strong waves. Most of the tourists there, and there were only a handful, were serious surfers with dreadlocks deep tans and that ubiquitous string and bead jewelry they always seem to be wearing. Prices were as good as promised and our private sea view room only set us back $45 a night.

We eked out our last three remaining days in South America walking along the abandoned beaches, eating seafood and watching the waves. Punta del Diablo was a relaxing footnote for this leg of our trip, before heading back to the US.

View from our private balcony in Punta del Diablo.

A local family watching the waves. Yes, a horse and buggy is the typical means of transport in these parts.

No, this is not an abandoned house. A scraggly bearded fisherman stared back at us through the windows.

Fishing boats like this one lined the towns coast.

We were only allotting two days in Salta which seemed a bit ridiculous considering how long we drove to get there. But I really wanted to ride the Tren a las Nubes, or Train to the Clouds. Sounds magical, right? Maybe we’d see the Carebears up there!!

Our train adventure began at 6:30 AM in the morning and lasted until 11 PM at night. It was one seriously long excursion. But first, we took in the sites of Salta.

Salta truly is a lovely town, perhaps my favorite in all of Argentina. Like Goldie Locks would say, it’s “just right”. The buildings aren’t too tall, the town isn’t too small, the restaurants aren’t too ritzy or too provincial, the people are friendly, the museums excellent and the architecture is bits of lovely and bits of horrid – just as I’d come to expect of the best of South American cities. I imagine if Lucas and I were Argentineans and we’d tired of the Buenos Aires pace, Salta is where we’d move to.

One museum in particular, the High Andes museum or something like that, featured three astonishingly well preserved mummies from the Incan culture in the area. You could see the fingernails and eyelashes on these things. Amazing!  They were discovered in 1999 on a high altitude expedition, frozen in the ground, most likely as Incan sacrifices.

For anyone thinking of taking the Tren a las Nubes, make sure you get a Hostelling International Card. It’s worth 15% off – a savings of about $18 and the card only cost $16. Pretty easy math. Plus, we get a price break at future HI hostels for the next year. It would have also given us 10% off the NaviMag back in Chile… wish we’d known that then!

The train was pretty comfy. We sat back in our chairs and watched the sun light up the landscape as we sipped coffee and snacked on baked goods. The scenery was pretty awesome. I don’t think Lucas sat down for more than two minutes the entire trip. He kept bopping between one window and the next taking photo after photo.

We saw hundreds of the same Giant Cacti that we’d seen in the San Juan Provence. I just love the way the light is catching them in this photo.

Most of the terrain we traveled through was pretty stark. Very Eastern Washington-esque. The dry side of mountains look pretty much the same everywhere. It’s funny how the more you travel, the more similarities you find between different parts of the world and places from your own home turf.

As we got to higher altitudes, the staff passed out coca leaves and gave a demonstration on how to effectively use them to decrease the risk of altitude sickness. Yes, coca leaves are used to make cocaine. No, one leaf isn’t going to give you a buzz even remotely close to what cocaine would… you’d need a garbage sack full to do that, apparently. Lucas tried the coca, I wasn’t a firm believer and skipped it. No need to feel like a cow chewing its cud if you don’t need to. For all those interested, you fold the leaf into a small straw shape chew it a bit so it becomes flat and then stick it between your teeth and gums. Kind of like a baseball player uses chew. Yuck.

Here is a photo of one of the small town we passed. I think it had a population of like, two.

Part of the way we traveled parallel to a road. Those who don’t want to spring the big bucks for the train squash themselves into minivans and drive up the mountain range taking photos of the train. Doesn’t sound likely nearly as much fun to me!

Before we’d even left on our “round the world” adventures, Lucas found a photo on flickr or somewhere that he liked of a guy sticking his head out of a train. The guy had long hair like Lucas and it was billowing all around. We’d really wanted to take a similar photo and thought the Tren a las Nubes might provide just the opportunity. Unfortunately, it moves at about 15 miles per hour. Not exactly fast enough to get any sort of billowing hair going on. Oh well.

Here I am at the mountain range looking happy. And below you can see all of the other tourists milling about checking out handicrafts that were for sale. This point marks an elevation of 4,200 meters or 13,750 feet.

At first Lucas and I were milling about with everyone else. We bought a hand woven shall and then started to walk up to the viewpoint. Then very rapidly I felt completely exhausted and my vision pinholed to the smallest prick of light. Essentially, my world went black. I knew I was prone to altitude sickness so I’d taken some diamox earlier, but apparently it wasn’t an adequate prevention. Lucas had to help me hobble down to the medic train car. Embarrassing! Our friend wasn’t quite as fortunate, she didn’t have a Lucas looking out for her and she fainted! Good thing they had fresh oxygen on board. Yum!

After we’d gone back down a few hundred meters I started to feel better, though I didn’t venture off the train again. Lucas got off at the next sight seeing stop and snapped a few shots of the locals. 

He thought these girls were just so adorable. These sticks that they were selling were supposedly like viagra. Kind of a strange image when you know that about their wares.

The llama caught this woman by surprise when he decided to sample her snack. She smiled and then turned and gave him some of her biscuits.

Lucas says there is no particular story about this little guy. He was just “wearing a hat and looking cute”. From here on out it was all down hill, ha ha. It took us several hours to get back to Salta. And while the scenery was just as lovely on the way back as it was on the way out, we spent most of our time socializing with our neighbors.

Now, on to Uruguay!

The park is famous for it’s petroglyphs, which are 500+ year old rock carvings that were drawn by the native inhabitants of the region.  The petroglyphs show the lifestyle and culture of the people, and were used as markers for trade or migration routes in the area.

The rocks here are massive columns that rise straight up out of the ground, leaving interesting fissures and designs all around.  The colors were vibrant red and orange.  Occasionally we would spot a condor flying above us.

 
Panorama showing a slice of the park, and a wider view of the surroundings.

More interesting rock formations that dot the dessert. 

Lucas taking some shots of the scenery

The resident population of Talambaya Park, the Guanacos.  They look like a mix between a llama and a deer!  I bet they are tasty!  However, the park ranger told us they are a protected species, and that they are no longer hunted.  Bummer… I wouldn’t mind a big Guanaco steak!

We wanted to see more of the park, but our guided tour was only 3 hours.  We discovered that you can see the park on foot or bicycle if you plan in advance.  In fact, many people take a couple days and camp in the park, but it requires a significant amount of preparation, as there are no services here.  No water, food, etc.  It would have been fun to know this so we could have purchased all the necessary things in advance to camp here.  We considered going into the nearest town to buy supplies, but it would take us nearly half a day to drive to the closest town and back.  So, we decided to continue on to Ishigualasto national park.

The drive between the two parks is very dry and dotted with huge cacti.  We decided we’d stop along the side of the road and get a little closer to some of them.  We found one that looked accessible and made our way to it.  They look much better from afar than up close.  They are gnarly looking plants, pitted with holes, discolorations, and dead stuff hanging everywhere… generally uninviting!  They typically grow about 11mm per year, and these were over 600 years old!

This cactus had some sort of bud growing off it.  Maybe it had managed enough energy to spawn offspring?

When we got to Ishiqualasto, we didn’t think we’d arrived in time for the last tour.  Fortunately, they have a “night” tour of the park, and it would be leaving in only a few minutes!  We signed up and waited for our guide to show up.  He told us it would be a driving tour, and we’d ride around the park inside a vehicle.  Setting outside the entrance was this massive vehicle, and I was super excited to take a ride in it.  It could have driven over our little rental car without a hiccup.  I started checking it out and immediately wanted one!  It turns out the vehicle wasn’t a park vehicle, but was owned by another couple also visiting the park.  They had built the vehicle in Italy, and transported it over sea to South America by cargo vessel, for a 1 year trip overland. They were traveling from the southern tip of Argentina all the way north to Mexico. 

They let me take a look inside and around the monster, and it looked really fun!  Every part had a backup, or two!  Spare axles, leaf springs, wheels, tires, pretty much anything which could break on the trip was doubled up and latched into storage on the carriage of the vehicle.  It had a full kitchen, beds, shower, everything you need to survive harsh terrain. 

The tour guide ended up riding with us in our vehicle, and we drove through the park with the monster truck following us.  We would stop at all the sites in the park, get out, and take a walk around while the guide explained everything to us.  This park is known as the “valle de la luna”, or valley of the moon.  Much of the surface looks like the moon.  Void of life, water, and even color. 

There are many interesting geological formations in the park… and this one is called “Canta de Bochas”, or the ball field.  These stones have made their way to the surface over thousands of years, forming perfectly round spheres.  Evidently, when it does rain (which is very rarely), water rushes through this valley like a torrent, clearing away the loose soil and exposing these boulders.  The rushing water erodes the rocks and looser material around them, leaving these for our viewing pleasure.

Along with the spheres, tall spires of rocks called “the mushroom” and “the submarine” have been formed.  There are hundreds scattered about, but those two are the most famous.  They even make the monster truck look small! Unfortunately, it was getting dark, so the pictures didn’t come out too great!  Oh well, I guess we’ll have to make another trip there sometime in the future!

We packed up our tiny Chevy Corsa, and headed out of town. At this point, we had two choices. 1) Continue right back the way we’d come, along those windy roads, almost all the way back to San Juan before heading north towards our next stop. Or, 2) drive through the Calllingasta Valley and loop around north the slightly longer way. The obvious choice seemed to be to take the new route. Except for this way had a fairly substantial (but unquantifiable with the map we had) section of unpaved road. No big deal, we thought. We’d tackled a 20 mile stretch of unpaved road the day before without problem. So we set out for route number two.

At first the road was lovely. We sped through small towns where it seemed that everyone was out an about on their bicycle. All of the homes we passed were adobe, mud looking sort of things. But each was livened up with a carefully maintained garden of dahlia’s and roses. Quite romantic, in the artistic genre sort of way.

We passed two locals going the opposite direction on dirt bikes, and then the road ended. And we didn’t see another human, or even any signs of human life for near five hours. Just us, an impossibly dusty, bumpy ‘road’ and our worry as to whether we’d made a horribly stupid decision. Well, all things turned out alright for us in the end, but there were a few tense moments as we jumped and jiggled along the way while our car scraped boulders, threw up rocks, and completely bathed itself in red dirt.

As the sun began to set, we started thinking about our options for sleeping. We had all of our camp gear, and we’d passed through the occasional small town (we’re taking maybe 500 people) after we’d gotten back on the main drag, but we hadn’t found anywhere that seemed inviting. We took a chance and turned off the main highway to explore a small town of Guandacol. We’d seen a sign about a hotel and were itching for a shower. This town, like all of the others consisted of small adobe houses, and things weren’t looking promising for a warm shower. Surprisingly, their hotel was just perfect. Clean, comfy beds, a freezing pool for us to jump in, and ahh hot showers!

Before we ventured on our dusty way, we passed Cerro Alcazar — Totally gorgeous red rocks that we drove right through.

This road doesn’t invalidate our car rental insurance does it?

Deep in the middle of nowhere, half way between Barreal and Guandacol, shortly after we decided we couldn’t turn back and shortly before we realized that we were at least 100 kms from another living soul.

Do you see that smudge on the horizon? Someone took the time to erect a cross in this wilderness. How did they get the supplies there? Who comes out to appreciate it?

This is a typical shrine to the patron saint of travelers. Story goes, a woman and her newborn baby were traveling through the desert. Some misfortune befell them, and they became stranded without food, or water, or rescue. The woman died, but her child miraculously survived by suckling on her breast. Argentine’s set up these displays all along the highway an leave drinks, snacks and the occasional fan belts. She’s a modern saint, after all!

We woke up the next morning to a ghost town.  The entire city was empty.  For a while, I thought we were in one of those movies where everyone was turned into dust except you… very eerie to walk around and not see a single soul.  Turns out there was some unknown holiday, and everyone stayed up until dawn partying, and thus everyone who would normally be out and about was still sleeping.  We couldn’t even find a convenience store open!  When we finally made it to the bus station, there were a few people milling about. 

We hopped the local #23 bus to Zonda to see the Cave winery there we’d heard so much about.  Evidently, this company makes champagne in a cave, and the temperature is perfect there for the process.  We were afraid they wouldn’t be open, since everything else was closed, but after ringing the bell, some one came and opened the gate for us.  He didn’t speak English, but in my broken Spanish we determined that it was ok for us to take a look around.  The cave started out pretty cool, leading into the mountain with very to see except stone!  Here and there a little side cave was dug out, where they would store various stuff.  We made it to the tasting room when someone came and yelled at us, very loudly and pointed back to the entrance of the cave.  We had no idea what he said, but from the wild gestures, it seemed like we weren’t supposed to be there.  As we walked back, we met up with a tour group and fell into step with them.  I’ve no idea where they came from, as there is only one way in, and one way out, and we didn’t pass them!  The tour was all in Spanish, and worked its way through the machinery, ending in a quick and small taste of Champagne, which was actually quite good.  (I’m not much of a Champagne person myself.)  We walked back to the tasting room to find that there was no tasting, but we could buy a few bottles if we desired.  No thanks!

We decided to rent a car and drive around to some of the touristy places in the San Juan Province.  The area is quite large, and taking a bus everywhere just didn’t seem very feasible.  Our first destination was the city/town of Barreal.  Getting there was an amazing drive!  Once outside of San Juan, the landscape was a barren wasteland.  It was arid desert after desert, with mountains of desert in between.  We were starting to get thirsty and our map showed a city not far ahead.  When we got there, we wondered how it could actually be on the map!

Evidently at one time there was a thriving city of maybe 10 people who lived here on the railroad junction.  We guessed that when the railway stopped, the town died.  There was one house that was occupied (the rest had no roofs like the one above), and he sold refreshments at an absolute bargain of double the normal price.  We continued on, and passed through between two peaks of the mountain, and hit a one lane dirt road.  It was quite beautiful in it’s total lack of life.  Then all of a sudden, we started following a river, and the contrast was astounding.  Tucked in between the desert hills as this beautiful scenery.  Such a difference a little water makes!

The water looked so inviting, I wanted to for a swim, but it was impossibly hot out there, and we needed to move fast to get to our destination while they were open for tours.  We are headed to the Astronomy complex in El Leoncito National Park.  There are two telescopes here, and we were hoping to do a night tour and possibly sleep in the complex and check out the amazing night stars.  We hadn’t been able to make a reservation, but had our fingers crossed!  When we got there, we found out that one telescope was closed, and thus our lack of getting a lunar visit.  However, we did get to take a tour of the other scope!

The complex sits at an elevation of around 2,600 meters, and this area is known to have more than 320 perfectly clear nights per year.  It is located in a national park known for wildlife and a little desert oasis.  Cool eh?

After touring the complex we took a walk through the national park.  We were keeping our eyes out for the Puma who like to roam about and hunt for the guanacos.  We found the guanacos, but sadly no puma!

Jenn found a nice place to stop and cool off from the heat.  When we were recovered, we headed back to go check out the salt / mud flats at the base of the mountain.  They were super cool!  It wasn’t salt however… it was all mud!  So much mud that you could see a mirage just looking out across it.  We had some fun playing in the dirt and taking some interesting photos.  As it started to get dark, we headed back into Barreal to find some food and camping.  We found both, nothing like Argentine beef and a bottle of beer to finish off an awesome day in the Argentine wilderness!

Jenn: trying to guess how hot it was out here!  Whew!

Lucas: Self portrait!

If only I had a guitar in my hands…

Jenn getting some good air!

Close-up view of the scorched earth      

The morning of the trip, we were still waiting for the tour company at 8 AM. Another guy from our hostel was waiting too, so we felt confident that we wouldn’t be completely forgotten but when 8:15 and then 8:30 rolled around we were pretty nervous. When the company finally arrived, the tour guide was in a rather foul mood. We began to climb into the van, but he stopped our friend ‘Stijin’ saying that he wasn’t booked, even though he was holding the booking confirmation right in his hand. Apparently, our hostel and the travel agent had miss communicated (or not communicated) and poor Stijn wasn’t going to be able to join us on the trip. With that foul taste in our mouth our hopes for the day diminished a bit, but we were still prepared for an adventure.

We had the absolute worst seats on the minivan – far back row, with a speaker system or something under our seat so that there was no leg room, and the seats were a bit elevated so that you could barely see out of the window. It was going to be a long day! Luckily, we sat next to a lovely couple from Nova Scotia who regaled us with their travel stories the entire way.

First stop on the tour, the water reservoir for Mendoza. Being agriculture heavy, water is hugely important in the area. This lake here supplies water to all of the wineries, fincas, and people of the providence.

Our second stop of the day was at this bridge. We aren’t really sure why it’s so important to the region but here’s the best we could gleam from our guide. A similar bridge was built over the river in the 1500s and was used in some sort of military skirmish. The original bridge fell down years ago, but this replica was built in the early 1900s to celebrate their achievements. I’m sure if we spoke Spanish, the bridges story would have been a lot more impressive.

There were a couple of other stops along the way that we didn’t think warranted photos: a ski lift, a cloudy view of a mountain, but we were stoked when we finally made it to the Puente del Inca. These dogs didn’t think much of it, but we thought it was absolutely beautiful.

   The natural hot springs here have been used since the Incan times. Those white, yellow, orange and green colors that you see come from the minerals present in the warm waters.

Throughout most of the 1900s a train used to take tourists from the Atlantic Ocean, through Argentina over the Andes Mountains. It traveled right along the road we took today. At this location, most travelers would disembark and refresh themselves at the bath’s posh hotel. The hotel builders also built these very unappealing structures around the baths. Who knows why? We thought it looked more like a Rainbow Bright Prison, but I guess everyone has their own style. A devastating earthquake hit the area in 1960 or so leveling the hotel completely, but mostly sparing the baths and this is all that remains.

Lucas posing near the closed Museum… who knows what we could have found in there!

This bike was completely loaded up with gear.  The couple riding it looked like they had gone a few too many hard miles, and were very happy for a break.  Lucas wants to take a trip like this someday.  Mr. Price????  Get your planning going!

The last stop on the way up the high road was at the top of this viewpoint.  The road was a very steep switchback for 9km before stopping at the Argentina/Chile border.  When we got out to walk around we could really feel the lack of oxygen.  Even the short climb to the viewpoint took a lot out of us!

Jenn had made a reservation for a place online that had good reviews, but it turned out to be a long haul away from both the bus station and the downtown area.  But, we hoofed it and eventually go there, completely wiped out from the trek carrying our luggage… We were so tired we didn’t even care how bad the room was.. .which was pretty dismal.  As soon as Jenn stretched out on the bed, the entire frame broke and crashed to the floor.  We thought we’d just find a new place, but the front desk person said he’d take care of it, and worked to pull the old frame out and bring in a new one.  Oh well, we needed to stay somewhere, and we were grumpy, so we just decided to deal with it and find a new place the next day.  This hostel wasn’t quite the worst place we’ve stayed, (Iquitos airport, New Dehli transit area, and Banda Aceh all come to mind), but it was by far the worst in South America so far.

The next morning we woke up, stored our luggage, and went to find another place closer to the action.  By the time we’d found one and moved our luggage, we had killed the morning.  We picked up a flyer for a wine bike tour and took off on the local bus to the Maipu area.  There we rented a tandem bicycle from Mr. Huge’s bike shop, grabbed a bike, and off we went.  This was the first time either Jenn or I had been on a tandem bike… I didn’t think we’d make it at first… maybe it should be called the divorce bike… but after about 2 minutes we had it figured out and pedaled like champs. 

The first place we stopped was supposed to have a fabulous BBQ lunch, and we were starving.  We pulled in and found a chair, only to discover they were out of food.  AAAH!  Oh well, we decided we’d just have the wine tasting on an empty belly… that would surely go straight to our head!  The wine wasn’t very impressive here, so good thing we didn’t spend the money on a full bottle with lunch. Viña el Cerno

The next place was called Familia di Tomaso, and our hostel worker told us it was his favorite.  Fortunately, they had food, and we were ravished.  We ordered a bottle of Malbec and some food to go with it.  The scenery was great, overlooking the winery, with old mechanical wine tools and machines placed about. 

The food was fantastic.  Jenn had a prosciutto sandwich, and I had some kind of stew that melted in my mouth.   We finished our meal and were going to take the wine tour here until we realized it was getting late and we wanted to be sure to check out a couple more wineries.  So, off we went for the next stop, although a bit buzzed! 

Lucas getting the bike ready to go for the next stop after having quite a bit of wine… drinking and biking is the way to go… no drunk driving tickets for us!

Our next stop was the Laur olive oil factory.  Neither Jenn nor I had EVER seen an olive tree.  So it was quite cool to see them growing on a tree!  Did you know that green olives and black olives come from the same tree?  The only difference is how long they stay on the branch.  I picked one off the tree to pop in my mouth and almost vomited.  Either these weren’t ready yet, or they do some serious work on them before making them edible.  Yikes!  From one olive, 14% of the “meat” processes into olive oil, and only 4% of the pit turns into oil.  The rest is waste.  But, one olive tree can produce over 25 liters of oil.  Amazing!  Also, olive oil is graded on it’s acidity.  Extra virgin olive oil has the lowest acidity… which is why it usually tastes the best. 

Our next stop was Bodega Carinae.  It was a small boutique winery across the street from the olive oil plantation.  We got a nice tour of the production line, which was very tiny, everything is hand labeled and boxed.  When we got to the sampling, they had quite a few options… from 30 pesos up to 130 pesos per person.  We wanted to try some of the nicer wines, so we opted for a couple of the middle tier tastings.  The wine here was really fantastic, and we ended up buying a bottle to take back with us. 

We were the last people to leave the winery, and wince we were at the last stop on the wine bike route, we had a police escort back towards town.  It was a little nerve racking being followed by a police car while you are pretty buzzed on wine, pedaling a bike down a the road.  Not to mention our bags and cameras were half-hazardously attached to our bodies and we were all over the road trying to avoid potholes and not kill ourselves.  Fortunately, when we passed another winery on the way back, the police pulled in there to round up that crew, and we proceeded back to the bike rental place without a glitch.

I guess eventually we had to end up in Buenos Aires. It’s the biggest city in Argentina by far, and tourists roll in and out of there daily on their way from one destination or another. We landed in BA from El Calafate, by plane. Our only domestic flight on this leg of our journey so far!

We didn’t really have an action plan for BA but had heard that we couldn’t miss their famous cemetery, nor a tango show. So, first order of business was to do a sight seeing tour of the city. Usually I loath these things. I always feel like I’m going to be stuck with a group of old people (sorry, Gram, but you aren’t really old in spirit!) and by being in a big group I’ll miss out on the real feel of things. But, BA’s tour is rated the #2 attraction in the city so I thought eh, I’d give it a try. Plus, our knees were still killing us after our treks through Patagonia. The tour was fun – we road a double decker bus that buzzed around the city with regular stops at all the main attractions. They have these silly headphones that narrate the sites in your choice of eight different languages. Anyone speak Russian? 

We took these shot of the obelisk from the top of the bus. It’s not an especially inspiring photo, but she’s it’s such an quintessential shot we had to include it.

Next stop was the Recoletta neighborhood for their famous cemetery. The Argentinean elite get buried in style: above ground, in a family shrine, and decked out with sculptures. We walked through looking at the graves of past presidents, Eva Peron (former first lady, radio personality and most beloved by her people, for those who don’t know), famous doctors and some guy who their international airport is named after. Here are a few photos from Buffy’s Land.

As the bus drove from site to site we saw tons of broken down cars on the road – old Volkswagons and Fiats were particularly prevalent. This old car kept our attention though. Looks like it’s been there a while right, so why is the guy looking in the trunk? Well, that’s where he keeps his beer cold of course! There was a cooler in the trunk and the guy pulled out a liter of beer seconds later.

Are we in Redmond or Bellevue? Nope still Buenos Aires. Looks just like their Washington State buildings, huh except for this one has a snazzy outdoor patio mid-way up. You can just pick out the tiny people on the bottom right if you squint. Anyone looking to move to a warmer climate?

Our most colorful stop on the double-decker bus was La Boca neighborhood. We aren’t really sure why this neighborhood is so famous. But during our travels we gleamed that they have a well known soccer team, that the neighborhood was originally founded by immigrant factory workers, that the buildings are really colorful, and that it isn’t safe to go out in the neighborhood at night. Even during the day time there were loads of police trolling about. I’m never sure if the presence of police is supposed to make me feel comforted or not. The neighborhood was very photographic though and it served up some awesome barbeque.

I know Argentina is famous for steak, but I really can’t get enough of their pollo (chicken). It’s hard to find, seems I’m the only one who appreciates just how good it is here. Maybe it’s all the mayonnaise they put on everything that makes it yummy!

After spending a day doing tourist things, we had to dedicate a day to camera maintenance. Lucas had really mucked his camera up early in our trip. He’d gotten dust on the sensor somehow, then gotten it even dirtier when he tried to clean it. So we dragged ourselves all around the city in the 80 to 90 degree weather, going to first this camera store and then that one. A guy a one place would tell us to check another secret place up on the 7th store of a residential building. This happened several times. The first of these ‘secret places’ seemed like they knew what they were doing and they agreed to clean Lucas’ camera. Unfortunately, their version of clean didn’t actually involve any cleaning, so the camera came back in nearly the same condition as it was before.

Eventually we found a place that did the trick, but that was only after several mis-attempts and one pick pocketing misadventure on the subte (subway). Fortunately, the pick pocketer didn’t get anything more than a credit card (which we canceled) and a driver’s license (that doesn’t them do much good in Argentina anyways).

To lift our spirits on our last night we treated ourselves to a tango dinner show. It was pricey, but we thought “Hey, what the heck. Everyone says it’s one of those must dos, so it has to be good!” And it definitely was. Complejo Tango is where we went, for anyone planning a trip to BA. The show took us tango through the years, from 1900 to the present. Each dance had the actors/dancers in different period costumes and they acted out mini-skits while they danced to live music.

Buenos Aires is one of those places you could spend a month and never see it all.  Unfortunately, we don’t have that much time, so it’s on to the next stop for us!

After consulting some of the help from the locals, we learned of a beautiful quiet lake only 2 hours from the town that would give us the perfect spot.  We packed up our gear (Jeremy and Sandra had to rent again), and off we went, loaded with booze, food, and supplies for 3 nights of relaxing camping. 

The easy 2 hour hike to the lake was a steady incline, with some beautiful views along the way.  Fortunately, it wasn’t up and down the entire way, just a nice healthy uphill the whole way. 

A lookout through the valley on the way up to our camping spot.  We saw some wild horses roaming through the valley.  We weren’t sure they were wild, but they didn’t seem to be contained by anything!

We made it up to the lake in short order, and wow, what a view.  About this time, Jenn and I decided to take some pictures, only to realize that we left the memory card in our camera back at the hostel.  So, all of the pics we have here are compliments of Jeremy… otherwise we’d be photo-less!

We set up camp and then took positions to watch the sunset.  It was pretty cold, so Jeremy decided to grab his sleeping bag to use as a poncho… aka, giant blue penis.

It was our best sunset of three days.  So far, the trip was going great! We’d been so lucky with Patagonia weather, we didn’t realize how quickly things can change!  The next morning, we woke up to grey skies.  We were lazy about camp, cooking breakfast and taking it easy.  Around lunch time we decided we’d take a day hike… just as it starts raining.  So, we turn around and head back into our tents to stay dry.  It rained for hours… and hours.  And before we knew it, our entire campsite was flooded.  We only realized it when we started moving around inside our tent and things were squishy underneath us.  Our tent was setup in a level spot, so naturally all of the water ran down the hill, into our spot, and stayed there.  CRAP!  Somehow, our tent didn’t leak or fill with water.  (Go REI tent material).  I put on my rain jacket, and set about trying to build a moat around our tent.  Jeremy and Sandra realized they had the same problem, and set about the task as well.  Using rocks, sticks, and hands, I dug a drainage ditch out the bottom of our campsite, and then tried to dig a moat around the top to keep the water from flowing in.  It seemed to work for the most part, but there was just too much rain.  It was impossible to keep it out.  The only thing we could do was let it drain on through.  It didn’t stop raining at all… so we basically sat in our tent until dinner time.  I cooked in the vestibule of our tent for us, then cooked for Jeremy and Sandra.  We took turns eating, and finally went to bed to the sound of rain… at least we were dry.  Sometime during the night, the rain stopped.  Well, actually, it turned to ice.  Ice pelted us for a couple hours, but not enough to accumulate on the ground.  It was freezing cold though.  Then, the wind started up.  I thought we were in a tornado.  The wind was ripping through the campsite so much that our tent was bent all the way down so the top touched our faces.  I was sure the poles would break.  But somehow they held. Our friends were not so lucky.  Their tent suffered a crushing blow and snapped a fiberglass pole.

Once we assessed and put all our wet clothes back on, we decided we’d had enough and broke down camp to head back to something a bit warmer and dryer.  Jeremy took this shot of the lake below, but it doesn’t do the event justice.  The wind was ripping through the valley between the mountains and curling around pulling up these huge twisters of water.  It looked like mini cyclones on the lake… you could even watch the wind rip across the surface of the water and know exactly how much time you had before you needed to take cover from the wind.  It was strong enough to knock you down if you weren’t ready for it.

Down the mountain we went.  About 15 minutes into the trip down, the weather turned again, for the better.  Here we were, mostly soaked, cold, and tired, and we meet people heading up the trail for day hikes.  They looked at us funny, as they said the weather was very nice back in the town.  Oh well…

Pausing for a break on the downhill leg.  Our GQ poses on full.

After getting settled and fed back in the hostel, we took a day hike out to a waterfall nearby.  The waterfall was quite beautiful, and we took quite a few pictures.  Jenn and I decided to go up to higher ground and take a downward shot of the falls.  While we were up there, Jeremy took a nasty slip off the rock face and landed with his back square on a fallen tree.  I thought for sure he’d broken his back, and we were all extremely worried.  Turns out he was ok, just bruised a bit in the ribs, and the pride. 

Our bus arrived in El Calafate around midnight, which made finding our hostel a bit difficult.  No taxis to be found, no good map, and only a slight idea of where we were headed.  Jeremy pulled out his compass, pointed us in a direction and off we went.  Unfortunately, that direction was uphill, and after about 30 minutes, we thought we had lost our way.  We decided that we must be close, so we went one more block and magically arrived at the correct place.  Somehow, we navigated a path without directions almost efficiently as possible.  The hostel gave us a free beer on check-in, our first Quilmes.  It was mighty tasty!  The hostel sets up on a hill overlooking the city, and supposedly a lake.  But it was so dark, we couldn’t see anything. 

We woke up with the goal of renting a car and driving to the glacier.  We had a yummy breakfast at the hostel, (our first experience with dulce de leche) got directions to a car rental place, and took off.  2 hours later, we had our mighty rental car, the Volkswagon GOL.  No, it wasn’t a Golf, that would be way too nice.  This was the cheaper version, it didn’t even come with power steering!  We thought it really was a Golf, and the “F” was missing… but we soon saw other cars just like ours, with the same name. 

Our Gol was going to take us to some lake with a nice view, and then to Perito Moreno glacier.  I was driving, and Jeremy was navigating.  About 1 minutes out of the city we hit unpaved road… the woman told us not to take the car off the main road, but oh well… away we went.  The road was beautiful, carving a nice path between the lake and the base of a sheer mountain.  There were fences running along the entire way with several different kinds of hawks on display.  So, of course we had to stop and take pictures of each of them!

We were starting to get hungry though, so eventually we just pointed at all the birds and kept on going.  Our stomachs had become our motivating factor.  We had purchased a ton of food at the supermarket and proceeded  to make a huge pasta dish.  It was delicious.  Fresh chorizo, mushrooms, peppers, onions, and garlic mixed in with a red wine tomato sauce, all poured over penne and rigatoni.  There wasn’t a bit left when we were done eating.

Our next stop was the Perito Glacier.  When we arrived at the entrance to the park, the young man who came out to collect our money must have been drunk.  He and his friends were laughing at each other, making jokes, and trying to tell us how much the park entry was.  He said the entry fee was 75 pesos, or 15 heroes.  How convenient!  We just happened to have 15 heroes in the trunk of our Gol.  Seriously, you couldn’t put half a hero in the trunk of the Gol.  But we told him to check anyway.  He didn’t fall for it, so we just gave him the pesos, and laughed at our own private joke. 

We walked around the Glacier for most of the day, watching huge chunks fall off into the water.  The sound was fantastic.  The glacier was so far away however, that if you didn’t actually see the ice chunks fall, by the time the sound made it over, it was too late.  In the pictures, it looks like we were really close… and we were… it’s just so big and massive you can’t actually see the scale of it in the photos!

After the glacier viewing, we headed back in to town to pick up our friend Adolfo, and then proceeded to make a home cooked dinner.  The kitchen at the hostel was busy, so it took a while.  We played a few card games, and then called it a night.  The next morning: off to El Chalten!

One of the giant hawks we spotted on the way to the lake.  The wing span on this guy was over a meter!

The four of us posing for a picture with the lake and mountains in the background.

Cooking up a storm.  You can see our mighty “Gol” in the background.  The poor car rattled so much on the dirt road, and dust completely covered us.  The windows didn’t seal well, there was no AC, and was barely big enough for the four of us.  But, it got us around, and cheaply!

Here is a taste of the scale of the glacier.  I’ve no idea how tall it was, but the chunks of ice that were breaking off were the size of passenger ferries.

Close up view of the ice as we were waiting for it to break off and fall into the lake.  The color was a brilliant blue.

You can barely see a large boat on the left hand side of the glacier. 

At the widest setting on my camera lens, I couldn’t even get half of the glacier in the shot!

Here is a chunk breaking off and falling into the water!  Sweet!

Jenn, posing for the camera.  3-2-1 glacier!

Random picture of some cool weeds I saw.  This is currently my background image.  Anyone at Microsoft want to buy it and put it in the new Windows?

Another random picture of a fence… I liked the shadows and the colors.