After clearing through the vigorous
customs of Argentina, where they had one man “inspecting”
people's luggage and an Xray machine that all of us set off without
being checked any further, and of course the man preferring to drink
his Yerba Matte instead of looking in anyone's bags, we were back on
the bus and continuing our long journey to Buenos Aires. The drive
was fairly nice, as the Northern Country had a nice rustic charm to
it, with sprawling ranches, set along hilly terrain, and a few lakes,
which reminded me a bit of the Eastern parts of the Italian
countryside, or else even some spots in Sweden. We made our first
stop at a Restaurant/Lodge in a forested region, where there was no
machine to pay with card, but fortunately I was with Johan who had
exchanged for some Argentine pesos in Brazil (the smart one of the
new travelling group), so I would be able to borrow from him, but
fortunately the restaurant was willing to accept Reals, and I was
able to enjoy 2 cheap empanadas. Empanadas are one of the staple
dishes of the Argentine diet, and for those not familiar with them,
they are fried dough that has various types of fillings...much like a
pizza pop in North America. Cheap and tasty. After our lunch stop, it
was more hours of bus riding, reading, and sleeping, before we made
our next stop, at a 24 hr petrol station, where a huge queue had
formed inside trying to buy products. It appeared that there was no
one working there, and after trying to find someone for quite
sometime, I suggested we could just help ourselves to everything and
walk out without anyone seeming to care. Of course as I said this, an
older man started to watch me quite closely, and of course he turned
out to be the security guard.....bad timing! Finally someone showed
up, and ran the till, as our bus drivers were glaring at all of us,
feeling like we were causing them great delay.
Back on the bus, and more
sleep/reading, and after our roughly 18 hour trip we were in massive
Buenos Aires. Well I can't exactly confirm the size of the city, but
Johan was awake for when we basically crossed into the city limits
and said we were driving for well over 1 hour through the city to
arrive at the Retire bus station. After a quick stop at the tourist
booth to get maps, and ask about cash machines (well I asked for a
caja automatica, which basically means automatic teller, but the
tourist information woman seemed to think I meant a teller where I
one would pay parking fees...lost in translation!). So after not
finding a bank anywhere, we just hopped on the metro, and made our
way over towards the hostel, and fortunately I was again able to
borrow a few pesos from Johan. After coming out of the station and
trying to get our bearing sorted, we were approached by a kind old
man who was quick to help us find our bearings and on our way. It's
one thing I'm more and more aware of in South America, the people are
absolutely amazing when it comes to helping lost
foreigners....everyone is just so aware when people are lost and are
very kind with offering help, and even just kind to have a chat at
any time.
We made our way to the hostel, but
couldn't check in, so after dropping off our bags, I was able to get
in contact with an old friend named Tom, whom I had met in Croatia in
the fall of 2011. He happened to be in the city on a group tour, and
was just about to head out for lunch, so we figured we may as well
get together and grab lunch. Johan and I started the walk towards the
hotel, which it didn't look overly long on the map, but then you soon
realize how massive the streets are of Buenos Aires. After
unsuccessfully trying one bank, and finding a second one that worked,
I was cashed back up. Interestingly enough, I soon found out that
changing money with the street changers offered far better rates than
the atms, as Argentines don't have a lot of faith in their currency
(rightfully so after 5 collapses in the last 62 years!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1183891-argentina-is-replaying-another-inflationary-collapse).
Needless to say, a few friends later
went and were changing dollars for pesos at rates around 9 or 10, as
opposed to the official rate of around 5 pesos to the dollar. That
money exchange, being illegal, made for some funny exchanges in shady
little darkened rooms along one of the main walking streets, Avenida
de Florida. While making our walk over towards Tom's place, we
immediately noticed a protest just outside our hostel, near an Esso.
I grabbed one of their flyers and realized they were protesting for
wage increases. This whole protesting thing would be a very common
theme noticed around the city over the next few days in fact. The
next entertaining sight was some woman walking about 11 dogs....it
looked so ridiculous and I was in absolute awe of her dog walking
skills, that I gawked at her a bit too long, and she appeared to be
become quite upset with the fact that I was admiring her skills and
started yelling at me! Crazy dog walking woman. After wandering
through some of the side streets, we wound our way over to the
massive main street that cuts through a large portion of Buenos Aires
called Avenida 9 Julio...named after the official independence day of
Buenos Aires....and just an amazingly wide and busy boulevard to
wander along and get lost in the charm and hustle and bustle of the
massive city. Located about half way down the boulevard is a large
obelisk which creates a sort of traffic circle as well, and is
surrounded on all sides by massive tv screens...it almost had a Times
Square feel to it.
 |
| The first of many protests we'd witness, this one for low wages at this petrol station |
 |
| Crazy dog walker who didn't appreciate me watching her |
 |
| Avenida 9 de Julio, under construction |
 |
| "The son of a bitch of hats"...sounds like a nice play! |
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| Buenos Aires equivalent of Times Square in NYC with Theatres all over the place |
After over 30 some minutes of walking
which I figured would take more like 15, we arrived at Tom's hotel,
and were joined by himself, a super cute Aussie girl, and another
Aussie guy who was on their tour to head out for lunch. They had been
told of a pizza restaurant that had the best pizza in Buenos Aires
according to several people that they had talked to, so we made the
trek over and found the place. It had a super cool vibe to it, as it
had a small entrance area with people standing around drinking
coffees and having light snacks, similar to a European cafe, but then
the back area opened up to a massive dining room area with a hearty
wine collection, and of course a large menu of pizzas. We weren't too
sure of the sizes, but the server assured us that one medium would be
enough for two people, so we ordered a few of those and they were
quite delicious and filling. After the tasty dinner, Tom and his
group were pretty worn down from the previous night of partying so
they went back to their hotel, while Johan and I just wandered around
a bit more along the boulevard and then made our way over to another
plaza where there were several churches and government buildings
surrounding the area. It was another area with some amazing
architecture, as well as the standard protesters, with these ones
protesting the Argentine ownership of the Falkland Islands (a real
sore point for Argentines apparently), as well as other protesting
the government....protest, protest, protest! After a wander around
the area and seeing some scaffolding being put up to construct
something that we would later find out was for the celebration of the
upcoming “unofficial” Independence Day, we made our way back to
the hostel to chill out for awhile and go grab something to eat.
 |
| The centre point of Avenida Corrientes and 9 de Julio...also not to be confused with Washington DC :) |
 |
| Wandering the massive intersection |
 |
| Fancy McDonald's with a secret menu :) |
 |
| Plaza de Mayo |
 |
| Plaza de Mayo |
 |
| setting up for "Unofficial Argentine Independence Day" |
 |
| Plaza de Mayo again |
 |
| Must be a protest somewhere nearby, the News is there! |
 |
| Typical condition of cars in B.A...aggressive drivers here |
The hostel was pretty good for having
many activities organized for guests, and Monday night they had both
a pub crawl and a big drum show for the Monday night. We kicked
around the idea of the pub crawl, but several people talked about
this drum show and said it was one of the coolest things in BA to do
during Monday nights, plus Tom and his group were going, so I figured
I would go check it out as well. Johan was keen, so after some
procrastinating, we got ready to head out, found our directions,
grabbed our metro tickets, and were on our way. Upon arrival, the
line was quite long but there were quite a few English speakers, so
we knew we had found the right place. Because of the long line, it
seemed like a good idea to buy some beers off the street vendors, but
then the line moved really really quickly, and I was stuck outside
waiting to finish the damn beer...Johan, being 48 years old, smashed
his in a timely fashion and was well ahead of me entering the
place....guess I'm just too slow for a Swede! We caught up, grabbed
another beer and went inside to check out the cool venue. It was kind
of like an old parking garage under a skyscraper, with the open air
atmosphere, combined with concrete pillars everywhere....maybe not
the greatest for accoustics, however, the drum group was quite large
and loud, so the sound was still quite intense! We enjoyed the hard
beats, and kept an eye out for people we knew, however, the area was
packed and nearly impossible to see anyone, until an English girl
from the hostel wandered past us, and told us to come join her in the
mosh pit area, but when we went and got our drinks, we couldn't find
her, but did run into Tom, and hung out with him for awhile, before
meeting this massive group of Finnish girls. There were 40 of them in
total, 38 of which lived in Santiago, Chile, and had come over to BA
to visit one of their friends studying there...they were nuts! As
most Finnish women are :) We chatted with them, until the drum show
wrapped up, and they told us to call come to the after party which
was going to be held at the Buenos Aires party hostel known as
Milhouse. I had read about Milhouse, and almost booked there, but
America del Sur had a bit higher rating and was where Johan had
already booked, so I ended up there instead. While we were finishing
up our drinks, the English girl came wandering back with her two
friends, and I could sense she was already interested in me, so we
decided to go walk with them.
What happened next was quite a stroke
of genius, as a nightclub in the vicinity had paid some of the
drummers from the band to go into the streets and drum down the
streets, causing a large crowd of people to follow them, and they
continued drumming right into the nightclub, which caused a huge
group of people from the previous concert to folow them
there.....genius use of human herd mentality! Of course we ended up
being part of that herd somehow...damn those drums were great! I
think half the Finnish girls ended up there as well....effective
marketing..unfortunately Tom didn't, so I ended up losign him and not
catching up properly, as he only had one more day left in town...oh
well. So we ended up in this club, where the lineup was a bit lengthy
so we waited, and then they kept fluctuating the entrance price. Near
the entrance, there was a broken out window connected to another part
of the bar and I was leaning against it and realized I could just go
right through it instead of waiting in line, so I just squeezed right
on through...win! I wandered over to the entrance where the line was
and the people I was with were a bit shocked to see that I was no
longer behind them in line..suckers. They arrived in, we grabbed some
beers, and enjoyed the dance music. When in a group of 3 girls and 2
guys, I do find it a bit hard and maybe a bit rude to just dance with
one of the girls, so when the others made a run for a drink I had my
moment to isolate and sure enough, as I expected she was into me,
which lead to some hard core DFMO....(Dance Floor Make Out) which was
a stupid expression we used back in the University days...ahhh
sometimes I miss those times. So after that went on for quite some
time, her friends found us again, and then it was back to normal
group behaviour, just enjoying the live band that had begun playing.
Eventually her one friend, an American
girl was really really drunk...to the point that it almost seemed
like she had something slipped into her drunk, the way she was
acting...so with her sudden demeanor, it was decided it was time to
take her home to avoid any problems, and good thing we did, as she
damn near fell down the stairs coming out of the club, that's how bad
she was. Her, Johan, and the other friend went back to the hostel,
but the girl I was with was up for staying longer, as was I, so we
just went back into the club and hung out there until closing time,
then caught a cab back to the hotel. Earlier in the day we had passed
by a restaurant that was open 24 hours on the main boulevard, and I
made a mental note of that, as I'm a serial late night eater, and
sure enough she asked me if there was anywhere we could get any food
when we arrived back at the hostel, so we began that long walk over
to the restaurant and settled in for some tasty and filling late
night Argentine food. We had some pretty interesting conversations,
including one about Freddy Mercury and how I related to him a lot..at
this point she asked me about the whole homosexuality thing, and I
said that he went both ways and I was into the female side, but
somehow she misunderstood that I also swang both ways...I found this
out about an hour later in our conversation....such was our
relationship, one of lack of understanding ha ha....after our meal,
we went back to the hostel, and ended up crashing for a few hours in
the tv room, before making our way back to our separate rooms for the
night....I was surprised to see that even though I was crawling into
bed around 8 am, the girl in the bed below me still hadn't made it
back...she was a party animal, arriving back around 10 am!
After a short sleep, I managed to make
it down for a rare breakfast, as I'm notorious for missing them. I
found the English girl and an Irish girl who I recognized from the
night before at the drum festival, and sat down with them, had some
breakfast, and chatted for awhile. There was a walking tour later
that afternoon, but we had some time to kill, and the English girl
was going to go get a haircut, which I also was in need of. And
around that time Johan mentioned he was also in need, so it was group
haircut time! The hostel recommended a place a few blocks away, so we
made the walk over there, with Mary passing right past the salon, not
noticing it all, but fortunately my eyes are a bit sharper, plus I
knew the Spanish word to look for, so we popped into the place and it
was time to get haircuts. The guys working at the place were pretty
cool guys, and I had to laugh at the one stylist constantly stopping
in front of the mirror, fixing his hair, putting a little more gel,
blow drying, etc..... he was definitely intent on looking his best at
all times. After my haircut, I inquired if there was a coffeeshop
nearby where I could try some Yerba Mate.
For those not in the know, Yerba Mate,
is pretty much a religious event in both Argentina, and later on I
would find Uruguay as well. It involves a loose leaf tea called
Yerba, and it is placed into a cup called a Mate, then mixed around a
bit, and hot water is added. You then use a long metallic straw to
drink the Yerba from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage)
The guy at the shop recommended a
place, but then just decided to make me a cup for myself while we
were waiting, how kind. After enjoying the tasty drink, which is
meant to be drank scalding hot, however, I can't handle that kind of
scalding heat, and also have read that high water temperature with
teas causes higher rates of throat and oral cancers. So after
finishing off the tea, and haircuts, we were back on our way to the
hostel, arriving in time to catch the walking tour, which was lead by
a friendly Argentine named Santiago, who didn't like the sun at all,
and tried to remain in the shade or covered up at all times. We all
piled onto a bus and took a 15 minute trip over to the Retiro area of
the city, and began touring from there, starting with Plaza San
Martin, where I learned an interesting fact about statues, that I
hadn't heard before. If a statue has a man on a horse, and the two
front legs of the horse are in the air, then he died in battle,
whereas if the legs are on the ground, he died outside of battle.
Interesting enough. After the plaza we were shown a very unique
building that was built in the 1920s, and had a fairly distinct
architectural style, plus it was the first building in Buenos Aires
(BA) to have an air conditioning system. The name of the building was
the Kavanaugh building, and it has a bit of a comical past, as it was
supposedly built to block the view of a nearby church, as revenge
against the family who lived in a nearby palace and attended the
church, as they opposed the owner's engagement to one of their sons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanagh_building
 |
| First Argentine Yerba Mate, free with a haircut |
 |
| San Martin Plaza...start of Recocleta Neighbourhood |
 |
| Nice of the Argentines to protest on a National Monument...extra points for associating an agricultural company with nuclear waste |
 |
| San Martin park, nice place to relax and make out |
 |
| Santiago, our Argentine guide who is afraid of being in the sun |
After the plaza and some nice views, we
made our way through the Retiro neighbourhood, chatting away, and
getting to know other people on the tour, before arriving at one of
the more famous sites in BA, a massive graveyard called Cemetario de
la Recoleta, which is a famous landmark for having the gravesite of
Eva Peron. There were again some interesting stories about Eva Peron,
including how her corpse was stolen at one point in time, how it was
defiled by a doctor who had performed an autopsy, and how it was now
buried over 6 m deep so that it could not be stolen. By buried I mean
put into one of the absolutely massive mausoleums or tombs that
littered that graveyard. It was a bit creepy walking around as there
was this massive gang of cats running around and lingering around
gravesites...creepy cats. We also were shown a graveyard of a famous
hairstylist's daughter who died in an avalanche in
Switzerland...apparently hair stylists can make a lot of money, as
the shrine to her was massive as well, and seemed like it would have
cost a pretty fortune. After the graveyard, it was onwards towards
Parque Thays, where there were two interesting sites to note. One was
a man in his late 50s sitting in a cafe with a suit, cigar, glass of
scotch, and a fancy scarf and hat...I can only hope to look like him
one day..very classy individual indeed. The other more permanent
interesting site was a large flower structure that used to open and
close, but now was broken, and therefore was stuck open. Apparently
the city chose not to fix it, as it was a private donation, and they
didn't feel that they should provide the funds..hilarious. And with
that, the tour was complete...a relatively quick trip around the
Retiro and Recoleta neighbourhoods, and we were back on our way to
the hostel.
 |
| First of many beautiful monuments in the most beautiful cemetery I've ever seen |
 |
| Final resting place of Eva Perron or Evita as some may know her as |
 |
| Famous graveyard of the daughter of a famous hairstylist....complete with her dog and cat...cat appears to be still doing well |
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| Faculty of Law, Buenos Aires University |
 |
| Commissioned art project that used to open and close, now that it doesn't close, the city doesn't want to pay to fix it and it remains open ha ha |
After arriving back at the hostel, we
spent most of the night just hanging out there, having a few beers, a
new Chilean friend named Dario and I went to a nearby pub to play
some billiards, but they wouldn't let people play after 11 pm...what
kind of a pub is that! So rather than staying there and spending more
on beers, we just grabbed one more beer each at the hotel, chatted a
bit in Spanish, and then called it an early night. The next day
myself, Dario, and Johan decided to go wander around the Puerto
Madero area, which is just south of the hostel. While walking towards
there we kept seeing tourist advertisements on nearly every corner
for the Puenta de Mujeres (Bridge of Women), sometimes two within 15
m of each other...they really really wanted people to read about the
damn bridge! We wandered along the area, near some swampy area, and a
park that had some man running steps. In true Rocky fashion, Johand
and I ran up the stairs, humming the Rocky theme song, and doing some
boxing moves up top, much to the disdain of the local man who was
running the stairs in a circuit for exercise. We continued to make
our way wandering around, before finding the Comedy Museum. I'm not a
huge museum fan, however, if the museum is something fairly unique,
then I'm willing to check it out, and this was the case. It was
located in an old brewery, and had Argentine comics and short stories
from many time periods, including some comics from the 1800s where
Argentine is mentioned in an English comic. Everything was in Spanish
of course, but it's a good way to learn the language a bit better.
After our museum tour, we made our way
finally over to the bridge that was so ingrained into our
heads....and it was okay. I guess it's meant to mimic a woman dancing
Tango, or so I've been told. After crossing the bridge, we found a
nearby hamburger stop for a quick lunch before making our way on the
bus towards some architecture museum called the MARQ. We managed to
miss our stop somehow, but were relatively close by even with the
missed stop, and arrived at the museum that was absolutely tiny, as
it was set into a tall and skinny house. It did have some rather
interesting examples of various homes constructed around Argentina by
various architects....I was quite impressed by the models, however,
the other guys weren't all that impressed and were ready to leave
quite quickly. After the MARQ we were on our way to the Obelisk where
we were to meet the French girl. After admiring some more of the
lovely architecture and the amazing French embassy, arriving just on
time to meet up with Alexei before wandering down Avenida Florida,
where her and Dario went to do the illegal money exchange, which
involves going into some tiny boarded up room, and making the money
exchange of Dollars for Pesos, with the exchange rate fluctuating a
fair bit, but the avg rate along the street was 8.5 to 8.6. After the
money exchange, and a stop for a few Happy Hour beers at a nearby
restaurant we went onwards towards the hostel, where we settled in
for a few hours until some Milonga show was on (a faster version of
Tango dancing) at a nearby bar.
 |
| The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Buenos Aires....just a bit nicer than my Engineering faculty in Canada |
 |
| Puerto Madero....not a nice day |
 |
| I have a friend named Pancho, apparently in Argentina they seem to think he's super....I don't think so |
 |
| The Comedy Museum of Argentina |
 |
| The infamous Puenta Mujer that was so heavily adversed along the streets....not really that amazing |
 |
| You sir, have a fine moustache |
So a few of us went down there, ordered
some empanadas and a few bottles of wine and settled in. We were a
bit too late to take part in the early parts of the lessons, so we
just sat and watched, and then a wicked orchestra band came on and
played several numbers for the dancers to dance to. The band was
really really awesome, but I couldn't help but laugh at one of the
women dancing on the floor, as every time she passed by our table, no
matter her dance partner, she had this look on her face that could be
described as something that would be seen after intense sexual
pleasure! I started laughing as I noticed this, and began to point it
out to others at the table who all joined me in laughing. After the
bottles of wine, the band finished up, and we decided to wander off
elsewhere, finding another nearby pub. One thing about B.A nightlife
is that people go out REALLY late to party, and any day of the work
week to boot. We arrived and found several full tables of people
drinking late, and ended up meeting several groups of them outside.
With the cute French girl with our group, she kind of drew the
attention of many, as she spoke Spanish so well from living in
Barcelona the past few years, plus the pub was mostly Argentine men
who flock to any foreign girls we're with! We ended up spending quite
some time at the pub, until nearly 5 am I think, bs'ing with locals,
until it was closing down. We ran back to the hostel, and I went for
a quick wander to find a cafe where I could grab some late
night/early morning food before making my way to bed around 7:30 am.
I had to laugh, as again, the Chilean girl didn't arrive back until I
did...she was much better at parties than myself!
 |
| A Milonga night, complete with awesome live band |
 |
| extra high urinal...bit too high for me! |
The next day I missed my free breakfast
once again, and made it up just barely in time to catch that day's
walking tour which took us around the San Telmo area and over to the
Boca area of B.A, and once again Santiago was our leader. We did a
quick tour around San Telmo, which is a really cool and artistic
neighbourhood with lots of little cafes, bars, restaurants, and
boutique shops. After seeing a few landmarks in the area, we hopped
on our bus and arrived over in La Boca, which is a very touristy
part. Nearly immediately we were approached by several people trying
to sell different things. One man who was going for a Diego Maradona
appearance was offering the amazing chance to take a photo with
him...groan* Of course, having decided to wear an Argentine futbol
jersey that day, he was on to me like a fat kid on rice, but I wasn't
interested at all....I did see a few people who were sucked into his
stupid little gimmick though of course. Another thing about the La
Boca area is that it is famous for many outdoor cafes having tango
dancers performing, as well as dancers just in the street offering a
chance for photos with them or of them dancing. It's kind of neat to
watch, but again, not really worth the money. We wandered around the
Boca area for awhile, enjoying the very colourful buildings, the
aggressive salespeople (well not really), and soaking up the cool
vibe of the area. Eventually the tour group was heading back, but
myself, Dario, and the French girl Alexia decided to stick around a
bit longer, as she had a store she wanted to visit, plus we wanted to
go check out the Boca Jrs stadium.
 |
| Mafalda....famous Argentine comic, she's all over |
 |
| Smallest house in Buenos Aires |
 |
| Palermo is considered "Hollywood" yet San Telmo street artists seem to differ |
 |
| cool apartment on Avenida Defensa |
 |
| Sleepy and hungover Frenchwoman inside an old house converted into shops |
 |
| Arriving in La Boca, complete with crappy Maradona look alike |
 |
| Free tango shows at most of the cafes and restaurants in La Boca |
 |
| Loads of colour and character in La Boca |
 |
| Damn near look alikes |
 |
| La Boca Port, likely where the Swedish ship arrived back in the day which is how Boca Jrs received their team colours |
 |
| Home of Boca Jrs futbol |
 |
| Photos of people taking photos of people taking photos :) |
It's kind of interesting how the Boca
Jrs team obtained their team colours, as the club couldn't decide on
a colour scheme after losing to a rival that had the same colours and
agreeing that the loser would take on new uniform colours, so they
decided that the next boat that would come into the port, they would
take the colours of that boat's flag. And sure enough, a Swedish boat
came in, so the club's colours are now Gold and Blue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Juniors
Unfortunately there was a big game that night in the stadium, so we
weren't able to go inside and tour the stadium. The store ended up
being closed as well, so there was actually not much point in having
stayed longer, so we just went and found a bus back to the hostel. A
few of us went over to the Red Door, the pub across the street for
some billiards and tasty pizzas before making our way back to the
hsotel as that evening they were offering free tango lessons, so I
signed up for those, figuring it would be a fun little endeavour. The
tango lessons kicked off around 7 pm, and there were about 10 of us
who were there, including a few new French Canadians from Montreal,
and some very lovely and hilarious South African girls. The lessons
were beginning and we were told to pair up, and as luck would have
it, the most beautiful girl of the group, one of the Saffers came
over to pick me..win! Unfortunately we didn't have the greatest dance
chemistry, and didn't do a lot of moving around, although to be fair
it is actually a fairly difficult dance to learn, and we had such a
small area to learn that everyone was running into each other and
trying to avoid collisions...needless to say, there were a lot of
sorry's said throughout the hour long session, not only sorrys
between dance partners for stepping on toes, awkward bumps, etc..but
also sorrys between couples running into each other. Eventually our
lesson finished, with one couple dropping out completely, and the one
French Canadian struggling to learn anything....quite a funny site. I
picked up the steps alright, but it's a very robotic dance style and
I found it a bit difficult to not be so fluid and bop and weave.
 |
| Tango lessons at Hostel America del Sur |
After the lessons finished up, it was a
massive gathering of people hanging out in the courtyard area, so we
spent a fair portion of the time having some drinks, chatting away
and talking about heading out to Palermo for the night to watch the
Boca Jrs futbol match, however, the groups kept staggering and before
we knew it, there wasn't so many people around who still wanted to go
out, resulting in another night in, instead of heading out to explore
the crazy night life. The next day was a pretty low key one, just
hanging around the hostel for awhile before heading out with a few
people that had come over from the Milhouse hostel, trying to escape
the craziness of that hostel and rehab a bit. They needed to go
change some money, so it was into one of these little dark rooms, and
I wish I could have taken a photo as it's absolutely hilarious, with
the two Irish people and the one Aussie guy holding up these notes
against the light, inspecting them as if they knew anything about
counterfeit notes, while the money exchanging guys stared at them,
looking on intently, while I was in the corner laughing at the
ridiculousness of the whole situation. Apparently, according to their
“expert” eyes, the notes were good, so we were on our way, making
a stop at a gellateria for some tasty ice cream, before making our
way back to the hostel where we hung out for the next few hours.
Dario decided he needed a haircut, and one of the Irish girls that I
had gone with to change money had jokingly told him that she could
cut his hair later on that night, so he was taking her up on that
offer. What ended up happening was a big group haircut, with several
people taking their turns cutting a mullet into Dario's hair. He was
quite worried about how it would like, but surprisingly after a few
beers, and some laughs, the haircut went pretty well. After that
wrapped up, it was time to for the hostel organized Argentina
barbecue...and wow was there a lot of great tasting and amazing food!
We all stuffed ourselves and enjoyed the beers, wine, and good
company before getting ready to head out on the town one more time.
 |
| Friday night haircuts at Hostel America del Sur! |
We decided to head off to a nightclub
called Kika, over in Palermo, with a very large group, that required
over 4 taxis. We arrived there, and found it to be just starting to
get busy, as it was now 2 am...yes, Buenos Aires nightlife is pretty
intense, with the clubs really kicking off around 3 or 4 am on most
nights! The taxi I went in, with a cute English girl and Dario,
arrived and we couldn't find anyone outside. We mulled around for
about 15 minutes before deciding to just head in, when everyone else
finally showed up, as they had been taken to a totally different club
by the taxi driver. The drivers in BA are pretty dodgy, as are taxi
drivers almost everywhere I suppose! We all entered inside, and found
a pretty large and rectangular shaped dance floor along the middle of
the club, with several bars and chatting areas along the sides...this
style seems to be the dominant style of the clubs in Buenos Aires,
which is nice, as it's relatively easy to spot your friends if you
happen to get lost. We partied pretty hard for the next few hours,
and I thought maybe something might happen with the South African
girl I was getting along with well, but when we walked into the dance
floor I noticed the English girl from a few days earlier giving me a
bit of a glaring look...ahh jealous women. So basically we just
partied in our big group for the next several hours. Old habits ended
up dying hard, and rather than trying with some of the cute women
that had smiled at me a few times, I ended up just going back to the
English girl...we all called it quits around 5 am, and came back to
the hostel, and had to walk her American friend back to her nearby
hostel. After dropping her off, we were walking back and still with a
bit of energy, and noticed a random house with a black curtain and
people kind of mulling about, so we figured why not and popped
inside. We were immediately met with some curious looks, as we were
clearly foreigners and the only ones there, but people were quite
friendly, and we sat down for a beer and had several people come chat
us up. One guy who was particularly interesting had this massive and
adorable dog that he brought into the club with him. It looked like a
Shih Tzu, but crossed with a Labrador or some other massive dog...it
was pretty sweet. He told us that he met the dog outside a bar once,
and asked if it wanted to go home with him, and that it replied yes,
and that was the only time the dog ever talked to him....what a crack
ha ha! After our beers and some laughs, it was back to the hostel,
crawling into my tiny bed around 7 am and spending the night, er
morning.
 |
| crazy dog that came into the bar...a sort of Shi-Tzu cross with some really big dog I think |
She had to check out at 10 am, as there
wasn't room in the hostel, so I was up a bit early because of that,
but managed to fall back asleep until the mid afternoon. It happened
to be Argentina's unofficial Independence day, as they elected their
first official government on May 25th, however, they didn't actually
declare independence until July 8th. While watching a youtube video,
the advertisement showed a big party being held on the 25th of May at
the Plaza de Mayo, which was very nearby, and the party looked
absolutely incredible. I figured I would go wander down there, and
then find a pub to watch the Champions League final. Well after
sitting down and shooting the shit with the hilarious South African
girls, I ended up wasting well over an hour chatting with them and
having some laughs before I realized that the game was well over half
way finished, so instead of going to a pub, I ended up just sitting
downstairs in the tv room, but only caught the last 8 minutes of the
game..oops.
After that wrapped up, I didn't even
venture out towards the square, even though there were so many people
wandering around the streets, and several people had returned to the
hostel talking about how crazy it was getting, but also how they felt
a bit uncomfortable there, as there were not only partiers, but also
many many protesters there. In the end, I didn't even venture out
there, as Johan, Dario, and a few others from the hostel wanted to go
for a steak dinner at a nearby steakhouse. I hadn't been out for a
proper steak dinner yet, so I was of course keen. We were meant to go
to a place just around the corner, but when we arrived, we found the
waiting time to be about 40 minutes, and even though the place looked
really nice, someone had told Dario that there was another place
nearby that was better and cheaper, so we made the trek over to
Avenida Defensa and found the restaurant which is called Desnivel.
When we arrived inside we found the place to be quite packed, but
didn't have to wait very long for a table. Interestingly enough, it
was already 10:30 pm and most people were just arriving or starting
to eat dinner...things start and end really late here! After a short
debate over the flags of some of the countries that were hanging on
the wall, we were seated and ordered several plates to share around
the table. One of the more interesting plates was some Argentine
blood sausages called Morcillos. We didn't know that they were
actually blood sausages when we ordered them, until they arrived and
looked a bit odd looking. They weren't terrible, but the texture was
a bit hard to stomach, so we only finished one of the two I think.
The actual steaks we received actually weren't really all that great
either, but it was good company and a nice time. After the big feast,
we walked back towards the hostel, said goodbye to Johan who was
leaving the next day for Montevideo, and arrived back at the hostel
where people were getting things going on as per usual.
 |
| South African lunch special....pasta, mayonnaise, hot sauce |
 |
| last meal with Johan in Argentina, at Desnivel...the food was okay..nothing that special |
 |
| Chileans inspecting the wine...I think it passed the test |
We joined in the group activities, and
got ready to head on out to the big club of the night, which was a
place called Pacha. Pacha is a fairly famous brand of nightclubs
around the world, with places like Ibiza, London, New York, etc..
having them. We grabbed a few cabs and were on our way there, and it
was actually quite far away from the hostel, taking around 20 minutes
to arrive. We pulled up and wow, the place was just massive and lit
up with bright red lights all over...very cool! While waiting in
line, suddenly a man in line asked if I was Argentine, as I was
wearing an Argentina football jersey. I jokingly said yeah, but he
said it wasn't a good idea if I was, as the club didn't want to let
me in with a jersey on. Ironic, considering it was a day where many
people were celebrating Argentina related things, and that an
Argentine wouldn't be allowed into a club if he was wearing the
futbol jersey...I can understand a Brazil jersey or something that
might cause some trouble....hilariously enough, because I was a
foreigner, I was allowed to enter while wearing it. I also found it
quite funny that the guy explained that the club was a bit of a “high
end” place and didn't want people with sports wear in, even though
they were letting in girls from our group who were wearing flip flops
and very very casual dress. We entered inside, and wow, that place
was just massive! The DJ was really really great, but the lights were
a bit too intense. I had wondered early on why so many people were
wearing sunglasses, and thought it seemed a bit silly, but soon
figured out why, as it actually hurt my retinas. It was like someone
was taking a photograph and putting the flash nearly directly on my
eye, it was very very intense, and would leave me blinded at times,
wish I had taken glasses!
We continued to party pretty hard for
quite some time, although some of the group didn't last so long and
couldn't handle the size and late hour. We met some pretty fun
locals, especially since I was wearing the Argentine jersey, and the
girls did since they're...well, women, and since the Argentine men
are always on the prowl. I continued to find it silly how earlier I
was possibly not going to be allowed to enter with the jersey, and
how upon entry, everyone was loving the jersey and high 5'ing me and
such. Eventually it was just myself and Mary, the English girl left
at the club, so after some more dance floor makeouts, it was nearly 7
am and the club was about to close, so we decided to head back to the
hostel. She hadn't even booked a bed anywhere else, and was just
going to sleep in the tv room on a couch, so after the crazy taxi
ride home, where we probably reached speeds of 140 km/h in 70 km/h
zones...crazy taxis here! We got back and just crawled into bed for
the night.
 |
| Pacha Buenos Aires...crazy nightclub and party |
The next day was a lovely day to go for
a wander down into the San Telmo market, as I wanted to look for a
Matte, while Mary had to look for a change purse, as hers had been
stolen the previous night while we were dancing in the
nightclub...sneaky bastard thieves! After a quick croissant and
coffee stop, we found our way to Avenida Defensa, where the market
was set up over the course of about 30 city blocks...absolutely huge
and with quite a nice variety of objects to purchase. After wandering
around, looking for Mattes, clothing, people watching, antique
viewing, pizza eating, and attempting to barter in Spanish
(apparently Argentine vendors don't budge on their prices..damn). I
ended up picking up a funny Matte, and content with my purchase, we
stopped for a little break and pizza. The restaurant claimed to have
B.A's best pizza since it's inception in 1949, which was a pretty
bold claim...it was pretty good, but I don't think it quite beat the
pizza I had the first day of my arrival. After our break, we ran into
Mary's American friend, and went for a bit more of a wander with her
along the market, before heading back to the hostel to rest a little
bit. I had grand plans of going out to a nightclub that evening,
called Clubone, that everyone I had talked to, raved about, however,
after not much sleep the previous few days, the tank was running a
bit low, plus I had an early boat ride the next morning over to
Uruguay for some much needed R&R, plus an opportunity to visit a
new country, as it was just so close by. My typical procrastinating
cost me in the wallet, as Dario had bought the same ticket and had
paid only around $100 US, while mine ended up costing $160. After
vegging out for a while, there was a group of people heading over to
a steakhouse in Palermo that was supposed to be quite delicious, as
well as cheap if you ate between 8 and 9 pm, as they offered 40% off.
What was initially meant to be a group of 2, ended up being a group
of 7, as several of us tag alongers joined in.
 |
| San Telmo Sunday market |
 |
| I love how there's little coffee carts all over the city |
 |
| Street entertainment |
 |
| Fresh juice stands |
 |
| Bold claim by the pizza place |
 |
| People watching from the pizza restaurant |
We made our way over to the restaurant,
called La Cabrera, and arrived in time to be seated and have our
order taken just slightly after 7 pm, being fortunate that there
wasn't a long wait to get seated. After 3 massive platters of meat, 2
delicious bottles of wine, and several sides, we were all very full
amazing meal, and had just enough time to get the bill paid before
the 8 pm cut off time. That massive feast, with the discount, ended
up being around $10, and for a lot! Damn I love Buenos Aires. I was
pretty beat after the previous nights' festivities, but the group
wanted to go for at least one drink in a pub in the nearby Palermo
square, so we popped over to one of the corner pubs, had a few
mojitos and beers, and listened to an overly chatty Canadian girl
talk about her family and their issues. It was a pretty funny moment,
when Mary relatively innocently mentioned that it was going to be a
nice time when the girl returned to see her sister, with whom she
hadn't seen in quite some time and argued with frequently....to some
it almost sounded like a bit of sarcasm, and I think that's how the
Canadian girl felt about it, but it was all meant in good terms.
After our happy hour drinks, and being pretty tired, we grabbed a cab
back to the hostel, while having to stop at several banks along the
way, as I was out of cash, and there appeared to be some issues with
the bank machines, as the one Aussie girl with us hadn't been able to
draw out money all day, as well as several other people she had
spoken with. I was a bit worried, as I had to pay for a taxi the next
morning and had 0 pesos, but we finally found a machine that worked,
meanwhile, Mary and her friend Tiffany were trying to find an open
shop to buy a bottle of wine, so the stops and starts for the taxi
driver were numerous, but he was a pretty good sport about it. We
arrived back, and I just called it a night, saying goodbye, and
crashing for a few short hours before the dreaded early wake up.
 |
| La Cabrera Parilla, great 40% discount on meals and wine from 8-9 pm |
I try not to be THAT GUY who wakes up
the entire room while packing his bags, and typically do it in the
evening, but everyone was asleep in bed when I got back into the
room, so I had to do the early morning pack. I tried my best to be
quiet, but wasn't very efficient at that, waking up 2 of the 3
others..oops. After gathering my stuff, and meeting a Canadian girl
downstairs, with whom I was going to share a taxi with to the port,
we waited and waited and waited for the taxi to show up. The staff
told us we should be at the port by 8 am, and that it would take 10
minutes to go, so when we ordered a taxi at 7:40 am, we figured this
should be fine, right? Wrong, of course.....it took about 25 minutes
for a taxi to show up, and several times they called to confirm if it
was coming or not, and then kept asking us if we still wanted it or
not...well duh...however, we're now wondering if we're going to miss
this boat or something, but alas, the taxi showed up, and we arrived
around 8:20 am, and they hadn't even started boarding yet. It's a bit
frustrating in Latin America, as times are never as they seem, and
you never really know if you've missed things, if being an hour late
is okay, or even 2 hours....definitely a way different culture, but
just one of the things you need to learn to adapt to.
So we board this boat, and I am still
trying to figure out why I had to pay so much more for my ticket. I
noticed that it mentioned it was an “executive ticket” , so
naturally one would assume a better seat, food and beverage service,
or something to distinguish it from the standard class fare....well
upon boarding the boat, all the seats were the same, and after
inquiring about free food or drink and being told no, I really began
to wonder. Next I assumed that the bus ride to Montevideo must
provide the added benefit of having this executive ticket, so I just
nodded off for the majority of the boat ride over to Colonia. Upon
arrival, and of course not being able to take money out of the cash
machine there, as Argentines make big cash runs to grab US dollars in
Uruguay, and drain the cash machines in Colonia, I was fortunate to
have some spare pesos to change over for when I arrived in
Montevideo. I found the bus, and yeah, there was again no added
benefit to this stupid over priced executive ticket...fml what a rip
off...the bus was old and shitty, and there wasn't even free water on
it like nearly all the other buses I've taken in South America....oh
well, first world problems. I was still pretty exhausted, and ended
up sleeping the entire way to Montevideo, missing out on what
probably was some nice coastline or something...but alas, that's
life. Upon arrival, I found a map, gathered my bearings and made my
way over to the area near the hostel, via local bus. I'm pretty sure
that I gave the driver a $20 Uruguay note, and he didn't look at it
properly and gave me change for $200, but I can't be entirely sure.
I arrived over near a large park in the
city centre, and made the quick trek over to the hostel, becoming a
little lost, as I thought the address was 1200 on the street that I
was walking, and couldn't seem to find it, so I crossed over to the
other side of the road and as soon as I looked back to look for
signs, I immediately noticed I had been standing nearly right in
front of the place, but hadn't seen the smallish sign...oops. After
entering the amazing old mansion that had been recently converted to
a hostel and admiring the beauty of the place, I was greeted by a
gorgeous and very flirty Uruguayan receptionist...I was a bit smitten
with her immediately, and we were laughing and flirting while I got
checked in, but of course that didn't last long, as her bf happened
to be hanging out at the hostel, and quickly saw what was happening,
so he showed his affections for her very quickly when I was talking
to her after having settled in....damn! After asking where I could
find a decent place to eat nearby, and being given a flyer for a
relatively close by place, I was on my way to find it, as I couldn't
find Johan anywhere in the hostel upon arrival, even though he was
supposedly staying there. I wandered along through somewhat
questionable parts of the city, on my way to this restaurant, and
arrived there, finding a place that seemed to really only deliver.
The people there seemed to be a bit surprised when I entered the
place, and then I found out it was actually closed....strange...what
restaurant closes at 3 pm? So, I had to head over across the street
to another spot, and settled in there. Being the first restaurant I
visited in Uruguay, I had no idea what to expect when ordering food,
and I should have been slightly suspicious when I asked for a
Milenesa plate, and the server looked a little surprised that I asked
for it, but took the order anyway. What showed up shortly after
was.....well, I was quite shocked! Damn they have big portions here.
I just sat there staring at the monstrous plate, and couldn't helpt
but laugh a bit about the situation. Even one of the other servers
walked by and patted me on the back and laughed a bit. I maybe
managed to finish half of the beast, and just sat there digesting
when an older man approached me and began talking about my shirt, as
I was wearing my Vietnam shirt with the communist symbol...he seemed
to be quite amused and happy that I was wearing such shirt, but I
couldn't really understand what he was saying, as he spoke a bit too
fast. After that brief encounter, I made my way back to the hostel,
and found that Johan was in fact there, and that Dario had arrived as
well. So after catching up a bit, and hanging out with the cute
receptionist's bf and some of his friends outside, enjoying some
wicked guitar playing, before heading out for dinner with the guys.
 |
| My first meal in Uruguay...massive portions! |
We ended up randomly running into a
Brazilian guy who had stayed in the same room as Dario and Johan in
Buenos Aires, so he ended up joining us for our walk towards the old
town, where there were some bars and restaurants open. The first
night time impression of Montevideo was that it was sleepy and
quiet...and this was definitely confirmed over the next few days, as
it's quite small and very very relaxed, except maybe on the weekends.
We ended up settling into a restaurant that hilariously enough, Johan
had eaten at earlier in the day and experienced the exact same
situation as me, with a way too large plate of Milenesa that there
was no way he could finish. Well it was the same chain of restaurant,
just not the exact same restaurant. We settled in there, had a beer,
and some dinner before wandering around a bit more and realizing
there really wasn't a whole lot happening in town, so it was back to
the hostel to sit around the fire, listen to some music, and relax.
After waking up too late for the free breakfast the next day, and
being fortunate to have the leftovers from my ridiculous plate the
previous day to fill me, we decided to go for a wander down to the
futbol stadium that hosted the final of the first World Cup, won by
Uruguay, in 1930. After finding our way to a bus stop and making our
way toward the stadium, we didn't quite pay enough attention and
missed our stop by one spot, but it was no big deal. The area around
the stadium had an old Eastern Soviet bloc country feel to it, with
old and crumbling buildings, including one very ugly and poorly
maintained university building for Med students, as well as an old
hospital. We wandered around the nearby park for a little bit, before
entering into the stadium, and visiting their futbol museum. It was a
fairly good museum, as Uruguay has a very strong football culture,
having won 2 World Cups, and 7 South America championships, which is
really quite amazing for a country of 3.5 million. That would be the
equivalent of ice hockey players from Manitoba winning 2 Olympic Gold
Medals and several Stanley Cup championships, or something like
that....crazy good.
 |
| Main square in Montevideo at night |
 |
| classic garbage collection system |
 |
| Uruguayans love their bull and wagon statues |
 |
| A school inside a futbol stadium...crazy idea |
 |
| Kind of depressing Eastern Europe bloc feel...that's the hospital in the background |
 |
| and the Med School |
 |
| The futbol stadium in Estadio Centenario |
 |
| live action in the stadium....lawn cutting! |
 |
| They still host games here...you'd think they would at least put in some newer seats after 80 years |
 |
| The first World Cup, won by Uruguay in 1930...well their replica trophy |
 |
| The second one won in 1950...damn good futbol country considering its size |
The museum was all in Spanish, but
fortunately I could understand more of it than the previous futbol
museum I had went to in Brazil. Some of the highlights were flags,
jerseys from several world events, as well as the first World Cup
statue that was awarded...well at least the replica, since the
original is actually still missing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_the_Jules_Rimet_Trophy
They also had several other very interesting artifacts from other
world events. At one point Johan came from having seen the inside of
the stadium, and excitedly told me there was some live action going
on inside, so I rushed out and saw some wicked live action....that
being a man cutting the grass! I could see an ominous storm
approaching, and after spending a bit more time touring the museum,
the floodgates opened up, and down came torrential rain. We were
stuck inside this stadium, trying to get a taxi, but the staff told
us that calling one would mean waiting an hour until it showed up,
since the rain was that heavy. Dario went out to try and flag a few
down, and was promptly soaked and unable to hail one, so we decided
to make a run for a nearby bus stand and take the bus towards a
shopping centre, where we could go chill out and have a bite to eat.
It was pretty entertaining to watch all the people boarding the bus,
absolutely soaked head to toe...the rain was that intense. We arrived
at the shopping centre, and after wandering around a bit, settled in
for a bite to eat, before acting like kids and playing some arcade
games. Dario was feeling pretty ill, as he was coming down with the
flu that he had received from another guest in Buenos Aires, and it
turned out to be the flu that just kept giving! He went back with
Johan early, and I decided to check out a movie, and go try and chat
up a cute girl at a coffeeshop that had smiled at me earlier, but
unfortunately she wasn't having any of it! So, after watching the
movie, which was at times quite painful to watch (Fast and the
Furious 6), it was back in a bus and on my way back to the hostel.
 |
| newest fashion in Uruguay....I think |
Upon arrival, I saw that young Philipp,
a German kid that I had met in Foz do Iguacu, had arrived at the
hostel, so we caught up a bit, playing some chess by the fire, which
was one of the nice benefits of the hostel. It was just another nice
and quiet evening, really what I needed after the Buenos Aires
madness, and with the bad weather present, it gave myself a good
excuse to avoid the bars or pubs for a change. The next day myself,
Philipp, and Dario decided to go wander around the Old Town, and take
a stroll along one of the Ramblas. We made our way towards one of the
main squares, which features by far the most striking architectural
work of Montevideo, an old apartment building, that had such a unique
style with its large bubbled dome, and sharp curves, that lead Johan
to describe it as a “Flash Gordon” piece of work....I guess
because it was really flashy compared to the neighbouring buildings?
After making our way past the main square, and running into a few
girls on a tour and following them a bit, before finding some
hilarious works of graffiti, and finding a little empanada shop for
some tasty snacks. We sat around a small little park listening to a
man playing some guitar, and were a bit shocked when he apologized
for any nuisance he caused by playing, as he left....he was actually
a pretty good player, we I assumed he was approaching us for money,
but he was just on his way out, while delivering the strange apology.
We continued our walk a bit further, carefully avoiding all the dog
poop on the side walks (Philipp hadn't been so lucky the previous day,
unknowingly crushing one large turd), before arriving at what appeared
to be the biggest building in Montevideo, and was actually the
headquarters of Uruguayan immigration.
 |
| lively Montevideo |
 |
| main square in Montevideo |
 |
| ridiculous architecture style compared to the rest of the city |
 |
the spectacular entrance to the Old Town of Montevideo....
|
 |
| Uruguayan street art...Gauchos chasing dinosaurs |
 |
| What would Bill Murray do in your place? |
 |
| Old Town looks pretty new to me... |
 |
| funny guys in Uruguay |
 |
| more of Old Town |
 |
| was thirsty...hoped for beer...there wasn't any |
After a quick detour into a nearby shop
to inquire about some postcards for Dario, we made our way through a
somewhat rough looking area of the old town, before finding ourselves
on the coastline, at one of the Ramblas. The water and the view
really wasn't anything special, so we didn't spend too much time
wandering along. There was apparently a much nicer area of the coast
several kms further, but before we knew it, we were already near our
hostel, and decided to stop in for a glass of water, before figuring
what to do next. What was meant to be a quick break, ended up being a
few more hours of just chilling out in front of the fire, listening
to some Austrian girl play some amazing music, and playing some more
chess with Philipp, who apparently wasn't so good, as I kicked his
ass each time. It was Johan's last night with us, as he was off the
next morning to Rio, so we decided to go out for some Uruguayan beef
and have one last meal together. We were given a recommendation by
one of the hostel workers of a nearby place, but they didn't accept
credit cards unfortunately, and that was the only manner that Johan
could pay for his meal, so we continued our walk towards the main
street, trying to find a restaurant. At this point we came across a
giant group of young journalism students, who were practising doing
interviews, and of course they came up to me first, to ask if I
wanted to do an interview, but their Uruguayan Spanish was too quick
for me to understand! In the end, Dario ended up doing a quick
interview, and I kept looking at two of the girls, thinking they were
very attractive, until they told us they were 16...what the hell! So
that was out of the question ha! Their professor ended up giving us a
restaurant recommendation, which happened to be a place nearby, so we
popped by there and had some large and tasty Uruguayan beef steaks
and a few beers, enjoying our last night together.
 |
| lovely accommodations |
 |
| The Three B's...Bueno (Nice), Bonito (beautiful), Barato (cheap)...what more could you want from a restaurant! |
 |
| classic Mate...too big for my bag unfortunately! |
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| Montevideo coastline....exciting |
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| Fishermen |
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| One of Uruguay's largest discos....full of fruits....ended up being a supermarket ha! |
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| angry hostel guitar player...could be because he was sick..who knows! |
 |
| my Mate I purchased in Buenos Aires |
 |
| Uruguayans interviewing Chileans...talking about Latin things I'm sure |
 |
| hilariously shaped dessert |
 |
| Uruguayan beef! |
After dinner, we wandered back to the
hostel, where several people were hanging out by the fire, having
some drinks, and chatting away. They ended up somehow dragging me out
with them for a night on the town, which consisted of us going all
the way to an Irish bar in the Eastern part of the city, having a
beer and some food, and then going next door to some long cocktail
bar, where there was about 80% dudes.....fun times! After one more
drink there and a bit of bs'ing, it was closing down, since it's
Montevideo, and the place is very very sleepy compared to Buenos
Aires....definitely hard getting used to not going out on the town
until 6 or 7 am. We arrived back around 3 am, and I didn't manage to
make it up in time the next morning for breakfast to say goodbye to
Johan. In fact, I began to feel like crap upon waking up, and spent
the remainder of the day laying on the couch in pain...yes, the flu
had struck....damn Dario and his spreading of germs!! It was a bit of
a doozy, as I spent nearly the entire day in front of the fire,
trying to stay warm in the cold house, with Philipp laughing at me
wasting a day away doing nothing, but I was floored. After playing
some chess and still managing to beat him without having a clear
head, we ended up going out to grab some terrible and cheap corner
hamburgers and just spending the rest of the evening in the hostel.
After sleeping with all my clothing on, and several blankets,
battling the fever and chills all night, I was feeling a lot better
the next day.
After doing a few errands, including
grabbing some US cash from the atm, I was in a bit of a rush to get
to the bus station, arriving 10 minutes before my bus supposedly
left, at least according to the printed out itinerary that I had.
Well, I ran around outside checking all the departure gates,
including one that had a bus that appeared to be leaving to Colonia
at the exact time as mine was supposed to, but it was a different
company and the lady told me to get lost and go inside and talk to
the desk of the company I was travelling with. I wandered back inside
and found the desk and started to wonder if maybe I had the wrong
date and that my ticket was for the previous day so I asked a woman
in front of me what the date was, and she asked “today?”....ha ha
what the hell, no I wanted to know the date tomorrow! So the date of
my ticket was fine, but the time still didn't make any sense until I
arrived at the counter and they told me that I was just supposed to
check in at the time on the ticket, but had another hour to kill. So
after lingering around, I was on the bus back to Colonia, sleeping
nearly the whole way! After killing a bit of time in the port,
waiting for the boat, which of course was an hour late to leave, we
were on our way to B.A with a boat full of very loud and giggly
American University students....it made for a bit of a long ride, but
I managed to ignore them for the most part, although there were some
rather funny stories about how dumb they could really be...ah poor
Americans. And thus ended my Uruguayan adventure, which could easily
be described as relaxing and very tranquil.....Montevideo is an
alright stop, but nothing too special unless you just want to relax.
I'd also highly recommend the hostel I stayed at, the Ukulule Hostel,
as their staff are absolutely amazing and friendly and fun. Here's
their link:
http://www.ukelelehostel.com/index.php/en/
Thus we arrived at the Puerto Madeiro,
and there was all of one taxi waiting there, with about 60 people
needing taxis...great planning job! So after trying to wander off and
find one in the near vicinity, I just started walking towards the
hostel, as I had been told it was only like a 10 or 15 minute
walk...well after about 10 minutes of walking, I was nowhere near any
location that I even recognized, and stopped to ask a woman if I was
anywhere near one of the main streets that I knew, and she told me to
take a bus or taxi, as walking any further would be dangerous...okay
take the locals advice I guess! So off in the taxi, and I arrived
just in time to see Dario with a large group, who were all heading
out for dinner, so after a quick check in, we went down to meet them
at a restaurant called Don Ernesto. At this point one of the funnier
misunderstandings occurred. I sat down at the table and Dario told
everybody “hey guys this is Reilly”, but in his Chilean accent,
apparently that sounded like something different. So, a very pretty
French girl across the table said “Shalom” and I immediately
began to think it was a bit odd that a Vietnamese French woman would
have a name like Shalom, but I guess I've met people with stranger
names. Then, the Englishman next to me asked where I was from
exactly, and I said Saskatchewan, so he then asked if I had been born
in Saskatchewan and moved to Israel from there, or if I was born in
Israel and moved to Saskatchewan.....at this point, I'm thinking what
the hell is going on....and I soon realize that when Dario had
introduced me, it sounded like “This Israeli” and everyone at the
table then thought I was Israeli....ha ha what a laugh. So after some
proper introductions, we proceeded to enjoy a huge feast of meat,
that ended up being the best steak I had experienced to that point in
Buenos Aires...just awesome. After the large feast, and some wine, we
made our way back to the hostel, where Dario had to call it an early
night, since he was still battling the epic flu. Meanwhile, the cute
French girl disappeared quite quickly, off to Palermo to meet some
friends, so I wasn't too sure if we would be heading out and doing
anything that night or not.
I sat around with a German guy from
dinner, and we figured we would join a large group of other people at
the hostel who were heading out that night, but then when he went to
have a shower, they were suddenly about to leave and since I had
already talked about going out with him, I felt bad about leaving, so
I hung around with an amazingly talented Singaporean guy and two
American guys who were playing a whole bunch of cheesy pop songs by
the Backstreet Boys, and other 90s pop groups...it was a pretty big
laugh, and I was actually quite amazed how the Singaporean guy could
just pick up a guitar, and figure out how to play a song nearly
instantaneously by remembering what the song sounded like, and just
put together the notes and chords on the spot....impressive. We hung
around singing and laughing for quite some time until this absolutely
massive beast of a man wandered into te hostel with an eye patch,
obviously a bit drunk and instantly making the whole room laugh at
his outrageousness. He came to grab his friend and head out
nightclubbing, and invited myself and the German guy to tag along,
and I couldn't resist going out with him, as he was just too
hilarious to not go venture with. Unfortunately there wasn't room for
5 of us in taxi, especially with that beast of a man, so we had to
split up.
Myself and the German guy had probably
the most slow and painful taxi ride I've ever taken, as the woman
driving must have just started driving taxi, as she had no idea where
she was going and had to look up the location of the club on her
phone, and continuously have to keep looking down and checking where
she was on at. On top of that, it was quite obvious that she had only
recently begun driving manual transmission, so she would rev up the
engine to about 4 or 5 rpm and sooooo slowly let off the clutch....on
this went for a very long ride, plus she was driving about 40 km/h
and getting honked at and passed by all other traffic, wow it was
painful. Then a truck started backing up into a nearby parking spot,
causing her to have to back up a bit, which resulted in her flipping
the driver off and apologizing to us for the event. We finally
arrived at the club, and she drove the wrong way down a one way,
which resulted in another 6 minutes of very slow and painful turning
around of the vehicle, creating more traffic chaos...oh what a woman.
So we arrive at the club and of course can't see hte other guys
anywhere, as they probably arrived at least 10 to 15 minutes sooner,
assuming they had a driver who knew what they were doing. We entered
inside and found another absolutely massive club, with an incredible
DJ playing, and at least a thousand Portenos (Buenos Aires residents)
partying hard...this all at nearly 3 am, as that's the time to go
out. We found a quieter spot at the back of the club and grabbed a
beer and enjoyed the show a bit, until we finally spotted the huge
Welshman. It was a pretty funny site, as you could look out into this
huge mass of people and pick him out right away, he was that big! We
ended up hanging out with those guys for a little while, but they
were working on some girls, so myself and the German just spent most
of our night off on the sides, occasionally chatting with a girl or
two, but I didn't meet anyone that seemed interested until nearly the
end of the night. After a brief chat and some dancing, she wanted to
exchange numbers, but since I don't have a phone, I wasn't able to do
that. She asked for my FB or email instead, so that we could hang
out, but what would start a common trend, after giving her my details
I never heard back from her...damn Argentines!
Eventually it was well past 6 am, and
we weren't really meeting anyone else, so we decided to call it a
night and head back. After sleeping in a fair bit the next day, I
ended up seeing the Welsh boys, who were heading out to change money,
and I needed to do the same, so I tagged along, and we did the money
change, although I got a better rate as I was willing to walk around
a bit more. After our little foray to exchange, we stopped in a
restaurant along Florida for a bite to eat, I suggested the guys wait
on the steak, and that we go later on, but they were hungry enough to
delve into steaks for lunch, as well as later on for
dinner....unfortunately the meat quality was less than adequate, so I
was glad I stuck with the over priced empanadas. After our mediocre
lunch it was back to the hostel for awhile, where I was running out
of gas pretty quickly, which resulted in a nice little 2 our siesta
in the tv room. I awoke to find a sky window above me that I wasn't
aware of, and the South African ladies pointing down and waving at
me. I figured they would stick around a little bit and I could come
hang out with them, so after a quick shower I came back up to find
the whole place pretty much empty..bummer. Fortunately I found the
Welsh boys, who were keen to head out for another crack at steak, and
had been recommended Desnivel, but after my relatively poor meal
there the previous week, I wanted to go check out the much closer
Gran Parilla, and we were fortunate to get a table very quickly, with
our group of 4, even though we had to sit outside. The staff
recommended the Medallon de Lomo (a beef tenderloin), and we grabbed
that along with a few sides and some red wine. And damn! That thing
was completely massive, and sooooo tender, well worth the 92 pesos.
After an amazing feast of beef, which I could only finish half of, we
chatted up a few nearby girls, who spoke nearly no English, while the
two Welsh boys spoke no Spanish, making for an entertaining
conversation. Near the end of the dinner big huge Greg happened to
spill half his glass of red wine all over me, and profusely
apologized, which I found a bit funny because really what was a
little fly like me going to do to a beast like that...but he was a
pretty kind giant, one could easily tell.
After our amazing dinner, which
resulted in leftovers for myself for the next day, it was back to the
hostel, where we met up with quite a few people and hung out having a
few drinks outside, where the South Africans had returned, and one of
whom was getting absolutely smashed....which was to result in
disaster later on of course. After several drinks, funny photos, and
a lot of sitting around dwiddling our thumbs trying to figure out
where the hell to actually go, it was getting to be really late, and
people again started to drop out. We went to grab a few cabs which
was the first sign of drunk trouble as Tracy, the one South African
was running out into the street, trying to stop cabs and nearly
getting run over several times. Well eventually I hopped in with her
and one of the other South Africans and one of the Welshman, but
Tracy was in the front seat, and immediately was causing trouble,
playing with the radio repeatedly, and then for who knows what
reason, she thought it would be funny to grab the steering wheel! So
the driver immediately pulled over and kicked us all out..shit! Then,
we hailed another taxi driver who took us along a very long and
winding route, which ended up costing 120 pesos for what should have
been only 50 pesos...at this point I started to light into the guy in
Spanish, even though he had been kind early in the drive and spoke
English...what a f**king prick....figured he could rip off tourists
by taking a long route, and then act like it was normal....so after
some passionate arguing, he dropped the price down to 70 pesos, which
was still way too much, and was trying to say we were taking money
out of his pocket...damn I dislike taxi drivers. So, upon arrival,
Tracy took about 3 steps and whack, down on her head on the sidewalk,
oh damn! So, it was back to the hostel for team South Africa, before
we even picked a spot to go out.
 |
| back in Argentina...and more protesting! |
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| The best steak in Buenos Aires...Medallon de Lomo at La Gran Parilla in San Telmo :) |
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| hostel party nights |
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| just a shy guy |
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| myself and some lovely South Africans...great girls! |
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| deep philosophical discussions over beers...always |
Shortly after that, another guy from
our group decided he wasn't feeling the night out and left, so now we
were down to myself, Chris the Welshman, and two Americans who were
apparently “just friends”. We couldn't settle on a place to go,
and asked some local people who were going to take us to some party
with them, but then they said they couldn't, as there were two guys
in the group who were leery of us foreigners..lame. So we sat in
front of a disco that seemed okay, and finally made the move to enter
inside. Once inside, the two Americans just disappeared on the dance
floor, and were getting pretty coozy with each other, so Chris and I
wandered around chatting with random girls, having a laugh over his
terrible Spanish. He had been approaching girls over the previous few
days saying “Hola hablo ingles” thinking that it meant he was
asking them if they spoke English, when it actually meant that he
himself spoke English, which was often met with some strange
looks...hilarious. There wasn't really any nice girls there, so after
a few laps and one very terrible drink that we later found out was
Vernet and Coke (seriously, we thought we were being drugged or
something by that terrible concoction and after two sips, got rid of
it). After wandering around the disco, and also stopping to laugh at
some dude who was passed out against a pole, and somehow balancing
himself, we decided to bail and go find some place else. We ended up
finding some locals next door and chatted with them for quite awhile,
and having some of their drinks, before finding one last pub to shut
down the night, and head back....we had big plans but obviously the
night kind of ended up being a bit of a dud, although it was pretty
entertaining to be around Chris and watch him talk to women!
The next day I was up pretty late once
again, with nothing too exciting other than heading out for lunch
with Rico and Dario at the awesome steak house around the corner, but
instead of getting another steak, I kept it a bit light with a salad
that was once again exceptional...can't say anything bad about the
food at the place, check it out for sure if ever visiting Buenos
Aires. After our lunch, it was back to the hostel, with a few beers
in hand, and a little pre party, while convincing people to come to
the Buenos Aires Sunday hot spot, ClubOne.....they offered free entry
and a shuttle for hostel guests before 12:30 am, so a fairly large
lot of us made our way with the shuttle to the club. I had been told
by my friend Tom that it was pretty wicked, but I was definitely not
expecting what I soon found, as the place was absolutely huge and
packed! We nearly immediately lost everyone, so it was just myself
and the Welsh boys wandering around, grabbing some drinks and
chatting with the locals. There were tons of gorgeous women there
too, plus a pretty wicked light show and some scantily clad dancers,
so the vibe was buzzing! We eventually found the rest of the group,
and after trying to flirt unsuccessfully with the cute
French-Vietnamese girl and having no luck, I ended up in the back of
the club where I met some cute Argentine girl who spoke no English,
so after practicing some Spanish with her, soon enough we were having
ourselves a grand old makeout session, while her 3 guy friends looked
on unimpressed. Eventually she had to leave because her guy friends
wanted to, so after another exchange of contact information, I
figured I might have found a new lady friend in B.A, however, once
again, I didn't hear back from another woman....damn these Argentines
are tough to crack! So after finding the rest of the group again, we
partied until close.
At this point we were outside and
wandering around, with a Danish girl from my room, and an English
dude wanting to continue on partying, while the Welsh boys were ready
to head back to the hostel, and I was torn, as I wasn't tired and
ready to continue on to an after party. There were apparently two
options, Kika nightclub or else Amerika nightclub, and since Amerika
was a bit closer, that was what the three of us decided on.
Hilariously enough, it ended up being a gay club, and unknown to me,
the two I was going there with had been hooking up at the previous
club, so within the first 5 minutes of entering the club, they were
all over each other, making out on the dance floor....it was intense,
it was like two 15 year olds who had never kissed before, going at
it, never coming up for air. So after about 2 minutes of standing
around awkwardly, I went on my way, wandering around the club,
attempting to talk to any girls that appeared to be heterosexual and
with gay guy friends, but that wasn't going so well, so I ended up
just grabbing a drink and standing around, dancing by myself. Then
some transvestite grabbed me and pulled me out onto the dance floor,
so, in the interest of a hilarious life experience, I spent the next
15 minutes dancing with a tranny......hilarious times. Eventually
once he/she realized I wasn't gay, it left me alone once again, so I
just entertained myself for awhile, and was about to head out on my
own back to the hostel, when the young lovers emerged from their
intense make out session, and said they were ready to head out, so it
was back into a cab, and back to the hostel.
Fortunately for me, the girl decided to
not bring her new friend back to our room, as she was in the bunk bed
above me, but she didn't emerge back into the room until around 8 am,
just in time to pack her bags and check out. All this moving about,
along with 2 other people in the room also checking out lead to
another early wake up, and not much sleep for me once again. I
managed to make it down for breakfast, and ended up mulling around
for most of the day at the hostel, hanging out with Dario for a
little while before he had to leave for Chile, and mostly just
relaxing for the day. Once my new Chilean friend was gone, I made a
few more new friends, including a Canadian girl from BC, who was
pretty cool, and a hilarious Texan who is travelling around the World
to promote his non profit organization that encourages travelling for
inner city children. The guy was an absolutely hilarious black man,
with a great laugh and a dirty sense of humour. Here's a link to his
website, it's pretty interesting.
 |
| lunch at La Gran Parilla...my new favourite restaurant of Buenos Aires |
 |
| craziest Sunday party yet.....ClubOne Buenos Aires! |
Eventually several of us decided to
head out for a bite to eat together, and I had remembered an Indian
restaurant a few streets down, so I figured that would be a good
idea, as I heard good reviews of the place from other travellers. I
thought I knew where I was going, and lead the group towards the
restaurant, unfortunately I took a wrong turn on the one street, and
ended up going a bit too far before realizing my mistake and asking
some locals if they knew of an Indian restaurant nearby. There
apparently was another nearby one, but when we couldn't find it, we
quickly changed direction and managed to find the place eventually.
The beer there was pretty terrible, but the food was most excellent,
full of spice and flavour, very nice! I asked for the spiciest dish
they could make, and although it wasn't quite Sri Lankan or Thai
spicy, it had enough kick to make me sweat a little bit at least!
After our dinner, it was back to the hostel, where Erick, the Texan,
and Bruno, a South African, wanted to go out on the town for the
night, and started having several drinks downstairs, but I was pretty
wiped out from the previous night's parties, and decided to have a
quiet night in. We tried to put on a movie, but it was in Spanish and
not enough people spoke Spanish to watch that, and the English movies
were all in English, so that was a no go. After flirting for a bit in
French in front of everyone I decided to just call it a night, and
was surprised to see my entire dorm room was empty. I figured it
might be worth a shot, so I sent out an invite to the French girl on
FB to come join, but she didn't so I just crashed. I awoke around 9
am, surprised to see that she had just read the message in the
morning and in fact decided to come check out the room...what a nice
surprise!
So thus began a lovely new travel
relationship. The first morning was quite a bit awkward, as I figured
I had the room to myself for quite some time, so just as we were
starting to get a little intimate, some guy randomly showed up, being
allowed to check in way earlier than normally allowed since the room
was empty..damnit! So after he threw his bags in, he left, so we
figured we would be okay, but locked the door this time, and again,
just as we were becoming more intimate, he was back, knocking at the
door...ahh such is the life of the dorm room! So he hopped in the
shower without actually seeing who my guest was, and she decided to
head back to her room, but the closing of the door must have lead him
to believe he was all alone in the room and shower, and at this
point, I began to hear some rather strange noises coming from the
shower, my cue to leave! So after grabbing some breakfast, I went out
for a quick wander with Rico the German, and my French lady friend,
as they were both now feeling a bit under the weather, thinking they
had both caught the flu that Dario had....damn Dario! In honour of
him and his never ending spreading of illness, we captured a classic
photo in the pharmacy to remind him of our sickness he had spread
upon us. After our trip to the pharmacy, which is actually quite
famous, as it's very old and classically decorated, we continued on
towards Plaza de Mayo, one of my favourite spots of B.A, to check out
the beautiful architecture once more, and then making our way back to
the hostel.
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| wandering around San Telmo |
 |
| One of the oldest pharmacies in Buenos Aires |
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| Recipients of the "Dario Flu"...damn you Dario! |
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| Plaza de Mayo |
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| background creepin! |
I couldn't seem to find my headphones
that I had misplaced the previous night, so I checked the lost and
found and could only find one fluffy scarf, so I decided to go ahead
and put that on, and combined that with some hilarious rainbow
reindeer boots that had been left in my room to put together a very
lovely outfit. After enjoying some Yerba Mate and chatting with the
staff for awhile, plus catching up on a few things, I ended up
meeting a Frenchman from Basque who was a pretty cool guy, and we
decided to head out for a bite to eat and some beers, before going to
a Tango show. Before heading out we ended up meeting a German guy
named Tobias, who had just arrived in B.A for a few days, and invited
him along as well. After stopping at a nearby market for a little
wander around, we made our way over to Plaza Dorrego, where there's a
bunch of small pubs and restaurants, grabbing a beer and overlooking
the square, before heading off to a Basque pub, where Peo, the
Frenchman, wanted to go and see if they had some Basque food and
music, but the place ended up being kind of a dud, with no music, and
an expensive menu, plus the place was dead. Being from Basque, he
wasn't terribly impressed, so we headed back towards the hostel, and
grabbed some food and happy hour drinks at the nearby Red Door pub.
After spending a fair bit of time there, he wanted to go meet up with
a Brazilian girl from the hostel, so we started walking towards where
she told him to meet him, but soon realized that there was no way we
could walk all the way there. It was entertaining to pass by some of
the night construction projects, where the workers were unsupervised
and texting away on their phones...gotta love the Latin work style!
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| amazing new boots I found in my room...coloured deer..awesome..too bad they were a bit too small |
 |
| amphibious vehicle that Moses could ride down the Nile and then through the streets with |
We eventually made our way over to the
Tango bar, and had a hard time finding a spot to sit, but managed to
steal some chairs from what was probably people who were out dancing.
Peo was pretty focused dancing with the Brazilian girl most of the
night, while myself and Tobias enjoyed sitting around making fun of
people most of the night, including one small and bald old man, who
had the instructor come over and remove the price tag from what must
have been his new belt he just bought for the event, that also came
with some funny key chain clip....we had a great laugh at his
expense, trying to dance with all the young and pretty women in the
place, with no success. After several hours of beers, and funny
commentary, plus having some random funny events such as some curly
haired Argentine guy come up to us to film a video where we had to
swear at Lionel Messi and tell him to score a goal in the upcoming
match against Colombia....interesting character. After sometime, the
place was shutting down, so we all hopped in a taxi and made our way
back, with the sneaky Frenchman disappearing with the Brazilian girl
for the night.
The next day I hadn't booked another
night, so I was moved out and decided to grab a private room for a
night in case something happened with the Frenchgirl as we had been a
lot flirty. I couldn't find her anywhere during the day, so I ended
up heading off with a Canadian girl, and two American girls down to
La Boca area, to have a coffee and chill out for a few hours. After
battling to find some coins to pay for bus fare, since B.A seems to
be the only place where you can't pay for buses with notes, we
arrived in La Boca, and found a cafe where the Canadian girl claimed
they had “like 80,000 different types of coffee” (reminds me of a
funny Dane Cook skit about women and exaggerating), we settled in
there, and did some people watching, while I counted the list and
found about 12 different types. After our coffee, we wandered around
a bit more and grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant that offered a
live tango show. Of course the guys outside trying to get us in told
me there was no cover charge when we entered, and of course when we
received the bill, there was a cover charge, but I was able to fight
that charge off and explain the situation. After a few cheeky photos
with the tango dancers, myself and the Canadian decided to head back
to the hostel, while the Americans hung around La Boca for a bit
longer.
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| La Boca graffiti |
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| Tango graffiti |
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| live Tango show |
 |
| Strong legs on that one |
After arriving back, I spent some time
chilling out and waited for Linh, the French girl to get back from
Palermo and go for dinner. Once she arrived, with 3 others in tow, we
made our way back over to La Gran Parilla again, where we were lucky
to get a table without having to wait. We ended up with a very
charming and kind older man from the Dominican Republic, who went out
of his way to provide exceptional service to us, which unfortunately
was lost on the English girls who came along. After the amazing
dinner the bill came out, and none of them left any sort of tip for
his service, so I was stuck paying tips for 3, as they quickly ran
out before he would come and grab the bill to check that it was all
paid. I felt bad for the guy, and handed him a bit more on my way out
and he was quite thankful and mentioned he could tell that I was from
Canada, based on my kindness with appreciating his service. After the
dinner wrapped up, there was no sight of anyone other than Linh who
waited around for me, and we made our way back to the hostel. After
this point, I became somewhat disenchanted with one of the English
girls as she turned into a bit of a snob I felt, which is pretty rare
for English people, but oh well such is life. After the big dinner I
hung out with Peo, Tobias, and Linh for a little bit before making my
way to bed, and was happy to be joined by her for the night.
Unfortunately, the next morning
housekeeping showed up earlier than I expected, and I was again stuck
scrambling to pack my bags and get out of yet another room. After
moving my belongings into yet another new room, I caught up with
Javier, a Colombian guy, and Tobias downstairs, and we went for a
wander to go change some money, which is always an adventure.
Unfortunately the market has been flooded recently by more and more
American dollars, so the rate had dropped down to 8.5, but still
decently higher than the 4.5 to 5 official rate. After changing my
last 200 USD, the boys were heading off to Rosario for a few days, as
there was no space in the hostel the next day, and there was a huge
Colombia vs Argentina World Cup qualifying match coming up the next
day. The Colombian said there were lots of Colombians in Rosario, and
that it would be a pretty fun time there, so I figured I might just
end up heading there for the weekend, since I was going to be out of
space in the hostel again. After heading out to meet up with Linh and
one of the English girls, who was again kind of aloof and snobby,
Linh and I went down to Plaza Dorrego to try and grab a bite at the
place I had been previously with the two guys, but it was closed. We
found some other place that I initially thought was the same place
but the downstairs level, however, it was different and a bit too
pricy, so after a coffee we were on our way back towards the hostel,
as she had made plans to meet up with another friend and was running
late. After a quick stop at an amazing vegetarian restaurante called
Abuela Pan, we went back to the hostel, and Linh went off with her
friends, while I found some time on the hostel couch, falling asleep.
Waking up an hour and a bit later, I
found I was surrounded by several Irish people and a Brit and
American who were having beers, and upon my waking, they quickly
offered me a beer...and so it goes. The American and Brit were
having some interesting times, as they had decided to ship their
motorcycles down from Boston, where they had just finished studying
at Harvard, but the bikes hadn't arrived on time, and they were still
waiting for them to show up, so that they could start their adventure
driving from Argentina up to Texas. They eventually left, but I was
left with an Irish couple, two Irish girls, and the Irish guy from my
previous room (and loud shower guy), and we decided to head over to
the Red Door pub across the street for a late bite to eat and some
beers. It ended up being a pretty fun night, and kind of went out of
control with all the beers. I was surprised to find the pub actually
had an ice hockey game playing on one of the small tvs, as they were
streaming that through the internet there, while the big screen was
occupied by the NBA finals, which nearly nobody was paying attention
to other than an American guy from our hostel, who was a pretty cool
guy. We spent several hours having beers, getting quite drunk as
Irish people do (with me along for the ride), and having a pretty fun
time. Just before leaving I met two really hot Argentine women, one
of which could speak pretty good English, and since I was planning on
coming back for the Sunday night club session at ClubOne I told her
and her friend that we should meet up, but again since I didn't have
a phone, we couldn't really exchange info, other than her giving me
her facebook, which I ended up finding, but it was more of a fan page
as she was a model, so I couldn't even message her to try and meet up
later on, shit. We made our way back to the hostel around 3 am, and
after hanging out with Linh for another hour or so, I finally crawled
into bed, and of course was woken up by housekeeping the next
morning, feeling pretty rough and being punted from a room yet again.
I was just too tired and groggy to do
anything, so I made my way down to sleep on the couch downstairs, and
hilariously found one of the Irish guys from the previous night doing
the same. After crashing there for awhile, I finally got my ass in
gear and was trying to get out of B.A, but not without wandering
around a bit, grabbing some empanadas and hanging out with Linh a bit
and having some fun with the huge group of Colombians that were
staying at the hostel and heading to the game later that evening. I
popped into a few of their pictures, wearing the Argentine jersey to
poke some fun at them, but they were all pretty friendly and fun, as
Colombians are. After packing a small bag for the two days or so in
Rosario, I was out the door and off to the subway, hoping to catch a
bus and arrive in Rosario in time to watch the futbol game that night
in a bar with Javier, Tobias, and what I imagined would be a bunch of
Colombians. After wandering around Retiro a bit, I found a bus that
left in the next 10 minutes after arriving, so I grabbed a ticket,
and hopped on board. I spent most of the ride sleeping or reading,
but for the last hour or so, after the man behind me jostled me,
trying to get out of his seat and speaking in Spanish that I didn't
quite understand, I soon had 2 nearby people curious about me when
they heard me speaking English. The first guy was a bit of an
interesting character, with a lazy eye, and interested if I was from
America, as he was born there but was studying in Rosario at the
time, so we chatted for quite awhile in English. Meanwhile, the
elderly lady beside me spoke only Spanish, but was quite friendly and
curious about my adventures, and was more than happy to tell me about
her family and show pictures of her loved ones, and such. In the end,
she even gave me her phone number to go for a coffee or something if
I was going to be spending an extended period of time. I joked around
later that she gave me her phone number as she was interested in me,
which the boys had a good laugh about, saying that I was chasing
after the grannies.
 |
| "Moosycling" |
Upon arrival, I was already running
quite late to watch the game, having missed the entire first half
already. I caught a cab and arrived at the hostel, and found the
staff didn't really speak any English, so I checked in, and they said
that Tobias and Javier had went out, but had left me a message to
meet them at a nearby bar. So, I grabbed a map and was on my way to
meet them, expecting a big Colombian party, and arrived in a
restaurant that wasn't very full, and found that Javier was there
with a Colombian girl, and that Tobias was there with an Argentine
girl, and there was one other non attractive girl at their table.
None of the girls spoke any English, and Javier and Tobias were both
all over their girls, so I spent the next 2 hours basically sitting
there, having some beer and watching them making out...ughhh, so much
for the party. I would soon find out that Javier had actually came to
see this girl for an entire month, and that he was “dating” her,
at least in her eyes, while he had another g/f back home. To make
things worse, he would ask Tobias to leave the dorm room that we were
in, so that he could have sex with the girl, and then afterwards, she
would leave the room and he would be on skype with his girl back
home, telling her he was in Cordoba, as she knew that his ex g/f
lived in Rosario, and would kill him if she found out he was
there....ahhh what a crazy mess. On top of that, he later posted a
photo with a caption describing how he was seeing Cordoba, but then
the Facebook location locator clearly stated it was in
Rosario...hahaha what a mess! So after the makeout session/awkward
5th wheel for awhile, we were back to the hostel for a bit, where
Javier and his girl wanted the dorm room, so there wasn't much else
to do, as the hostel was kind of a dump, especially after coming from
Hostel America del Sur, so we decided to head out to grab a late bite
to eat and a beer.
The girl that Tobias was with, was a
cute but very young 18 year old, who was kind enough, but also very
very innocent. After having one beer at the hostel (they only had one
cup, one shower, one type of beer, one of everything basically, which
is how we developed this ongoing theme of Rosario being a city of one
of everything and nothing more), we found a small bar close by that
served pizza. We inquired what size and what flavours of pizza they
had, and of course, there was only one type of pizza and one size,
and also the place only served one type of beer! The place was so
tiny and was called the 7th Form of Art (which I started to make fun
of, saying if it they hadn't added that 7th form of art, they would
have been able to at least add one other type of beer to their menu,
and various other terrible jokes. Then a band started to set up, and
it appeared that they would have a drum set with only one snare and
one cymbal, and of course only one guitar was plugged in as
well...the city of ones. Eventually they did somehow manage to
squeeze in a full drum set, a keyboard, several guitars and somehow
put together a 6 man band....they were actually pretty good, although
of course all the music was in Spanish so I didn't understand much of
it. The pizza was decent, the beer tasty, and at least several
friends of the girl joined us so that I wasn't stuck being a 3rd
wheel the whole time. The one girl seemed fairly flirty with me, but
the conversations in Spanish were limited. We stuck around until well
after 2:30 am, before making our way back to the hostel for the
night. I figured Tobias would try to go with the girl somewhere, but
turns out she was very very innocent and had never been with a man,
so that was out of the question. We hung out having one last beer
with a few of the staff members before calling it a night.
The next day we killed a fair bit of
time before heading for lunch to a nearby 50s style diner called C.
Berry. It had some classic 50s music playing, along with your typical
diner food....we enjoyed some delicious hamburgers and of course
milkshakes there. It was funny when we were again asked by the girl
working there what we were doing in Rosario, since it seems that no
foreigners apparently go to Rosario to visit. I replied that we were
there looking for girlfriends, and she said that she had several
single lady friends we could meet...ah those Argentines so friendly!
After our delicious dinner and some funny pictures to imitate the
menu, we were on our way to check out the Casa Natale de Che (the
house where Che Guevara was born). After the short bus ride there, we
arrived and it was.....well...pretty simple and really not much to
see. You can't even enter the place, and apparently the current
tenants are quite bothered as many people buzz their door asking if
they can enter inside! After our quick stop there, we went to catch
another bus and while Tobias and I were waiting, a blind lady was
there and asked if we could help her catch her bus, so we did that.
While she was standing there talking to us, she asked where we were
from and when Tobias told her Germany, she said she had been in
Frankfurt once and how it was a beautiful city. Of course, we kind of
shared a funny look, as it was a bit of an ironic statement, but
perhaps she had been able to see once before when she went there, who
knows. Frankfurt is actually not that nice at all, and extremely
boring, at least I found when I visited several years ago. We caught
our bus back to the hostel, and then grabbed Tobias's sort of g/f and
went for a walk to the nearby Independence Park, where they had such
exciting things as: a flower garden that showed the current date
(several of us in different order inquired what the significance of
Junio 8 was, and were simply told that it was the current day and
that the city changed the date of the flowers every day), a lake
where you can rent paddle boats and paddle around, a large fountain,
that later on had a light and music show, similar to a really small
version of the Bellagio in Las Vegas....and mini ponies and llamas
for the children to ride!
After a quick walk around the lake or
pond thing, we settled down on a blanket and has some yerba mate,
relaxing and I just around listening to the Spanish and continued
being a 5th wheel again...fun times! They were all pretty nice
though. After a few hours there, we made our way back to the hostel,
with me arriving a bit earlier than the others and trying to take a
little nap. Everyone else went and picked up some chorizos to make
some churipan (a sort of Argentine hot dog), as well as some Vernet
and Coke (eww), and a few beers. When the Colombians arrived they saw
that there was another guy in the room, and they actually were upset
that someone would dare be in the room when they wanted to have
sex...ahhhh strange cats. I left the room to hang out in the patio
area, and I guess they didn't care that buddy was in there sleeping,
they just went about their business again! We spent the next few
hours hanging out in the hostel, eating, drinking, and bs'ing until
the Colombians went to bed, and the Argentine girl decided she
wouldn't come out late with us to check out the town, so she left and
Tobias and I went out with a few of the guys who were staying at the
hostel, to check out a disco. We went and hailed a cab and arrived at
the place around 2:30 am. The place was way smaller than the typical
Buenos Aires places we were going to, but Rosario is also a quieter
city apparently. We arrived there and grabbed a few beers and tried
to meet some local girls, but it was a bit trickier than Buenos
Aires, at least for me, with the language barrier, but we managed to
meet a few. While we were outside smoking, we started talking to some
guy and he said that the girls there would love us because we were
foreigners, but I told him that doesn't really work, and then sure
enough, I met probably the most gorgeous woman in the city, near the
door, who heard me speaking English and she immediately started up a
conversation. We got along great, but being this creature of beauty,
she was surrounded by a group of about 7 guys, all of whom kept
staring at me, like I wasn't allowed to be talking to her...it was a
bit uncomfortable at times, and she assured me they were just
“friends” and that they were looking out for her....ah the queen
bee....we had a nice chat for quite awhile, and if I wasn't leaving
the next day for Buenos Aires, she said she would have been
interesting in hanging out more...damnit! So she had to leave, as it
was getting late, so I said a sad goodbye and went back inside the
find the rest of the guys.
I couldn't find them so I just hung out
by myself for awhile, and met two other pretty cool girls, who had
all this flashing jewellery, and were pretty fun to dance with and
chat with, but then of course once one guy meets two girls, the
wolves come in, and several other guys were soon surrounding them
trying to talk to them as well....ah well. Eventually the other guys
came back, and we hung out with the girls, but weren't getting
anywhere with them, although one funny moment did occur, as we were
taking a photo with the girls, and probably 3 seconds after the
photo, a fight broke out behind us, and a guy was shoved into my
back, nearly knocking me and one of the girls over, and then the
fight continued on, with the one combatant being very bloodied
up....we checked the photo later on to see if we could actually see
the fighters behind us, and we could actually see them yelling at
each other, but not a photo of the first punch. Soon enough, the
disco was shutting down as it was 5:30 am, so we gathered our coats
and were out the door, and decided to walk all the way back to the
hostel. We arrived and I just went straight to bed, but the guys
continued on until about 9 or 10 am, as they had a pretty wild
schedule, basically party until 10 or 11 am every day, and then sleep
until 6 pm or so every night and do it all again!
 |
| awesome Argentine Parilla in Rosario |
 |
| Hostel California...such a lovely place...noooooot |
 |
| El Esta Blo? que significa "blo"...no one liked my poor Spanish joke |
 |
| Perverted cartoon? |
 |
| Tobias and I...acting like the menu characters |
 |
| Chuck Berry Burger and a Milkshake at a 50's diner..hell yeah |
 |
| Birthplace of Che Guevara...comrade! |
 |
| wild streets of Rosario |
 |
| classy looking hostel |
 |
| Montreal smoked meat! |
 |
| being a 5th wheel in Rosario..fun times |
 |
| highlights of Rosario...a fountain |
 |
| and mini ponies of course! |
 |
| Rosario at night |
 |
| ughhh Vernet evil drink |
 |
| Argentines love to claim everything is theirs...apparently I'm now Argentine too |
 |
| a small cup of coffee needs 2 large packs of sugar apparently |
Tobias and I were woken up and punted
out of yet another hostel room the next morning, so after gathering
our things, and hanging out a bit longer with the Colombians and the
Argentine girl, we said adios, and made our way to the bus station,
where we had some time to kill, grabbed a coffee, and then were on
our way back to B.A again. We were returned back, grabbed some cheap
and greasy empanadas from the train station, and arrived at the
hostel to find it considerably quiet, and looking pretty dead for the
party night at ClubOne that I had told Tobias so much about. We sat
around, having some beers, and shooting the shit until it was time to
go to the club, and at the last minute Linh showed up and said she
was coming as well. So we were in the van and on our way, only three,
which was a bit surprising considering the previous week we had about
9 of us going from the hostel, but we soon picked up a boat load of
drunk Brazilians from another hostel, who were definitely keen for
some action, based on the hungry eyes the girls had several times
when I was near them in the nightclub! We entered inside and it was
even more busy than the previous week, if that was possible....what a
legendary nightclub, especially for a Sunday night.(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzlu2GJSsrE&feature=c4-overview&list=UUBNXsiU27cHBjcuOevuHIpQ This time was a
bit different though, as I was with Linh now, so I couldn't really go
talk to other women, but it was okay. We ran into Erick, the crazy
Texan, who was drunk and loving the sights of the Argentine women,
everywhere. It was pretty entertaining to watch him in action,
hooting and hollering at times, which didn't seem to go so well with
the girls of the club, although later on he did apparently meet a
nice woman there and spend the night with her. Meanwhile, it was a
bit strange as Tobias, even though he knew I was with Linh, kept
dancing with her and tried to kiss her several times in front of
me...Germans and their aggressiveness! Fortunately, she wasn't having
any of it, and would fend him off and just come back to me, so I knew
all was good. We spent the next hour and a half partying there (with
local Argentines continuously pestering me for a sip of my beer which
was seriously annoying so I would tell them to get lost in English
but they couldn't communicate with me), but being in the club this
time was kind of a different vibe since I already had a girl, and
Tobias wasn't trying for any others, just trying for her, so it was
time to get out of there. We walked back to the hostel, which was
kind of weird as Tobias would keep grabbing her hands and she would
oblige for a bit then let go and grab mine...some sort of weird
game....eventually we got back, I fell asleep on the couch, she left
Tobias to go to sleep and hung out with me until the early morning
when we finally retreated back to our separate beds for the night.
 |
| one of many trashed cars left in the streets in Argentina....apparently tow trucks don't exist |
 |
| a nice European breakfast with Tobias |
 |
| how many Argentines does it take to cut down a branch? 8...7 to watch..1 to work |
 |
| San Telmo street art |
The next morning cleaning staff once
again woke me up, and since I hadn't booked a 2nd night, punted me
out of yet another room, but I wasn't the only slow riser, as Tobias
also was late to wake and was punted. We made our way downstairs, and
found that there were no dorm rooms available for that night, which
was fine for Tobias, as he was leaving that evening, but I had to
figure out what to do. Eventually I settled on a private room for one
last night, and decided to head down to Puerto Madryn with the two
French girls the next day, as per usual, a last minute decision.
After sorting out the room, I just hung out most of the day with
Tobias, heading out for some San Telmo breakfast and coffee, watching
as one worker was cutting some branches while being “supervised”
by about 7 more....Argentine efficiency! After our coffee, and some
leather jacket repairs for Tobias, we went for a wander toward the
city centre for me to get some money, and for Tobias to change some
money, but the rates weren't all that great, as they were now down to
8.2 pesos per dollar. After the money change, and finding a Citibank,
where I hoped to be able to withdraw some American dollars. We
arrived there, and of course it was closed for some cleaning, and the
cleaner told me it would be about 15 more minutes, so we waited, and
began making endless jokes, as there was a sign above saying it was
24 hr banking, yet we had to wait for about 25 minutes before they
opened up the atm room....we couldn't figure out what the hell was
going on, as the room was cleaned, and the cleaners were just sitting
inside the actual bank, chatting away and doing nothing...oooh
Argentine efficiency again! Once they finally opened the door I was
unable to take out any American dollars, as that feature had been
banned apparently, damn. We then happened to spot a very lost Nicole,
one of the South African girls, who was having a hell of time at her
new job, teaching English, as none of her students spoke any English,
and she spoke no Spanish, plus they were at least an hour and a half
late all the time... After a quick chat with her we were back towards
the hostel, with a stop at the Pan Abuela vegetarian restaurant, for
an early dinner. While seated there, a guy who had left for Foz do
Iguacu 2 weeks earlier came into the restaurant, and remembered me,
saying “oh you're STILL here?”, which was funny, as there had
been 2 other people in the hostel earlier in the day who had been
there several weeks earlier and had returned from various adventures,
and mentioned the exact same thing. After our dinner, Tobias was off,
back to Brazil, while I just spent a few hours hanging around
chilling, waiting for Linh to get back from being out entertaining
some of her other friends, then called it an early night.
Waking up late the next day, and once
again being kicked out of yet another room by housecleaning, we got
our stuff ready to take the big trip that afternoon to Puerto Madryn.
We had drawn straws the previous day for spots, as there were two
executive style seats and one normal passenger seat, and
unfortunately I ended up with one of the more expensive ones, so I
had to fork out the $175 or so. After lounging around for a bit, I
decided to head down and buy some headphones, since mine had again
disappeared yet again, plus try a Big Mac meal before I left. It was
kind of an entertaining experience, as it was almost a secretive
thing to do. It wasn't listed anywhere on the menu, and when I
ordered it, the girl spoke to me in a low voice, like it was an
illegal thing to be ordering....the receipt even came up as “special
offer”. Then my battle with the ketchup sacks that were impossible
to open began, resulting in me giving up after about 10 minutes of
intense battling, apparently you need a knife to open them...wtf! I
made my way back to the hostel, and I assumed we would take the metro
to the station, as traffic would be heavy and a taxi would probably
take longer, but the girls wanted to take the taxi instead, so we
hopped in one of those, and of course he was stuck in traffic and
they were starting to freak out that we would be missing our bus
departure time, even though we arrived at the station 15 minutes
before departure. Then the intense scramble to the bus departure
spots began, with there being no postings showing our bus and what
platform it was leaving from, leading to more panic for the girls,
and I just told them to chill out, but it was a pretty difficult
time. I remembered having seen a Dutch girl the previous week at the
bus station, waiting for her bus to Puerto Madryn that had been over
an hour and a half late, so I had no worries, but the girls were a
bit different, even though I explained to not worry. Eventually the
bus did of course show up, about 25 minutes late, and we were on our
way.
 |
| Has anyone seen Maipu? |
 |
| Soya milanesas..mmm |
 |
| Subsidize? I said Supersize! |
I must admit, the bus was pretty
incredible, with huge comfortable leather seats, first class service,
wine, food, all the spoils of a very fancy ride. People say that
riding buses in Argentine is the best bus experience anywhere in the
world, and I'd tend to agree. They travel a safe speed, they're
comfortable, and they have some pretty great amenities. There were a
few stops along the way, as the police would stop the bus and take
several bags off and have the drug dogs sniff them, and one guy even
was busted, delaying our bus a fair while...not too sure if he did in
fact have anything in there or not, as I didn't recognize him or see
him boarding or disembarking the bus again. After a long 20 some
hours of bus riding, we arrived in Puerto Madryn, and began the walk
from the station towards a hostel that an English friend of Linh had
recommended. Well we began walking, and apparently women aren't the
best navigators, as we passed right in front of the place, and I
stopped them and mentioned that I think that's the hostel, but they
were certain it was a few more blocks up, and sure enough, several
blocks later, they looked at the actual address, and realized that of
course the one I pointed out was the correct one, so it was back to
the place, and I began immediately making jokes how the French never
trust English speakers, blah blah....well we arrived at this hostel
that the infamous Charlotte had recommended (I still wasn't a big fan
of her, yet Linh would always talk about her), and we found that the
door was locked and that no one answered the door after 20 minutes of
knocking and ringing....damn Charlotte! So we wandered down a bit
further and found an internet/phone centre where the girls could use
their French guidebook called “Le Retourd” to find another
hostel. I began calling this book “Le Retard” as they've become
so dependent on the book for everything, but I think the joke was
lost on them.
 |
| riding in style...executive style complete with fully reclining bed....wine...food..nice |
We found the hostel recommended in
there to be open, so we went there and grabbed a room. Of course over
the next few days, pretty much nothing but French travellers showed
up, so it was French only over the next few days. The day was pretty
late, windy, and cold, so we didn't get up to a whole lot, other than
a quick supermarket run, and hanging out until a bit later in the
evening when we went down to The Lizard cafe that offered half price
pizzas that night. Of course we were in there eating upstairs, when
Felicia thought she spotted Charlotte, who hadn't been responding to
any of Lin-Linh's messages, go into the toilet. Sure enough she emerged,
and when wes spotted her, she made the awkward walk over to say hello
and the excuses began for why she hadn't responded..suuuure. So after
her and Lin-Linh went for a chat with some other people, while Felicia
and I finished off our pizzas and chatted. We made our way back to
the hostel, and called it an early night. We were up the next morning
to check the hostel's weather predictor program, to see what the wind
was going to be like for the day, as heavy winds meant that the boats
wouldn't be going out to see whales, and that day there were high
winds, so we had to find an alternate plan. There were a French
couple who were looking at possibly renting a car, and with the 3 of
us, there was enough, to fill it up. Well, thus began the latest
random adventure in the life of Reilly T. Cowan. Only 3 of our group
had an international driver's licence, two of them being the girls,
so of course I made the usual joke about poor driving skills. Well,
we started off relatively well, although we were given this
relatively small Chevrolet sedan, we made our way off towards a
nearby beach, where we could see Whales swim right up to the shore!
On our way there, driving very slowly on the gravel road, as the
Frenchies likely had never driven on a gravel road before, we were
passed by several vehicles, with varying looks on the other driver's
faces. We arrived at the one beach, and saw 3 Whales playing around
right near the beach, wow. After an hour and a bit of freezing cold
wind, but rather lovely sights of whales, we made our way back to
town, as we were going to drive south of town to an area where we
might be able to see Seals. The car rental agency told us it would be
fine to drive on the roads south of the city, as did the hostel
workers, but of course that information proved to be terribly wrong.
But first, we arrived back in the city, and Felicia, the one French
girl who was driving, started driving down the wrong way of a large
one way street, and I was the only one noticing this, telling her she
was going the wrong way, unfortunately I was saying it in English,
and no one other than Lin-Linh really understood me, but she wasn't
paying attention as everyone was chatting away in French, so then
finally a vehicle was approaching us, flashing its lights, and
finally the whole car realized and slightly panicked, so we swerved
off to the right and everyone in the car was slightly hysterical in
French....so after that interesting event, we turned around, and
found a proper one way street, and not 6 minutes later, we were about
to turn a corner, and a guy trying to park his car in a non parking
spot on the corner backed into us, as Felicia didn't know how to put
the car in reverse, nor did the car have a horn!
 |
| View of the coast from Puerto Madryn |
 |
| whales only 30 m away or less from the shore |
 |
| 3 Whales enjoying themselves |
So now we're stuck in town, while the
police officer comes over, and the discussion begins as to who's at
fault and such. This takes about 35 minutes, so all I can do is sit
and listen and laugh, while people in the city are stopping and
looking on. The guy who backed into us was at fault, as he was
backing into a spot that was illegal, but because we were a car of
foreigners, he was trying to pin the fault on us, meanwhile the
French are mad, as they found out that it's no fault insurance in
Argentina, as opposed to Tort law in France...ah what a mess...so
after that gets all settled, we continue our drive and get out into
some more gravel roads...well this goes on for awhile, and I nod off
to sleep for a bit, and am woken up, being told we are stuck, and I
look outside and see the tiniest little muddy puddle and this would
only foreshadow our upcoming pain. So we hop outside and easily push
the vehicle out, and continue on...well about 15 minutes further down
the road, we see a very large puddle and I immediately think there's
no way this shitty little car will make it through that, but we take
a run at it...and sure enough..bam, we're stuck. So, we
unsuccessfully try to push little shitty car all the way out of the
mud, and make it about halfway, meanwhile, the tires are spinning and
kicking up mud everywhere, including inside the two front doors,
covering the panels and seats...oh dear...I'm also the only one
without any real proper footwear for pushing in mud, so I'm without
shoes or socks, in the freezing cold water, pushing away....well we
finally gave up on the pushing, and could only sit there and ponder
what to do next.
Fortunately, we were only about 500 m
away from a farm, so Felicia went for a walk there to see if we could
find any help, and several Gauchos (Cowboys) came out and took a peek
at our situation. They brought out a 3/4 ton truck, and some tow
rope, and tied onto us, and figured it would be a good idea to pull
us up and over the bank, onto the nearby dry field....looking at this
whole arrangement, I figured there was no way that the front bumper
was going to survive being pulled up the embankment, but surprisingly
enough, the bumper did survive intact. Now all that was left was to
follow this large truck, through this field with little shrubs that
were high than the underpanel of the car, so thus began a hilarious
10 minute drive, smashing over these shrubs, hearing the underbody
being scratched to shit....well we somehow made it out, and decided
it was best to just head back to town, as it was already getting
late. We make it back into town, and the car is an absolute mess, so
we find a car wash, spend the next 45 minutes cleaning the car inside
and out to the best of our ability, and return back to the hostel for
the night. The lady came to get the car the next morning, we
described our day, and she took the car in to a mechanic to have it
checked over, and surprisingly enough, the damage tally was only
about 500 pesos or $100...shocking....so we paid our bill and were
fortunate that it didn't cost us a lot more.
 |
| big discussion after the accident |
 |
| muddy roads that the little front wheel drive car couldn't handle |
 |
| and we're stuck! |
 |
| the aftermath of where we were pulled from |
 |
| Gauchos having a laugh...that car got banged up! |
 |
| a field with large shrubs...why not drive through it |
 |
| and here we go...the 3/4 ton had no problem driving through the field...the undercarriage of our car didn't sound like it was handling the drive so well |
The next morning we were up early, as
we had booked into taking a boat tour to see the Whales really up
close, so we were on our way to the bus station for a 9 am bus ride.
This was another rather expensive day for me, as Patagonia prices are
pretty steep for tourist things, much like European prices really. We
had to pay for the bus ride there, which wasn't terrible at $16, but
then we had to pay park entrance which was another $30, and then when
we arrived in the tiny village, we had to pay another $80 for the
relatively short 1.5 hour boat ride..ughh....but when in Rome I
guess. The village itself was quite cute, called Puerto Piramides,
but being low season, it was pretty quiet and dead, although it would
be a nice spot to spend some time relaxing and enjoying the view of
the Ocean. We waited around for a little while, before the boat was
ready to go, so we grabbed our life jackets, and were onboard, making
our 1.5-2 hour ride around the area. It was pretty cold on the boat,
especially with the winds cutting through my clothing, but I managed
to stay somewhat warm. We made our first approach to one whale, but
that didn't last too long, until we found another group of 3, for
sure one male and one female, and then one other sex unknown. Earlier
I had read about these whales having the largest testicles in the
Animal Kingdom, at over 500 kgs each!! No wonder why the Ocean is so
salty ha ha. We happened to be in luck sort of, as it was actually a
pair trying to mate (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwLiXjvQE3s), and the boat crew explained in Spanish the whole
ritual, and how the male is much smaller, but that its member is
about 3 m long and it just keeps poking it around on the female until
it eventually reaches its goal! After watching them frollick around
for awhile, and getting some pretty cool up close photos, there was a
sudden mist from the ocean that was fairly salty...who knows what
that was, hopefully it was just the mist from the whales breathing
out of their blowhole! We cruised around a bit more, took more
photos, and could see a few whales off in the distance jumping out of
the water, and we inquired why they jump...of course I came up with
the smart ass comment that it was simply one of the male whales,
celebrating having just had sex, but the crew was quick to deny that!
 |
| off to catch our whale boat |
 |
| Alan from the Hangover joined us |
 |
| Whales using their blowholes...I hope...500 kg testicles after all...eeee |
 |
| thrashing about |
 |
| those birds actually pick at the skin of the whales and can cause infections and death |
 |
| hello there! |
 |
| kind of gnarly looking faces from the Sea Lice colonies that live on their skin |
 |
| one last wave goodbye |
So after a nice but expensive boat
ride, we were back in Puerto Piramides, and had several hours to kill
before the bus to take us back to Puerto Madryn arrived, so we just
spent that time in the coffeeshop, having some Milanesas (which
weren't that great), and coffee. After a few hours of sitting around
chatting, and playing French hangman, it was time to catch the bus,
which surprisingly left on time (very very rare for South America!).
I snoozed most of the ride back, and we arrived in town, grabbed some
groceries, and had another relatively quiet night in. The French
couple were off hitch hiking the next day so they left early, and I
just wandered around for awhile, looking for some warmer clothing for
the temperatures to be encountered further south. After an hour and a
bit of wandering around, looking at things, I picked up a sweater,
and made it back to the hostel to have a quick bite to eat before
heading over to the bus station. The girls were in such a rush to
arrive there that they left 30 minutes before our bus was to leave,
even though it was a 10 minute walk, so taking my time and not
worrying, I arrived about 10 minutes before departure, and of course
the bus was over an hour and a half late. So we sat around, chatting
with a few blind guys who were an interesting group, firm believers
in God and all that, which I often find ironic, considering these
people have had an important thing taken from them, it doesn't seem
like a higher power would do that to harmless and innocent people,
but I digress from that point. The one took quite a liking to Linh,
and I had to laugh as he kept putting out his hand, trying to touch
her, and continue to ask her how to say things in French, and what
not....So, our bus finally showed up, and we were aboard and on our
way. It was another very long bus ride, and unfortunately the company
was a bit cheaper and not nearly as nice as the previous company we
had travelled with. The meals were kind of bland and there wasn't
really anything too special about the bus, although I did manage to
sleep a fair bit, as well as read a bit and even grab a few extra
bottles of wine from the bus, which was shared with Felicia while
having a wait in one of the bus stations while our bus was being
cleaned. Hilariously enough, an employee in the bus station ended up
coming over and speaking to her, saying that he recognized the wine
bottle and make, and that the company never gave the bottles out, so
we must have taken them...we just played dumb and he eventually left
us alone. One funny moment of the final leg of our drive was when one
of the Police officers that came on to check identification from
everyone made Linh-Lan put on her shoes that she had taken off for
the ride, while leaving me alone even though I also wasn't wearing my
shoes....Argentine chauvinism at its finest! We arrived in the early
afternoon to El Calafate, to a very rainy and slushy city, and after
grabbing a map, we made the cold and wet walk towards the hostel,
getting partially lost as the girls weren't the greatest navigators.
After stopping some city workers who were working on clearing up some
plugged drains that had flooded the street, we made our way up the
muddy road finding the hostel with some very soaked feet, bags, and
jackets.
 |
| The Trelew Penguins...might be making the move to the National Hockey League next year |
 |
| tiny stein of wine |
The hostel staff was again just as
friendly as the America del Sur Buenos Aires hostel staff, with tips
and advice, and making tea for all of us to warm up. Because the day
was pretty gross outside, we didn't do a whole lot the rest of the
day, other than just sit around and warm up, before heading over to a
nearby meat restaurant for a bite to eat. The barbecue was meant to
be for 2, so we ordered that and a side hoping it would be enough for
three instead, and of course the serving size was absolutely massive,
providing more than enough for the three of us. After dinner it was
back to the hostel where the place was somewhat loud and rowdy, with
several people having beers, but after having some quiet time in the
room for awhile, and emerging to be social and join the others, no
one was around, as they had apparently went out to go sliding down
some nearby hills, so it was just myself and the two girls there. The
big group came back shortly after, and the one loud and funny
Taiwanese girl was bleeding on her chin a bit from having fallen
down, so after they bandaged her up, we all had a good laugh at her
expense. We ended up meeting a few new and cool people, while playing
a board game that Felicia had brought with her, called Jungle Speed,
which ended up being quite an entertaining game once we finally
figured out how the game actually worked after about 5
attempts....the game would become so popular over the next few days
that several people would actually order it off of Amazon.com to play
at home.
 |
| view from the common area of Hostel America del Sur in El Calafate |
 |
| Argentine barbecue for 2.....yeahhh more like for 3 |
After a few beers and some laughs,
several people were off at 3 am on the bus ride to Ushuaia, while the
rest of us called it a night. After sleeping in a bit, and seeing the
weather was actually quite a lot better than the previous day, we
decide to take the 1 pm shuttle bus to check out the Perito Moreno
glacier, that was about 70 kms away from El Calafate. We made our way
down to the bus station, grabbed a rather terrible sandwich from the
cafe, and paid for our shuttle ride, which was only about 5 minutes
late...impressive for South America! We hopped aboard, and it was a
pretty empty shuttle, other than one Mexican girl and the 3 of us.
The views along the drive were rather incredible, with views of the
Argentine Lake, farmlands, mountains, and plateaus.....It kind of
reminded me of some scenes from movies in the Western US, regions
like Wyoming and Colorado. After the quick drive (maybe a bit too
quick around some of the corners considering the icy conditions), we
arrived at the Park, parked the vehicle and were given a few hours to
wander around. We quickly found the upper level observation deck, and
WOW....the glacier was absolutely stunning with large jagged walls,
similar to the Wall in the Game of Thrones TV series. After some
photos, the day really began to become interesting, as the clouds
started to part, leaving an amazing view as well as distinct sounds,
as one could hear the ice cracking, and small junks falling off the
glacier face. I held off on taking any videos of the chunks falling,
until near the end of our walk around, and was treated to something
truly special as seen here (
massive glacier chunk falling). Pardon the language of course.
 |
| wandering the streets of El Calafate |
 |
| Route 40....it's Legen.......wait for it......dary!!! |
 |
| On our way to Perito Moreno |
 |
| Landscape reminded me of the Old Western movies in the US |
 |
| amazing contrast...flat fields...snow capped mountains...kind of like the Western US and Canada |
 |
| Years since I've seen a Snowman! |
 |
| First view of Perito Moreno glacier...it would get better |
 |
| just an amazing sight to behold |
 |
| then the sun started to appear making things even better |
 |
| crack crack crack...all one could hear every 10 minutes or so with small chunks falling |
 |
| lame selfies |
 |
| and now the skies open..wow |
 |
| definitely one of the most amazing sights I've seen in my travels |
 |
| colourful birds hanging out |
 |
| I love the contrast of the blues in the ice |
After wandering around the paths, and
not taking the boat tour to the other glaciers, we made our way back
to the restaurant at the top, enjoyed some hot soup, and a break
before hopping back into the van and heading back to town. The place
had really died down by around 2:30 pm, so pretty much everyone
missed out on the big chunk falling off the glacier face...too bad
for them! We made our way back, and was kind of surprised to see a
few large flocks of bright pink birds wading in the lake....yeah,
turns out Flamingos aren't only warm weather birds as I always
expected! What a very strange sight indeed, especially with all the
ice. We arrived back at the bus station, grabbed some groceries, and
I was cold and the girls had to get money, so I just wandered back to
the hostel, and found a very full kitchen, and battled to make some
dinner in there, while waiting for the girls to get back, which took
forever, as they apparently ended up at the LibroBar, which was this
cool bar on the main street of El Calafate, that was above a library,
and had books for sale and to read while enjoying one of the many
cocktails on their huge menu. After the dinner, I met a few new cool
people, including several Californians, and ended up hanging out with
them for most of the night, playing some huge games of Jungle Speed,
which became a bit heated at times, with blood being drawn from nails
cutting skin, and fingers being jammed...great game. The girls
decided they wanted to go to El Chalten the next morning, so they
called it an early night, but I wanted a day or two to chill out and
do nothing, so when they were up early the next morning to head off,
I enjoyed sleeping in. They were travelling a bit too quickly and too
actively for my liking, so I needed the few days off to relax and not
spend a boat load of money on tours again.
 |
| Right after the falling ice, came across this sign |
 |
| beautiful end to a beautiful day |
 |
| Back to El Calafate |
After catching up on sleep, I went for
a wander down towards a nearby lagoon, that was a nature preserve
where I could see Flamingos again, however, I had no money on me and
of course they wanted an entrance fee, so I had to scrap that and
just continue walking around the city for awhile, but the wind was
pretty strong and cold, so that didn't last overly long, and I just
returned back to continue enjoying the amazing view of the lake and
mountains in the background, that the common room of the hostel
provided. It was a relatively quiet night, as we didn't have Jungle
Speed to play since Felicia had taken it with her or hidden it
somewhere. It was funny to hear how the people who had gone to El
Chalten that day had actually been asking her to play the game on the
hill. So we just spend the night playing cards and lamenting the loss
of the game for the night. After another night of beer and cards, I
slept in once again, missing the free breakfast as I did the previous
few days, I spent most of the day in the hostel just catching up on a
few things, relaxing, and enjoying a hot Yerba Mate and the view. The
girls ended up returning on the early bus from El Chalten, as the
weather had been poor there and they weren't able to see any of Mount
Fitzroy which was the big draw of the city, bad luck! They decided
they would do the boat tour the next day, but it was nearly a $100
and I was already content with having walked near the glazier and
passed up on that. For the evening, we went down to a bar that had a
tv screen, to try and catch a game from the Confederations Cup
football tournament, between Japan and Italy. One of the Americans
was of Italian descent, but I didn't know that, and since I dislike
the Italian team immensely, I was pretty crude with some of the
comments about them, although I didn't get too carried away. The game
was awesome, as were the massive hamburgers and special hot
chocolates that the restaurant offered, and after our 2.5 hour stop
there, it was back to the hostel for more Jungle Speed and beers for
the night.
 |
| yes, Cuts board Safety Pin! whatever that means |
Since most people were again leaving in
the morning for day tours, and since a bus to Ushuaia wasn't possible
to take that morning, we delayed it another day, so the girls could
take their boat tour and I could just spend another day enjoying
lovely El Calafate. I decided to go for a further walk down towards
the lake shore, on the West end of town. After a quick stop in a
bakery in the city centre, and a chat with the young kid that worked
there about a large rack of garlic hanging near the door, which was
apparently for good luck, and I was on my way, and found the winds to
be incredibly strong...probably the strongest I've ever felt. I had
to actually lean completely forward, and the strength of the wind
would prop me up enough. The gusts were even so strong that they
would catch my jacket and actually pull me off to the sides, wow. I
made it over to the shores of the lake, and found several flocks of
Flamingos huddle together, but it was too wet to get anywhere close
enough to take any good pictures, plus the wind was actually quite
painful on the eyes and ears, so the walk didn't last terribly long.
I ended up finding the LibroBar, and ordered a cocktail there, while
the rain started outside.
After the strong and tasty cocktail, I
was contemplating leaving, when two English girls from the hostel
showed up, with an Argentine guy, and shortly later a deaf Englishman
from our hostel. What an inspirational character, and funny guy he
was, as she showed us sign language over the next few hours, and
described some of the challenges and adventures that someone who's
deaf and doesn't know any Spanish would incur while travelling
around. After a few more beers and cocktails, and some pizza, the
weather cleared up, and we were on our way back to the hostel, to
kill the next few hours until the 3 am bus departure. After some more
beer, wine, card games, sign language, and even some salsa dancing,
it was already 2:25 am, and since the girls are obsessed with being
early for everything, we were on our way down to the bus station,
arriving much too early again, and having to sit around for the next
30 minutes. We boarded the bus, and as we hadn't slept, everyone
crashed fairly quickly for the next few hours, until our stop in Rio
Gallegos, where we had to catch a different bus to Ushuaia. We sat
around the quiet station for the next hour and half, meeting two
rather hilarious gay Frenchmen who were also heading to Ushuaia, as
well as two younger guys who were actually studying at the same
University where my brother goes to in Canada. We hopped aboard, and
were on our way, through Tierra del Fuego, passing through the
Chilean and Argentine border several times, having to constantly
being waken to immigrate and emigrate....kind of annoying but oh
well. It was kind of funny that the bus company, being a bit low
budget, had two pirated movies playing on the onboard entertainment
system....including a very badly ripped copy of the latest Fast and
the Furious movie, where you could actually hear the guys laughing in
the background, and shrieking over scenes in the movie.
 |
| one more view from the hostel :) |
 |
| Kind of sticks out like a sore thumb in the cute little town of El Calafate |
 |
| friendly local and his horse |
 |
| one of the stranger sights of my trip...Flamingos in the winter |
 |
| salsa dancing in the hostel |
 |
| an incredible guy...deaf and travelling through South America solo |
After another 12 hours or so of bus
rides, we arrived in Ushuaia, to find lots of snow, and the bus staff
throwing snowballs at us! Crazy guys. The bus stop wasn't exactly
much of a bus station either, as it was just in front of a petrol
station, with no real docking point. After trudging through the snow,
we arrived at the hostel that ended up being where all the people
from the bus were going, Cruce del Sur, which was fairly small, and
cramped, but a decent enough place. We checked in, and after a quick
grocery run, made a nice dinner and had a night in, as we planned to
head to the National Park the next morning for some hiking, since the
winds were going to be a bit rough for a boat trip through the Beagle
Channel. For those who don't know, Ushuaia is the furthest south city
in the World, at least according to more traditional city standards,
with a population of around 70,000 people. It's a lovely city tucked
into the side of a mountainous range, with all services, and also
acts as a gateway for trips to Antarctica. Unfortunately, at this
time of the year, trips to the one remaining continent I haven't
visited, were unavailable, as it was now winter season, and the ice
shelf makes boat trips impossible.
 |
| Part of travelling to the end of the continent requires boat crossing through the Magellan channel |
 |
| Welcome to Chile...for all of 30 minutes |
We were up early the next morning, to
catch breakfast, before heading down to catch our shuttle van to the
National Park, where we could do some hiking around. Of course I was
the only one in our group who didn't have any proper footwear for
hiking in the winter, but two pairs of warm wool socks in my trainers
seemed to make things bearable. After the hour ride, we arrived
there, and a group of 6 of us hiked through the various trails that
were still open, seeing some lakes, both frozen and unfrozen, several
foxes running along the roads, begging for food from passengers
driving around in cars, and a few spectacular viewpoints, including a
trail leading down to “the End of the World”, a small archipelago
that was at the end of the last road open to vehicle traffic in South
America (and therefore the World, as it is the Southernmost point).
The views were amazing, and after wandering around a bit longer, we
had to be back for 3 pm at the start of where we hiked from, so we
made our way back and were picked up nearly on time after a great
snowball fight. I was pretty tired and ended up sleeping most of the
way back, until we were shuffled off into another bus to take us all
the way back right to the front door. After some showers, the bottles
of wine were opened, and a party night ensued. I ended up getting
along pretty good with a French guy who was fluent in about 5
different languages, had been basically moving around the World,
stopping to work a few months in many different countries, with his
Portuguese gf...really quite an amazing couple. Unfortunately too
much wine, too many beers, and too many shots with him, lead to some
pretty blank memories from the night, including apparently playing a
game of knuckles with him, causing him to fall backwards and spill an
nearly full beer all over a Syrian girl from our hostel, and then
when him and a few others were ready to go some place else, I was
apparently meant to follow them, but somehow lost them within 30
seconds of leaving the door, and followed some random group of people
to another disco, thinking it was the group I was with, and then when
I entered, I realized I was completely by myself. The disco was
nearly empty, and there was what appeared to be an 18 year old girl
there with two very old men, men who could be her Father and Uncle
likely! What a strange place! After wandering around or stumbling
around there for awhile, I managed to make my way back to the hostel
somehow, and apparently got back around 7 am...ughh.
 |
| Tierra del fuego National Park...I wasn't well prepared for the weather! |
 |
| Lago Negro |
 |
| our little troupe wandering through the park's trails |
 |
| lovely winter landscape |
 |
| Several foxes were roaming the area looking for food from humans |
 |
| nice view of "The End of the World" archipelago |
 |
| damn Argentines...claim the Falkland Islands AND part of Antarctica apparently! |
 |
| someone else found The End |
 |
| The End |
 |
| fox pups playing in the snow |
 |
| a damn great bowl of soup |
So I slept, while apparently snoring
quite loudly and waking up the 4 girls in my room (oops), and ended
up sleeping until about 4:30 pm...wow what a rough night! I awoke to
find no one in the hostel except the French guy, who himself had just
woken up at 4 pm, and his gf and one of the young guys that came with
us from El Calafate. Needless to say, the day was quite a write off,
and it took a bit of help from several other people to put together
some of the pieces of the night together...lesson learned...too much
wine, no matter how delicious, is not a good idea before going to a
bar! Felicia gave me a bit of a hard time about the snoring, but
hilariously enough, the next two nights I would hear her snoring,
although not nearly as loudly as I'm sure I was....pot calling the
kettle black! The rest of the night was spent watching a movie, going
out for dinner to a King Crab restaurant where I had an awesome King
Crab Parmesan dish, and playing Jungle Speed back at the hostel,
which was a pretty painful experience for some, as the new players
who joined us were rather terrible, including the two gay Frenchmen,
who were so bad, but absolutely hilarious at the same time. We had
planned to take an air plane with a small Argentine company called
LADE to Bariloche two days later, and had reserved our tickets
online, but had to go down to an office the next day to confirm the
tickets. The poor Syrian girl had been waiting well over a week now,
waiting for the same flight, and it kept getting delayed as either
the weather was too bad, or else there weren't enough people to fill
up a plane to actually fly it down to Ushuaia, so that there would be
a plane to fly out with.
 |
| "humone is going to be mad I ate his empanadas" |
After the quiet night, we were up early
for breakfast again, and headed down to the LADE office, where,
surprise surprise, they informed us that there would be no plane, and
that it would probably not go for at least another week...oh the poor
Syrian girl! At least we weren't still stuck there like she was, and
could make alternate arrangements, such as the bus. We also booked
into a boat tour of the Beagle Channel, that was to leave at 10:45 am
or so, so after a stop for a dejected coffee, we were over to the
Port, where I nearly slipped and injured myself on the mud for the
first time of many times that day. We paid our Port tax (surprise
surprise on another way to bleed money), and then paid for our boat
tour, and managed to walk along the Boardwalk a bit, to really
appreciate the beautiful scenery surrounding Ushuaia. We hopped on
board, and it was a relatively small vessel, with a friendly guide
who had worked for a Dutch company the previous few years doing tours
to Antarctica, and now was working on this boat doing tours, plus an
older and long haired Captain, who seemed to be a bit of a stoner,
based on some of his music choice, and general appearance. We learned
the rules and were on our way, to our first stop, which was a Sea
Lion colony not too far out of the Port. I made a few obligatory
jokes about how much we love the annual Seal Hunt in Canada, much to
the sadness of the girls, as well as asking the guide why the seals
didn't have their cigarettes (our boat pass had a funny picture of a
seal with a cigarette for some reason), but he didn't get that joke.
Then, from that point forward, I just kept speaking about seals in
French, as the French word for seal is “phoque” which sounds a
lot like a bad English word, and was a common way for us French
Immersion students to escape trouble in English school if we were
heard using the word...”honest teacher, I was having a conversation
in French about sea creatures!”.
 |
| first smoking seal spotted |
 |
| Beautiful Ushuaia as seen from the port |
 |
| a beautiful and charming city |
 |
| first Sea Lion colony we came upon |
 |
| none of them had cigarettes though! |
 |
| "Hey guys let me come too!" |
After the first stop, we made another
stop to see some more sea lions and some birds that are similar to
penguins except for the fact that they can actually fly, and found
out that one of the two species of that bird uses their feces to
build their nests on the cliff faces, and then made our way to “Faro
Les Eclaiteurs” which some people thought was the Southernmost
Lighthouse, but apparently wasn't according to the guide. It was
built in the 1920s and used to run on fuel coming from sea lion
blubber, but now runs on solar power. After a quick drive by there,
we made our way over to a nature preserve where several other species
of sea bids make their nests, as well as several different types of
lichens, moss, and other Antarctic plants grew. The guide knew the
area quite well, and the different species, plus some history of the
native people who used to live there, and how they would dig trenches
into the soft peat moss to shelter themselves from the wind, and
throw all their food and debris behind their backs to build up the
walls further. Also, the women of the tribe were the fishers and
divers for food, as apparently their body fat and weight distribution
was better for diving...go figure! So after that very cold stop,
while nearly falling again several times on the very muddy slopes,
and seeing some rather neat plants including one that grows about a
cm per year, and would have been about 700 or 800 years old, we
finally were back on the warm boat, and enjoying beer, hot tea, hot
chocolate, or whatever wet one's whistle, for the ride back to port.
We arrived back into town around mid afternoon, and the girls went
off to make some last minute travel plans (I've been mostly just
following along, not really doing any planning myself), and they
found out we could do the 30 some hours of bus rides leaving the next
morning at 5 am.
 |
| Lighthouse that was formerly and incorrectly labelled the Southern most in the World |
 |
| could be fun to go wake surfing behind this bad boy |
 |
| our boat for the day |
 |
| our guide describing the finer points of moss and lichens |
 |
| cold and windy nature preserve |
 |
| plant that is about 700 years old and grows a cm a year at most |
 |
| surrounding mountains of Ushuaia |
So, we checked out, paid for our bus
tickets, and were back to the hostel for the rest of the night,
chilling out and getting ready to head out. After about an hour or
two of sleep, we were up way too early again, and arrived way too
early at the bus station, waited around in the cold for awhile,
before the same bus staff that had driven us to Ushuaia showed up,
and we were aboard. I pretty much slept the whole time, until we
arrived at our first of the many border crossings. This time, it was
not only Felicia the Frenchgirl who had her typical troubles with
immigration (as she had her passport stolen in Buenos Aires and was
travelling with a temporary one that seemed to always cause a bit of
grief), but now the Syrian girl, as travelling with that passport
seems to be an absolute headache, with numerous questions and grief
at every point...poor girl..it must be so frustrating. After several
annoying crossings, as well as all of us having to gobble down all
our fruits, as we couldn't take them across the Chilean border, even
though we wouldn't be staying in the country at all (fruits and
vegetables can be a headache sometimes, I remember back to having to
declare an empty banana peel at the US immigration in Seattle,
Washington earlier in my trip), we arrived in Rio Gallegos some 15
hours later, where we had a 3.5 hour layover until the next bus left.
After killing some time it was back on the next bus, finally arriving
in San Carlos de Bariloche after around 40 hours in transit!
We grabbed a cab and made our way to a
fairly unique hostel that was recommended to us by Jorge, the Mexican
guy we were hanging out with in Ushuaia, that is located inside a
Penthouse in one of the buildings in Bariloche. We arrived, checked
in, and found the French couple from Puerto Madryn there. After
settling in, we went for a wander to find a restaurant to grab a
bite, which ended up being quite tasty, as it had some local cuisine,
so I had a venison stew....after our nice dinner, it was back to the
hostel, where we met a few new people and played some cards with
them. We didn't realize it, but by 1:30 am the hostel staff told us
we had to leave the common area, as they had this rule about not
being in a common area past that time.....so okay, fair enough. Since
3 of the people that were playing the card game were in a 7 person
room, and they were the only ones in there, they said it would be
fine if we went to their room and finished off our game, so that's
what we tried to do, but then the dumb woman working the desk at the
hostel came in and told us we couldn't play at all......ridiculous
considering no one was drunk or even being loud, and if you're in a
dorm room, you should be able to at least not be treated like little
children...so we went to bed, not overly happy about the ordeal but
oh well. After all the travel time, it was time to sleep and get some
much needed rest.
The next day Felicia, Nivine, LL, and
myself decided to hop in a local bus and go do a walk up to the top
of Cerro Campanero which was about 20 minutes from Bariloche by bus.
After waiting for a bus for quite sometime, and wandering around to
find a place to put some money on our bus card, we were on our way.
We arrived, and the weather was crap, and the man working there said
it was fairly steep and slippery, and would only recommend climbing
it if we had proper footwear....well guess who didn't have proper
footwear...this guy....so I decided to just buy the pass to go up and
down with the chair lift. Because it was starting to rain and really
windy, the girls decided to do the same so we were on our way up up
up...arriving at top shortly after. The viewpoint was rather
spectacular, as you could oversee several of the lakes in the
surrounding area, although it was very cold and windy and
rainy.....this would be a trend that would develop over the next
several days in fact...great Bariloche weather! So after some time
wandering up top and enjoying the view, we stopped in for some
coffees at the rooftop lounge, which actually weren't ridiculously
over priced like normal! After a nice Irish coffee to warm up, which
was way too strong for LL as she doesn't drink and couldn't handle
more than a sip of it, we were back in the chairlift and on our way
down. The girls had kicked around the idea of continuing on to do
some more trails, but with the rain and the realization that we only
had enough money left on our bus card to get back to town, and that
there might not be a place to recharge, we decided to head back to
town. After arriving back, because of the bad weather, we just spent
the rest of the day inside, playing cards and hanging out, before
heading out for a few drinks since the French couple were leaving the
next morning. We ended up at a nearby Irish bar, where there was some
really good live music, and a DJ playing. After the live music ended,
I figured we'd head back to the hostel, but alas, the Frenchies
wouldn't let us leave, so several hours of partying later, it was
past 4 am and time to go back to the hostel.
 |
| time to hit the ski slopes.... |
 |
| how do they expect a bird that is smoking joints to protect them from forest fires (a splif is a marijuana/tobacco cigarette) |
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| perfect skiing conditions |
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| view of the Barioche and surrounding area |
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| misbehaved...ended up in the doghouse again |
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| party night in Bariloche |
The next day there were a few hangovers
present, myself not included, but Felicia wasn't feeling too well,
and we didn't even know where the Peruvian had gone to the previous
night, as he had just disappeared, but he was alive and hungover as
well. The day was absolutely ugly outside, with heavy rain and wind,
and that changed our plans of going on the bike tour in the area. A
few people wanted to go hike around a circuit area, and asked me to
join, but after seeing the weather outside, I was quite content to
have a quiet day in and just read and relax a bit. I eventually
wandered outside but with the cold rain and terrible winds, that was
short lived. Eventually Linh-Lan, Johnathan (an Aussie guy that
Linh-Lan had met several times during her trip), and Ercon (A Turkish
guy from our hostel) returned from their ill fated hike, soaking wet,
and feeling terrible. Ercon ended up becoming ill from having spent
that time outside, and the next few days paid the price, having to
spend most of his time in bed. I left the hostel for all of about 15
minutes that day, to get some food and that was it, and we spent the
rest of the time hanging out playing cards, reading, or whatever else
we could find to keep ourselves occupied. We decided to rent a car
for the next day and do the 7 lakes tour in the area, so since we had
an early morning, it was early to bed that night.
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| view from our room in the Penthouse hostel |
After getting our car, some last minute
instructions, and grabbing some lunch for the road, we were on our
way, with the Australian driving for the first leg of the journey,
and having a hard time getting used to driving on the other side of
the road, and figuring out the somewhat confusing traffic patterns of
Bariloche. We had to stop at the bus station for the girls to check
on bus tickets, which took forever...I think we waited there for
nearly an hour while they did that, as apparently the staff inside
had the usual Argentine efficiency (lack of), with one person manning
the printer and one person manning the counter taking orders, instead
of both taking orders...finally the girls were ready to go, and we
were on our way again. It was a bit annoying the first leg of the
drive, as there was a tiny bit of glisten to the highway and the
others were worried that the road was covered in ice, ha! I tried to
explain how I've been driving on icy roads my whole life and how
there wasn't any ice at the moment, and the Californian girl said she
had also been driving on ice her whole life and that because there
was ice on the sides of the road, there must be on the road, so we
stopped for a pee break and the Aussie was putting his hand on the
highway feeling for ice, while I just sat there thinking how dumb
this was, as the day was already sunny so the highway was absorbing
the heat from the sun, plus the design of a highway is one that
causes most or all of the water to run off to the sides, but no one
seemed to understand that. Sure enough, there wasn't any ice... So we
continued on our way, making a stop in a town about 100 kms away, for
a coffee break. It was a cute little snow resort town, with log
cabins and buildings littering the streets, and boutique shops. After
a somewhat expensive coffee, a few of us decided to try and grab some
empanadas for the upcoming 2nd segment of the drive. Being in
Argentina, and seeing empanadas everywhere, you'd think that would be
easy right? Well no, not in this town apparently, as we went to
several different bakeries and were shuffled on to the next one
before finally finding a shop where we could get them. Unfortunately,
we didn't realize that they would be freshly baked, and would take
about 15 minutes to have them made, but after having had to wait for
the girls and their bus tickets, we figured it was only fair that we
would wait for these empanadas, and they were definitely worth the
wait, as they were delicious.
We were back on the road, and made
several stops at the various lakes along the way, including one stop
where there was a man offering pictures with this big St. Bernard
dog.....the whole area had a really Swiss feel, including the
building styles of the homes, several Swiss restaurants, a Swiss
school, and even a Swiss Alp dog! After laughing at some of the
ridiculous sample photos taken with the dog, and sneaking some photos
while his owner was distracted, we were back on our way. The van was
a bit cramped, and I was stuck in the very back seat, where the only
way out was through the trunk door, so we always had to have someone
open that up to let whoever was the other passenger in the back and
myself out, which sometimes was a forgotten task. After several
beautiful lakes, a long and slow drive through a gravel road that was
undergoing construction and passing a Gaucho on a horse, herding
along cattle, we made our final stop at a lake called Lago Hermoso,
or Beautiful Lake....it was pretty, but wasn't anything absolutely
special other than one funny sign posted at the Lake, that I found
humourous. After the Lakes, skipping stones, brief snowball fights,
and many many many pee breaks for the girls, we arrived in the small
town of San Martin de Los Andes, a rather charming and pretty town
set on a Lake and surrounded by Mountains...again, another ski town,
but quite nice. We stopped at another coffeeshop for some coffee, met
some friendly local guy who overheard us talking in English and asked
if we needed any help translating, but soon realized that quite a few
of the people in our group spoke very good Spanish, and let it be. I
had to laugh a little bit when he suddenly disappeared, leaving his
Mother sitting by herself for quite a long time, and made the joke
that he had been upset that we didn't need his help in translating,
and had run off in an upset state, but he soon returned with his
Father, much to his Mother's happiness, as she had been sitting there
for quite awhile by herself and looked kind of worried. After our big
coffee, we had the bill pretty much paid off except for Linh-Lan who
had to pay her portion with credit card, and that's when another
fiasco began.
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| on the road to explore the 7 lakes |
 |
| first lake |
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| 2nd lake |
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| nice pose...seriously who poses for a photo like that |
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| the St Bernard that we could pay to have photos with..or just sneak photos of for free |
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| 3rd lake |
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| our sweet little 7 person ride |
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| 4th lake |
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| 5th lake |
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| the fish are well paid in Argentina |
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| 6th lake |
Argentines don't use chip cards yet, so
when the machine asked for her card to be put into the chip reader
and the subsequent pin number, the inexperienced worker started
putting in numbers from the credit card, not realizing it was meant
to be a pin....well the goofball did this 3 times in a row before
Linh-Lan realized what was going on, and suddenly, her card was
blocked...well that was a great fiasco of course, as she had to try
and get a hold of the bank to unblock it, but because it was a
weekend and it was in Europe, she couldn't get through, so the
restaurant was at least kind enough to wipe the bill clean for the
error....unfortunately this wouldn't be all that much help to
Linh-Lan as she did eventually get a hold of her bank, and they
wouldn't unblock her card, said they had to send her a new one, and
wouldn't even send it internationally, only to a relative's house in
France...what a disaster. Having been in a somewhat similar
situation, I offered to lend her money until she could get a new
card, as I had a similar thing done for me in Cuba. We got back into
the vehicle, and were on our way back to Bariloche, although it was
already getting late and it was going to be a tight race to get the
vehicle back in time. Plus, no one seemed to know how to get back and
we had to stop 3 times to keep asking the same directions, even
though it seemed pretty straight forward...apparently people in the
group couldn't trust not one, not two, but 3 different people who all
told us the same way to get back..ahh....so we made the long 4.5 hour
drive back, arriving a bit later than expected. We had to fill up the
tank, and when we were close to a petrol station near the hostel, I
tried telling Felicia to pull in there, but again, like in Puerto
Madryn, our language barrier proved to be difficult, and she missed
the entrance point....then, we had to do a large loop around since
there are quite a few one way streets, and I was trying to tell her
to go straight, but she went right instead...ahhh language barriers
while driving is a pain in the ass...then on top of all that,
suddenly the Syrian girl in our vehicle decided she wanted to get out
and walk back to the hostel, even though it would have been quicker
to return back to the nearby petrol station, and walk from there, so
she made us stop the vehicle to get out, which backed up traffic and
had people yelling and honking at us....oh man....but finally we were
able to get back to the petrol station, fill up, and fortunately
didn't have to clean the entire vehicle like the previous rental car,
and returned it back without penalty.
After the long day of travel, we made
some dinner together, and had a fairly quiet night in, instead of
venturing out to check out the Bariloche nightlife, although the
Australian guy and a German who had just arrived did venture out, but
couldn't find anything worth hanging around for, so they were back
early. The rest of us just played some cards and called it an early
night. The next day several people decided to leave including Felicia
and Nivine, but I wanted to stick around in case I could get in a day
of skiing. The weather was again terrible, so there wasn't a whole
lot to do for the day, although Linh-Lan and I did find an ice
skating rink to go for a little skate, as it had been ages since I
last skated, and it is something that I kind of miss about winter in
Canada. It was pretty funny to see how bad everyone was skating at
the rink, and I was circling around everyone, and had a lot of young
kids watching in awe of my skating. If anyone has seen me skate
before, they would know it's not pretty, but to all these people who
never really go skating, it looked very impressive apparently. One
little girl even came over to me, asked if I spoke English, and then
told me that I skate very well ha ha ha! After an hour or so of
skating, we were a bit tired, and grabbed some groceries before
wandering back through the rain to the hostel. That evening there was
the Confederations Cup final, with Brazil playing Spain in the
finals, so several of us decided to head down to the Irish pub to
watch the game, but the place didn't open until 8 pm for some odd
reason....with the large amount of Brazilians in town, and being a
pub, to not open until 8 pm seemed pretty dumb, so we ended up
missing a large chunk of the first half, waiting for the place to
open. Once inside I enjoyed watching Brazil beat down on Spain,
enjoyed a few beers and some conversation with the others, and then
had another quiet night back in the hostel, in hopes of getting up
early the next day to head out skiing.
So upon waking up and checking the hill
conditions, I found the day to be absolutely.....dreadful......rain,
sleet, and wind gusts up to 120 km/h on the hill....great day for
skiing! So that scrapped those plans, and it was another day just
relaxing in the hostel. In honour of Canada Day I figured I'd make
some Canadian food that day, so poutine was my idea for the Canadian
dish, as we don't really have any other unique dish that I can think
of. I also taught some of the others some Canadian card games, and we
just spent most of the day hiding away from the terrible wind and
rain of Bariloche. Rather than continuing to stick around and hope
for better weather, we decided to buy our bus tickets and head off
the next day to Mendoza, with an 18 hour bus ride. The rest of the
day was just a chilled out Canada Day, with some kick ass poutine,
and more cards. I had asked the previous day at one of the skating
rinks if I could rent ice hockey equipment to make it a real Canada
Day celebration, but unfortunately that wasn't an option, just
skates, so we ended up spending nearly the entire day indoors, until
it was time to cook up the big poutine dinner, which ended up being
absolutely delicious! After the tasty dinner, we just had another
quiet night in, as the hostel was pretty empty, and the weather was
still terrible.
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| finally a nice day in Bariloche...all of 15 minutes of sun in 4 days |
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| Happy Canada Day! |
We were up the next day, printed off
our tickets and then on our way to the bus station with an English
girl from the hostel who was also on her way to Mendoza. We arrived
and boarded our Andesmar bus, while once again being asked for a tip
from the baggage handler....that kind of ended up being an annoyance
throughout all the bus travels, as the guys putting bags into the bus
always asked for tips....no one really quite understands the idea of
tipping and that it's a voluntary thing, not to be asked for, but
that's part of the South American selfish culture that I later spoke
about with a Swedish man on a later trip. Anyway, I found the best
way to deal with the guys asking for tips was to just carry a large
note in my pocket, and pretend like it was my only note and ask if
they had change for the large note, and they would always say no,
don't worry about it. Great way to deal with it. So we were aboard
and had another 18 hours of bus ride to look forward to, watching tv,
movies, reading, and sleeping a bit. We arrived the next morning
around 8:30 am, and made our way over to a hostel called Hostel
Independencia. We arrived and couldn't actually check in until
several hours later, we just sat around, enjoying the hostel
breakfast which included fresh made crepes, yum.....before heading
over to a nearby cafe with the English girl from our bus, and a few
Irish girls that we had just met at the hostel. They were all close
friends and we were kind of the outcasts in their group, as they
didn't really speak to us very much, so after our coffees and
medialunas ( an Argentine type of croissant), we were back to the
hostel to finally complete our check in. Probably because of a lack
of sleep on the bus, I was exhausted, and decided to have a quick
afternoon nap, which ended up lasting about 5 hours, while Linh-Lan
went for a wander around the city a bit with a French girl from our
room.
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| Argentines love their mate so much you have mate machines in the bus stations |
I woke up and could hear laughter and
Spanish being spoken outside the room window, so upon investigating,
I found Linh-Lan and the other French girl conversing and having some
wine with a nice Chilean couple. The girl spoke great English, but
her bf didn't speak any. We ended up hanging out with them, chatting
in Spanish and English for the next few hours, while they offered us
some of their wine, until it was 7 pm, which was the hour that the
hostel offered free wine for one hour. After our hour of grape power,
we were all feeling a bit hungry and decided to venture out to find a
spot, settling on a buffet restaurant a few blocks away, where the
food was avg at best, and somewhat entertaining to watch a family
with a bunch of out of control kids, who were crawling along the
floor near the buffet line, nearly tripping both customers and
workers of the restaurant, while the parents were trying to corral
them all in...good luck! After our dinner and one last beer, it was
back to the hostel where we ended up spending the rest of the
evening.
The next day after another tasty
breakfast, we decided to go try and do a self guided tour of Bodegas
(Vineyards) in a nearby area of Mendoza. We could have signed up for
an organized tour which cost nearly $100, but several people had sait
it was better to just rent bikes ourselves and go do a self guided
tour, so once we finally got ourselves sorted, we were on our way to
try and find a bus to take us to to Lujal de Cuyo, which took quite
awhile, as the hostel staff weren't very helpful and didn't know
anything, and most of the people we asked in the street were the same
way, until one lady finally was able to help us. Of course, being
Argentina, we couldn't pay with cash on the bus, so we had to go find
a place to buy a bus card and charge that up as well!
We finally arrived in the small suburb,
and asked the driver to drop us off near a bike rental shop that was
recommended in Linh-Lan's French guide “Le Routard” or Le
Retard....well we arrived near the spot, and of course the place was
closed, and we really had no other idea where to rent a bike, so we
went for a walk. We soon found a small little Bodega, and decided to
check it out since that was the whole point of our day. We were soon
greeted by a friendly worker who offered to take us on a quick tour
of the tiny vineyard, which was more of a boutique vineyard, and much
smaller than most of the ones in the area. We learned a bit about the
equipment they used, and were shown the storage tanks, which were
actually made of concrete instead of stainless steel.....we learned
about the difficulty in cleaning the tanks in the past, where the
only people that could squeeze inside them were small children, so
they had tiny little wooden doors for the children to enter and
clean. We also learned about how the old cement tanks would provide
terrible taste to the wine, and that's why the locals would add
carbonated water to their wine, to help make it more bearable to
taste, however, with the invention of an epoxy coating on the inside
of the tanks, the flavours of the wine improved immensely, such that
they were the preferred tanks of the Bodega, in place of stainless
steel. We learned a bit more about the history of the Bodega before
getting down to what we really were there for, some wine sampling!
After a tasty meal, myself and the other French girl sampled 3
different wines, all of which were exquisite....I figured I could
find a bottle of the vineyard later on, so I didn't end up buying a
bottle there, but I should have, as I wasn't able to find any bottles
later on. After the tasting, and some coffee, we asked if there was
another vineyard nearby, and a place to rent bikes. The guy working
didn't know where the next vineyard was exactly, but did write down
some directions to a bike rental place, which was kind of far.
So LL had an idea of where the next
Bodega was, however, she didn't quite read her iPhone map so well,
and after a rather lengthy walk, we realized that we had gone
completely the wrong way, and this was after about 30 some minutes of
walking....the girls thought it would be easy to hitch hike inside
the town and get back towards the Bodega, but I was pretty skeptical,
as I kind of think that hitch hiking only works when on highways or
other major road ways, as I can't imagine picking up some random
person in the streets of a city to drive them somewhere...so we began
walking..and walking...and walking some more..probably about 40 to 50
minutes of walking, all the while with them trying to get a
lift...well surprisingly enough eventually someone did decide to pick
them up, and by that point I was well ahead of them, but they did
decide to stop and pick me up as well....we were dropped off by the
kind Argentine man and his daughter in front of another Bodega, and
of course, they required a reservation, and wouldn't let us in for a
sampling...ughh! By this point it was also nearly 5 pm, and all of
the Bodegas close by this point in time, so we didn't have much other
options open other than beginning to head back to Mendoza. After
stopping and buying an apple, to which I was given change in candies
rather than coins....we found a nearby bus stop that we could catch a
bus back to Mendoza.
 |
| Sophie getting up after stepping into the grate and falling hard ha ha |
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| water tower at the Bodega |
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| small wine equipment...cost is around 45,000 USD for this...other Bodegas have machines 10 times as large |
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| Mini tombstones on the wine vats to remind employees that it's dangerous working around them |
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| old cement vats, with small wooden doors where children workers would enter to clean |
 |
| a nice purchase by a Canadian import company |
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| wine tasting...Chardonnay, Cab Sav, and Malbec-Cab Sav-Merlot mix (the best) |
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| Ceviche to go with the wine :) |
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| hilarious Argentine trash bins you see in the cities...effective? |
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| Oil and gas company in rural Argentina?? |
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| our long walk to find a Bodega..completely lost |
 |
| buy an apple, and instead of change, receive candies instead... |
We arrived back in Mendoza, but got off
a bit far away from the hostel, but it still wasn't too hard to get
back. Seeing as how it was American Independence Day, I was hoping to
find some Americans to go out and party with, but the hostel was
pretty quiet other than 3 American girls, one of which was there with
her entire family who was in Argentina visiting her. They talked
about going out, but it didn't seem like much was happening. I
figured I'd celebrate America Day by purchasing some fireworks,
eating American food, and drinking American beer, but unfortunately I
was only able to complete two of the 3....hooray for McDees and
Budweiser! After dinner and beer, it was back to the hostel for the
free wine for an hour, but not much else....especially since we
decided to go on a tour the next day that left at 7:45 am. We were up
early the next morning, and barely had time to eat any breakfast, as
our tour bus showed up earlier than expected, so after quickly
wolfing down what little food we could, and grabbing some bags of
food to make lunch with, we were on our way out the door.
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| Happy Independence Day! Being American |
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| a lost bet, she was in fact able to put me into the trash bin |
After picking up a full bus load of
people, we began our drive to the high mountain pass, along the route
that lead to the Chilean border. Unfortunately the day was cloudy,
and we didn't get the best views of the surrounding mountains, but
for what little we could see, it was quite spectacular. We made
several stops along the Cordillera (Mountain range) seeing the
beautiful displays of colours associated with different metals in the
rocks. The Argentine Andes haven't been mined for quite some time,
due to concerns about environmental pollution, while the Chilean side
has been business as usual. Before stopping at a ski hill, we made a
stop for coffee and for people to rent snowsuits and sleds and boots
for the hill, but I chose not to do any of that, as I wasn't so keen
on sliding down the hill, I'd rather ski! We then arrived at the ski
hill that was tucked away along the highway, but none of us felt like
paying to go up on the chair lift, and ended up just hanging around
the base, having lunch and killing the hour we had there before
moving on to our actual lunch stop, which was a restaurant at the
highest point of the highway. Since we had already eaten, and had an
hour to kill there, we figured we'd grab a bottle of relatively cheap
wine, and drink that to pass the time. This ended up being a bit
rushed, as people finished dinner much more quickly than we expected,
so we were forced to guzzle our wine. We even convinced LL to join in
the game, and after probably half a cup of wine or so, she was
already buzzed...lightweight! We were back in the bus, making our
next stop at a small village where a large avalanche had destroyed
nearly everything, including a large hotel...only the church survived
somehow. There we had some more spectacular views, some cute little
shops, and something a bit strange to see, as there was mud pits at
the former hotel location, and some of the vendors would dip various
items in the mud pits and they would solidify with a mud
coating...neat but no room for that in the bag!
After that quick stop, we were back on
our way to town. I ended up having an interesting chat with a Swedish
man who looked after several different groups of people on different
continents for his company, and he described the South American
worker's views as that of “me, me, me, my family, my friends, then
at the very end of the priority list, the company I work for.” It's
kind of an interesting view on worker culture, but it does make a
fair bit of sense, as corruption is fairly rampant in nearly all
countries in Latin America. It was quite a task to manage groups like
that I'm sure. After our long bus ride back, we arrived in town, and
LL suddenly got off the bus at the wrong stop...we weren't sure if it
was because she was ill, drunk, or just had to go to the bathroom
really badly! We were dropped off at our proper spot, and somehow she
had managed to make it back to the hostel before us, even though she
had gotten off way way earlier in the drive home....We got back just
in time for the wine hour, before making arrangements to meet up with
Francois and Anais, the French couple from Puerto Madryn, Bariloche,
etc... They knew of a good steakhouse near their hostel, so we made
the walk over and joined them, plus one other French guy from their
hostel. We made our way over to the place, and I enjoyed a rather
delicious Portuguese Chicken dish, while the others had beef...LL
said it wasn't that great, but the chicken was at least decent, and
the wine was delicious! After an hour and a half of bs'ing in French,
we decided to go check out a nearby street full of pubs and bars,
making our way there and finding an Irish pub where we had some beer
and hung out for another hour, before making our way back to the
hostels and calling it a night.
 |
| first stop along the Mountain road |
 |
| Ski hill |
 |
| Nice spot for a hill |
 |
| At the restaurant at the top of the highway..weather conditions not so great |
 |
| Girls not enjoying the weather so much either |
 |
| Never Have I Ever drinking game with wine |
 |
| small village where the avalanche occurred several years earlier |
 |
| remains of the hotel |
 |
| The Andes |
 |
| Beautiful mountains...unfortunately the weather wasn't so great |
We were woken up around 5 or 6 am when
a drunk American guy in our room was trying to climb up on his top
bunk bed, and somehow caused the whole bed to come crashing down on
the face of Sophie, who was on the bunk beneath him. She was really
lucky as it only caused a small cut underneath her eye, and then when
the guy came down to help get the bed off her, she popped her head up
in shock and smacked her head again...what a mess! We settled back
down to sleep, and she ended up being okay except for the cut. After
finally crawling out of bed the next day, we had a relatively quiet
day, heading off to buy some supplies to make some guacamole, and
some other goodies. After our nice little feast, LL and I just went
and wandered around to do some shopping, before coming back and
getting our bus tickets for Santiago the next day, as the border
crossing was going to be open. Because of the location in the pass,
if there's storms, the crossing will be closed, and it had been
closed for a few days already, as Francois and Anais were turned back
with their bus when they went the previous day. The rest of the day
was spent hanging around the hostel, with the Chilean girls and a few
Brazilians before calling it an early night.
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| Housekeeper that looked like Liza Manelli!! |
We were off to the bus station the next
morning, and were aboard and on our way to Chile finally! The drive
went through the exact same highway that we had gone through on the
day tour two days earlier...and for half the cost! The day was also a
lot clearer so we really got some amazing views of the surrounding
mountains, and could even see a tiny bit of Aconcagua, the mountain
that is the highest in Southern and Western Hemisphere. We then
passed about 1000 trucks, as the log jam at the border crossing was
absolutely crazy, due to the length of time it was closed! After
another long and disorganized mess crossing the border, and nearly
being left behind by the bus as I ran off to grab some final
empanadas, it was time to say final goodbye to Argentina, and hola to
Chile!
Until the next post, adios y saludos a
todos
Rye
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| On the road to Chile |
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| Amazing day and drive |
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| why pay for a tour when you can take the bus for cheaper and see the same things :) |
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| Impound lot where Argentine police keep vehicles caught with drugs or other contraband...hilariously enough there was a large tourist bus in there! |
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| One of the nicer spots for a border crossing |
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| Adios Argentina, we had fun :) |
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