Crossing the Andes by bus...

It's actually fairly easy to catch the bus from Mendoza to Santiago, Chile although I was a little apprehensive since we had to cross the Andes Mountains (aka the mountains where the Uruguayan soccer team crashed and had to eat each other, aka the movie Alive).

You leave Mendoza from the bus terminal (there are plenty of companies offering this trip and you can buy tickets the day of but get there before 10 a.m. because the buses only leave once a day in the morning).

The Argentinian part of the trip is a fairly gradual ascent and you pass by vineyards on the way up the mountains. I went in early November (the beginning of summer there) but I think they close the pass in their winter.

After about 3 hours, you get to the Los Libertadores border crossing. There are tons of cars, buses and trucks all waiting to cross the border (having grown up crossing the Detroit/Windsor crossing to Canada it was nothing new to me but a lot of people seemed bored/annoyed/in urgent need of a restroom.

You have to go through the exit visa line from Argentina, then go to the enter Chile line and then get everything searched and then they put everything back on the bus (BTW, the people who load your bags back on to the bus expect/demand a tip (una propina). They don't work for the bus companies so I guess this is free enterprise at it's purest.

It reminds me of Danielle's story about the guys in Brazil who, for a tip, watch your parked car and "guard" it against thieves. Yeah, right like they're going to risk getting jacked up from some car thieves for a $1-2 tip!

The Chilean side is much steeper and there were a few times I actively cringed but it wasn't as scary as I thought...a few hairpin turns and tipping to one side precariously....no worries.

You arrive in the downtown Santiago bus station which is a bit dodgy so definitely take a cab.

All in all, it was much preferable to flying (again with the Alive scenario) and I'm actually not sure if there are flights?

Mendoza, Argentina

Wine country!!! I thought I'd be right at home but I didn't enjoy Mendoza as much as I thought I would. On first glance, (taxi from the airport) I thought it looked like California...dusty, warm, dry. And I guess it is, what with all the vineyards and olive oil production, but something was still lacking.

Although I would love to give it another chance because I feel it could grow on you.

It's a sleepy town with not much else to do besides tour/bicycle the vineyards. I didn't see a building higher than two stories. A big change from BA.

I did a wine and olive oil tour. Also walked around alot. It is a nice city for walking and I stayed at two different hotels. Ibis Hotel when I first got there---great hotel but not near the city center and Argentino Hotel which is adjacent to the main plaza, Plaza Independencia. The plaza has a small museum, a nice fountain and tons of market stalls. I bought some fernet as a gift for a friend. For some reason, Argentinian people are obsessed with this drink. It tastes basically like Sambouca, which is iffy at the best of times.

The town is a little sleepy but I wouldn't mind going back and checking it out again. I went there in order to be able to take the bus to Santiago, Chile and avoid the $140 airport fee if I had flown into Chile. Plus I wanted to be able to say I had taken a bus across the Andes (aka the mountains where the Uruguayan soccer team crashed and had to eat the corpses to survive).

You can take a bus across these mountains very easily and very cheaply, although they weren't nearly as big as I thought they would be. In fact, I felt a little jipped. But it still was beautiful scenery and hairpin curves at points. You go through customs half-way and as is usual, you are expected to tip all the bag handlers. Travel time to Santiago is about 5 hours or so.

La Boca

One of the obligatory tourist stops in Buenos Aires is the area called La Boca (the mouth) which was the original port. This is the area of brightly colored tin sided houses you see in all the postcards and photos.

The area surrounding La Boca is completely dodgy but the main tourist street La Caminita is ok. I've read some reviews of this area where people were told they could walk there and were promtply mugged in the middle of the afternoon. Seriously, don't walk here. If you want to go the economical way, take the subway to the last blue line stop, Constitucion and take a cab the rest of the way. Even our cab driver warned us how sketchy the area is, but it is pretty.

Known as the birthplace of the tango, there are plenty of couples willing to demonstrate outside of restaurants and shops. If you take your picture with them you have to tip but little did Danielle and I know that even if you sat at the restaurant and didn't have anything to do with them, they will still expect tips. Although it was worth it watching the guy dancer having to pick up every overweight tourist and pose with them in his arms.

All the shops just sell tacky tourist crap and as you walk down the street, you will be accosted to come in to whatever restaurant you happen to be walking by. We decided on one which had a guy who was sporting the famous Argentinian man bun. See below.

Obviously that's not the real pic of the guy we saw but when I google imaged "man bun" I learned there's apparently a whole sub strata of women who dig this 'do. They should just go to Argentina...just about every guy down there is rocking the man bun.

I know it sounds like I didn't like La Boca, but it is pretty and I had a good time. Will I ever go back? No. But it's a place you should definitely see if you're in town.

Ushuaia photos

Ushuaia, Argentina...The End of the World

Danielle and I took another side trip from Buenos Aires; this time to Ushuaia which is the most southerly city in the whole world and the jumping off point for Antarctica. Port Williams, Chile disputes Ushuaia's claim, as technically P. Williams is farther south but apparently it consists mostly of a military base and the few stores that services said base. Ushuaia's argument is that does not constitute a city.

It truly is "El Fin de Mundo" or the End of the World.

It is about a 2 or so hour flight from BA and not too expensive. If you go, I would plan on spending 2, maybe 3 days.

A taxi from the airport to town is cheap (you definitely don't need a car here) and we stayed at Hotel Austral which was one of my two favorite hotels in South America. It's a good price and very near the downtown area.

One of the things we were most excited to do was do a penguin rookery tour. We used Pira Tour, which is the only tour that is allowed to let passengers out on the island where the penguins live. Others have to moor off-shore. You can book this tour at the pier, although space is limited and it is popular so you may want to book in advance or online.

The tour begins with a 1.5 hour bus ride to an estancia (ranch) where you board a boat to go to the penguin colony. DRESS WARM! It is seriously freezing and the boat is open air. The winds that come off Antarctica are serious and face numbing.

But when you get there and get to walk among the penguins (penguinos in Spanish) it is truly amazinfg (although a bit stinky). You can get about 3 feet away from them and Pira Tours really emphasizes conservationism. In Spanish they say, "Tocamos con los ojos no con los manos"--We touch with our eyes not with our hands.

During the tour, you also get to stop at the famous bent tree that's in all the National Geographic photos and postcards. See what I mean about it being windy. Look what it did to that poor tree.....

At the Visitor Center you can also get your passport "officially" stamped with an Ushaia stamp.

We also did the Beagle Channel tour (yes, it's named after the ship Charles Darwin made famous); you can book this tour at the pier. This tour isn't as cold as the penguins because the boat is enclosed with outdoor viewing areas. On this tour you'll see a colony of sea lions, the "lighthouse at the end of the world" which isn't really the one Jules Verne wrote about but everyone thinks it is and also a really smelly bird colony. Come to think of it, the sea lions were pretty stinky too.

You also get to get out on of the islands and the guide explains about the indigenous people and also about the plant and animal life in the area as well as telling you some of the history of the area. We did ours in Spanish but they speak English.

Back on dry land, Danielle suggested we check out the Yamana Indian museum, which I didn't think I was really going to like but it was fabulous. The Yamana are the original people of that area and they gave the area it's name. Because it's so freaking cold down there, the Yamana would always have a fire lit (even a small one in their fishing boats) so European settlers, who saw all these fires from their boats, named the region "Tierra del Fuego" or Land of Fire.

The Yamana also didn't wear clothes which seems at odd with the harsh environment, but we learned that if they wore clothes while fishing, the clothes would get wet and freeze. So the Yamana would cover their bodies with animal fat and grease, thereby water-proofing themselves.

The last thing we did besides drinking alot of beer in the 2 Irish pubs there was to go to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. Foreigners have to pay while Argentinians get in free which is kind of weird. But on the van ride there, we were offered a drink of mate, which is the national obsession there. This doesn't sound weird until you realize everyone drinks out of the same metal straw that is attached to the cup. No one there thinks this is weird. Apparently there are no germaphobes in South America.

The park was really nice although we couldn't do the hike we wanted. Trails were not marked all that well and we were nervous about getting lost and dying in the Argentinian wilderness.

Ushuaia is the farthest I've ever been from home and if you can do it, I highly recommend it. It's amazing to me that people can survive and adapt to such harsh conditions (the town has a population of around 64,000).

One thing that was interesting to me was how angry the Argentinians still are about the Falklands War with Britain in the early 80's. While largely forgotten in England, the Argentinians still have banners proclaiming, "Las Malvinas son Argentina" --the Falklands are Argentina. Kinda strange but we also happened to be there on a local holiday and saw a parade in which trucks had been shrink-wrapped with the same slogan.

Tigre, Buenos Aires Argentina

Another popular day trip is to Tigre, which is a seperate town about 17 miles north of Buenos Aires. To get there, you take a local train from the Retiro subway station. It takes about an hour but is super cheap, like $1.50 each way cheap.

Danielle and I got off the train and walked around a little and then the smell hit us. We were walking across the river (the Parana Delta) and it was just a wall of stank that assaulted us. It smelled like a cross between rotting garbage and a backed-up toilet. Eventually, as we made our way down to the river side, we saw what it was. There were hundreds of dead and dying fish flopping around on the banks of the river and along the jetty. I have never seen anything like it before. Andth e dead ones were rotting in the sun, hence the stench from Hell.

I asked a local man who was just kind of hanging around what was happening with the fish and he said it was because of the government, that they don't care about the pollution in the waterways and that's what was killing the fish. It seemed a cop-out answer but it was all we had, so who knows?

Other people I know went there after we did and they say they didn't see any fish (and they were pretty dang noticeable). Maybe it was just an off day for Tigre?

We walked alot but there's not much of interest in the town. There's an outdoor market (which was only functioning at half capacity when we were there) but they were selling old trinkets and junk you could get anywhere.

If you walk along the river (which is a muddy brown) you will get harassed to sign up for a river cruise. We contemplated it, but it's pretty steep price wise and at that point, I think we were done with Tigre.

While I had a fun day out with a good friend, I really don't understand why people like this place. It's super popular (even Madonna and brood took a river cruise during her split with Guy Ritchie--thanks Wikipedia).

Who knew?

Colonia del Sacramento

One of the most popular day trips from Buenos Aires is to Colonia, Uruguay, which is Uruguay's oldest city and was founded by the Portuguese. Danielle and I decided to check it out, if for nothing else than to add another stamp to the old Passport.

I recently read that only 30% or something of Americans even have a passport---neither of my parents do--while mine is one of my prized possessions. We do live in a freaking huge country, but c'mon people!

On a side note, living near Canada as we do now, they offer a half-price passport (which is more like a driver's license) that will allow you to travel to Canada and Mexico but that's it. Not sure of the point of this...I say spend the extra $50 or whatever and get the real deal.

To get to Colonia you will have to take a ferry. There are 2 types of service: fast (about 1 hour) and slow (about 3 + hours). You will be crossing the Rio Plata, which is one of the widest rivers in the world. In fact, it may be the widest...I'm just too lazy to look it up. Suffice to say, you can't see across to the other side so it looks like the ocean rather than a river emptying into an ocean and the Argentinians will sunbathe and hang out on the banks just like at the beach.

Buquebus is the ferry service and you catch the ferry at Puerto Madero in BA. The terminal looks exactly like an airport and it can get very crowded, so you may want to buy online or in advance. Definitely take the fast ferry...to save a few dollars is SO not worth being stuck on a ferry all day (although the ferry is huge and super modern, complete with duty-free shopping).

Uruguay is 1 hour ahead, so factor that into your plans. And don't forget your passport.

Unfortunately, it started raining after we got there, which put a damper on our plans to rent scooters and cruise around the city and countryside. Instead, we opted for covered golf carts!

Yes, that is a Uruguay shweatshirt I'm wearing...did I mention it also got pretty cold. That dang sweatshirt cost like $50 and ended up getting holes in it a few months later and had to be given to Goodwill. Still pissed.....

We cruised all around, went down 1-way streets, made illegal U-turns and pretty much made road nuisances out of ourselves but it was SO fun and really recommended. Walking can get pretty blinking tiring after awhile.

We also checked out some museums on the history of the town and the Portuguese influence.

While I had a great time, Colonia for me was a one trip only kind of place. It was cool to see another country (and it's much closer than Montevideo the capital) but it wasn't that exciting that I'd want to go back. You can definitely see everything in 1 day and probably still have time before your ferry is due to depart.