The Falklands Islands are a small group of islands about 500 or 600 miles of the southern Atlantic coast of Argentina. In addition to being a safe haven for Britishites around the world, they are really a beautiful collection of islands, with some amazing views and a really impressive set of supported wildlife.

They’re an independent British territory, and have been controversial territory for the two countries for about 400 years. Getting there is tricky, because you can’t fly there directly from Argentina. To get there, you basically have 3 options:

1. Fly from Punta Arenas, Chile. LAN flies to Stanley from Punta Arenas, and you can get to Punta Arenas from either Santiago (international airport) or Ushuaia (international airport, but if you’re coming from another country, you’ll probably land in Buenos Aires and them fly to Ushuaia).
   • Benefits: Easy flight to the Falklands. If you’re already in South America, this is the simplest way to get to the Falklands (and probably the cheapest, as well).
   • Drawbacks: this flight only happens once per week, on Saturdays. So not only would you arrive on a Saturday, you would have to leave on a Saturday as well. So you’d need to spend exactly a week there (or two, or three, and so on).
2. Fly from an RAF base in England. The RAF offers semi-chartered flights (with some tourist seats) to the Falklands from the UK on an irregular schedule.
   • Benefits: you can get there direct from above the equator (pretty far north in the northern hemisphere, actually).
   • Drawbacks: just about everything else about this flight is a drawback- there’s no published schedule, costs are pretty extreme, and it’s really really long.
3. Visit in a cruise ship from Ushuaia. This is probably the best option, and is included in certain Antarctic cruise routes (which is how we went).
   • Benefits: scheduled visit, at a reasonable cost, guided tours of the sites on your itinerary.
   • Drawbacks: may not be flexible enough to allow for independent exploration.

What to do there:

• Visit Stanley, the main town (of 3000 people), and check out the museums, some of the memorials (including an Argentine one, which is a recent addition), and some of the wrecks in te harbor.
• Visit some of Camp (the outlying islands and residences). The thing about camp is, most of it is on other islands. You can try to travel by boat, but the distances are often long enough to eat up a day of travel. There are a few private planes that you can fly to different locations from, and I assume flight costs are reasonable – although I know nothing about them. Be aware that travel around the islands is unpredictable an often weather-dependent, so you may want to have a few days of flex time if you are making the travel arrangements.

As I mentioned, the islands are really beautiful – check out some photos if you don’t believe me…

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We spent nearly two months in Argentina, so we really got the chance to know the country, the people, and the culture. We spent time in pretty much every area, and traveled overland for a significant portion of our time. We got some really good use out of our gear, too. Here’s what we found most useful:

1. Lonely Planet Argentina. Yes, we used the guidebook a lot in Argentina. In fact, we spent so much time in-country that we brought a country-specific guidebook (for the rest of our trip we pretty much only used the book “South America on a Shoestring” by Lonely Planet). It was super-useful, from helping us to identify the primary places we wanted to visit, to giving us tips on which sights were worth it and which weren’t. Yes, we spoke with a lot of different people on the road in Argentina, but we couldn’t fit them in our packs (besides, I’m not sure they would have been ok with that, either).
2. Unlocked cell phone. Again it came in handy (seems like we used it almost everywhere!). From calling hotels and hostels when making reservations for the next night (or confirming them), to arranging meetups with locals, to coordinating tour details with guides, we used our phone several times in Argentina. This time around, we had a Claro chip, and it worked great!
3. Hiking shoes. We hiked a lot here. We visited the national park in Ushuaia, did several trails in El Chalten, hiked around La Cumbre, and walked with our packs from bus station to hotel, hotel to bus station in cities the length of Argentina (which, by the way, is about as long as the US is wide).

So that’s what came in handy while we were in Argentina.

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Here’s another way to look at our time in Argentina:

• Days in-country: 50
• Passport exit stamps: 5
• Number of times we returned to Argentina: 4
• Cities visited: 12
• Overnight buses: 5
• In-country flights: 7
• Longest flight delay: 4 hours
• Glaciers visited: 2
• National parks visited: 5
• Emergency room visits: 1
• Environments visited: 7
  • (city, beach, pampas, mountains, lakes, desert, jungle)
• LNG taxis used: 1
  • (in cordoba to take us to the airport)
• Futbol games attended: 1
• Criticisms of Diego Maradona: thousands
• Tango show invitations received: 10
• Mistakes made because of the Argentine accent: 84
• Packages shipped home from Argentina: 3
• Time required for packages to get to the US: 6 weeks

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We were in Cordoba for my birthday (April 10th, just so you know , and we decided to take a day trip out to a town called Alta Gracia. It’s a bit south of Cordoba, but only an hour-long bus ride away, so it was pretty easy to get to!

Alta Gracia is primarily known for having been the site of a prominent Jesuit ranch and the birthplace (and childhood home, as well as official museum) of Che Guevarra. Just so you know, we went to the Jesuit ranch (the town has moved so much that the ranchhouse is now surrounded by the town), but I didn’t see anything that struck my photographic fancy, so no photos of it .

By far the coolest thing that happened was that, coincidentally, we arrived in Alta Gracia on the day that the regional Gaucho Competition began. It started with a parade:

Here are some of the other gauchos we saw that morning during the parade:

that the regional competition began that afternoon in town. So, we decided to walk around the town for a bit, seeing the Jesuit ranch and the Che Museum (more on that later). Then, we collectivo’d it up to the race field, where we saw this:

But that’s not all we saw! Gauchos young and old were preparing, practicing, and racing up and down a an oil-barrel-lined course. I got some great shots; this is one of my favorites:

I made 74 photos of the racing; play through this slideshow because there are some really amazing ones!

So, there are a few things you haven’t seen still. First, the Che Guevara Museum.

It was pretty interesting. Based in the family home that he grew up in, it contained a few family photos, replicas of his bicycle and motorcycle (La Poderosa II), and stories about his childhood and families. Here’s what some of it looked like:

Second, you haven’t seen much of Alta Gracia. This is what we saw as we walked around:

As always, you can click-through (even the slideshows!) and see the original images. (Tech note – I’ve switched to Picasa for photo hosting for the blog, and will slowly move all of our travel photos over. New posts will use Picasa, which enables these slideshows!)

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The Dirty War – as the Argentinians call it – took place in the mid-1970s. A pretty powerful regime took control (I believe they were aligned with the military) and “disappeared” a whole generation of college students. They were brought to prisons hidden in and around many of the major cities, and most of them were executed after being interrogated, often brutally.

Literally thousands of Argentinians were lost (All of Argentina agrees about this; the only debate is whether it was 10,000 or 30,000).

A group of mothers began the crusade to find the “desaparecidos” (disappeareds) all the way back in 1977. The “Madres de la Plaza de Mayo” began meeting every Thursday in Buenos Aires, wearing white scarves as identification. They still meet every Thursday; in the meantime they’ve gotten the government to identify some 250 adopted children as “desaparecidos”, found the remains of others, and built a university and library. They’ve left their mark on Bariloche – on the grounds of the Centro Civico there are the names of some 30 desaparecidos, written in white paint along with the date of their disappearance and an image of a white scarf:

From Bariloche – Around

In Cordoba, they converted a half-city-block former prison (used for the desaparecidos) to the Museo de La Memoria, where they show the names of several thousand, some of the rooms they stayed in, and some writing about their experiences. Here are some shots of the museum (it’s a slideshow; use the buttons to move through the pictures):

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On the second half of our journey through South America, we’ve been able to see a lot of the country – with about 7 weeks on the ground in mainland Argentina. It’s a big country – just over 3000 miles from the southern tip (Ushuaia) to the northernmost point (La Quiaca, on the Bolivian border). We usually travel by bus, but the Andes are a big mountain range, so there are some trips that are just better in a plane. We’ve been able to fly several times in Argentina (not including our short stint in the US), and on most of the Argentinian carriers:

• From Rio Gallegos to Ushuaia (with Aerolineas)
• From Ushuaia to El Calafate (with Aerolineas)
• From El Calafate to Bariloche (with LADE)
• From Cordoba to Iguazu (via Buenos Aires, with Aerolineas)
• From Iguazu to Cordoba (via Buenos Aires, with Aerolineas)
• From Cordoba to Lima (en route to Cuzco, with LAN)

We’ve had the full set of experiences, I think. It’s been pretty funny – everyone (guidebooks and travelers especially, but also some of the tour companies – like Quark, who ran our incredible Antarctic Cruise) complains about Aerolineas – how their flights are either delayed or canceled, and how they never have information for you until after something happens (or doesn’t happen, as the case may be). We’ve flown with Aerolineas three times now, and each time have had a different experience:

1. We weren’t sure what to expect when we booked our first Aerolineas flight to Ushuaia, but the price and timing was too good to pass up. As it turns out, we arrived at the Rio Gallegos airport to discover that our flight was delayed by 3 hours. By the time our flight actually left the ground, it was a full 4 1/2 hours late. However, they did get us into Ushuaia, on the same day, and didn’t lose any of our bags.
2. After we got off of the Ocean Nova to return to dry land, we flew from Ushuaia to El Calafate. This flight was surprisingly uneventful, schedule-wise. The only funny part was that I checked my big backpack, but because we had so many extra clothes I carried our duffel bag onto the plane. That bag was as large as my big pack, and must have weighed at least 25 pounds (Aerolineas limits carry-ons to 5kg, or 11 pounds, on their domestic flights). I wasn’t even questioned when I told them I was carrying it on! That was a good thing, too, as we didn’t really have too many options that afternoon.
3. Our final set of Aerolineas flights was a round-trip from Cordoba to Iguazu. We had bought the flight through Travelocity, but I visited an Aerolineas office to extend our trip by 1 day (for 2 full days in Iguazu instead of just one). This trip was fraught with problems:
   1. It took two changes in the office to get the flights right. For some reason, the agent I spoke to thought I wanted us to stay in Buenos Aires for a day between Cordoba and Iguazu (and this was all conducted in solid Spanish, by the way).
   2. Travelocity was informed of the flight changes three days before our flights took off – about 3 weeks after the changes were made! They sent several emails requiring me to call them to learn about our new itinerary. When I called, I spent an hour on the phone with an unfortunate CSR from India (whose English was OK, but not good) where I tried to explain what the tickets were supposed to be. This person actually called Aerolineas Argentinas to understand the changes (I was on hold for that conversation, but I wish I could have heard it), and then confirmed with me that what I had requested was going to happen.
   3. On our way back from Iguazu to Buenos Aires, our 10:30am flight was cancelled! No email or notice (not unheard of in this case). Thankfully, we had gotten to the airport early and were one of the first to check in for the canceled flight, so we thought it would be easy to change to the flight that was one hour later…
   4. When we spoke to the woman at the counter about getting on the later flight, she said that her records showed that we had been a “no-show” for our flight to Iguazu. This didn’t make any sense, since we had flown Aerolineas to get to Iguazu. Apparently, she was looking at our original reservation, not the updated one. After a few minutes discussing dates, she found our correct information. With that hurdle behind us, we thought that we were all set, but…
   5. She must have been very frustrated at the prospect of telling all these people that they weren’t going to get their 10:30 am flight: She tried to strictly enforce the 5kg carry-on limit with us. My bag weighed 8kg, so she told me I couldn’t get on with it. I needed to do some smooth talking to get around it, but I was helped by two things:
      1. We didn’t check any baggage, so our carry-ons were all that we had.
      2. The woman in front of us in the line had checked 30kg (66 pounds) of luggage, plus her carry-ons.

   After a lot of negotiating, we were able to get on the flight. It was a bit harrowing because we had reservations to go to Cusco the next day, and most of our stuff was stored in Cordoba, so in order to make our international flights (to meet Jack and Jen), we needed to get back to Cordoba that day.

So, in a nutshell those were our experiences with Aerolineas Argentinas. I know this was longer than normal, and there aren’t many pics, but I had to put all of these together in one place! Mostly interesting, sometimes successful, but never completely depressing…

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Iguazu is one of the largest sets of waterfalls in the world and a cultural World Heritage site. You shouldn’t go to Argentina and NOT see the falls. At least, that’s what we had heard. So, we booked some short flights from Cordoba so that we could spend a few days seeing the falls before we left Argentina.

Our flights to Iguazu went really well, and we arrive at our hostel late in the afternoon. We decided to stop in town the next morning to try for a Brazilian visa to see the Brazilian side of the falls, as well as the Argentinian.

The thing about Brazilian visas is that they’re expensive for Americans – $150 each. They are as expensive and complicated for Americans to get as American visas are for Brazilians. Typically Americans have to apply in their home country and use their visa within 90 days of it being issued. The bonus is that the visa is valid for 5 years, so you only go through the complicated process once, no matter how many times you visit Brazil.

We arrived at the Brazilian embassy, and asked about visas. Unfortunately, we had four strikes against us in our minor quest to see the Brazilian side of the falls:

1. You have to fill out a form online before arriving at the embassy, which we didn’t do.
2. Visa applications are taken from 8am to 11am; we arrived at 11:22
3. The office in Iguazu only issues 30-day visas, so it wasn’t worth it for us (we’ll visit Brazil soon, but not on this trip – we just wanted to see the Brazilian side of the falls).
4. I was wearing my Argentinian national team futbol jersey, so I don’t think the Brazilian behind the counter was too kind to us. Even though we were speaking decent Spanish and he knew we were Americans, he spoke to us in Portuguese the whole time!

So, we didn’t go to Brazil. But we did head over to the park to see the falls for the afternoon, and it was awesome – way better than we thought it would be. The sun was out, it wasn’t too hot, and there were rainbows everywhere!

Our second day in Iguazu, we headed over early to catch the sun at the Garganta del Diablo – the devil’s throat. This is the biggest site at the falls, and worth it. You can actually see the mist that rises from this from the plane as you fly in; here’s a view from up close:

Later that morning, we hiked down a small “jungle-like” trail to the final waterfall to see in the park. It wa hot, but fun to see. On our way back, I caught some bits of a spiderweb, and trailed a huge spider (the size of my hand) along with me until Stef brushed it off. We also passed by a few monkeys hiding in the trees…

Then we left the next morning to get back to Cordoba. What really struck us was that the airport was completely cloudy and overcast when we left. Our flight back wasn’t as easy as our flight in, but you’ll read about that tomorrow…

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Our bus from Mendoza to Cordoba only took 9 hours, so we got in, settled down in the morning, and started exploring the city on foot in the afternoon. Cordoba is a pretty interesting city. There is probably as much (I’m sure the Cordobans would argue that there’s more) art and culture here as there is in Buenos Aires, which is known for its projection of the Argentine (and porteno) perspective. The city is very colonial Europe in its layout and architecture, with plazas, rotundas, and a few pedestrian-only streets and markets, one or two of which we saw.

We also visited a museum – of “Bellas Artes” (beautiful arts). The architecture was pretty interesting:

One afternoon, we met up with a local – Stef’s college friend’s husband’s sister (really, I’m serious here). Sofi showed us a few of the different museums as well as some of the better restaurants (Cordoba is argentina’s largest university city, so most of the food is pretty greasy).

See our Cordoba photos here:

We spent one of our afternoons in a town called La Cumbre, which is about 3 hours outside of Cordoba. While we were there, we stopped at a lavendar farm. It was open to anyone, and had some really interesting older machinery, and some cool landscape views:

We also used Cordoba as a base for a few longer excursions (more on each of these in later posts:

• We spent a day in Alta Gracia, a former center of the Jesuit missions
• We flew to Iguazu for a couple of days to see the great waterfalls
• We left Argentina from Cordoba in order to get to Cuzco, Peru.

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After returning from San Martin de Los Andes, we grabbed a remise to the Bariloche bus station and headed to Mendoza. We ran into a couple I had met in our hostel in Bariloche, Ricardo and Pia. This Mozambiquan/Portugese couple was also headed to Mendoza; they spotted me at the bus station and we chatted for a little while before the bus started it’s journey. After the 20-hour ride to Mendoza, we got to our hostel and settle in. We only had two nights there, so we looked into a few different vineyard tours. We decided on a longer one on Monday that also included lunch at a reputable restaurant.

On Monday morning, we walked out to the bus to see Ricardo and Pia seated near the back! We immediately got to talking (since Stef hadn’t met them yet), and talked about everything as we visited different vineyards. Lunch (at Cava de Cano) was amazing – everyone had a great time. We agreed to try to meet for dinner Tuesday before each of us left in different directions (Stef and I north to Cordoba; Ricardo and Pia west to Santiago). Here are some of the vineyards we visited:

Navarro Correas

Bodega Cecchin

Carmine Granata

Cava de Cano (the great restaurant I mentioned…)

The next day, Stef and I walked around Mendoza’s main park, which includes a go-kart and a BMX course, a set of tennis courts, a rowing racecourse, and a lot of road and mountain bike trails. Mendoza seems like a pretty active city. We also stopped for cotton candy here:

Next I spent an hour on the phone with Travelocity and AT&T (this is the most enjoyable part of traveling…):
Travelocity noticed that our Iguazu itinerary changed, and had all of the information wrong. I had changed it earlier in our trip; it only took three weeks for the change to register in the systems. I suspect that’s an aerolineas problem, though.
AT&T had cancelled our cell phone service for non-payment after I had set our bills up to pay themselves (one of our secrets for traveling for a long time). That was eventually settled, and we now have a $5 credit, which is nice.

Then, we met Ricardo and Pia at Azafran for dinner, and had a great time. They met in Mozambique (which was a portugese colony until 1975), and decided to travel together after about 3 months. They told us a lot about the non-touristy parts of Africa, Mozambique history, and it’s relationship with South Africa.
Our paths may actually cross again our travels; we’re not sure yet.

Then we grabbed the bus to Cordoba…

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It took about 30 minutes to leave Bariloche:

• 10 minutes to figure out that I couldn’t put the car in reverse
• 5 minutes to get them to explain to me how to do it
• 15 minutes to actually drive out of town.

(In case you don’t know, I’ve been driving manual transmission cars almost exclusively for 15 years).

Here’s a couple of things I didn’t know about cars in South America until we were driving in Bariloche:

1. There is a special release handle on the shifter for reverse. You pull this in, and the gate that keeps the tranny from going into reverse opens, allowing you to go backwards. Once you know how it works, it’s really easy, but until then, it’s really frustrating.
2. Passing is allowed almost everywhere, especially in cities. In fact, most of the lines that indicate lanes (primarily opposing lanes) are either absent or faded from view. The trick is to do it smoothly enough…
3. Speed recommendations only apply to commercial vehicles (which have a special sticker on the back indicatig their maximum permissible speed; usually 90 or 110 kilometers per hour). At least, that’s the way everybody drives. Several times, I was passed on the 20kph dirt road – when I was doing around 70 (yes, it was very safe – just ask Stef, as she was in the passenger seat, and even commented on how dangerous the slower drivers were).

The 7 lakes route is really beautiful. It’s about 130 miles long, with a 30-mile dirt road section (that is mostly limited to 20kph).

We arrived in San Martin de Los Andes, checked into our hotel, and went in search of lunch. After lunch, we strolled around town, and checked out the lake that borders it. We had a great dinner, saw a cool local Easter parade (it was Holy Friday, after all), and got up the next morning, drove back to Bariloche, and got on a bus to head to the wine capital of South America, Mendoza…

See a few of our photos from San Martin de Los Andes (click through to see the rest):

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We landed in Bariloche and found another super-easy transfer to our hostel. We relaxed in the evening an went out to dinner, then spent some time listening to a Canadian banker explain his disgust with the American banking system (and how all the Canadian banks had been so prudent in their lending).

In the morning, as we were changing hostels, Stef fell and cut her nose with the frames of her glasses. She left some blood on the ground:

It was bad enough that we needed to get her to the ER (called La Guardia, at least here in Argentina). Since it was early on a Friday, we were seen pretty quickly. A lot of alcohol, and a bunch of gauze pads later, and we left with steri-strips holding the cut together, and strict instructions to keep it clean and maintain the steri-strips for as long as possible…

As a result, Stef spent basically a full week sleeping and listening to music in our room, and I rode a mountain bike on the circuito Chico, met a bunch of random people at our hostel, and got a ton of work done on our blog (this is why I was able to post some of the photos from Antarctica as quickly as I did).

I also watched the buildup to Easter, in a Catholic country, in a town known primarily for chocolate. Every store had its own display of 10+pound chocolate Easter eggs, and some of them were even animated!

We left Bariloche in a rented car Friday morning, to drive the route of the 7 lakes and visit San Martin de Los Andes for a day.

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We mixed things up a bit with our flight from El Calafate to Bariloche – we flew on the argentine military airline LADE (Lineas Aereas Del Estado -state airlines). LADE is cheaper than LAN or Aerolineas for three reasons:

1. Their crazy schedule. LADE flys to certain cities on certain days of the week. For example, one of their routes on Thursdays goes from El Calafate to Bariloche (direct). But it’s ONLY on Thursdays. See their timetable. And if you try to buy a ticket for a Friday, their system intelligently offers you a ticket for the following Thursday – only it doesn’t make that too prominent. So if you’re not reading the fine print, that Ticket might not be for the day that you thought it was for.
2. Outdated technology. You can reserve a seat on their website, but you have to pay for the ticket by phone or in-person (Thankfully, they have offices in most large, touristy Argentinian cities). I was amazed that the reservation system even worked in Firefox!
3. Old Planes. (our mothers will love this one!). We flew in a Fokker F-28 from El Calafate to Bariloche. This is an old plane. The company went out of business five years ago. They stopped building these planes 23 years ago. The Dutch airline KLM (Fokker was a dutch company) stopped flying them 25 years ago. If you don’t think that makes it old, check out this photo:

There are no doors on the overhead lugguage bins! (As usual, click on the photo to see more…)

It actually reminds me a lot of the flying we did on Aeroflot in the USSR almost 20 years ago…

It turned out to be a very enjoyable flight. What was interesting:

• Carry-ons are limited to 3kg – 6.6 pounds. My carry-on weighed 8.5kg (about 19 pounds); after I moved most everything to my checked bag, they let me on with a 5kg (11-pound) carry-on.
• There are no assigned seats. You pick your seat once you are on the plane. We were lucky enough to get into an exit-row, which is more comfortable than other rows. That was good, but even better when you consider…
• Since we flew north along the Andes, all the best seats were on the left side of the plane. We manage to snag one of these (I had to run to secure my spot in the boarding queue), and watched the Andes during our short, 1 hour 15 minute flight:

It was a lot of fun. I don’t normally post about stuff like this, but this time it was too good to not pass along…

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We returned from Torres del Paine (exhausted from 3 days of hiking; our 3 weeks in Antarctica were great but not very physically active) and spent the night in El Calafate. We caught the early bus (8am; anything before 10am in Argentina is considered early morning) to El Chalten, and even managed to sleep a little on the bus! When we arrived, the weather wasn’t great – it seemed like it was always on the edge of a storm. We found out later that El Chalten was right next to a storm front, and so the black clouds, 40mph+ gusts of wind, and occasional sideways rain were expected.

So we spent a day and half resting and getting organized. Then, on Tuesday, we hiked up to Laguna Torre. It was a beautiful day – just cool enough so that we weren’t drenched in sweat, just warm and sunny enough that it was really pleasant. It was so clear that we could see Cerro Torre the entire way to the lake.

Typically it’s covered in clouds, so this was a real treat. On Wednesday, our last full day in El Chalten, we took a catamaran across Lago Viedma to see and hike on the glacier there. Again we had a beautiful day (the day before the wind around the glacier had been too high to enjoy it). In fact, we managed to skip a pretty poor weather day in El Chalten at the same time. We saw several different ice formations, an a bunch of icebergs. The trekking was a lot of fun, too!
Iceberg photos:

Glacier photos:

After the glacier, we had dinner with two Australian doctors we had met on the trek. We went to our favorite restaurant in El Chalten – La Cervezeria. We had enjoyed it so much that we ate there every night of our stay – it was awesome!

Thursday morning, we headed to the bus stop early to catch our 8am bus back to El Calafate, where we hoped to ship some of our winter gear home and catch a flight to Bariloche.
Here are some shots of El Chalten:

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After we returned from Antarctica, we spent the morning in Ushuaia. We hung out with our friends Stacy, Helen, and Stuart, and – as a part of “Team Travel” – tried to accomplish two goals:

1. Ship our extra winter gear back to the US.
2. Help Stacy find a new rollable duffel bag that she could carry her gear in.

I am happy to say we successfully helped Stacy, but even though we walked around all of Ushuaia, we couldn’t ship our stuff back (DHL isn’t open on the weekends, and, even though the Correo Argentino office was completely staffed, the customs officer there told us he wasn’t working that day – no, I didn’t understand why he was there to tell us that he wasn’t working, either).

Then, we flew to El Calafate. We got in, and had the easiest transfer ever to our hostel – like, we got in the van, it drove us to our hostel, and we checked in. No negotiating, no addresses, no exorbitant fees, no spoilers – just easy.

El Calafate is best known for the Perito Moreno glacier (Perito Moreno is one of only a few international Latin American heroes; contrary to popular belief, it does not mean little brown dog). It’s really impressive – not at all like a little brown dog, in fact, and is probably the closest you can get to a glacier on land on the six populated continents (you can get closer on a ship, and in Antarctica – which of course we did). We spent an afternoon watching it, and enjoying the most(ly) quiet. It was quite fun, and I managed to snap a few photos during the day (funny how that happens, huh?). Check them out by clicking on this one:

We also managed to ship some of our gear back to the US. It usually takes a few months for it to arrive, so if we’re lucky, it will make it home before we do. We were really surprised, because it was so much easier AND less expensive than shipping from Ecuador (keep in mind, Quito is about 2500 miles closer to Philadelphia than El Calafate).

Finally, we got our bus tickets arranged to go to torres del Paine, an to el chalten. It was a busy 3 days, so I only have a couple of shots from around El Calafate… Enjoy!

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Ushuaia calls itself “La Ciudad en el Fin del Mundo” (Fin del Mundo for short). It’s the southernmost city in the world (Trust me – or you can google it too!). It’s not just a tourist destination for that reason; there are a few others as well (each photo below links to others; click each one to see the rest!):

• A great museum (The Yamana Museum) that explains the lifestyles and customs of the early Fuegians (residents of Tierra del Fuego – extreme southern Patagonia). Know why it’s called Tierra del Fuego? Because the first residents always had fires lit (for warmth and cooking, since they didn’t wear many clothes, and kept ‘dry’ by using seal oil), even in their canoes! When Magellan came through, he noted it as the “Land of Fire“.



• Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego – one of the greatest (and largest) national parks in Argentina, of which only a little bit is accessible to tourists (still worthwhile, but also great to see a country protecting some of its resources as well).



• Estancia Harberton – an early settlement built by the Bridges, who were the most interested in the Fuegians and made several attempts to protect and (at least a little) integrate them (unfortunately all failed).



• Martillo Island, a completely protected refuge for Magellanic and Gentoo penguins.



• A great port – from which nearly all of the Antarctic cruises sail (more about this later this week). This, of course, drives the vast majority of tourism. Antarctic tourists hail from everywhere, but so many are from Europe and North America that nearly every shop takes US cash and Euros. Since most of the stuff is so expensive (this is the only place in South America where we’ve seen outdoor gear prices higher than US list – everywhere else it’s been about the same), almost every shop takes credit cards, too.

We spent about 5 days in Ushuaia, and really enjoyed it – it’s a fun town to walk around. We learned a lot about the early Fuegians and Antarctic tourism here. Plus, we got to stay in a great hotel one night (as part of our Antarctica cruise)!

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We had a great time in Puerto Madryn. It was our first opportunity to relax and just hang out in a city since we began traveling again in February. We had four days, and the place is a relatively small city (100,000 people, but most work at the aluminum plant; it’s not driven by tourism like some other places.
It is a beach town, but we didn’t spend much time in the sand. We relaxed, planned some of our travel (boring but necessary), and we visited Peninsula Valdes, a great natural reserve located on the Argentinian Atlantic Coast. We visited a few spots, and here’s what we saw:
A penguin colony (click the photo below to see all the penguin photos)


A guanaco, an armadillo, a whale skeleton, and a cormorant (click the photo below to see all the assorted photos)

A few elephant seals at Punta Cantor (click the photo below to see all the photos)

A lot of sea lions, sea gulls, and a few elephant seals at Punta Norte (click the photo below to see all the photos)

We had a great day – it was really sunny (as you can see), and our guide (who had been there for 9 years), was really knowledgeable and helpful. Plus we loved our hostel, so it worked out!

We did see a few things around town, including this great Yuengling beer (American beer made in upstate PA, near where were from November to January) poster (click the photo to see the others we got from around town):

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Once we had found our Antarctic cruise, we started working out how to get from Buenos Aires (where we first would arrive in Argentina) to Ushuaia (where our cruise left from). We looked at a lot of options, and eventually found a cheap flight from rio gallegos to Ushuaia. So we booked some buses down the argentine Atlantic coast. We saw peninsula valdes in puerto madryn, and thought we might explore estancia visits in rio gallegos. Well, there isn’t much to do here (just like the guidebook said). In fact, the tourist brochure from the local tourist office says almost exactly that – after about 5 pages of information on the city, it dedicated two full-color pages to all of the OTHER places to visit in Patagonia and how to get there from here. We expected that, so we took a couple of rest and planning days, buying boots for stef and sandals for Matt, and getting caught up on sleep. About the only thing I can show you is the photo of the Patagonian landscape I made from the bus:

We rode along that for about 36 hours. Fun, eh?

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Buenos Aires. There are a lot of ways people have described this place, like:

• The Paris of South America
• Capital of a country full of faded glory
• The birthplace of Tango
• Home to a great culinary history

We were lucky enough to visit B.A. twice – once in November at the end of the first part of our trip (before we went back to the States for a couple of months), and when we returned to South America in early February.

The first time around, we didn’t get much of a sense of the city. We arrived on a Saturday morning after having traveled about 3300 miles in two days (2300 miles from Easter Island to Santiago, and 1000 miles from Santiago to Buenos Aires) – the equivalent of flying from San Francisco to Chicago, then taking a bus to Boston. Since our plane left on Monday night, we spent two days getting reservations made for our return to the city, and then walked around on Monday. We did see one or two kind of funny things along the way, though (click the photo to see the photos of the fully-decked out Christmas tree – in a mall in early November):

Yes, it says “You are going to feel like you robbed us!”

When we came back, we were a little more rested than we had been, we were excited to travel, and we had more time in Buenos Aires. So, the second time around we were able to (Click each photo to see the rest of the photos from that area):

• Tour La Boca, the famed neighborhood of colors (and poverty)



• Walk through El Caminito – the only touristy part of La Boca



• See the stadium and fan club of the legendary Argentinian futbol team, Boca Juniors



• See an incredible Tango show, which had 12 dancers and a live band with 14 amazing performers



• Visit La Recoleta Cemetary, the famed mausoleum that houses the ancestors of many of the city’s most important families, including Evita – Eva Peron



• Experience a real pro-league Futbol game – we saw River Plate play Rosario Central at River Plate

We had a great time the second time around in Buenos Aires, and we even found had some good food karma while we were there!

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After we came back from Easter Island, we spent the night in Santiago and then boarded the first of two buses to get us to Buenos Aires. This bus brought us across the Chilean-Argentinian border at Los Horcones and to Mendoza, Argentina.

This border crossing wasn’t filled with nearly as much pretense as our crossing into Chile (everyone said it would be super-easy), but it wasn’t all smooth sailing:

• We spent three hours of the eight-hour bus ride waiting at the border (where it was cold, a pretty high altitude (so I got a bit of a headache), and there was NOTHING to do but wait.
• One of the women on our bus had about 46 pairs of shoes and 12 sweaters with her, and we waited an hour for her to get finished with customs. Eventually, our bus just left without her – we heard through the grapevine that she had to pay taxes and some fines for all of the import duties she had tried to evade.

So that was our border crossing. Everyone said it would be easy, but it turned out a little more painful than we expected. After we got to Mendoza, we hopped on our 18-hour bus bound for Buenos Aires….

Click on the below photo to see the rest of them from around Los Horcones:

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