Best Day Ever

I have said the phrase time and time again throughout this trip, but I truly did have the best day ever on my last full day in South America.

Los porteños: Maxi, Marcelo, y Omar

Bonnie and I reunited with Omar and Marcelo, our porteño amigos we met in Bolivia, and hung out with bit last time we were in Buenos Aires. Their travel buddy, Maxi, picked us up and we went to a park for an asado (barbeque), and Argentines love their meat. That's probably an understatement.

El asado

A sunny, warm fall day, tasty meat/potatoes/fried cheese, a car trip to Tigre where we sipped mate along the riverbank and walked around (mostly looking for the car), followed by pizza (who knew we could still eat again the same day as the asado)... Wow.

Lost in Tigre

Omar, bless his train-loving heart, even gave Bonnie and I magnets to remember Buenos Aires, and hopefully come back to travel some day (the guys want to rent a motor home and go through Patagonia in 3 weeks. Sounds like fun!). Best day ever.

Learning Guitar

Downside of living in a hostel dorm for a week: Dumb Dutch-bag roommate who snores and smells, and claims it's the fault of anyone else in the dorm.


Perks of living in a hostel for a week: AMAZING staff (JuamP, Facundo, Nacho, Jugo) who invite us to lunch with them and are even willing to dar una vuelta for a mate, and the street performer who is super nice and is teaching me how to play guitar. Thank you, Adrian.

A Lazy Day

We took one or two days easy, including a day hike to Lago Gutierrez and la Cascada de los Duendes, as recommended by the cook. The lakes really remind me of home, with all the pines and other trees, and pebbly beaches (minus the mountains, of course). I found the greatest, most twisted tree in the world, and we napped by the beach.

Circuito de los 7 Lagos

Bonnie and I befriended the Argentine and Chilean dudes in our dorm, rented a car with them, and proceeded to drive through the common lake route near Bariloche.

Let's just say, Bonnie and I found a bridge. May or may not have jumped...

San Carlos de Bariloche

Bonnie and I came to Bariloche hoping to go fishing with two Argentines (including Tad, who gave me the Yerba Amanda thermos) we met in the hostel at el Bolson (hence the picture in the previous post), but it was too windy to fish. Bummer.

So we drank mate and hung out at the lake. Buena onda.

Bonnie and I planned to only stay for two nights and head to Mendoza, but we have reached the conclusion that our funds are running low, we are tired of moving, moving, moving, and this lake district of Argentina is bomb dot com.

Plus, I need a reason to return to Argentina.

Yesterday we rode bikes for the day around several lakes, the day before we ate AMAZING ice cream (thank you Helado Juaja) and today we're planning to be vagabonds and just wander.

What better way to wind down the trip?

Bariloche

Tadeo is my gaucho.

El Bolson

Recommended el Bolson by several Argentines, we headed north from el Chalten and wound up in a slightly warmer mountain town where we did several hikes and experienced a great Feria, artesian fair, where I ate many strawberries and raspberries.

We did some hiking, but once again spent a large amount of time in the hostel, this time chatting it up with a Mexican, Costa Rican, more Argentines, a dude from New Zealand, a Canadian, a Swede and another Israeli. Lovely.

We even roomed in a closet, no joke. It was the side room where the roof slopes down on the house, and only had mattresses, but we stayed for cheaper by sleeping in our sleeping bags (it is the end of our trip, you know). The hostel worker referred to it as Narnia. We were sold.

Some hiking was done, some ping pong was played, we even decorated for a birthday party and ate tons of homemade pizza and other delicious food made by the mother of the birthday boy (who was actually the hostel owner).

One amazing Argentine gave me his Yerba Amanda thermos as a gift since I told him I've been searching for one. Gracias, Tadeo!!

El Chalten

The next town, El Chalten, was more or less an alternative to an expensive Chilean National Park, because in el Chalten we could hike for free, which is what we did when weather was nice.

We even camped one night. We may or may not have set up the tent in a non-camping zone, followed by us seeing no reason to pack up the tent and sleeping bags when we only needed to walk 100 meters or so, resulting in us carrying an already set up tent. Maybe that happened.

We did hike to Cerro Fitz Roy, good ol' Fritz, which was quite the hike, might I see. It's a nice jaggedy mountain with a glacier lake at the top of the trail. All water being potable, I drank some of that deliciously pure glacier water.

The hostel experience might have been the best part of our stay, because during a miserable rainy day or two we sat in the kitchen and chatted it up with people from Argentina, Switzerland, the US, Israel and Puerto Rico (which is also the US, albeit without a star as we mercilessly teased the dude).

El Calafate

Going north from Tierra del Fuego on the Chilean side, we took a bus ride to el Calafate, home of the Perito Moreno Glaciar in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares.


This Glacier National Park is a bit different that the one in Montana. As in, the Perito Moreno was ENORMOUS, the pictures just can't give you the best impression of it's 60 plus meter height. No joke. And when the ice randomly fell off the side, the splash would be huge, also.


It was a lovely day, and Bonnie and I traveled with an Israeli girl from the hostel who insisted we could also be Israeli (and actually initially spoke to me in Hebrew, as did the hostel worker and our roommates, because apparently I could really be from Israel. Masseltov!!!).

Getting to el Calafate

We flew to Ushuaia.

We took a bus to el Calafate (also in Argentina).

We had NO idea we would pass through Chile on the way to el Calafate (across the Magellan Straight, believe it or not).

But.

This meant we had to throw away nearly ALL our food. I had just gone shopping in Ushuaia in order to avoid the more expensive stores in el Calafate!!

Thankfully, the busdriver took pity on us and literally helped us hide our bag of groceries, moving it around under his jacket as customs police took a peak through the bus.

Thank you, bus driver.

And, yes, I officially visited Chile.