knappman
Vegetarians in the Land of Carnivores Joined: September 23rd 2008
Logged in: February 11th 2009
Logged in: February 11th 2009
Travel Blog Posts
pregame
Ok we survived the Falls… But not to be outdone in the final minutes of our tour de Argentina I needed to experience a true South American tradition. Football!! That is translated to soccer everywhere in the world except the USA. Like I said for the Falls, you experience rather than see…well I participated rather than experienced the football game. If you remember several blogs ago I mentioned the Boca Junior team that has its roots in the blue collar neighborhood of Boca. We I was able to get a ticket in the end zone of La Bombonera for a match with Racing, a team from across the river. This is like Green Bay vs. Pittsburg. And La Bombonera only holds about 50 thou. About double that want to get in. The police seem to outnumber ... read more
jesuit mission
We hop on the bus for a 3 hour ride to the Angkor Wat of Argentina. San Ignacio Mini is a sleepy kind of place…appropriate for the ruins of this Jesuit mission built around 1700. They arrived in the region in the late 1500’s establishing reducciones which reduced the Guarani Indians to living near the mission and working the surrounding farmlands. Bad guys from Brazil pushed this mission south to the current location. Hence the word “mini.” I guess what is left of the one up north in Paraguay is called San Ignacio Maxi. So in exchange for their spiritual attention, the Jebbies teach the Guaranis how to read and write in Spanish, Latin and Guarani. They also taught them crafts because they knew K would be coming by in 2008 looking to spend some pesos. ... read more
mate anyone
I don’t know how we fit any class time in with all these excursions around the country. We are off to the north today, Iguazu Falls is the place. Remember we live in the southern hemisphere now so going north get hotter and more humid. However the weather cooperated and we had a relatively cool stay. Took a two hour airplane ride from the domestic airport located 25 pesos away from our place in Ricoletta. Not far. Processed into a nice hotel about 4KM outta town. We grabbed a taxi for town as soon as we got settled. This would be the only day we could conveniently check out the ville and see a recommended sight, a hummingbird park located in someone’s back yard. This place is off the radar of your normal travel guide book ... read more
lunch with the ambassador and wife
Lots has happened since arrival back in BA. Don’t know if we will ever be able to get back into my one challenge a day life when we return to Cool. And I am so far behind in letting you know about our life here. Maybe I will just continue this story after I return. But let me fast forward ahead to a timely subject and then I will return to the humdrum life we live here. I don’t know where you were for Thanksgiving but we took advantage of an invitation to the American Club of Buenos Aries for a Thanksgiving luncheon. These clubs are usually inhabited by business types and they even lowered the dress code to let us poor students participate. So I washed my jeans and tee shirt for the affair and ... read more
honey I think it's hatching
The wind is still blowing a gale but we are on a 4 hour round trip bus ride to see the penguin colony in Punta Tomba to the south. We are not here at exactly the best time but close enough to see tons of birds sitting on their eggs in little scrubland hovels. In a couple weeks little chicks will be running around getting underfoot and breaking things. The male penguins arrived in September and made the nests or redecorated last years nest. You see this is the attraction for the female. Kinda like when you were in high school. The guys with the best looking cars got the girls. Then after laying the eggs the females convince the guys to sit on them while they go shopping. But some guys have poor construction skills ... read more
whale ho
After our rain soaked adventure in El Chalten yesterday we flew northeast to Puerto Madryn where we are now in yet another bus to the east coast village of Puerto Piramides for a boat ride to the whales. Nothing in this part of the world is within walking distance. The whales are waiting for us and we get an unexpected show of some young ‘uns cavorting about their mothers. These are the “southern right whales” believing in all things conservative and come to this small Golfo Nuevo to hatch. Have never seen whales so up close before and our boat driver kinda cheats the rules and puts us right over the top of one pair. Whale watching in California/Hawaii will be a ho-hum affair after going eyeball to eyeball with these guys. But there is more! ... read more
view of fitz roy
After looking at glaciers yesterday the 6+ hour roundtrip combi ride up to El Chalten does not seem too appealing but we are on the road nonetheless. Our first objective is to get on Ruta 40. For those pagan road warriors this is like Route 66 in the US. La Cuarenta traverses Patagonia from the north to the south and has been used by the likes of Butch Cassedy and Sundance. I put on my best Paul Neuman face for the trip. Unlike the movies however life is not always paved and so La Cuarenta. We got about 30K of ripio (dirt and gravel) to go with the lungful of dirt I consumed outside of Barailoche. This was mitigated by the yellow spring blossoms of the calafate bush (box-leaved barberry). They make jam outta the fruit ... read more
I think I see a glacier
Today Kazuko is showing me what she saw in Bariloche while I was on the combi yesterday. This is the chocolate capital of Argentina however the best coco comes from Mexico. The idea is to go into as many chocolate shops as you can stand and sample. I will probably not sleep at all tonight. Stopped by a great museum that had some wall maps that knocked off my geographical socks. It also put some of the words I had heard about the native Argentineans into perspective. But the best display was a caricature of wet nurse Moreno guiding the diapered Teddy Roosevelt on his trip around here in 1913. I would have thought it the other way around as by this time Roosevelt was well established as a conservationist. We were on the road to ... read more
tangoing in the Andes
Today we are doing the Circuito Chico out of Bariloche with Marta. Nice lady who makes a mean mate. I am not sure I would do this again but for sure it is the most popular tour around. Stopped by Marta’s favorite rose hip face cream factory where she probably gets free stuff for stopping by with the tourists. Then we go up to the top of a mountain on a chairlift to get some grand views of the lake and surrounding montanios. Best part of the day but too short. We must have spent too much time rose hipping it. The drive now goes past one of Argentina’s famous hotels, the Llao Llao. Would have liked to check out the inside but it doesn’t cater to us lowly tourists. Nice scenery for the rest of ... read more
Modern Wagon Train
It has been awhile since I have been writing to you all but we have been in Patagonia for the past 10 days. Argentina is defiantly big and one way to get a feel for the bigness is take a bus ride. We hopped on the Bariloche bus at about 2:30 pm and dragged ourselves off at about 10 am the next day. Fortunately there was a potty on board along with an Antonio Banderas type as a bus attendant. He made sure we were fed, watered, and kept the TV going with mostly American flicks so we wouldn’t get bored with watching the pampas grass grow. Not that the scenery wasn’t beautiful…but you can only take so much of that flat middle American topography. We lived upstairs fortunately as the folks below had to deal ... read more
