Jmo

I´m not feeling too eloquent, but Im sitting in the Tacna bus station and have an hour before my departure, so this gives me something to do. After my aforementioned "Adventurous" bus ride from El Calafate to Bariloche via Rte. 40 I was struck with conflicting feelings of exhaustion and restlessness. Unfortunately, due to the 6 hour delay caused by the bus breaking down, by the time I found a vacant hostel there wasn´t much I could see. On Thursday I rented a bike in town and cycled a touristy loop overlooking Lago Nahuel Huapi and some smaller lakes in Reserva Llao Llao. After the first 20km in which autos and buses zoomed by giving little heed to cyclists, the traffic desisted and the scenery turned magnificent. There were a lot of short side trails to ... read more

I just got back from a 5 day trekking/backpacking trip in Torres del Paine, the park in Patagonian Chile famous for its towers (torres). In addition to being a bit tired, I don´t think that I can fully describe my experience in words, or even pictures. Hands down my favorite place in South America. Here´s a tease: Imagine a place where metallic blue lakes are enveloped by vibrant flowers, mountain berries and lush, pristine pine forests. Where hills give way to towering snow-laden peaks, and snow turns to massive glaciers, which creak and groan and every so often treat you to a thundering avalanche. Unique geoligically-shaped summits dot the landscape, transiently protruding from the mist to provide cellestial viewpoints. To accentuate how great this place is, I loved it so much despite having awful weather for ... read more

Don´t remember exactly where I left off... On Tuesday I was originally planning to go to Uruguay for the day. Apparently Colonia is really nice and pretty easy to get to. But when I awoke to a thunderstorm I realized that it really wasn´t worth it just to get the stamp in my passport. Kind of a lazy day. At night, however, I made it out to a more local milango tango show, with a substantially cheaper entrance fee and an eclectic mix of seemingly professional dancers and couples who clearly had learned an hour ago. It had a great environment, and I was glad I was able to see that over a more touristy performance. Wednesday I again considered going to Uruguay but chose to use my last day in Buenos for a once in ... read more

Not only have I not posted anything for a week, the days are starting to run together, but I´ll give it a go. After my escapades in Paraguay/Brazil, I finally made it to Puerto Iguazu, in the northeast corner of Argentina. I was immediately how struck by how expensive everything was, but I guess that was inevitable after spending three weeks in Bolivia. And you really get what you pay for, as the infrastructure in Argentina is leaps and bounds ahead of anywhere I´ve traveled in South America to date. I woke up early on Thursday, 12/10/09 to visit Parque Nacional de Iguazu, and the famous waterfalls. I was unable to flag down a bus, so I actually ended up walking the entire 12km to the falls. Despite the walk being beautiful (as it was through ... read more

One of the reasons I stuck around in Samaipata and Santa Cruz was that I kept hearing how awesome the Santa Cruz Oktoberfest was going to be (and inevitably delaying going to more expensive countries like Argentina and Chile). Santa Cruz is the largest city in Bolivia at around 1.5 million people, although it´s so spread out you wouldn´t know it. Also, it has more of a Brazilian feel (and climate, at 500m ASL) than the rest of Bolivia -- not sure how accurate this is, but I´ve been told that Santa Cruz tried to seceede from the rest of Bolivia, and I wouldn´t be surprised given the political stability in this country. On Friday I did a really awesome canyon hike for FREE (sans transportation) that followed a river several kilometers, at some points too ... read more