Blogs from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, South America - page 58

Blue suits are to a dog what a red rag is to a bull! yes the suit walked again, well it was his birthday! we did it again, another hostel grinds to a halt, who was leading who, the staff or the patrons, I think everyone was leading another! After initial panic and a forced, yet brief reliance on Heiniken, the Quilmes finally flowed our way again! the beer began at 10am and once again we put ourselves in the care of the bar, and this bar knows how! The Antarctica Hostel, considerate and encouraging they orchestrated the madness from the begining! Stuart, John, Anja & Anna, each masters of their destined role...it baffles understanding and cannot be explained, but with style, dignity and a shared respect for messy drunks they carried us through the day! ... read more

Hello everyone, Ryan here. We´re still here in Ushuaia, Argentina. It´s a beautiful town on the Beagle Channel with large mountains rising steeply behind the it. We´ve been having a wonderful time. Friday, Ana and I went on to see Magellanic Penguins. There is a colony on an island in the channel where they congregate each summer to lay their eggs and molt. We signed up for a tour to the island with two other Americans, Mark and Troy, who we met at our hotel. We took a 1.5 hour minibus ride to the famous Estancia Harberton, where we had afternoon tea (Oh, South America is so ROUGH) as we waited for our boat ride. Most of the penguins had already left the island, (they stay at sea during the winter and migrate north), but there ... read more

Hello all, We´re writing to let you all know that after approximately thirty-six hours of travel and layovers, we´ve finally reached the first stop on our long trip. Our flight from LAX left about 11pm PT and landed in San Jose, Costa Rica ¨6:40 am CT. We met Florencio, a retired Costa Rican banker. He told us all about his family and grandkids and his work. His sister and nieces were making a typical breakfast for him consisting of gallo pinto (rice and black beans), maduros (fried plantains), eggs, and empanadas. We had breakfast at the airport. We did not have a typical breakfast, but did notice that Burger King and Church´s both offered gallo pinto (translated simply as ¨typical food¨). We spent nine hours in the SJ airport waiting for our connecting flight. We had ... read more

Even with all of the excitement of our day on the Moreno glaciar, we managed to book a flight to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego for the same afternoon. We landed in the southernmost tip of Argentina after only an hour by plane and found ourselves in an even colder place than El Calafate, it did feel very Christmassy though. At the tourist office we were given the name of a B&B, ´Los Retamas´ run by Eduardo and Monica. They were a lovely couple who really took us under their wing and within half an hour of arriving we knew the best things to see and do in the area and had about ten maps to choose from. They beat the Lonely Planet hands down! Southernmost road in the world! Next day we set off in ... read more