Uruguay. The land of little interest

To top up on dollars for the black market money swapping we spent a couple of days in neighbouring Uruguay. Possibly the dullest country in the world. 

We got a boat from BA to the town of Colonia - very pretty - and visited the banks, ate lunch and saw all the sights in 3 hours.  People come on holiday to this town. Christ knows what they're doing for entertainment but by 10pm everything bar the casino was shut. In Argentina people don't go out for dinner before 10pm. Uruguayans are a very different breed, 

The next day we took the bus to Montevideo. 'See the countryside as you travel' the bus company said. Flat brown fields in drizzly rain for 3 bloody hours is what we saw. Pathetic fallacy in action. 

 

24 hours in Montevideo was plenty of time to see all of it's districts, or streets as they should more truthfully be called. The finance district is 2 streets of offices, and if you cross the road you're in the marina district. Montevideo is surrounded by sea on 3 sides so you're in the minority if you're not in the marina district. Or you've walked to a different city without realising.

After we'd exhausted the old town (2 roads and a plaza), been for a seafront run, and splurged dollar in the retail district ($15 - 3 tops) we went back bewildered to our hotel -is this really a city, let alone a capital city?!

As we waited for our boat back to BA the next day we met a tour group from the UK who were there for 4 days. Poor misguided things. From the city that only sleeps, we returned to the city that laughs in the face of sleep. 

Buenos Aires; The Paris of South America (apparently)

A bit tired of being nomadic, sharing lounges, only unpacking the top 1/3 of our rucksacks etc we rented a 1 bed apartment for a week.  It meant we could make our own meals, drink coffee in our pants (not sure the office opposite appreciated this), and use a wardrobe to hang our scruffy rags up. 

We stayed in Palermo, the current des-res, and while the area had plenty of plus points (very safe, clean, big parks, cafés blah blah) it's been gentrified to the point of being boring. BA has a huge amount of European influence in its culture and gene pool so doesn't feel obviously Latam anyway, but with suburbs called Soho & Hollywood, Palermo has taken it's need to emulate other places a bit far and forgotten all the good stuff they started out with.

We did enjoy it's parks - swathes of roller-bladders, joggers and dog walkers (with up to 15 dogs each, apparently these guys are veterinary trained and highly paid) navigating the free exercise classes which attracted all walks of life to salsa/samba/zumba their weekends away. Apparently at night it's the place to pick up a transvestite hooker too but we didn't see any evidence of that (and we did look). 

As it was a bank holiday weekend (when isn't it in this continent?) there was a free concert by Violetta - a Disney all-singing-all-dancing-puberty-denying character played by a 17yr old Argentinian. Think Hannah Montana with dark hair.  Loved by tweens, the park was swarmed with 30,000+ screaming, tutu-wearing, glittery girls and their fatigued parents. Poor bastards. We saw them at 11am and she wasn't due on until 16.00. Ears must have bled. 

We spent that day on a graffitti tour instead- walking around the less obviously attractive barrios  learning about graffiti as a means off political protest, social optimism and commissioned character for a buildings facade.  Some impressive works but I can't help but be irritated by grown men using 'rad' pseudonyms like Stenzz (real name Stephen) and Brixx. 

Onto the Perons. It was harder to find an anti-Peron stance in BA than we expected. The Evita museum is laughably partisan in its approach to saintly Eva (although still interesting), people have Eva postcards in their shops, homes and cars on a parr with the image of the Virgin Mary, her tombstone and the balconies of the pink palace are the most photographed in the city. Not much about Argentinas famous son though - Che Guevara is noticeably absent.  

The conspiracy theories surrounding Eva Peron - the alleged lobotomy months before her death, the posthumous abuse, the nazi sympathies- all fascinating but not fully understandable from our sources. Those sources being a fella we met in a park, the pro-Eva museum, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Fully intend to find some more reliable reading matter and understand properly, as it is, at least it's now Eva and not Madonna I picture when talking about the era. 

As bland as Palermo is, the barrios of San Telmo and Boca are very much alive with everything we imagined BA to be like. Beautiful, colourful, ramshackle but once grand buildings, cafe bars full of old men bickering and drinking tiny cups of coffee, Markets full of local art and antiques (with each economic crisis people sell their wares on Calle Defensa resulting in a market 6 blocks long full of old furs,furniture and jewellery), and tango.   

There are hundreds of tango shows where professional dancers maintain sour faces and flick their legs over their partners shoulder but we forewent those for a visit to a local plaza where real people dance each Sunday night away.  Old men are much sought after (the male lead is critical to a good tango we're told and the older the men, the more experience they have) so the mix of partners is varied to say the least. Some couples have their Sunday best on, other in jeans and dance shoes - it doesn't matter. All ages and classes dance together in a fairy-lit plaza. Very romantic. 

After 10 days in BA in total (we moved to San Telmo for the last 3) we're taking our over-indulged bodies 20 hours north to the Tri-border, waterfall rich, town of Puerto Iguazu. Really hoping it's time to ditch the warm clothes soon.... 

Ice Ice Baby

El Calafate is as far South as we'll be going on this trip as roads/towns/hostels further towards the Antarctic are now closing until it gets warmer again. 

So with a despondent huff I put on every item of clothing I own (didn't bother with the beachwear but in retrospect shouldn't have been so optimistic. Every inch of fabric would've been appreciated) and headed to the Perito Merino National Park. 

The Perito Merino glacier is the 3rd biggest body of freshwater on the planet, it advances about 2m each day, is about 50m high above water and about 300m underneath.  Given that only the mountain tops are snow-covered it feels really odd to turn a corner in the Lakes and be presented with this: 

The cold coming off the glacier is teeth-hurtingly fierce. We spent 3 hours spellbound watching huge chunks of it come crashing off and floating away (before the walk barriers were built about 30 people were killed by boulders of flying ice as it's quite explosive when it falls). Because it's growing it constantly creaks and groans, and when a crack widens it sounds like thunder. Other than one type of insect nothing can live on the ice so it's a completely desolate environment.  

Frozen beyond the point of feeling we returned to our hostel and got ready for day 2 - climbing over the top of it. 

Ice-burka ands crampons on we spent 4 hours stamping our way up and down ice valleys,  watching the landscape turn from white to blue to so white 3 of us fell over as we lost all depth perception!  Such a weird thing to be able to make out ice-hills in the middle distance but not be able to see anything other than glaringly white white in front of you.  

The ice went from having recent melt on it which gives the crampons something to spike into, to solid smooth ice where we had to stamp each step to keep traction.  Bit challenging going down steep bits, and more so when we had to straddle a water filled ravine and stamp our way out of an ice cave but all good fun! 

Back on dry land, beer in hand, feet still not responding to human touch,  we agreed it had been an incredible thing to walk over a glacier, and to see bus-sized pieces of ice crashing off it but it's time to head north again and hopefully see the sun again. 

The Lake District

San Carlos de Bariloche (Barry to it's friends) is the start of Patagonia on the west side of Argentina and after a paltry 19hr bus ride the difference in temperature and air quality was apparent. 

Our first hostel with heating that worked was welcome as after a few days hiking around the lakes and mountains in autumn sun, the nights felt cold.  We spent a great couple of days schlepping around lakes and mountains, I went on my first ever ski lift (not quite as hateful as a cable car but still being swung off a high piece of wire is not fun), and Chris didn't enjoy cooking our own food in the hostel (his worst meal in 7 months, the first one with anything other than carbs in it for me). 

Other than the incredible scenery in this heavily Swiss influenced city (will let the pics speak for themselves) it's worth mentioning the black market/blue dollar system in Argentina. 

Economic crises after economic crises has led to the peso being at times worthless, and the dollar being highly sought after. As such every backpacker knows that it the month before entering the country you withdraw as many dollars as the random ATMs in neighbouring countries will dispense (Chile useless, Bolivia pretty good) and change them for a better rate on the street (currently 25% higher than the official exchange rate but has been up to 50% in the last 12 months).  To do this illegal transaction you ask anyone in the town where to head, then go to (typically) a city centre street where a group of men will shout 'cambio?' At every passing gringo.  You negotiate the rate (shouted at full volume), then follow a Cambio man into a nearby shop (in our experience often jewellery shops) where the owner will produce a fat roll of pesos and the deal is done.

Some streets are so full of illegal cash exchanges the police stand outside to ensure no-one gets robbed whilst breaking the law. 

Typically South American to be so brazen, and for the police to be in on it, but helpful to budget travellers navigating one of most expensive countries on the continent. 

Hostel wisdom (thank you Gus & Carla) informed us that contrary to our belief we could still get a lot further south as the winter weather doesn't shut down towns/tours and transport until the beginning of May.  30hour bus trip to El Calafate booked - glaciers here we come. 

Mendoza. One for the road?

Mendoza. The city where a bottle of incredible Malbec costs $3. The city where it'd be rude not to with every meal. The city where a lot of people (or one at least) get so drunk on their first night they're sick ( proper teenager first night out ever sick) for the next 24 hours.  After 7 months of not much booze, my drinking tolerance is diminished to say the least. 

But we're in Mendoza so one must push through the pain and work harder so we booked in to  Maipu, home of the wineries and bodegas, for 3 days of intense training. 

The done thing in Maipu is to hire a bike and cycle from bodega to bodega enjoying the educational wine tours and the sampling sessions. With this in mind we had visions of French-style countryside, lanes with tipsy cyclists ambling from site to site and vineyard picnics.  The reality is an incredibly busy road dominated by trucks and buses with intoxicated tourists (as much though diesel fumes as wine) desperately trying to keep balance on a bike with no brakes, gears, and invariably after a few hours of cycling, air in the tyres. 

Once off the main road though, the vineyards are lovely and the family run boutique ones especially (some only making 90k bottles a year) give great tours and tasting sessions for a couple of dollars.  Day one of touring was quite civilised - we got home around 8.30 after a wobbly ride home in the dark (with a stray dog running alongside us the whole way- chris thought this was funny but I suspected it was mental and probably had rabies) having learned quite a bit, and drank quite a bit more.  Day 2 however got a little out of hand. 

We started at mid-day with a terrifying cycle to the furthest vineyard, listened to the guide telling us pretty much the same as we'd heard the day before, and went on to the tasting.  Learning from the previous day when it became apparent that not many places do food, we took advantage of this bodega having a restaurant so ate lunch. And had a bottle of red with it. 

From there it was only a short cycle to 2 more bodegas. One of which had the standard 3 glasses included approach, but the other had a tasting placemat so you could keep track of every wine you'd tried.  Clearly this made it a challenge and being competitive types we drank our way through each variety until we'd won.   Then, as the sun had come out and it was a nice  view, we had a bottle of red. 

On route to the next venue Chris got a puncture so we phoned Shouting Mario, the morbidly obese bike-rental man, who bellowed his way to us with a new bike. By the time he reached us though we'd decided we were bored of cycling so he agreed to load all 3 bikes on his car and drive us to another tasting bar instead.  As a gesture of good will he then bought us a bottle of red. 

Chatting with 3 lovely Americans we'd seen at the first venue (and therefore after a days drinking greeted like old friends) we 'sampled' a further bottle of sparkling red (every bit as awful as you'd imagine), a white (Argentina is not famous for its whites but the torrentino is very impressive) which we disrespectfully treated like a pallet cleanser, and then a further 2 bottles of red. I only know this from photo evidence of our table. 

Then Shouting Mario turned up with 2 more bikes for us to get home on, so we finished off our drinks, bought another bottle (?!) and proceeded to cycle home. 

Thank god Maipu doesn't have CCTV on the streets. I lasted a good 4 meters before I fell off. I then resorted to scooting as I couldn't do the bit where you take both feet off the ground and start pedalling, but couldn't balance enough for that either so ended up using the bike like a Zimmer frame and pushing it back to Mario's. 

It took a long time to get back to our hostel and when we did, we opened a bottle of red. The octogenarian who owns the place must have been thrilled to sit up with us talking (shouting I expect)  Spanglish at her until the early hours. Every pensioner's dream. 

Remarkably no sickness the next day but it was all I could do to lift my head off the pillow for 3 hours before returning to my pit with the most immense fear.   Vowing to stay off the pop for a few days, giving myself the 'moderation in moderation' talk, and packing a fair amount of self- loathing in with our luggage, we left Mendoza and caught the night bus south to Bariloche.   Please don't let there be vineyards there too.....

Chile. It's alright s'pose.

San Pedro de Atacama is known for being a tourist hot spot in the middle of nowhere - the gateway to the salt flats from the Chilean side. It's a small town full of overpriced artesan (tat) shops, bars and hostels. And the most miserable people I think I've ever met. 

In our 30 hour stay we witnessed some of the best bad service we've seen since setting off- from the full on row we had with the hostel owner who thought it was ok to change the rate once we were in the room, and then change the check out time by 3 hours (neither happened but only due to my one woman sit-in until 11.59) to the consistently indifferent service in the bank/shop/bars.  For a town reliant on tourist dollars they really can't be arsed with tourists. 

Luckily we were only there to get a bus down to Santiago so didn't loiter. On night one we went out stargazing in the desert with a local astronomer and saw some beautiful views of the planets and various constellations, and then the next morning Chris did some sand boarding (like snow boarding but shit) while I continued to argue with the battleaxe. 

Getting on a 23 hr bus was a relief and we slept/read/slept through the most unremarkable scenery ever. For the first 7 hours it was boring to see desert, scrubby bush, desert repeated but when we woke up the next morning and the view was still identical we did wonder whether we were actually progressing or if in the spirit of Atacama hospitality we were going round in a big loop.  Then a glimpse of the Pacific appeared and in no time (relatively speaking, it was probably another 3 hours) we hit Santiago. 

3 days was enough to see that Santiago is a fully functioning modern city - very easy to navigate, great Metro system, easy to kick back and relax in the parks, bars and restaurants etc. but has little of interest to offer travellers looking for cultural difference. Probably a great city to live in (reminded us a lot of London with it's 'many small towns make up the city' feel) but not that compelling to travel in. 

The exception was the human rights museum which chronicles the Pinochet regime.  It serves as an idiots guide to modern Chilean history and a memorial to all those who died/disappeared in the struggle.  Pinochet, like his bestie Thatcher, very much divides opinion in Chile and while the 200+ monuments across the country acknowledge the suffering experienced by his opponents, there is a substantial living contingent who prospered under his rule.  However good he was at economics he was a sadistic dictator and we were suitably ashamed to be British when it came to the end of his story. 

The plan was to move from Santiago due west to Valparaiso but a huge fire had been raging for 3 days, thousands of homes destroyed and the town declared a disaster zone so we changed direction and headed for Mendoza, Argentina instead.  Sad to miss Valpo, and sad to see what was happening in Valpo but tourists getting in the way  didn't seem right. Time to make up for months of fizzy beer in the home of Malbec. Sorry liver. 

What's flat, salty & Bolivian?

The antiplano is a high altitude huge strip of land that runs down Bolivia where the Andes split. Once upon a time it was the bed of the Pacific but now is a bizarre landscape of salt flats, lagoons and geysers. 

Bolivia boasts the worlds largest salt flats, and claims that only the locals know how to cross them without getting lost, or driving on the thin bits and drowning.  With that in mind we got into our jeep with Driver Leo and three kiwis we'd met in Sucre and set off for 3 days of brilliant white terrain and, it quickly transpired, a soundtrack of techno. 

Because the white salt is so white, perspective gets confusing and it's customary to dick around for a hour with a load of props and a camera.  As one who refuses to high five or whoop as a collective I was dreading this bit of 'enforced fun' but surprised myself by partaking with a modicum of enthusiasm. Was secretly a bit relieved when it was all over though. 

That night we slept in a salt hostel, on a salt bed, eating on a salt table etc..  Very comfortable and warm but remarkably no table salt. 

Day 2 felt like we were travelling through different countries the landscape was so varied. From desolate flats, to rock gardens, to flamingo populated lagoons we eventually climbed up a volcano of 5300m where mud geysers spurted and spewed all around us.  Unlike other geyser-tastic countries (yes, you Iceland) where regulations decree you must stand behind a barrier a sensible distance away from the 800*c spurting mud and steam, we were given the instruction to 'try not to fall in the wet bits' and set free to pick our way through.   At altitude it's staggeringly cold so being able to stand in a cloud of (admittedly sulphuric) steam was great.  

We'd been warned the accommodation on night 2 was a little more basic but the dry toilet ('just throw some ash on it') and 6 bed non-heated dorms didn't matter once we'd all grabbed some booze, put on our cozzies and pegged it down to the thermal pool 100m away. 

Beautifully surreal to sit in hot water, in cold weather, under a starry sky drinking red wine and vodka with a group of previously unknown friends.  So much so we stayed there for hours until wrinkly skin and lack of booze made us run back to our salt beds. 

A combination of the above, and the respiratory challenges of sleeping so high gave us staggering cruel hangovers the next morning.  Suddenly the aroma of the dry loo was too much  to cope with and it was all we could do to slump our green faces onto the jeep and succumb to some more hardcore house as Leo drove us to the Chilean border. 

For all the altitude, protests, shonky airlines, challenging loos, alligators, and bed bugs we've had a great time in Bolivia.  Sad to wave goodbye but after 7 weeks of altitude we're looking forward to some sea level living again.