Ciao for now South America

After a whirlwind of traveling through the Andes by bus from Mendoza to Santiago, then flying from Santiago to Lima, stay in Lima for 12 hours, then flying back to Austin, I am exhausted but happy. It is good to be home after being away for so long.

On my last day in South America, I am happy to report that I survived touring the city ON MY OWN and speaking Spanish to cab drivers. Granted, I am sure they only understood like half of what I said at best. But, hey, at lest I tried and lived to tell the tale ;). I even negotiated fare to downtown Lima to see Iglesia de San Francisco and the catacombs underneath it. The catacomb is one freaky place. Because I arrived basically right before they closed and was the only English speaker, I totally got a private tour! It is pretty awesome. Seeing tons and tons of bones and skulls can be slightly creepy but they have arranged them in very interesting ways so as to remove the creepiness a little bit (at least for me) They have no idea how many levels of catacombs there are as they have stopped extracating due to fear of the church tombling down. The catacombs are basically the foundation of the church. The church and museum itself is pretty cool as well. Too bad there are wayyyy too many pigeons in front of the church and I do not like rats with wings. EWW.

Lima downtown is pretty neat with lots of cool architecture/buildings. Too bad it is so far from where I stayed (Miraflores). On the way back to Miraflores I was impressed (scared to death) by the way people drive in Lima. Two cars in one lane on a free way. One of the cars was the one I was in. The other car? was right next to my door. Wow.

After a quick and LARGE dinner at Makoto which was located at the mall near the beach, my hotel called a car for me and back to the US I go!!

I biked and I wined

After a few mishap in the morning, cab driver tried to scam us by not running a meter and telling us our fare is $40 (we had a shouting match...in Spanish, which consisted of me repeating 20, 25 in Spanish. ha.) and realizing that we were at the wrong airport, we arrived in Mendoza. The city is NOT what I had imagined in my head at all. I was thinking...similar to Sonoma where there is this beautiful plaza (there is a plaza) surrounded by cute little restaurants and cafes. It is much more a city than I imagined. After orienting ourselves, eating $15 peso pastas (about usd $4), we set off to figure out how to do some wine tasting tomorrow.

The next day, armed with information in hand, Paige and I set off to find the bus that will take us to Lujan where the big wineries are. After about 30-45 min of walking back and forth between bus stops trying to find the bus and enlisting the help of various locals, we decided to change our plans and go to Maipu instead. One of the locals who was helping us works for Bikes and Wine but he didn't push the tour at all on us while he was trying to help us get to Lujan. So, as a thank you, we decided to go with Bikes and Wine to rent our bikes once we get to Maipu. These guys are great! Two guys hopped on the bus a few stops earlier to make sure we'd get off on the right stop. Nice.

After we received the map and picked out our bikes, Paige and I set off on our little adventure. First stop, the wine museum, it is ok. Next, we went to this small olive oil, chocolate, and liquor store next to the wine museum to learn about olive oils. Did you know olive trees can produce up until they are 600 years old?!? WOW. We got to taste some interesting liquors, they even made absinthe with wormwood (the kind that makes you hallucinate). Considering my low tolerance to alcohol and more bike riding in the immediate future to more wineries, I decided to not taste it.

We stopped for lunch at Di Tommaso, one of the oldest wineries in the region. It is really cute and is exactly what I'd imagined a Mendoza winery would be like. Since the original winery is a historical site, they can not make changes to the buildings. Instead they use their old ferment tanks as a place to store wines since the tanks are made of bricks and cement shipped from England and Germany (uber expensive back in the day!). Paige and I learned that for every year the wine is aged in the barrel, you can store it for 3 years in the bottle. Interesting...

After a leisurely lunch, tasting, and tour, we only had enough time to stop at one more winery before needing to head back and return our bikes. We decided to stop at Tempus Alba. Really contemporary building, totally different than Di Tommaso. We tasted all but one of their wine between the 2 of us. It was fabulous!

With lots of wine in my blood, I paddled back to the bike shop with more energy than before. Along the way, I even had energy to shout back at the whistlers and the hollers. If Paige and I had a dollar for every time we were hollered at on our bike ride, we'd be able to pay for a nice room at the Park Hyatt in town. Once we got back to the bike store, they gave us MORE wine! So we sat and chatted with other fellow wine bikers before heading back into town.

It was FUN! Seeing as how I don't exercise much normally and am usually a couch potato by choice, I had a LOT of fun riding bikes. Something about it just give you a carry free feeling. Or it might have been the fabulous wine we drank all afternoon.

A great way to end my month long trip through South America. Tomorrow I head back to Santiago via a bus through the Andes and then fly to Lima for one day before I leave for the good ole Texas.

Ciao!

Flood, Bio Weapons, and Sushi = I am officially a puma!

AH civilization...sophistication...mosquito attack...BUENOS AIRES!!

Paige and I arrived in Buenos Aires and was glad to be in a warmer climate. Though I could have done without the humidity, thank you very much. A short cab ride to our hostel, dumped our stuff and out we go to explore the neighborhood, Palermo Soho. We walked by a couple of places that Chris and I went on our last trip through South America 2 years ago. Then I realized...we stayed not too far from Paige and I's current hostel 2 years ago. A HA! For dinner, we went for sushi at Tenkuu in Palermo Viejo (I think...). YUM!!! After a little over 6 weeks of NOT much variety, I was in heaven! Hello asian food, I have missed you.

The next day we decided to do the tourist thing and went to see the cemetary in Recoleta. Beautiful blue sky, sunny, HOTT, and definitely make the cemetary less creepy. We also walked by and saw the Floralis Generica by Eduardo Catalano. I actually remembered how to get there from the cemetary. YES! After being out in the hot sun...we decided, it is time to explore the finer side of Buenos Aires, ie shopping!! Off we go to Peatonal Florida, an avenue only for pedestrians and LOTS of shops. This is where things started to go a little downhill. First, came the near robbing experience where Paige felt someone tried to lift her purse out of her backpack. Luckily, Ms Pagina here is an excelent packer and packed VERY smartly. Despite BOTH zippers on her backpack being COMPLETELY UNZIPPED, all the culprit got was a tourist map. The map that was to point us to delicious Thai food near by Plaza San Martin. BOO! And then, as we walked around trying to remember exactly which street the delicious spicy food is on, she got pooped on by a bird. FAB. So we decided to duck into this rather nice Japanese restaurant and have our lunch (and so she can clean up). What can go wrong here? well...how about the waiter forgetting to tell me that they are OUT of curry katsu until they brought out Paige's food? So I watched Paige eat and then she watched me eat. Damn you Irifune! The food was good though. I'd give them another chance. As we sat at lunch, the weather forecast slowly went from sunny to cloudy to chance of rain...to rain. Well, deciding that we must see the Obelisk since it is close by. We hauled butt to get there ONLY to be stopped by a torrential downpour. Luckily, there are lots of cafes with wifi nearby. It rained so hard parts of BA flooded and I learned the word 'hail' in Spanish (Granizo). We took the subway home because there was NO free cabs anywhere and they were letting everyone ride for free due to the weather. Back at the hostel, we plunked down in front of the tv and I learned the beauty that is Curling. It is like shuffle board but with bigger 'puck' thing. And the guys scrub at the ice frantically. Hilarious.

Next day, 2/20/2010, the day known as the last day of my fabulous 20s was spent dining and shopping. YES! I bought a cute pair of shoes and a dress to wear to dinner that night. My birthday present to myself is my justification for shopping and buying more stuff when I have to sit on my pack to zip it up. Dinner though, was the highlight of the day. Paige had schemed and schemed for the last couple of weeks to set up this amazing dinner at this closed door restaurant called Salt Shaker (http://www.saltshaker.net/ or http://www.casasaltshaker.com/indexen.htm check them out if you are ever in BA). It was super delicious, especially the pea gazpacho with a dollop of gelatined watermelon mixed with fresh crab. HEAVENLY! It was the perfect way to send off my 20s and welcome me to the 30s in style.

For our last day in BA, we decided to do some more sightseeing. We went to San Telmo where they were having the weekly antique fair at plaza Dorrego and arts and crafts stands all down Defensa. It was just as I remembered but with a LOT more people. Maybe it was because Chris and I came during BA's winter that we didn't see as many people when we went sightseeing. We got to see some tango dancing in the streets, not to mention a choripan and bifepan stand (awesome!). After a leisurely lunch at Territorio (where Chris and I ate at on our previous trip), we went to check out La Boca. It was hopping with people and just as vibrant with the colors as I remembered. On the way back, our taxi driving, upon learning that we understand some spanish, decides to give us an impromptu guided tour of the city as he sees it on the way to our hostel. Fab.

Bioweapon, this deserves its own little paragraph. So, Paige needed to mail back some stuff back to the states (all the winter/trekking gear) and off we go to the post office. Paige explained to the woman behind the counter that she needed a box to put the clothes/shoes in to mail it to the states. The woman responded with basically, you can't mail used clothing. After double checking our hearing, which prommpted the woman to write on a piece of paper 'ropa usado, no'. We asked her why. Her explanation is that it might make people sick. New clothes you can mail but used cloth that is yours and that you want to mail to yourself? NO. Incredulous! Who'd have known used clothes is counted as bio weapons!? Hello defense department, are you getting this? A lot of taxpayer dollars can be saved here...I think Argentina is on to something. LOL.

Next up, WINE!!!! Hello Mendoza...here we come!

Who saw the glacier fall? who who who who?

Woke up at 6am and got picked up at 7am from Puerto Natales to our next destination, Perito Moreno and El Calafate. The ride is long and quite boring. I fell asleep a lot despite the beautiful but unchanging landscape. Paige and I bumped into Andrew at the Chile/Argentina border crossing and found out that he is also going to Perito Moreno/El Calafate! What a great surprise!! :)

After about 5 hrs we finally arrive at the glacier park. As we drove in toward the glacier, one is simply amazed at how expansive and beautiful it is. First up is the boat ride up close and personal to the glacier Perito Moreno. It is even bigger than I imagined up close. The color of the ice is so blue and the result is turqoise lake water. Saw some minor ice chunks fall off the glacier but nothing major. After one hour on the boat, we got back on the van to go to the walkway where you can walk to see a different side of the glacier.

As Paige and I stood at the walkway looking in amazement at the expansive ice (secretly hoping for some ice falling action), our prayer was answered. A HUGE HUGE HUGE chunk of glacial ice fell off and we were able to capture it in sequential shots. It was amazing!! and VERY LOUD!

Who saw the glacier fall? I did! I did!

I want to put a penguin in my pocket

Today is the day we saw penguins. Hundreds of thousands of Magellanic Penguins in Magdalena Island (just waiting for me to take one home...ha!). We took the boat to the island, about 2 hrs. Relatively calm on the way out, saw some penguins swimming in the ocean which I first mistaken it for seals...then I saw their beaks so I thought they must be those sea diving ducks. NOT so smart here but I digress...

When we arrived at the island, I could not believe my eyes!!! The guide books aren't lying when they say the whole island is covered with penguins. IT IS AMAZING!!!! They are so adorable and not really afraid of people. Groups of them would walk across the pathway in their cute wobbly movement. I tried to touch one...and it tried to attack my friend Megan (definitely not afriad of people). Sorry Megan! I got to see baby ones, old ones, middle aged ones, and ones that are obviously way too fat for their own good. It is really neat to see them in their habitat, chilling in their holes that they dug up and generally ignoring people. I even saw some couple penguins snuggling together and cleaning each other, SO CUTE! There was also a lot of seagulls there too, I was afriad I'd get shat on. Luckily, I made it out clean.

It was one of the best days of my life. Penguins...I want to put you in my pocket.

90km plus wind and one sun

Waking up to rain on the day we begin our trek through Torres Del Paine is never a good thing. And the bus showing up 10 min early (really? 10 min early? are we not in south america?!?) didnt help as we scrambled to stuff our face with our breakfast and check out. The bus ride to the national park was uneventful if not a little too bumpy. After 3 plus hour bus ride, we arrive at the ferry place to catch a boat that takes us across lago pehoe to lodge paine grande where we would begin our hike toward glacier grey. After a quick lunch (5min), we take off in the rain toward glacier grey and refugio grey, where we would be staying for the night.

As we hiked through the rain, the wind picked up. At some point, it was DEFINITELY greater than 90km. It made the rain felt like hail, ice against my face...pelting me, punishing me as I struggled to go forward. Not to mention sudden gusts of wind threatening to push you down...down the side of the mountain. Awesome. After 5 hours trekking through rain, mud, rock, and WIND, we made it to refugio grey. In comparison to people who are camping, it is heaven and we'll just leave it at that.

The next morning, we woke up to super cloudy sky but no sign of rain (yay!). Before we hiked back to Lodge Paine Grande where we would be staying our second night, we went to the lookout point for Glacier Grey. Super windy but nice view of the glacier. It is HUGE! Took us about 4 hours to hike back to Lodge Paine Grande but we made it. Started to rain about 1hr before we got back to the lodge, fun. The lodge is REALLY NICE and it even has internet, hello connection to the outside world! After assessing our situation for the next couple of days (ie trekking in more rain, Megan is getting sick, and Paige's back is not cooperating...), we decide to get off the trail the next day. Funny that I was the only one wanting to continue on...yes, prissy little Rita. HA!

HOLY MOUNTAINS is what we woke up to on our third day in the park. It was sunshine with hardly any clouds in the sky. GORGEOUS! We hiked toward Valle de France from the lodge. AMAZING view!! Totally recommend going from the west to east on the W just for this view. I know everyone goes to Torres Del Paine to see Las Torres (the towers) but man, Cerro Cuernos, in my personal opinion, is better! With the different layers of rock, it is just really interesting to see how nature formed these mountains. After crossing a scary draw bridge, Paige and I stopped a little ways into Valle de France. Found a comfy rock and just sat there in awe of the amazing views. Saw some glacier ice/snow fall off (kind of like an avalanche).

Though we got off the trail early and didnt get to hike up to see Las Torres (only saw them from the back side via Valle de France) and we didnt get refund back on the next 2 nights food/lodging, this third day made everything worth it.

I can't wait to come back to Torres Del Paine. Who would have thought? Me? Nature? Hiking? ;) Patagonia changed everything.

Ferry to the South

After a nice trip to Chiloe and Puerto Varas, we boarded our ferry, Evangelista, for our travel southward toward Puerto Natales. (man they sure like to have lots of puertos in the city names). Our cabin was tiny...when I first saw it with our luggages in it, I didn't think we'd be able to fit in there at the same time. Once we put the luggages away in the nice little cubbies, we got room to groove. kind of. The bunk beds are nice, though you really got to watch your head. I hit the back of my head pretty hard getting back to bed one night. The sound of head connecting with wood was so loud that I woke my friends up. If I seem dumber in the rest of my blogs, thats the reason why.

The food on board was surprisingly decent and so was the bathroom facilities. The showering was interesting. There was this knob thing that you had to keep pushing in order to keep the water running. Part of the water conservation effort I think. Definitely makes showering an arm work out and an entertainment.

We pretty much lazed about the days playing cards with each other. Picked up a cute British boy traveling by himself who taught us the game, shithead. Pretty fun. Megan also taught me how to play spite and malice. We were also alerted to go on to the front of the boat deck occasionally to see the boat 'manuver' through a narrow channel. Usually pretty boring and cold. Though we did see some sea lions swimming around, clouds, mountains, and a ship that got stuck on a rock years ago. We stopped and got off the boat in Puerto Eden. Not much to see but good to stretch our legs. We also got to see Glacier Pio XI. It was HUGE!! and I was freezing. The weather had turned bad so the pictures didn't turn out well but you can still see the blue in the glacier. So amazing.

After the disasterous bingo night they hosted for us. Disasterous because I DID NOT win and I had to go dance in front of everyone with Paige and Megan (who had won). We arrived in Puerto Natales to a clear, beautiful day. Thanks to my motion sickness patch, I remained sea sick free! Can't say the same about half the boat though. HA!

Next up...Torres Del Paine.

Caudillo del Congrio

This is Pablo Neruda's favorite meal. After tasting it at El Reloj Restaurant, I completely understands why. It is delicious and wonderful on a cold day in Puerto Varas where we stopped off for a night before and after we visited Chiloe.

Doesn't this look great on a cold and rainy day? mmmm mmm good! :D

Rain Rain Go Away!

In the midst of rain, we arrived at the mystical island of Chiloe (off the coast of Chile, close to Puerto Montt where we are boarding our Navimag ferry a few days later). First time I have seen rain since I arrived in Chile, slightly disconcerting. On the way to Chiloe, I got to see a whole bus (i mean a big one) get loaded onto a boat among other cars. AND I got to see sea lions playing in the water, WAY COOL! We stayed at Castro, the capital city of Chiloe. The hostel we stayed at, Palafito, is more like a really nice bed and breakfast. It is definitely the nicest place we have stayed in thus far (and future as well...). Fantastic breakfast with a warm fire. Not to mention that it is right on a lake (inner bay?) that has its water recedes and rises with the tide. We would wake up and the entire area has been drained of water where you can totally walk across from one side to another. I wanted to put this hostel in my pocket and take it to go!

It wasn't all rain all the time. On the second day we got some decent weather, enough that we took a bunch of buses (collectivos) to different cities to see some really old churches. We went to Ancho and Dalcahue, cities on a small island to the northeast of Castro. The church in Dalcahue is really interesting with a painting of Jesus mixed with mythical local creatures. The intention is to encourage conversion to Catholicism by use of local myths. Pretty clever of them. Megan bought a book about the local myths and read some to us. Most of them have to do with witches and warlocks.

My favorite part about Chiloe is that it is the place where I was introduced to Maico. This delicious mash potato ball thing filled with shredded pork and fried. I mean DELICIOUS! Probably not the best thing for me but man...I could definitely go for one right now :)

Volcano: 1....Rita: 0

"Today," I thought to myself, "is the day I shall climb to the top of the Volcan Villarrica". Boy...was I overly optimistic! Volcan Villarrica is a live volcano standing at 2847 meters tall and covered in snow. Walking around the town in Pucon, I can see the volcano from almost anywhere I stood and it is just begging for me to climb it.

5:30am - the car comes to pick us up from our camp site after I had gotten grand total of 3 hours of sleep thanks to the partier who came back from the Hot Spring at 3am.
6:00am - the car came to a stop due to a pretty bad accident on the only way into Pucon. we almost had to walk the last 7km to town, luckily for me, they let us pass 30 min later.
7:00am - fitted for volcano climbing gear (ice pick, heavy duty hiking shoes, gaiters, crampons, water proof pants, windbreakers, and a backpack filled with snacks, water, camera, etc) and off we go in a van toward the volcano
8:00am - HORRAY for ski lifts!! Our other friends who had climbed the volcano in the last 2 weeks all had to walk up because the ski lift wasn't open to take them up the most slippery/steep part of the hike.
9:00am - The weight of the gear is starting to weigh on me and my legs are begining to feel like lead. I make it to the first stop.
10:00am - I am in between the first stop and the second stop, standing on a slippery slope of ice (slowly dying on the inside) and trying to figure out how in the world i am going to make it to the next stop since going back down is more difficult than going up.
11:00am - I made it to the 2nd stop (HORRAY!!!), the big one right before everyone leave on the trail to ascend to the top of the volcano where there really is no turning back. This is the point where I quit. I have NEVER had a more challenging climb in my life (I haven't climbed a whole lot...but man this was brutal).
11:30am - I slide...slide...and slide down the volcano. NOW this is the part that makes the whole climb worth it (on top of the amazing view). :D wheeeeeee!!! SO fun. I want to open a slide only slide park in the US.
12:30pm - Back down to the van. Heads back to Pucon.

Volcano: 1....Rita: 0

Camping...'nuff said

I kicked off my traveling adventure post MBA exchange program with 2 night camping trip with Paige, Molly and a bunch of couchsurfers at Carburga, about 30min outside of Pucon. For those of you who know me, I am sure you are re-reading the first sentence a couple of times right now. Rita, camping?!?!?!? how is that possible. I am here to tell you. It is possible and I did it. Will I do it again? Probably not for another 10 years ;)

However fun it was, meeting new people and sitting by the camp fire, I missed the following things: eating on time, sleeping in a bed, access to proper bathroom/shower facilities. I also learned that I am far too old to go camping with people who are going to party until the sun comes up...3 days in a row. Good thing I went rafting the first day I got there so I was super tired and assisted by Piscola and wine, passed out in no time. The next night I was not so lucky but at that point, I am so tired, I slept through the hard ground, the cold, and the party chants. Unlike the volcano, which I will go into in the next entry, the camp did not conquer me. Another day, it would have. Luckily, we had a room at the Tree House hostel in Pucon and I got to reset my memory of my traumatizing experience showering at the camp site. (It is too traumatizing to talk about still...the wound is still raw). Lets just say, I have never slept so soundly in a bed.