Travel Blog: Day 89

Sorry that it's been so long - almost three weeks. I was kind of procrastinating. The problem is, that writing a blog post just gets more work the longer you wait.

Well here we go. Last thing I mentioned was that I got to Bariloche. I had some good days there. The area strongly reminded me of the Alps. Lots of snow covered mountains, lakes and lots of swiss or mid-European

architecture. In Bariloche I also met and Argentinia from Mendoza by the name

of Lucas. One day we rented a car and drove around the seven lakes, constantly stopping at all the wonderful viewpoints.

After Bariloche I took a very comfortable 21 hour bus ride to Cordoba. They ha

d warm food, good movies and even wine and whisky. Once in Cordoba I did not really do a lot. Actually I just did not find a lot of things to do. I walked through the city plenty of times. Went to an art museum and ate lots of ice cream. One day I wanted to

go swimming but the minute I stepped out the hostel it started to rain and it didn't stop for the rest of the day. But in Cordoba I met Olli again - the English guy I have mentioned before. We played some cards, cooked with each other (well, most of the times I just ate what he cooked) and had some good time.

My next stop was Mendoza - Argentinia's main wine region. I spend some more money on the hostel because I really wanted to have a pool. It turned out to be a good decision because the weather was really hot (35 Celsius / 95 Fahrenheit). On my first full day I went with some people out to the wine area and rented some bikes. We hit three or four bodegas and tasted some of the local wine.

Most of it was pretty good. We also got a really interesting tour at one of the places. It was just strange to see that the vineyards were not on small hills li

ke they are in Germany. Here they were just flat - like fields.

I also spent Christmas in Mendoza (I am talking about the 24th). I spent most of the day at the pool and at night there was a big BBQ. For me it was a strange setting for Christmas. I did not really get into the mood. The dinner was tasty though and later at night most of the people went to a club. By now I really should have figured out that I am not the club kind of person. In summary the Christmas was pretty weird. I missed family and also (a little suprising) the cold weather. I had a better day on the 26th when Lucas invited me to play football with his friends. We played for three hours and after that we had a great BBQ. It was just a perfect setting with all those nice Argentinian people who invited me into their home and treated me as a honored guest!

On the 27th I took a bus to Chile. The ride went through the Andes and there was some beautiful scenery. Too bad the border crossing took us about 2 hours because every piece of luggage was taken off the bus and put through one of those airport X-ray scanners.

But eventually I arrived safely in Santiago and found my hostel. I had only one full day there but this one was really fun. I met "Baba" at the hostel, a 40 year old German who has been travelling for 20 years. He has been to Santiago several times and knows

the city pretty well. So he played the tour guide for a Brazilian guy, two Australian girls and me. We took a walk through the city, starting in Bellavista - Santiago's bohemian quarter - and continuing through Chinatown until we got to the market area. There are so many different markets in a rather small area: fish market, flower market, vegetable market, meat market....

He then took us to some Chilenian beerhall for drinks and food. We each had a "terremoto" (earthquake) which is white wine with pineapple ice cream and fernet. Half a liter of that makes you really tipsy. So afterwards he took us for some coffee.

But not regular coffee but "café con piernas" or "coffee with legs". He was a little secretive about it and I was quite surprised when he lead us into a place which looked like a strip bar. And that is basically the concept of those places - there are lots of them in downtown Santiago. Except the women that serve you the coffee do not strip...but then they are not wearing a whole lot to begin with anyway. A really strange business idea!

To finish things off we went to a bar which is famous because Bill Clinton once drank a coke there. The half empty glass is still on display - I wonder what they did to it so the coke did not turn green....

The next day I took a bus to Valparaiso where I am at the moment. This is where I will celebrate New Year's tomorrow. I already have taken lots of pictures of this beautiful place but I will save those for my next post. I should have enough time at different airports on my way to New Zealand.

Happy New Year to everybody!

Lyrics Snippet #13

This song came to my mind fairly often during my time in southern Patagonia:

I see trees of green, red roses too,
I see them bloom, for me and you.
And I think to myself... what a wonderful world.

~ "What a Wonderful World" - Louis Armstrong ~

Travel Blog: Day 69

Wow, so much has happenend since my last post. I spent a couple more days in Buenos Aires. On Sunday I went to the football game "Boca Juniors vs. Gimnasia La Plata" in the Boca stadium called La Bombonera. The athmosphere was absolutely intense. The supporters only stopped singing during the 15 minutes half time break. Amazing! On Monday night I went to a percussion show called "La Bomba del Tiempo", which was also really entertaining - lots of rhythm!
On Tuesday I wanted to see the Andy Warhol exhibition in the Malba but when I got there I found out that the museum is closed on Tuesdays. So I went for a stroll in the park instead.
The next few days I spend in La Plata visiting a friend of mine who studies there. Had some fun times and explored some of the nice parts of the town.
After that my patagonian adventure started. I took a 15 h bus down to Puerto Madryn from where you can go to the Peninsula Valdes where I actually saw some whales! It was absolutely awe-inspireing to be so close to those giants of the sea. And there I met Olli again - an English guy I travelled with for a while in Bolivia. He, me and Paul - another English guy - afterwards went south to El Calafate to go see the Perito Moreno Glacier. I've never seen a glacier before and this one really is a terrific one to start with. It's a monster, it's huge. Take a look at the pictures, but even the pictures cannot convey the majesty of the thing. And my words don't do it justice. I guess you just have to go see for yourself. The glacier moves about a meter a day, and we are talking about a 30 km long mass of ice with an average height of 74 m above the water. The noises were incredible - like thunder without the lightning. And when a big piece of ice breaks off it is just undescribable. This glacier is one of those things that, the longer you look at it, the less you are able to comprehend it. And taking into acount the beautiful surroundings - snow topped mountains and condors circling above the scenery - it just felt like a picture painted by someone with too much imagination.
The same night the three of us took a bus to El Chalten where we started a three day's hike the next day. Just rented a tent and three sleeping bags and started walking. The scenery was (again) beautiful with the peak of Fitz Roy always towering above everything. After about 4 hours of walking we set up tent and had some dinner. Because at this time of the year it is light until about 22:30 (or 10:30pm) we decided to hike up to the two nearby lagunas (I forgot the name). After some time of exhausting hiking we finally saw the first one - a frozen and snow covered lake. After we climbed another small ledge we saw the other laguna. This one was not frozen at all but looked really cold - a deep blue color with some big chunks of ice floating inside. The whole picture looked so beautiful it was unreal. It looked like it belonged into some fantasy saga. I have to be careful not to repeat myself and to not use the same words over and over to describe the beauty of southern Patagonia.
The next day I hiked with the two others to a nearby glacier but then left to go back to our tent alone. I needed some time to myself to read, write and relax. The third day we started the way back and were rewarded with more beautiful views before we reached El Chalten again where we treated ourselves to a couple of beers.
On the next morning it was time for me to say goodbye to my fellow travelers because they were heading further south to do some more hiking and I was going north to Bariloche. This meant a 2-days bus ride. On the first day our bus broke down so we had to spend 5 hours in the middle of nowhere. But that was not too bad. I played some hackey sack (which I hadn't done in years) and played some other games and thus really got to know some of the other people on the bus. Because of the delay we got to Perito Moreno (the town, not the glacier) at about 2 in the night. Since the hotel still wanted 60 Argentinian Pesos for the night some of us decided to just spend the night partying. I turned out we were lucky because the little town celebrated its 82nd birthday with some live music on the streets. So we joined the locals and had a good time before we hit a nearby bar. When the bar closed down at about 5 in the morning we went to an ATM to get at least a few hours of sleep in a warm place. After about an hour the police showed up and had us move out. It was still a fun night and I was able to sleep a little the next day on the bus to Bariloche. This is where I got yesterday night after another 13 hours on the bus. Today I didn't do much. Just walked around a little and told some people over the internet that I was still alive. As always: Enjoy the pictures!

PS: I finished a few more books:

• "The Sum Of All Fears" by Tom Clancy
  
• "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
  
• "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
  
• "The Final Reckoning" by Sam Bourne
  
• "Stalin's Ghost" by Martin Cruz Smith