Wine, Waterfalls, and Weird Animals

I will do this post going backwards. This really could have been a couple posts, but I've been very busy being lazy.

Today is our last day in Mendoza, Argentina. This city is all about wine. They even have fountains in a creepy redish color.

There are vineyards and wineries all around and signs on the sidewalk offering wine specials. Yesterday, Alex and I toured two wineries and an olive oil factory. I had never really given a lot of thought to the way wine is produced, and it was all very interesting. It's a little sad that despite all the explanations of how much goes into each bottle and the tastings, Alex and I still don't actually like wine. I feel like I needed to confess that here. We do love olive oil though, and appreciated trying all the different flavors. I even understand the difference now between Extra Virgin and regular (but I'm not telling).

Mendoza is also big on "adventure sports". We went white water rafting a few days ago. The scenery is beautiful, but the water is straight from the mountain tops so its very cold. There are some hilarious photos of our heroic faces and efforts to keep one another from falling out, but the photos are on CD, Internet cafes don't have machines with drives anymore, and my iPad looked at the plastic disk and started laughing. I will upload them later though.

Before Mendoza, we visited Iguazu Falls. If you are unfamiliar, they are among the worlds most impressive. I might even be so brazen as to say that they were cooler than Niagara because there are a lot of them. The park has two different circuit walks that show different falls and different perspectives. They also have a 50person boat that takes you right up close (second picture). You can't actually see anything though because you are busy being drenched and can't really open your eyes. I was surprised to read that huge waterfalls like these are not a great way of generating electricity. Something about the flow not being consistent enough and air pockets effecting the turbines. Seems a shame.

Iguazu was a mini-trip within the ten days spent in Buenos Aires. I've been to BA a few times, but this was the first trip I had a lot of time to explore and just hangout. The city is very large and probably the only one where our feet and subway were not always sufficient. Taking cabs can make you grumpy because you often get the feeling that they choose the most circuitous route to your destination to better exercise the meter. Makes you almost miss the cities where you had to haggle over the fare before you got in.

Cafes, with their own language for coffee sizes, are ubiquitous. Some are really classic and beautiful. As for restaurants, we would give the mixed reviews. I knew steak is big here, but I had forgotten that they put ham on everything from lasagna to pizza to hamburgers. We've taken to asking now regardless of what we order.

Some neighborhoods still have signage with a typographic style from the turn of the century called "fileteado". Some people who still practice the art form (mostly for tourists) are called "fileteadoras". On my list.

They are very proud of their tango, and Alex and I quickly learned its not the sort of dance you can just sort of "wing". It's nothing like swing and we would really have to take a lesson so as not to step all over each other.

Even though BA is big and busy and frenetic, it has a lot of leafy green spaces that we enjoyed. Renting bikes turned out to be a real hassle but were were successful in Mendoza.
Our next destination, Salta, will be our last in Argentina.

Oh, almost forgot. A couple of the weird mammals we encountered (one of which appears to be pooping a pigeon)..

Penguins!!

Scientific studies have shown that penguins are among the cutest animals on earth. We had the opportunity to observe this remarkable degree of cuteness first hand yesterday. We are in Ushuaia, Argentina right now, the city known as "the end of the world" because it is the southern most city in the world. The island we visited has two kinds of penguins, Magellanic penguins (shorter, b&w) and Gentoo penguins(taller with orange beaks), and one single King penguin that noone understood what was doing there. We were advised not to get closer than seven feet which seemed to be the distance the penguins preferred as well. My only piece of advice would be to remember that an island full of penguins is likely also full of penguin poop, and lying on the ground to get that perfect photo is not such a great idea, especially when you have one jacket and one pair of warm pants.

The day before we hiked around Tierra del Fuego, the main park down here. Little islands, leaves changing color (its fall down here) and snow covered mountains in the background. It's pretty, but not as dramatic as the stuff we saw in northern Patagonia, on the Chilean side.

Up there, we visited Torres del Paine park where the mountains really tower over you and the lakes are an artificial looking pale blue. There is also a waterfall and a lake where big chunks of ice have fallen off a nearby glacier and are just bobbing along.

We also went to Perito Moreno park on the Argentine side to get up close to a glacier. They make it pretty easy with elevated walking paths and even a boat ride that gets you even closer. What we can see is twenty stories high, but some parts are as much as 600 stories deep. Just not the kind of thing you will see in one of the parks back home. Of course, none of this is.

Tomorrow we fly to Buenos Aires (sane people don't attempt the multi-day bus trip).

FAQs

We recently met a guy from Philly in Chile for eight days on a mission to follow Pearl Jam wherever they tour(people have all sorts of interesting reasons for travel). He was floored by the prospect of our six month trip and had a lot of questions. Not that our trip is so unique, but we have been asked a lot of the same questions, so I thought a little FAQ might be helpful.

How much does it cost?
A lot. We started out with what I thought was a very respectable and upstanding looking budget, but when we got to Chile, the gods of travel got all up in our budget's face and started giving it a hard time. Eventually they beat the stuffing out of our sad, demoralized budget. Poor shlub never had a chance.

In Ecuador, you can get a whole set meal for 3 or 4 bucks. Where we are now, just the entrees start at 14bucks. That said, if you can book a place that has a kitchen,you can save a lot by making your own meals. But forget about the food, it's the costs of seeing these parks that get outrageous. For example, yesterday Torres del Paine park charged $38/person just to enter. Now add that to the $40/person for the day tour. Today's day tour was $80/person not including the entrance fee which was a much more reasonable $18/person. You can skip the tour and rent a car but that isn't much cheaper. When in these situations, you have to battle the "but when will you ever be here again?" logic they must know most tourists are operating on. You don't mind paying that much when you are traveling for just a few weeks,but in our situation these numbers can get you grouchy awful fast. Hopefully, once we finish Patagonia, the biggest expenses will be behind us. Oh, almost forgot, in the last six months Argentina added a $160 "reciprocity entrance fee"/person just for people from US and two other countries. Psshht..Americans are all loaded, they can swing it.

Did you quit your jobs? Aren't you worried about finding jobs when you get back?
Yes, we had to quit our jobs, and that was tough since we both really liked our jobs. This is something we have both always wanted to do, and you only live once (although I know people who would dispute that), and well, you get it..

Yes, to be honest, we are worried about finding jobs when we get back. But we are fortunate to be at the point in our careers where we are pretty marketable and don't expect to have heaps of trouble. Actually finding jobs isn't the main worry, it's finding jobs that we are really excited about that's the bigger challenge. But I've been in this situation before, and I think it will work out fine. I'm very proud of Alex for her leap of faith.

Where do you stay?
We decided that we don't mind hostels as long as we get a private room. The problem there is that they all use hostelworld.com which charges per person,not per room. So it's usually at least $25/person making the room $50. That's often the cost of a hotel which includes a private bathroom and nicer accommodations, so we have been in more hotels than hostels. But it all really depends. The place we are in now calls itself a hostel but its more like a schlocky hotel. We have also looked into couchsurfing.org but most of the options we have found do not have a private room, and we have become too princessy to crash on the sofa. AirBnB.com is also an option. Haven't done any camping on this trip.

Isn't it dangerous?
Not really. None of the places we have been are that dangerous. Pickpockets are the biggest worry. The only place I ruled out for safety reasons was Caracas, that place just sounds like a free-for-all.

How do you know what to see and where to go?
We have at least one guidebook per country (ebook versions), and checkout people's favorite things on tripadvisor.com and similar sites. It does take research, but its interesting. One little rantito: I don't understand why everyone just buys Lonely Planet by default. Some of them are good and some aren't. There are plenty of other guidebooks out there, and getting something else also means you don't end up following the herds to the same places.

As for getting around, info on buses and planes is of course online. It's mostly bus travel and every city has a bus station, so you just go and ask.

How did you plan the whole thing?
You really just figure it out as you go. It's impossible to plan the whole thing ahead of time. We just knew 6 months, six countries we wanted to see = roughly one month per country (Mike and John, aren't you impressed?). You are never quite sure how long you will want to (or have to) stay in each place so we usually don't plan more than a week or two out. That said, if you want to stay in a highly rated place or be sure to get a certain flight, you do have to book things a week ahead or so, so the whole show up and hope for the best philosophy is not recommended.

As for packing, just bring a weeks worth of clothes and hit the lavenderia once a week. This trip includes time at the beach as well as time freezing our tushes off in Patagonia so we had to bring warm stuff too. Toiletries are easy to buy anywhere when you run out. My biggest packing tip is to put your clothes in these special air compression plastic bags that have one way valves. You can save tons of space that way.

6months?
And that still doesn't seem like enough time. We have had to skip over plenty. In my travels I have met lots of people going longer, like practically every Aussie I've met. Personally, I think I would miss home too much though. Our six months is mainly all travel but a lot of people volunteer for part of it. Some people cruise through the highlights and others just hangout somewhere for weeks at a time because they like the town. That's one of the fun things about travel, learning about people's itineraries. You might even meet someone traveling all the way to South America to hear their favorite band play.