For a few days, I did nothing but walk around town with different combinations of my friends Sara, Menno, Claudia and Alec.  Then at some point the week became dominated by eating as much excellent food as humanly possible.  First, Alec and I got dinner at a parrilla on Calle Florida, a pedestrian mall not far from the hostel.  I had the Bife de Chorizo, which was (up to that point) the best steak I’d had in Argentina.  The next day, a bunch of us met up at an excellent Milanesa restaurant where we overate delicious flattened, breaded chicken covered in ham, cheese and tomato sauce before going to see La Bomba de Tiempo (an incredible improv percussion band) at Konex.  Then, Guille and Mariela once again invited everyone over to their rooftop terrace for a home cooked asado.  As it turns out, Guillermo is a master asador and made up some excellent Chorizo, Molleja, Riñon, Lomo, Asado and Vacito.  Amazing. Then, last night, the whole crew opted to go out to Cafe San Juan where we all had something different, but my dish, the ojo de bife, was definitely the best.

I’ve probably walked a few dozen miles around Buenos Aires, seen a lot of great neighborhoods, perused through countless markets, gotten lost on the way to a few different places, seen some great museums and spent time with some amazing friends.  Buenos Aires is a very cool city, and a perfect place to have finished up this trip.

The next morning we caught a bus to Iguazu Falls National Park.  The falls really are indescribable, and sadly these pictures do it no justice at all.  Really, all I can say is: Go see it for yourself.

After walking around the park and the miles of walkways above the cliffs, we took a quick boat ride to see the falls (and feel the spray) up close.  Soaked and exhausted, we headed home for another night of good food and drink.

The next day, Claudia, Menno and I said our goodbyes to Robby who headed off into Brazil to make his way home.  I’ve travelled with him for the better part of the last 5 months, and we’ve had some ridiculously fun times.  It was sad to see my good friend go.

At least I had my other good friends joining me on the long bus ride back to Buenos Aires.  The other consolation was that we all had fancy, full bed bus seats, complete with meals and free drinks.  The champagne, whiskey and wine made the trip a whole lot more bearable.

The next morning, I slept in, then relaxed, then took a nap.  It was very productive. Later, we met up with our friends Guillermo and Mariela (a couple that Robby and I had met on our Inca Jungle Trail). That night, they took us out to see the band Dancing Mood play at a place called Konex.  Afterwards, we went back to Guille and Mariela’s place for some pizza and drinks.  Great music and great people is a simple formula for fun.

The next day, Robby, Sara and I took a walk around town, taking in some of the sights around San Telmo (the neighborhood around our hostel) and the beautiful cemetery in Recoleta.  We walked down to a neighborhood with some inexpensive shopping (much of my clothing has been lost, worn out completely, stolen or is just well past the point of usefulness, and I thought I could use a few things).  A few things conspired against a fruitful shopping excursion. The first is  my crippling, all encompassing hatred of shopping.  The second was the flood of biblical proportions that descended upon the city.  We essentially had to swim back to the hostel.

After a shower and change of clothing, Guillermo and Mariela once again took us out, this time to a Tenedor Libre, where 72 pesos (less than $20) gets you free beer, salad bar and unlimited asado.  Tons of amazing cuts of meat, as well as a few more -shall we say?- exotic choices.  Any time you get a chance to eat thymus, you take that chance. We walked off our giant meals around the ritzy, new neighborhood of Puerto Madero.

The next day, Robby and I took our final bus journey together, off to the amazing site of Iguazu falls.

After a miserable series of bus rides from El Chalten, I arrived in Ushuaia, with just enough time to check into my hostel and fall asleep.  The next day I set about exploring the town, which took far less time than I thought it might.  I visited the former prison, which now houses the Maritime, Modern Art and Penal museums.  Some interesting exhibits there, but the rest of the town didn´t offer much.

The next day, I set out for Tierra del Fuego national park.  And, like many of the other parks in Patagonia, it was absolutely stunning.  I took the obligatory photo of the end of highway 3, the southernmost road.  When I had hiked my feet sore, I headed back to town.

The next day I flew to Buenos Aires, and into the beginning of the end of my travels.

We spent the next day relaxing, trying to find decently priced food (more challenging than it should have been) and finally getting to watch Casino Royale, a movie that we’ve both seen a dozen times before, but that we’ve been talking about watching since we were in Colombia.  It was very refreshing to have a day of doing nothing since, over the past 10 days or so, we’ve been moving at a fairly frantic pace.

The next morning, we woke early, had some breakfast and headed out to see Perito Moreno Glacier.  When we got there, we took an hour long boat ride on Lake Argentina out to the front of the glacier.  Never having seen a glacier up close, I was pretty well dumbfounded by it’s beauty.  After the ride, we were taken up to the balconies overlooking the glacier.  Walking along a few kilometers worth of platforms, we were treated to spectacular views of the glacier and the icebergs in the lake. We even got to see (and hear) a huge chunk of ice cleave off the glacier.

Robby had a flight booked the next day up to Buenos Aires, but I was eager to get a bit more of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.  So, after a quick goodbye (we have plans to meet back up in BA), I headed up to the nearby town of El Chalten for some more lakes and mountains (a cheaper alternative to Chile’s Torres del Paine).  I arrived in the mid-afternoon, rested up for a bit and decided to go on one of the short hikes near town, Mirador de los condores.

On the hike, I got some great views of the mountains to the north and west of town; the most notable being the peak of Fitz Roy mountain.  True to the name of the hike, I was also treated to some great views of a giant condor flying overhead. I ran into some other hikers and got to talking with another American computer programmer named Nate.  We decided to join up the next day for the famed Laguna de los Tres hike.

Early the next day, we caught a cab up to Hosteria El Pilar, north of town.  Behind the building is a trail, which offers a nice alternative entry point to the Laguna hike (taking the usual way in is nice, but means that you walk back out the same way for a good 2.5 hours).  When we set out, we had decent clear and cool weather.  As we approached the steep climb up to the Laguna, the weather took a vast turn for the worse.  Before we knew it, we were climbing through snow to look at a peak that was covered by pea soup thick fog and cloud.

We were about to head back down when the weather very suddenly started clearing.  First the snow stopped, then the sun shined a bit brighter through the clouds, then the low fog over the mountains started to part.  All within about 10 minutes, it went from winter wonderland to partly sunny and warm.  Fitz Roy still stayed covered, however, and I had a bus to catch, so we started the hike back to town.  All the way down, the weather continued to improve.  Finally, by the time I was back in town, showered, dressed and waiting for the bus, I caught a nice peek of the peak that had been hidden all day. Absolutely beautiful.

My 6pm bus arrived in El Calafate at around 9, and so I ate, drank, read and internet cafe’d my way through the next 6 hours, caught a 3am bus to Rio Gallegos, where I connected to an 8am bus, which after excessive stops, border crossings (you have to cut through Chile to get to Tierra del Fuego), a rough ferry ride (the Straight of Magellan was very choppy, and being on the top deck of a double decker bus sitting on a ferry wasn’t the best feeling in the world), and two awful movies, finally arrived in Ushuaia around 11pm.  An absolute nightmare journey, but hopefully the End of the World is worth it.

After check-in and a quick nap, I decided to walk along the beachfront.  The weather was markedly nicer than the cold rain and wind we got in Bariloche, and the whole town seemed to be out at the beach.  I walked a few miles, returned to the hostel, changed into swim trunks, got Robby and we headed straight back to the beach.  Of course, in the 3 minute walk from the hostel to the beach, the sun managed to find a hiding spot behind the clouds, and the ice cold water didn’t seem quite as inviting.

Later, we walked through town, bought a few modest ingredients and transformed them into a spectacular dinner.  Most of the meals I’ve made at hostels have been fairly uninspired, but this one was totally worth mentioning.  Bacon-wrapped grilled chicken Caesar salad.  Just awesome.

We booked ourselves a Peninsula Valdez tour for the next day.  It was scheduled to leave at 7am, so we had an early evening. In the morning, we boarded a large van and headed East towards Peninsula Valdez.  We stopped at a number of different spots along the peninsula, seeing sea lions, penguins and elephant seals.  It reminded me a bit of the Galapagos, but from a bit farther away.

We returned to town in early evening and realized that it was Super Bowl sunday.  We wandered throughout the town, trying to find a bar showing the game, but we failed in even finding a bar.  Puerto Madryn seems like a nice enough place, but is seriously lacking in places to drink.  We got kicked out of the one place that had the game on TV because you are required to order food there.  Silly.  We ended up back at the hostel, watching the game on a tiny TV in the kitchen, drinking, and trying to explain football to the Argentine guy working the night shift. It seems that without chicken wings, the silly commercials (rebroadcast from ESPN Desportes, we didn’t get any of the US commercials) and a few people who can actually appreciate the game, watching the Super Bowl kind of stinks.

We had plans to head out of Puerto Madryn, and down almost the entire length of Argentina to El Calafate near Glacier National Park in the south.  More on that later…

The following day, we booked a bus down toward Bariloche, the gateway town to Patagonia.  The bus was the longest I’ve ever taken (21 hours), but also one of the most comfortable.  My only complaint was that we got three different Denzel Wash¡ngton movies (who actually is far more tolerable when overdubbed in Spanish).

We arrived to a completely different world from anything I’ve seen over the past (holy crap I can’t believe it’s been) 5 months.  Bariloche looks like it ought to be in Switzerland.  The style of building is even called Patagonian Alpine.  I looked around and saw log cabins, and ski shops, and cable cars up to snow-capped peaks and pristine lakes.  Of course, the other notable difference was the weather.  We stepped off the bus in shorts, t-shirts and flip flops (it was nearly 100 degrees in Mendoza) into a windy, ice-cold rain.  We struggled through town, woefully underdressed and carrying our packs from hostel to hostel until we finally found one, El Gaucho, with some vacancy.

After a hot shower and a change into pants and long sleeves (hadn’t worn any of that since Cuzco – about a month ago) we went exploring the small, charming hamlet.  At least it feels like a small, charming hamlet.  It turns out it’s home to more than 200,000 people and expected to double in size over the next 10 years.  Tourism is huge here, with great hiking, biking, boating in the summer and as a huge ski resort town in the winter.

A gorgeous rainbow appeared over town.  The end of this rainbow, was appropriately enough, an Irish bar called Wilkenny.  We took this as a sign, and decided to claim our Pot o´Gold.  Sadly, rather than a jolly Leprechaun or even his drunker, surlier cousin, the Clurichaun, we were only greeted by monstrously overpriced beer.  I feel completely let down by the Irish.

We continued walking through town, and decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out (Bariloche is, like almost every other Argentine town we’ve seen, said to have the greatest steaks in the country).  We both had Bife de Chorizo, a nice sized piece of steak accompanied by soup and salad.  Delicious, as expected.

That night, we went over to Pudu, a hostel which had been recommended by many to us, but which we were unfortunately unable to book ahead of time. They had a nice bar downstairs, where we met a largish group of people all planning on heading out bowling in town.  The one bowling alley in town is refreshingly old-fashioned.  Not only do you score with pen and paper, but the pins are reset by hand.  Though no one took the bowling too seriously, Robby and I came in last and second to last respectively.  An absolute clinic in nonchalance.

The next day, we looked to take in some of the world-class scenery of the area without spending an arm and a leg.  We hopped on a bus headed west out of town.  At the famous Llao Llao hotel, we got off the bus and walked a few hundred meters to a trailhead.  A few hours later, we had traversed around 15 km of amazingly beautiful forest and lakefront.  The views of the mountains and lakes were astounding.

We returned, cooked up some dinner (budget demands that we cook more often than not from here on in), and tried to figure out our travel plans for the next few weeks a bit more.  Eventually, we decided it best to head east for the town of Puerto Madryn near the wildlife haven of Peninsula Valdez.

Hundreds of musicians, dancers and artisans flood the town (not to mention thousands of spectators) and turn it into a huge circus. The town square is taken over by tons of vendors of every kind, musicians set up on every corner, large crowds form circles around dancers of every age and skill level (including some very amateur dancing by some of us gringos), restaurants bring out extra seating and extend well into the streets, and everyone jacks up their prices by 50%.

We stayed for two nights, enjoying the sights and sounds and staying out until early morning. During the days, we did our best to stay out of the blistering heat. On the third day, we attempted to see the 7 Waterfalls near La Falda, a small town roughly 20 minutes away, but after a bus, a taxi and a park entrance fee, we found that there was no water in the falls these days. We never did find out if this was caused by a drought or if the water was controlled by a dam or if this was just some freak occurrence. Either way, most of us needed to get going further on down our respective paths.

Many of the guys I had been travelling with had far different itineraries than myself, and so, many goodbyes were said. This was a crazy group of good guys who had travelled more or less together for about a month. Fun times indeed.

Robby and myself headed (on yet another long distance night bus – this will be the norm every few days for the rest of my time travelling through Argentina) for Mendoza, the heart of Argentine wine country. Once there, we found a beautiful city with wide, tree-lined streets and plenty of park areas. We took it easy that first day, mostly just leisurely walking around, taking in the surroundings. The big tourist attraction of the city is to tour some of the famous wineries on bicycle. We figured we’d do this the next day. However, when we awoke and decided to head out to the wineries, we found out that all of them are closed on Sundays. Frankly, I was just shocked to know it was Sunday. I’ve lost track of days and dates.

Instead, we had ourselves yet another leisurely day of walking about town, this time, to the large park on the western edge of the city. In the park, we met two local guys and struck up a conversation. They told us that one of Mendoza’s football (soccer) teams, Independencia, was playing that night and that we should go. It sounded as good as any other idea we had for the day, so we went back to the hostel, had a siesta (I’ve never been much of a napper, but the Argentine schedule demands it – dinner at 11PM?!?!), and headed back to the park for the game. The crowd was great, and the home team kicked ass, crushing Italiana de Buenos Aires 4-1.

So, tomorrow, we will once again attempt to ride bicycles and drink wine. I hope we succeed, because, regardless, we leave tomorrow night on an absurdly long night bus to Bariloche, the gateway town of Patagonia.

I walked down two blocks, found some of the others and led them to where the bus was.  Or rather, to where the bus had been.  We were left standing in the dust that our bus had left behind.  I didn’t panic until I realized that all of my worldly possessions were presumably speeding toward Salta, across the border in Argentina.

My other two stranded friends assured me that all would be fine, as we set out down the dusty road in an attempt to hitchhike across the border.  Soon enough, we found that we were actually very close to the Chilean border control, and figured that might be a good spot to try and catch a ride.  As it came into view, I saw a number of buses waiting in line to be processed, including, luckily enough, ours.  We flagged them down, explained ourselves, rushed through processing (ahead of some very understanding and friendly Argentinians and Chileans) and took our seats on the bus.

The rest of the ride went without incident through some breathtaking desert, mountain and forest scenery until we finally pulled into the city of Salta at around 9pm. We found hostel Correcaminos, set our stuff down, cleaned ourselves up a bit and left to eat some delicious Argentine grub (I think I’m going to love this country which is known for both steak and Italian food, two of my absolute favorites).

The next few days, we spent our time escaping the blazing morning heat, exploring the city, grilling tremendous, delicious, cheap steaks, and partying with locals. Two of our friends had met a girl from Salta earlier on their trip, back in Ecuador, and they met back up with her.  She quickly became something of a guide for us, showing us the cool places to go and also recommending that we join her when she headed back to Cordoba, where she is a veterinary student.  She told us about a folk music festival there over the next few days.

So, last night, we bought tickets (the elusive, mysterious full cama ticket – where the seats recline to a nice flat 180 degree bed – we’d heard the legends but none of us had seen it up close) and set off.  The seats did in fact live up to their hype, as we all had a decent night’s sleep as we travelled overnight to the city of Cordoba.

We’ve been walking around Cordoba in the blazing heat, trying to kill time before our trip out to the festival (it’s a bit of a ways outside the town). Though it’s a very nice city, with some decent parks and some nice archictecture, we just spent four days in the city of Salta, and I’m looking forward to getting out to a festival and escaping city life for a day or two.

For centuries, Potosí was the source of most of the silver in Spain, and at one point was one of the largest cities in the world. Eventually, though, the mine was nearly stripped clean of silver, and the town was basically left to die. Now, the mines are still active, but mostly extract less valuable minerals such as tin, lead, antimony and wolfram.

We headed up toward Cerro Rico and stopped at the miner’s market to buy gifts for the workers.  In exchange for things like Coca Leaves, Ceibo (96% alcohol that these guys actually drink… I think we call it ‘rubbing alcohol’), and dynamite (all the miners are independent and have to purchase their own equipment, including explosives), the miners allow tourists to go through their workplace and see the mines.  We got on some protective gear and our hard hats with lamps and headed into the mine.

The Potosí mines have been called ‘the mouth of hell’ and they certainly lived up to the reputation.  Dark, hot, smelly, and dangerous (at times we had to hoist ourselves up ropes and climb old rickety, broken ladders) it was very eye-opening to see the men of the town risk their lives daily for a small piece of the wealth that might be left in Cerro Rico.

And, for an added bonus, after the mine tour, our guide took us to a small abandoned spot and we blew up some dynamite.  A bit childish, maybe, but c’mon, who doesn’t love blowing stuff up?

We got back to the hostel and relaxed for the rest of the day.  In the morning, we got on an Uyuni-bound bus.  We arrived in the afternoon, found a cheap place to stay, and booked a three day tour of the Salt Flats, which would leave us down in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.  That night, we ended up at a very cool bar in town, having a few drinks, chatting with a lot of people, and participating in some open mic fun.

The next day, at around 10:30, we set off in our Toyota 4Runners (in all, there were 7 of us, plus 5 other travellers, so we had to take two cars – I ended up in a car with Ryan and Omar from my group, plus three very cool Argentinian girls).  For the first day, we drove all over the surreal, seemingly endless, bright white salt flats.  My buddies all took a bunch of good pictures which I will steal and post as soon as possible. The next day was a full day of driving through the desert, checking out lagoons full of flamingos and looking at volcanos.  You know, the usual.  On the third day, we woke up early, and headed out into the freezing cold to see some geysers, and then watched the sunrise from the 100-degree waters of a hot spring.  By mid-morning, we were close to the border of Chile, and our group borded a small bus bound for the town of San Pedro de Atacama.

After a miserable, disorganized, slow, but thankfully free (still reeling from the cost of a Bolivian visa) border crossing into Chile, we hit the small desert town of San Pedro.  We immediately noticed the big difference between Bolivia and Chile is the cost.  Prices are closer to what we pay back in the States for food and drink, and we were all used to the cheap cost of travelling in Bolivia.  Despite the cost, we all quickly fell in love with the small town and it’s incredibly friendly residents.  Of course, it’s going to be a short stay, as we purchased tickets bound for Salta, Argentina for Friday morning.