Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Conditions at 9:30pm: 55Fand sunny
My family was on vacation at a beach. We all had long-board rollerskates on that allowed us to glide effortlessly along the water. Each leg stroke took us 50m and there was a lovely evening breeze in my face....then a blue breakfast tray was put in my lap and Galen accidently unreclined my seat instead of his, causing me to go from dreaming to sitting upright holding breakfast in about 2 seconds...and thus another amazing night of sleep on the bus concluded. This bus trip was even better that the last since a group of old guys were having a party and got everyone on the bottom level of the bus wine with dinner and champagne during the movies.
Back in Buenos Aires we had 3 hours to buy food for the trek and drop off our Mendoza clothes and repack for Patagonia. After a lot of deliberation we decided not to take the stove and associated cookware to save weight and allow us to cover more distance comfortably. Two of the nights we¨ll be camped near ¨refugios¨which will have hot water and little stores where we can get dinner and the rest we have packed. Sample food for the day:
· Granola with powdered milk
· trail mix snack
· tuna and crackers and dried fruit
· cliff bar
· sausage and crackers
···I know what you are thinking...how can I eat fantastic meals like that at home¿ Its easy! just adopt me and allow me to live on your couch and steal your wireless internet and I can make these culinary delights in your own kitchen! Please send me your orders for this exclusive and unbeatable offer by next Friday (when I am done with my Patagonian hike) so I can be sure of a home. I figure if I start buying trail mix full time I may no longer be able to work at my usual job.
So anyhoo...took a plane down to El Calafate, which is sort of like a mid-west ski resort town but instead is at the bottom of the American continent and is a gateway to a number of Patagonian national parks. It is almost 10pm and the sun is going down. Tomorrow we´´ll cross the border into Chile on a bus to Puerto Natales from which we´ll be able to get into Torres del Paine (the national park we´ll be hiking in). The buses between these cities run once a day, so it has taken some careful planning yesterday and today, but we´´re having an awesome time and rolling with the small surprises as they come up.
From El Calfate we can only see the tips of the snow-capped mountains but soon we¨ll be in the middle of them. Can´t wait!
Reason #17 why I heart Argentinians: they form perfect queue everywhere!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_area#Queue_Ethics
Back in Buenos Aires we had 3 hours to buy food for the trek and drop off our Mendoza clothes and repack for Patagonia. After a lot of deliberation we decided not to take the stove and associated cookware to save weight and allow us to cover more distance comfortably. Two of the nights we¨ll be camped near ¨refugios¨which will have hot water and little stores where we can get dinner and the rest we have packed. Sample food for the day:
· Granola with powdered milk
· trail mix snack
· tuna and crackers and dried fruit
· cliff bar
· sausage and crackers
···I know what you are thinking...how can I eat fantastic meals like that at home¿ Its easy! just adopt me and allow me to live on your couch and steal your wireless internet and I can make these culinary delights in your own kitchen! Please send me your orders for this exclusive and unbeatable offer by next Friday (when I am done with my Patagonian hike) so I can be sure of a home. I figure if I start buying trail mix full time I may no longer be able to work at my usual job.
So anyhoo...took a plane down to El Calafate, which is sort of like a mid-west ski resort town but instead is at the bottom of the American continent and is a gateway to a number of Patagonian national parks. It is almost 10pm and the sun is going down. Tomorrow we´´ll cross the border into Chile on a bus to Puerto Natales from which we´ll be able to get into Torres del Paine (the national park we´ll be hiking in). The buses between these cities run once a day, so it has taken some careful planning yesterday and today, but we´´re having an awesome time and rolling with the small surprises as they come up.
From El Calfate we can only see the tips of the snow-capped mountains but soon we¨ll be in the middle of them. Can´t wait!
Reason #17 why I heart Argentinians: they form perfect queue everywhere!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_area#Queue_Ethics
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Bus Bingo
The overnight sleeper bus infrastructure in Argentina is a world unto itself. This tremendous fleet of double-decker buses run by dozens of companies make traversing the country convenient, comfortable and...fun...enter bus Bingo.
We left Buenos Aires on Tuesday night on a 10h ride west to Mendoza. The ride began with the handing out of bingo cards (for which I needed Lonley Planets numbers quick-guide for the harder ones), followed by the hopnoring of the winners (I think the winner received fruit, but my Spanish is non existant so I may have misunderstood), then we watched the wedding crashers with Spanish subtitles and ate a strange collection of culinary manipulations of meat and potatoes and then reclined the seats into flat beds and watched the stars of the Southern hemisphere. I am not a ´star expert´but I didn´t see any dippers or belts!
In the morning I was awakened by the bus attendant handing me my breakfast try. I pressed the botton to bring my chair upright which catapulted my pillow into the back of the seat in front of me...I was exceedingly amused and felt that set a good tone for the day. After wandering around the center of Mendoza with a mini-backpacks, we found a Spanish-style hotel with a little courtyard with a tiled fountain and goldfish. Then we figured out how to take the local bus from Mendoza to Maipu where we rented bikes and biked about 2mi to a winery for lunch. We parked the bikes and got glasses of wine while our steak sandwiches were grilled 10ft away. Did I mention the weather was perfect? - bright blue skies with the occasional puffy white cloud, 80 deg and low humidity. We continued biking and visiting wineries for another 5 hours and then utterly satisfied made our way back to Mendoza.
After cleaning up we went out for a truely fantastic dinner and then wandered over to the central park where a crowd of several hundred were watching two young, male clowns. Then I was tired and wanted to minimize further blistering before getting to Patagonia, so we headed back to the hotel.
···············Night of rock solid sleep :) ··································
Woke up at 7am for breakfast rolls, jam and tea sitting in the shade of the Spanish-tiled patio with brilliant blue skies above. We waited at the hotel until we were picked up by our guides for paragliding (hehe!)
We drove about 20min and joined 4 other ´´paragliders to be´´ and 6 ´´actual paragliders´´. Then we all piled into a big truck and went up steep, gravely roads, coming hilariously close to the drop offs but nevertheless made it to the top of the hill. I buddied up with a guy who had clearly just eaten chips and a coke for breakfast and when he asked me if this was my first time, he responed ¨me too¨...then we strapped, got some wind in the sail, and ran off the edge (...running off the edge was by far my favorite part!)
We played on the updrafts along the steeps hills for a while before gliding into the valley and doing some sharp cork-skrew dives that left me feeling the tiniest bit queezy. I also enjoed landing for which the instructions are just to run.
This afternoon´s plans include finding gelato and hanging out in the main park and reading.
(I will fill in these blogs with appropriate pictures when I get home :)
Much love to you all. Love, travel cat
We left Buenos Aires on Tuesday night on a 10h ride west to Mendoza. The ride began with the handing out of bingo cards (for which I needed Lonley Planets numbers quick-guide for the harder ones), followed by the hopnoring of the winners (I think the winner received fruit, but my Spanish is non existant so I may have misunderstood), then we watched the wedding crashers with Spanish subtitles and ate a strange collection of culinary manipulations of meat and potatoes and then reclined the seats into flat beds and watched the stars of the Southern hemisphere. I am not a ´star expert´but I didn´t see any dippers or belts!
In the morning I was awakened by the bus attendant handing me my breakfast try. I pressed the botton to bring my chair upright which catapulted my pillow into the back of the seat in front of me...I was exceedingly amused and felt that set a good tone for the day. After wandering around the center of Mendoza with a mini-backpacks, we found a Spanish-style hotel with a little courtyard with a tiled fountain and goldfish. Then we figured out how to take the local bus from Mendoza to Maipu where we rented bikes and biked about 2mi to a winery for lunch. We parked the bikes and got glasses of wine while our steak sandwiches were grilled 10ft away. Did I mention the weather was perfect? - bright blue skies with the occasional puffy white cloud, 80 deg and low humidity. We continued biking and visiting wineries for another 5 hours and then utterly satisfied made our way back to Mendoza.
After cleaning up we went out for a truely fantastic dinner and then wandered over to the central park where a crowd of several hundred were watching two young, male clowns. Then I was tired and wanted to minimize further blistering before getting to Patagonia, so we headed back to the hotel.
···············Night of rock solid sleep :) ··································
Woke up at 7am for breakfast rolls, jam and tea sitting in the shade of the Spanish-tiled patio with brilliant blue skies above. We waited at the hotel until we were picked up by our guides for paragliding (hehe!)
We drove about 20min and joined 4 other ´´paragliders to be´´ and 6 ´´actual paragliders´´. Then we all piled into a big truck and went up steep, gravely roads, coming hilariously close to the drop offs but nevertheless made it to the top of the hill. I buddied up with a guy who had clearly just eaten chips and a coke for breakfast and when he asked me if this was my first time, he responed ¨me too¨...then we strapped, got some wind in the sail, and ran off the edge (...running off the edge was by far my favorite part!)
We played on the updrafts along the steeps hills for a while before gliding into the valley and doing some sharp cork-skrew dives that left me feeling the tiniest bit queezy. I also enjoed landing for which the instructions are just to run.
This afternoon´s plans include finding gelato and hanging out in the main park and reading.
(I will fill in these blogs with appropriate pictures when I get home :)
Much love to you all. Love, travel cat
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Cat in Buenos Aires
Ten days ago I didn´t know i would be taking a trip in early February...and yesterday at noon I landed in Buenos Aires.
By 2pm I was swimming in a rooftop pool, unwinding from the surprisingly painless overnight flight from JFK. (It may have helped that I was up until 4am the night before for the housewarming party my roommates and I threw on Sat night)
I can thank the 5 months of visits to the Panamanian Sheraton for ¨free¨rooms and the words: ¨¨you have been upgraded to the club level¨which will provide comfortable book-ends to the hostels and camping we have planned for most of the trip.
Tonight Galen (the first friend to respond to my facebook post asking for a travel partner on 7 days notice) and I will take the overnight sleeper bus to Medoza, for which I have high expectations. The seats recline to 140deg and they will serve dinner and breakfast. The plan for Medoza is to stay in a hostel and go around to visit wineries (possibly by bike)....although, I also want to look into windsurfing options, which was mentioned in the guidebook, despite the fact that Mendoza is in a desert near the border with Chile in the northern half of the country.
Yesterday afternoon we drank matte tea and wandered around the city feeling very at home and enjoying the many parks and fantastic cafes. Today we´ll go to the modern art museum during the hottest part of the day and then visit a few more parks and the giant (apparently spectacular) cemetary where Evita is buried. (FYI: Eva died at the age of 33 of cancer after being married to President Peron and making huge progress on social efforts in Argentina on behalf of women, the poor and the elderly).
Love you all and will post again soon!
By 2pm I was swimming in a rooftop pool, unwinding from the surprisingly painless overnight flight from JFK. (It may have helped that I was up until 4am the night before for the housewarming party my roommates and I threw on Sat night)
I can thank the 5 months of visits to the Panamanian Sheraton for ¨free¨rooms and the words: ¨¨you have been upgraded to the club level¨which will provide comfortable book-ends to the hostels and camping we have planned for most of the trip.
Tonight Galen (the first friend to respond to my facebook post asking for a travel partner on 7 days notice) and I will take the overnight sleeper bus to Medoza, for which I have high expectations. The seats recline to 140deg and they will serve dinner and breakfast. The plan for Medoza is to stay in a hostel and go around to visit wineries (possibly by bike)....although, I also want to look into windsurfing options, which was mentioned in the guidebook, despite the fact that Mendoza is in a desert near the border with Chile in the northern half of the country.
Yesterday afternoon we drank matte tea and wandered around the city feeling very at home and enjoying the many parks and fantastic cafes. Today we´ll go to the modern art museum during the hottest part of the day and then visit a few more parks and the giant (apparently spectacular) cemetary where Evita is buried. (FYI: Eva died at the age of 33 of cancer after being married to President Peron and making huge progress on social efforts in Argentina on behalf of women, the poor and the elderly).
Love you all and will post again soon!
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