The Home Stretch

Hello from sleepy San Antonio de Areco. We now have less than a week to go, and plan to spend the bulk of it living it up in Buenos Aires. We leave for there - just a short journey of about 2 hours by bus - tomorrow. For now, we are in Gaucho-ville, where the horses and bicycles outnumber the cars, and there´s not much to do but walk around and enjoy the quiet, which we are (it helps that our hotel has cable TV!) while we rest up for Buenos Aires.

Rosario was a nice city with a great waterfront (on the Paraná River.) It also wasn´t incredibly touristy, which was nice for a change. We did a lot of walking around there, saw Che Guevara´s first home (rather anti-climactic) and ate some good and cheap food. All and all, a good side trip.


Next update will probably be from Florida. Ciao.

Two weeks

Can´t believe there´s just two weeks to go before the S. America portion of our trip is finished. We have mixed emotions about it - we´re a little sad, but excited to start the next part of our journey (and of course to see the family.) We are particularly excited to be traveling to Europe in style at the end of April. Our (self-dubbed) "favorite cousin" Andrew, who works for Norwegian Cruise Line, was able to get us a great rate on a 14-day cruise from Miami to Barcelona, for not a lot more than it would cost us to fly! Thanks Andrew!

In the meantime, we have spent a week in Mendoza, which is a very nice city in Argentina´s wine country. When we got here, someone approached us at the bus station offering an apartment in the center, which we took for 50 pesos (US $17) per day. It had a kitchen and balcony, and although it was a bit noisy, we enjoyed our time there - sitting on the balcony and watching the crazy drivers somehow avoid hitting each other. We also explored the local parks, wineries and restaurants.

The 12-hour night bus to Mendoza was not bad at all-we got the front seat on the upper level; it was really comfortable and when we weren´t sleeping we had a pretty cool view of the road in front of us.

Tonight we are taking another night bus (and we got the front seats again) across the country to Rosario, which is a bigger city and the birthplace of Che Guevara. We plan to spend five days there and then head to San Antonio de Areco, which is a gaucho town near Buenos Aires. Then, finally, to the capital for the last five days of the trip. I think I have just enough memory in the camera for the photos from this stage, so I won´t be uploading any until April when we´re back in Florida.

Hasta Pronto

On the road again

Okay, we never made it to the fiesta we stayed an extra day in El Bolson for - we started walking there, and then realized it was about 20 km down a very dusty and somewhat busy dirt road. So, we turned off toward Cascada Escondida (hidden cascades), which turned out to be a very nice hike. It all worked out somehow. (Photo: Matthias picking wild raspberries)
Yesterday, we finally (reluctantly) left our comfortable digs in El Bolson and started heading toward Mendoza. We are now in Neuquen, which is basically a town where everyone changes buses to go somewhere else. Our bus to Mendoza leaves around 7PM tonight and takes 12 hours. Hopefully we´ll be able to get some sleep, and hopefully, Mendoza is as nice as everyone keeps telling us.

R and R - and more photos

More photos are posted on Yahoo photos - see the links to the left of this page.

We have decided to take it easy here in El Bolson, and we found what looks like a nice place for the next few days. We just moved out of the hostel (which was nice, too, but kind of busy) and we are waiting for our "cabaña" to be ready. It´s really more like an efficiency apartment, but it has a kitchen, a counter for eating, TV, private bathroom and a (shared) yard, all for the nifty price of US$17 per night. We decided we could use a little luxury, and Matthias is excited to cook (and I am more than happy to indulge!) There are a number of day hikes that we plan to do, and there is a festival this coming weekend, where we hope to watch some gauchos doing their thing.

Hope all is well back home. Keep in touch!

Back to the Blog

As you may have surmised, I have become quite lazy about updating this blog, as well as lazy about grammar, run-on sentences, spelling, etc. Please bear with me.

We have made it to some beautiful places in Argentina. We took the Patagonian Express train (an interesting experience) across the country to Bariloche in the Lakes District. Bariloche, though extremely touristy, is a beautiful ski/summer resort area. We spent five days there, hiking through the area and enjoying the great views (pictures to come hopefully soon, but I´ve been lazy about uploading them as well.) We also enjoyed some fabulous food...Matthias finally had the Argentinian steak of his dreams: a Bife de Chorizo (strip or sirloin, we think) that was out of this world.

We are now in El Bolson - just as scenic (in a different way) as Bariloche, but "crunchier". It reminds me a little bit of Berkeley, with somewhat of a hippy scene, but for the snow-capped mountains in the background and the fact that everyone smokes. So far we´ve hiked around the area to waterfalls and scenic views. We plan to stay another three days.

Tomorrow we plan to take a break from hiking and post some pictures. Really!