We wake today and suddenly John suggests that we try and get on the flight tonight to Toronto. Dee and Mark are heading home this evening and we have done pretty much everything that we have wanted to do in Argentina and Buenos Aires so……we decide to pack up, organize the rental office to come by and return our damage deposit and get some tickets re-booked. Dee, Mark and I have some last minute shopping to do and John heads down to Plaza San Martin to the Air Canada office to see if we can get on tonight’s plane. I think we are feeling a little restless; trying to fill in time while we wait for the end of our trip; Utz also weighing on our minds.

The day is glorious summer, shorts and t-shirts. We stick to Av. Santa Fe for the shopping and pick up some shoes and end up at a specialty shop where Mark buys all of next summers wardrobe, all for a mere $150.00 US. They are being picked up for the airport around 4 pm and we will follow a couple of hours later. The process of packing and moving on as easily as we do still amazes me.


But this time we are heading home.

Today starts with a visit to the home stadium of the Boca Juniors, one of Buenos Aires’ 2 futbal teams. Our taxi driver is clearly a soccer fan, and by the time we arrive he is so excited about our visit that he somehow gets us into the stadium for half the normal price by talking to a friend who works there. There will be an amateur game later today, but right now it is the social club that is on the field in this intimate stadium. We watch, along with the rest of the crowd, as the players, who range in age from 3 to 50, enjoy themselves on the field. The sky is cloudless and the day hot, and after half an hour or so, we escape to explore La Boca itself.


Estadio Boca Juniors

La Boca is the old port area of Buenos Aires, and the immediate living area of the millions of European immigrants who flooded the city. Even today, 100 years after the harbour moved away, the area still wears its scars proudly, and the guidebooks suggest that this is one of the few areas of Buenos Aires that is best avoided after dark. Over 80 years ago it was declared a heritage area, and its tin shacks were preserved, painted bright colours and turned into artists studios.


Street tango in La Boca



La Boca

A cab ride away we find San Telmo, home to the Sunday market. Once filled with luxurious mansions, its wealthy citizens fled during a yellow fever epidemic, and the mansions became rooming houses overnight. We spend some time exploring the market, and then find a place for lunch.

Walking down the street, Greg spots a dancer, waiting to be hired to dance on the street. She catches him in the act of taking her photo, and is not impressed - unless of course he pays for the privilege.



Dee and Mark grab 1 cab and head out for an afternoon at Recoleta Cemetary and some museum going, and Greg and I head home for naps. How we will miss our afternoon naps once we are back in Canada. We meet back at the apartment just before 8, and are joined by Robert and Robert, who have flown in from Vancouver and arrived this morning for an Argentine vacation. We have a glass of wine, and then head off to a restaurant that Dee’s mom found written up in the New York Times, Bar Uriarte, in Palermo Viejo.

We find a very hot restaurant, beautifully decorated and full of Buenos Aires’ beautiful people in the middle of what seems to be a totally residential area. We have a wonderful meal, enjoying lots of conversation and the atmosphere, getting caught up with Robert and Robert, and sharing their first, and Mark and Dee’s last, Argentinean evening.

Everyone enjoys a sleep in today but the warm, sunny weather is too enticing for us to remain indoors for too long. Today will be a tourist day with Deirdre and Mark, and we have left plenty of time for shopping. Utz is in the forefront of our thoughts but we try not to let him overwhelm our emotions on our last 4 or 5 days in Buenos Aires.

We are feeling that our time has come to an end in both Argentina and around the world. We are looking forward to boarding a plane for the last time and schlepping our luggage up and down for the last time. But it is Saturday morning in Buenos Aires and everyone is out. We don’t want to be left behind in the beautiful 30 degree weather.

The four of us head down to the Casa Rosada via Plaza Congresso and take in the Cathedral. We stop for lunch at the famous but touristy Café Tortoni, it’s literary past rivalling that of New York’s Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel. We eat amongst the once grand but now somewhat dingy atmosphere and talk about our options concerning Utz. Having discussed our choices over coffee con leche, and communicated them back to Sarah in Peterborough, we continue our stroll down Av. de Mayo. It is mid-siesta as we wander onto the western end of Ave. Florida but soon all the stores are opening up for the afternoon business. We end up in the Galleries Pacifico and spend some time shopping in the more upscale stores, trying on leather and shoes, Dee and Mark thinking about Christmas and Hanukah gifts for friends and family back home.


From left: 2 views of the Argentine Congress; some of the domes that give the area near the Congress its name

Our walk takes us into the Plaza St. Martin and the leather store Casa Lopez where we all buy leather from the aggressive, but sweet salesladies. They look like they have been on the “floor” peddling leather to tourists for many years. We all walk out with something and stroll back up Av. Santa Fe in the late afternoon warmth, the sun directly in our eyes.

We are planning a special dinner out tonight for our last Saturday night in Buenos Aires and in fact Argentina. This will also be our last Saturday night out around the world, our followsummer trek soon to be over. Dee and Mark are dressed in their summer finery and at our apartment for a glass of wine at 8:00. We pull whatever we can from the followsummer suitcases and iron a shirt and head for an early 9:00 reservation at our favourite Buenos Aires restaurant, Cabaña Las Lilas. Our table is on the patio with a lovely view of the bustling harbour, and we enjoy a bottle of Argentinean wine with each course. The service and the food are as always, impeccable. John and I have already marvelled at cost vs. value at Cabaña Las Lilas, and now it is Deirdre and Mark’s turn as the bill arrives and they gaze, astonished, at the incredibly reasonable price of this wonderful meal. It is an early evening for us tonight; our late night flight last night has caught up with us, and we know that we will have a late night tomorrow night, as our friends Robert and Robert arrive from Vancouver early tomorrow morning and we plan to meet them for dinner tomorrow evening.

Despite my love of animals, I have turned down the opportunity to see the Commersons dolphins and the penguin colony, and am going scuba diving today. This will be my last opportunity for quite some time, and I am excited at the thought of feeling the cool water and the sensation of hovering 1 more time.

I get to the dive shop to find that there is 1 other diver going out today. This is good news, because it means we will dive the only wreck in the area, a fishing boat that was sunk 5 years ago to create a reef.

On the way out I feel my apprehension growing - the waves are higher than they look from shore, we are in a tiny boat, the equipment is unfamiliar. I force myself to stay calm, and we backflip in. I tighten my mask, and the strap breaks! Forget calm - all I want is out of the water. But - this is my last dive of followsummer, and so I breathe deeply, get a new mask, and down into the water we go. (I learn afterwards that the guy I was diving with, a much more experienced diver than I, was ready to get out of the water when my mask broke, and would have if I had. I’m glad for both our sakes that I didn’t).

The water feels good. For cold water, the visibility is quite good. We descend to the boat, about 25 metres down. Although a new wreck, it is alive, surrounded by salmon, beautiful fish with thick lips. I am quite surprised at how wonderful they look, and how friendly they are, swimming right up to us and staring us in the face.

Our second dive is very different, over a shallow kelp bed, about 10 metres deep. My buddy and I go in alone, the first time either of us have dived without a dive master. We spend the longest time swimming and looking at what there is to see. After almost 1 hour down there, we come up, and only because we are both so cold. I have almost 100 bar left in my tank, and can’t believe how long my air lasted at such a shallow depth.

I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the deck of a restaurant right on the beach, basking in the sun, working on our journal, and thinking about the changes ahead: the return to Canada, the search for jobs and a place to live. Where I was feeling ready to come home a couple of weeks ago, today I am wistful, and want to stay on the road forever. This year has been so amazing! It has been such a wonderful opportunity to explore different places and meet different people, and to have the luxury of spending extended periods in these places, really getting to understand their cultures. I have loved it (or at least most of it), and feel quite sad that reality is going to quickly intrude on this strange interlude.

We are called for 8:00 today but we all know that this really means 8:15. It is our last day in Puerto Madryn and I skip the meagre breakfast of toast and medialunas and more bread and more toast. Dee, Mark and I board the bus for our trip to Punto Tumbo and the penguin colony. It is going to be another long, 400 kilometre, day today, and we also have an early morning stop to do some much-anticipated dolphin watching.

John is diving today and I personally think that he will be missing one of the highlights of the Puerto Madryn trip with his favourites, the dolphins and the penguins. Oh well, he will have to live vicariously through us!

The tour bus is filled with familiar faces from yesterday’s tour this morning: the four Americans from Illinois, the Hungarian woman and the Birmingham/German woman, who are both travelling alone. We are joined by a Spanish couple and 3 guys from the Pays Basque. Of course, Jorge is guiding us again today.

The land is flat and desolate; nothing pierces the horizon for as far as the eye can see. It is a clear, intense day, the sun shining down from the blue cloudless sky. Time for the sunscreen again.

We arrive at the port, board the zodiac, and head out into the open waters to try and glimpse the Commersons dolphins, a distinct genus with a habitat that ranges from Puerto Madryn south to Tierra del Fuego. They dress us in orange ponchos and lifejackets, not leaving much room for movement. I opt not to bring the camera because of the spray and this proves to be for the best. As Dee says, “we will just have to rely on our memories of the dolphins.” The ride out is wild and even if we don’t see any dolphins, I will have enjoyed the bumpy, rollercoaster ride nonetheless.

We zoom back and forth across the waves and watch patiently for the black and white backs of the dolphins. There are some disappointed looks on many of the passengers’ faces as they scan the cresting waves. All of a sudden someone points across the zodiac and we briefly see the skimming backs of two Commersons dolphins, breaking through the waves. Soon there are more, swimming under the boat and cresting the waves around us. Those who dared to bring their cameras are shooting madly, just missing the fast diving dolphins; their pictures are full of sea foam and cresting waves. We spend a good 50 minutes out in the surf, chasing back and forth.

We motor back into port and say hello to a small colony of sea lions that has taken up residence in the harbour, living off the tossed-off remnants of the fishing fleet that makes its home here. The fleet looks fairly dilapidated, their rusting hulls burning in the mid-morning sun.

We continue our drive south to Punto Tumbo. The vistas continue completely desolate: a typical Patagonian landscape. We arrive at the penguin colony and grab some lunch at the snack bar. There isn’t much choice at the Mom and Pop shop but we make do and then head out into the colony. Jorge has given us some guidelines about the colony and I am overwhelmed at how close we actually are to the penguins and their new families. There are over 250,000 couples in the colony and almost all have 2 or 3 new chicks. We are able to walk amongst them and peer into their nests and see the newborns. Occasionally the penguins will cross our path as we cautiously move around their nests. They stop and crane their necks at us, trying to figure us out.


Welcome!

I stop on several occasions and crouch and crane my neck back at them. They seem truly intelligent and able to communicate in this way. At one point I am watching a penguin family and snapping photos when one of the family members comes right up to me and checks me out for over ten minutes. Dee arrives and takes a few photos of me with my new friend.


Head shots


The chicks


Families of Penquins

We spend about 2 hours in the colony and are amazed at the number of penguins that live here and the wonderful views that they have. They have the best real estate on the entire Atlantic coast.


What Real Estate!


The penguins share their landscape with other wild animals

The drive back is typical Argentina: rough gravel roads that bump and jolt you the whole time. Our driver today is somewhat kamikaze. He finds every hole and rut in the road and proceeds over it. So much so that we discover one of the tires has a flat and we have an unscheduled 45 minute stop in Trelew to fix it. Our transport to the airport is scheduled at 7:30 and we arrive back at the hotel at 7:15 only to turn around and retrace our same 45 minute drive back to Trelew to the airport where our flight to Buenos Aires originates. The sun is setting across the vast plain of Patagonia and we realize, more than ever, that our big trip is coming to an end.


Bye bye!

We arrive home to an email from Sarah, Utz and Sophia’s wonderful step-mom for the last year. Utz is not well. He has lost mobility in his hind legs and isn’t eating. He is dragging himself around and cannot make the litter box at this point. We are heartbroken. It seems that things are crashing down around us during the final lap of our trip. First the spammers on the website, then I caught a terrible cold and sore throat, and now Utz.

I am so excited about today’s trip I wake early. We are off to see the southern right whales.

But first, we have a 100 kilometre drive onto Pensínsula Valdés from Puerto Madryn, some of it on paved road, but much of it not.

The southern right whale is so-called because it was the most useful whale in the days when blubber was both fuel and food and when whalebones were used in women’s corsets. And so the sailors would call out “that’s the right whale” when one was spotted. They were hunted almost to the point of extinction, and when I was a boy most people thought there were too few still alive for them to make a comeback. But come back they have, and Jorge, our guide today, tells me later that the most recent census has shown that there are over 7,000 of these wonderful beings alive today (the scientists who carried out the census expected the number to be about 3,500), and that the population is growing by about 7% annually.

These whales live solitary lives, moving through the southern oceans, but they return annually to Pensínsula Valdés to mate, in September and October. They then move out to see, and the expectant mothers come in, 1 year later, to calve. They stay in these protected bays until late November or early December, when mother and calf head out to sea as well. The mothers calve once every 4 or 5 years.

We learned yesterday that although many of the mothers and calves have begun their annual odyssey into the oceans, there are still enough in the bay that we are quite likely to see them today. And so our hopes are high.

We see so many whales that I am enthralled. At first we see some spouts in the distance, but soon there are whales much closer. We see them glide alongside the boat, then dive and lift their tails and their fins, almost as if saying hello.




My friends, the whales

One little guy seems as interested in us as we are in him, and he comes right up to the boat, lifting his snout out of the water. It feels like he is watching us watching him.


More Friends

But all good things must end, and so goes today. We go back into shore, and head off to the Atlantic coast of the peninsula, to the elephant seal colony. Elephant seals breed here, and give birth to their young here, but as with the southern right whales, they mainly spend their lives living alone far at sea. They return here twice annually, however, once to breed and once to moult. The moulting takes place at different times of the year, depending on the seal’s age. Right now, the seals on land are independent but immature, and so we will not see any with a trunk, which only the males develop, and only upon reaching maturity.



There is lunch at the elephant seal stop. We are all so relieved that along with the asado there is a huge salad bar, and we pretend to be vegetarians. That of course does not stop us from having a lovely bottle of Argentinean malbec with our lunch.

From the elephant seal colony we head off to a small colony of Magellan penguins, the same breed that Greg and I saw in Ushuaia. We are much closer to them this time, as they have made nests for themselves within metres of the parking lot.



We start the 200 kilometre drive back to Puerto Madryn. Along the way, from our occasional napping, we see lots of wildlife. It is a truly glorious day!


From left: burrowing owl; Patagonian hare (but really a cavy)


From left; male rhea; male rheas raise the family


From left: meadowlark; guanaco (llama)

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Yet again, 4:30 comes way too early this morning, but somehow we all manage to rendezvous at 5:15 at Dee and Mark’s hotel to grab taxis to the airport. We are there by 5:25, in good time for our 6:20 flight, or so we think. The airport is chaotic this morning – the 20 minute difference between our 5:05 arrival to check in for our flight to Salta and this morning is the difference between night and day – both literally and figuratively, as the sun wasn’t up that morning, and it sure is today.

We arrive in Trelew 100 minutes after takeoff, to find a bleak and desolate landscape, the Atlantic side of the steppe that begins over at Bariloche. Flatter than southwestern Ontario, there is nothing to see in any direction for the 70 kilometre drive to Puerto Madryn except desert scrub. Greg says to me that he saw only 1 bird in the entire drive. But we are not here for the landlife, we are here for the sealife. Península Valdés marks the meeting point of two ocean currents, and as happens when these current meet, there is a huge amount of food that is brought close to the surface. And so there is abundant sealife here: southern right whales, orcas, dolphins, Magellan penguins, sea lions, and elephant seals.

As has now become routine, after we arrive and get settled at our hotel, we head to a travel agency to book our excursions. Our plans made, we find a place for some lunch.

This afternoon, Mark and Dee head off to see the sea lions, not far outside of town, on 1 of the 2 large bays that separate Pensínsula Valdés from the mainland. Greg and I, having walked within metres of them back in Australia, vote for the couches and extended naps.

Happy birthday to Adèle Malo!

As many of you have observed, we recently became the victims of a comment spammer. Over the last 4 days, around 1,300 comments were generated on our site, and as every comment posted to our site also sends Greg and me an email, we had received the same number of emails. Over the last few days Mark and I have tried a couple of things to try and stop this plague, without success. Yesterday, we heard from Ryan at Artifex, who created the website for us. Ryan implemented a couple of changes last night, blacklisted the comment spammer, and deleted all 1,300 comments. We wake this morning to find no new comments, and celebrate victory against the comment spammer.

Thank you both, Ryan and Mark, for your help!

Today is a travel day, and just as our flight to Bariloche was unusually civilized in its departure hour, so is our return to Buenos Aires. We spend the morning lazily sleeping in, then walk around Bariloche while Dee and Mark start their Christmas shopping.

The flight home is easy, and we are back at the apartment shortly after 6. Summer has arrived in Buenos Aires while we were in Bariloche, and it is 28 degrees and starting to be humid.

Dee and Mark call from their hotel, ½ block away, at about 8 and come over to the apartment. We watch “There’s Something About Mary” on the TV, in English with Spanish subtitles, before we head to Babieca for a light supper and then home to bed, early by Buenos Aires standards, for tomorrow we fly again, and this time we have to be at the airport by 5:20 a.m.

Happy birthday to Lois Mountain, John’s mom!

Today’s excursion is a boat trip on Lago Nahuel Huapi to Puerto Blest, on a bay that goes west, deep into the Andes. The ride out is beautiful, the day perfectly clear and already beginning to warm up as we board the catamaran.

As we pull into the bay from the open lake, the cat slows down and a voice announces that we are passing by an island where Sr. Moreno is buried. Sr. Moreno was a major explorer of Patagonia, and the largest glacier in El Calafate is named for him. He mapped the continental divide, the border between Chile and Argentina, and in thanks, Argentina made him a present of a huge tract of land in the Lake District. He in turn donated this land back to the government, on condition that it be kept pristine forever, and so Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi was created. Sr. Moreno and his wife are both buried on this island, and in his honour the boat whistle is blown 3 times, after which the Argentineans all clap.


Lago Nahuel Huapi

We are told that this is the rainiest part of Argentina, with over 300 days of rain annually. It is beautiful today, the sun shining, a perfect day for lazily watching the vistas drift by for an hour or so.

At Puerto Blest, we dock, then take a bus 3 kilometres to another catamaran, on Lago Frías a much small lake and thus a much shorter journey. This lake is glacial, and the copper suspended in its water gives it a beautiful emerald colour. As we sail along, we have a perfect view of Monte Tronador, the highest peak in the Lake District, and a view that few travelers get because it is almost always hidden by clouds.


From left: Lago Frías ; Monte Tronador

Back at Puerto Blest, we have our option of a 4 kilometre hike or the catamaran to the place on the other side of the Lago Nahuel Huapi where the catamaran will depart to go back to Bariloche. Once there, there is a 1 kilometre walk up the mountain to a lake and cataract. We opt for the hike, and enjoy the walk through the beautiful Andean jungle on this absolutely perfect day.

Along the route

Huffing and puffing up the mountain, we arrive at the end of the road, a tranquil mountain lake. Peaceful beyond belief! Then, having bypassed the cataract on the way up, we stop to view it on the way down, running into all the tourists who came over on the catamaran, who are stopping to view on their way up.


Mountain lake and cataract

For dinner tonight, we head back to the Swiss restaurant where we ate a couple of nights ago, and indulge again in smoked salmon and this time also in the smoked trout, which was caught right in Lago Nahuel Huapi. We have green salads with our smoked fish, and although the waiter doesn’t understand why we don’t want a main course, we feel decidedly virtuous (for the 1st time in a long time) for eating in a decidedly non-Argentinean style.

Hernán picks us up at 8:00 for this morning’s tour. Whereas yesterday we headed west, towards the Andes, today we head east and north. Hernán explains that Bariloche is a transition zone between jungle and steppe, and sure enough, within minutes of leaving town, we are into an area that is a dusty and treeless desert. The landscape, which constitutes almost all of those parts of Patagonia that aren’t in the Andes, and continues east to the Atlantic, hundreds of kilometres away, is a dramatic change from yesterday’s lush rainforest.


Where the Andes end, the steppe begins

We pass the Anfiteatro, a huge natural amphitheatre at a bend in the river, and then continue on into the Valle Encantado, which as the name implies is truly enchanting. The natives fear the valley because of its many odd rock formations. We see the finger of god pointing heavenward, and the many other things that our imaginations allow us to make out.

We turn west onto the road that will take us up to Lago Traful, and drive back into the mountains and the rain forest. Hernán tells us at this point that we are driving by an “estancia”, ranch in English, owned by Ted Turner. It is so big that it seems to take forever to drive past the end.


Lago Traful

The drive takes us through a beautiful lake-filled valley and past lovely campgrounds, many of which are not yet open for the season. We stop for coffee and chocolate in the small village of Villa (pronounced in Argentinean Spanish as “vijha”) Traful, right on the lake, and walk around the gravel roads of its alpine downtown with a couple of playful puppies who befriend us, happy to add us to their pack. They even want to visit the tiny local church with us, and from the way the dust is marked on its floor, it looks like they are indeed regular churchgoers.


The church in Villa Traful

We continue our drive, stopping here and there for sights before we drive into Villa La Angostura, near the north end of Lago Nahuel Huapi. We have lunch here, and order asado, the Argentinean barbeque where entire lambs and goats and huge cuts of beef are roasted over the open flame. They bring us enough food to feed an army, and keep trying to bring us more.


Dee, Mark and Asado

Villa La Angostura is where Argentina’s rich and famous build their summer/weekend places. After lunch, Hernán takes us on a tour of some of the residential areas. We pass the “chateau” where Isabel Peron whiled away her time after the Generals took over and before they sent her packing to Spain. Quite a nice place to spend six months, even if you are under arrest.

On the drive home we pass a wild boar and her baby, walking happily down the road. We wish they would hurry up and get off the road, as wild boar is a delicacy on every restaurant menu around Bariloche. Like the beaver, wild boar is another non-native species; unlike the beaver, the government doesn’t have to pay anyone to kill them.


Wild boar mom and baby

We have allowed ourselves the luxury of booking an individual van and driver/guide named Hernán for the next two days of touring in Bariloche. He picks us up at 9:00 for our Circuito Chico tour. This personal touch pays off immediately as we learn more today about the beautiful countryside of Bariloche than we did in our entire time of Spanish narrative by Cesar in Ushuaia. We are so happy to be on our own schedule and not to be herded on and off a big tour bus.

Our first stop is a somewhat touristy chairlift that takes us to the summit of one of the local hills, but despite being touristy we are rewarded for the ride. We have incredible vistas of the entire valley including Victoria Island, Monte Tronador and the entire Lago Nahuel Huapi.


What a view!


Happy Travellers

All along our drive today and tomorrow we are greeted with beautiful spring flowers: lupins are showing their purple and pink spiky heads, white and purple lilac bushes swaying in the wind. The most audacious and beautiful of all are the retama bushes that line the road of our tour, their riotous yellow flowers sometimes too bright to look at in the reflected sun. We stop at the famous Hotel Llao Llao and pass through the Colonia Suiza, the place where the Swiss settled when they immigrated to Argentina over 150 years ago. Bariloche is known for its chocolate, and the Swiss influence is obvious.


From Left: Hotel Llao Llao; one of it’s views; beautiful retama bushes

Hernán pops a cassette tape into the player and tells us that the band is a local Andean band and that this is their new “release”. He has just received it from one of the band members. We are surprised when we discover that the tape is called “Andean Beatles” and it covers many familiar tunes in that breathy Andean pan-pipe way. We are heading up to the famous ski hills of the Cerro Catedral, perhaps the most important and prominent range in South America. The Andean Beatles serenade our drive up and into the base.

Hernán’s plan is to take us to the summit, first by enclosed gondola to about 7/8 of the way up, and the remaining ascent by open chairlift, gliding over the last of the snow, dusty and brown at its edges. Incredibly, there is no wind at the top and we hike a bit to the summit and enjoy the incredible views in every direction. Three guys from Israel are continuing on, hiking the jagged, scree-covered trails to the overnight lodge, another two to three hours further along. We take lots of pictures and have an impromptu snowball fight (or at least I throw a couple at the unsuspecting crowd).


The view from the top


From left: Up, up, up!; Hernán, Deirdre and Mark; Greg, Deirdre, Mark and John

We head back down and have lunch in one of the restaurants at the base Hernán has suggested, and have a bottle of wine to warm our cold and rosy cheeks.

Hernán now drives us into the Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi and we do a short hike to one of the many cascades that are in the area. We are in the rainforest and the bamboo is prolific in this area.

The yellow retama bushes guide us home, still bright and outrageous in the late afternoon sun. We have been treated royally today and Deirdre pronounces herself “la reina por una dios”; but “this is no different from any other day”, states Mark. We are really looking forward to tomorrow’s Circuito Grande tour.

Our web site continues to be “spammed” and Mark and John spend some time trying to block the many gambling and free-money links being added to the comments section. We are just waiting for the cheap Viagra and University degree spam to start rolling in. I am fighting a sore throat and cold, and opt for some room-service soup in bed and a bad Ashley Judd movie on TV. John, Deirdre and Mark head out for a wonderful smoked salmon dinner at a very popular Swiss family-run restaurant, and they find me fast asleep and snoring when they return, just after midnight.

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In true Buenos Aires fashion, our “welcome to Buenos Aires” revelries last night continued into the wee hours, and we are dragging as we head to the airport for our flight to Bariloche. The flight itself is quiet and gives us the opportunity to nap. Strangely enough, despite the reasonable hour of this flight, it is the only domestic flight we’ve been on in Argentina that hasn’t been completely full.

We arrive in Bariloche to find a true ski town, perched on the side of Lago Nahuel Huapi. This region is called the Lake District, and Lago Nahuel Huapi is the largest of the 7 major lakes that give it its name. Bariloche has been described to us as a mini-Switzerland, and indeed it could be; it can’t be Whistler, as it is missing the miles and miles of condos.


Looking through the Centro Civico to Lago Nahuel Huapi

We find an English-speaking tour company, book tours for the next 3 days, and make a dinner reservation for tonight at a restaurant Dee has read about, La Marmite. As with many of the other restaurants whose menus we’ve checked while walking around, fondue seems to be its specialty.


Feeling welcome in Bariloche!

Continuing to get caught up, both with Dee & Mark and with sleep, consumes the rest of the afternoon and early evening. Dinner at La Marmite is excellent, although the only fondue ordered at our table is chocolate, and it is served with local strawberries. What could be better?

Our friends Deirdre and Mark arrive from Chicago today for 10 days of travel with us in Argentina, including trips to Bariloche and Puerto Madryn. It is a grey day, the streets still wet from an early morning spring rain.

Dee and Mark were scheduled to arrive at the apartment just after noon, and we had planned to get them briefly settled for one night (we fly to Bariloche tomorrow), and then take them on a tour of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately their plane was delayed for over 3 hours due to Thanksgiving snow and sleet in Chicago, and we finally welcome them to Argentina just after 5 p.m. The sun has broken through, though, and is showing them a beautiful late spring afternoon.

We are moving into the final weeks of our yearlong adventure, and Dee and Mark’s arrival signals this. We have known since they booked this time with us many months ago that they would be here “at the end of our trip”, but their arrival makes this a reality. We have slowly started to think about life after followsummer: we have contacted our real estate person, Kathy; I have updated my resume. We both have started sending some networking emails. Most importantly, we have started to discuss what our life will look and feel like when we return.

I am sad and happy at the same time. Sad to lose the luxurious freedom and time that this type of travel allows us. Sad to be losing the thrill of anticipating the next stop. Sad in many ways to have to go back. Happy to go home to a routine, to my own bed, to the ability to watch a movie perched on the couch in my PJ’s on a rainy Sunday afternoon. We are both exhausted and at the same time exhilarated.

We have a riotous reunion with Deirdre and Mark, and give them a quick tour around downtown Buenos Aires while we run some errands and get caught up. Back at the apartment, we drink a bottle of delicious Argentinean champagne to toast their first wedding anniversary, and then we head out to a wine-filled Argentinean parilla at one of the local restaurants we have been frequenting. Our flight to Bariloche tomorrow is not until after noon, so we stay out later than we should. But this seems to be the custom in Buenos Aires.

Today is a long day of doing not much. We check out of our room for 10:00 a.m., the standard checkout time here in Argentina. Our flight back to Buenos Aires doesn’t leave till 9:00 p.m. tonight. For some reason, most of the flights to the main tourist destinations seem to leave Buenos Aires before dawn, and get you back to Buenos Aires right around midnight.

We spend a few hours sitting in the hotel lobby, reading and working on our journal, before heading into town to do some shopping. An hour later, we have walked from one end of town to the other, and Greg has bought himself a belt and a sweater.

The weather is not nice enough today to sit outside, or even to walk by the harbour. There is rain and a bitter wind off the water. So we find a café and have coffees, before heading back to the hotel lobby for a few more hours.

The alarm goes off way too early this morning. All I want is another 4 hours of sleep, but I drag myself into the shower and pretend to wake up. We are going to the end of the earth today (or at least the place Argentineans consider to be the end of the earth – Chile actually goes another 400 or so kilometres further south).

Today we are the 1st passengers picked up by the bus, and we spend over 1 hour driving to the hotels of Ushuaia, picking up the rest.

Finally, much too late, we head off to the Tren del Fin del Mundo, the train to the end of the earth, which is a narrow-gauge railway built when Ushuaia was Argentina’s Siberia, in order that the prisoners could be transported into the forests to log them, and then to transport both prisoners and logs back to town. We have our option: take the train into the national park, or walk. Nessa and Colm had advised that they took the train, there was nothing interesting to see, and they could have walked faster than the train moved. We vote to walk; we figure we are less likely to fall back asleep this way, and therefore more likely to enjoy the view.


Train to the End of the Earth

The walk is in fact very pleasant, as it has turned into a nice day, the sun peaking out from behind beautiful clouds. Out of the wind it is actually almost warm, warmer than we expected it would be down here, anyway, and soon we have our jackets and scarves and hats off, only to whip them back on the minute there is any wind at all.

Our day takes us to to the most southerly point in Argentina, very close to the border with Chile. On the way we stop at a huge beaver dam, where we learn that beavers were brought here from Canada in the 1940s, to be grown for their pelts. Unfortunately, it turned out that their pelts didn’t grow well enough down here, and somebody turned them loose. As they have no natural predators in Tierra del Fuego, today there are about 150,000 of them. Their dams are radically changing the Fuegian landscape, for the worse, to the point where the government now pays a reward for dead beavers. The Argentineans look at the beaver dam in fascination, and when they find out we are Canadian, they pepper us with questions about beavers back home. From their questions, we get the impression that they think there are beavers everywhere in Canada, even in downtown Toronto. Admittedly, Toronto is a tiny city in comparison to the 18 million or so people who live in Buenos Aires, but we certainly have never seen a beaver dam there.


Fuegian Beaver dam

The journey continues on to a bay where Ruta Nacional 3, the main highway (a gravel highway for much of its length) from Buenos Aires to Tierra del Fuego, following the Atlantic coast, ends. The signpost tells us that we are 3,063 kilometres from Buenos Aires, and 17,848 kilometres from Alaska.



Scenes from the End of the Earth

By this time, Greg and I are really dragging, and we are quite happy when we are finally deposited back at our hotel, at about 3 p.m. We take long naps, rise only long enough to go to the hotel dining room for dinner, and have an early lights out.


Greg at the End of the Earth

Happy birthday to Marc Roels on November 25

A note to our followsummer.com readers: Some of you have noticed curious comments in our reply to postings section on the website. Someone has obviously devised a way of spaming the comments section and we are making every attempt to stop this irritating process. Bear with us and keep those comments coming!

We are the last pickup for our tour this morning, and Cesar, our guide, sits us up front with the only other English speaking tourists on the 40 seat bus, a young couple from Ireland. We have noticed a distinct lack of English-speaking tourists here in Tierra del Fuego, and together with the Irish couple we are the youngest people on the bus. Although most of the tourists here are Spanish or Argentinean, the trend is changing and the tour operators and guides are preparing themselves for more English-speaking tourists. Cesar will conduct most of his tour today in Spanish with the odd nod and phrase to the four English-speakers people on the bus. We are heading to the two most important lakes in the area today, Lago Escondido and Lago Fagnano. The day is beautiful, crisp and sunny; a glorious blue sky is the perfect backdrop for photos of the mountains.


The view from our hotel

There are a number of predetermined stops along the way; one is to view a husky farm, another is to view a beaver enclosure where they use huskies to drive the beavers, originally imported from Canada, out for tourist viewing. We finally make our way along Ruta Nacional No. 3 and stop high up the mountainside for the view of beautiful Lago Escondido.


From left: our 1st stop, note the peat bogs in the valley; Lago Escondido (foreground) and Lago Fagnano

We have an option of continuing the bus ride down to the lake for our lunch but nearly everyone takes the opportunity to enjoy the views, the air and stretch their legs by walking the 4 kilometres down to the lake and the small hotel where we will have our lunch. We take this opportunity to introduce ourselves to Nessa and Colm, the other English-speaking couple on our tour. They are Irish, living in Dublin, and are on their honeymoon. Nessa has a warm and lovely Irish drawl that just warms your heart. Colm is less so, growing up with an English dad and a Belgian mother. We spend the 45 minute walk talking about traveling and what we have all seen. The walk down is distinctly Canadian: we could be in the Rockies or outside Banff. The beech trees flutter in the wind, and rolling, roaring streams cascade off the mountains around us. Although the trees here are not pines (they are southern beech evergreens, of which there are both deciduous and evergreen types), I swear that I can smell the occasional whiff of Canadian pine on the fine spring air.


2 views of Lago Escondido

We have our lunch overlooking the lake and the mood again is definitely Canadian: skis over the huge fireplace, pine board motif in the lodge and beautiful views. I am feeling homesick.

The bus picks us all up and we head to the next lake, the bigger of the two, Lago Fagnano. This lake shares its waters with Chile, as the border cuts through the middle of it. Colm and I do something typically Canadian (and obviously Irish too), we spend our time skipping stones across the waves, competing for the most skips, the highest first skip and finally, who can skip stones over the dock. The Argentineans look on and laugh. I’m not sure they have ever seen anything like this before. Finally, an older gentleman joins in the skipping and despite the language barrier, counts out his own skips.

We board our bus again for the trip home. The four of us laugh at Cesar’s attempts to include us in his narrative. His Spanish versions go on at length about the scenery or the historical significance of some things. All we get is a short “that’s a peat bog”.

We have decided to join Nessa and Colm for dinner, and we rendezvous back downtown around 9 p.m. for a lovely dinner and a couple of bottles of wine. We toast their honeymoon and their last night in Ushuaia, and then the 4 of us proceed to this ramshackle town’s most ramshackle bar, the Galway, one of the many “Irish” pubs that we have spotted along our round-the-world trip. Nessa and Colm, the experts, both agree that this is not an Irish pub by any means, and we laugh and talk until after 2:30. Ugh. Tomorrow is a 7:30 departure for our next day of touring.

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These early morning flights out of Buenos Aires continue to kill me. Not only is the hour of departure desperately and outrageously early, but our decision to stay up all night and make a party of our trip to the airport just doesn’t cut it anymore with these old bones.

We said goodbye to Pablo and Marcelo at 3:30 a.m., and rushed back to the apartment to quickly shower and grab our bags before heading out to Av. Callao to hail a taxi to Aeroparque for our 5:30 flight to Ushuaia. Ugh. Double Ugh!

We seem to be the first people at the airport and even the security screening (or what there is of it), which at this hour closes between flights, isn’t open yet. The airport seems to stay open all night, but there only appears to be about 1 flight/hour from 2 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

Our gate is full of people heading to the fabled far south and I romantize them: A young British woman heading to some desolate outpost, her older, shaggy-bearded mentor accompanying her, their purpose is to relieve some lonely Antarctic sea-lion watcher or temperature-gauger, ready for some R& R. There are several members of the Spanish Army, scientists all, heading to the polar south for several months of research. Everyone has trekking shoes and fleece and practical zip off, water-wicking beige pants on; I included.

Due to Hernan, our travel agent’s screw up, we have one business class seat and one economy class seat. I, unselfishly, offer John the business class seat. We board the Aerolineas Argentinas plane and immediately fall asleep, although John is much more successful at staying asleep. Unfortunately, I have two screaming children sitting right in front of me.

3.5 hours later we touch down in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world and it’s the end of the world as we know it. Snow capped mountains and temperatures of about 10° greet our groggy heads. We are thankful for our layers of “winter’ clothes that we have brought. John has wanted to come to Tierra del Fuego since he was a kid in geography class. He is itching to get to our hotel, get settled and get out! Our hotel is about a 15 minute drive outside of Ushuaia and we are met by the tour operator who promptly recommends three different expeditions for us over the next 3 days. We arrive at the hotel, nestled on the Rio Olivia and at the base of Monte Olivia (picture Mount Crumpit, from “The Grinch”) and thankfully our room is ready. We are booked for a 3 o’clock cruise through the Beagle Channel and promptly go to sleep for the rest of the morning.

A “remise” is called, to take us to the tourist dock for 3 p.m., and we board the Tolkeyen Patagonia catamaran and head out into the Beagle Channel. The cruise will get us back to Ushuaia for about 8:30. We untie and float into the channel, viewing the town from the water. We can also see the dramatic Monte Olivia from the water, knowing our hotel is at the base.


From left: Ushuaia; Monte Olivia (on the left); Chile, on the other side of the Beagle Channel

The afternoon is cool and dramatically overcast. Every piece of information you read about Ushuaia tells you that the weather is very changeable here, so we are prepared for the best and the worst. Our first stop is a colony of cormorants who happen to be sharing space with the sea lions on Isla de Los Lobos (Sea Lions’ Island). The catamaran easily manoeuvres the shallow waters and every one is on deck, snapping pictures.


Cormorants and Sea Lions

We pass the Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse, and continue sailing past the Chilean Military town of Puerto Williams, on the other side (the Chilean side) of the Beagle Channel.


Passing scenery

We continue on through Mackinlay Pass and finally stop for a good half hour at the Magellan Penguin colony. We take lots of pictures here and move around the deck of the catamaran watching the antics of the penguins through the camera and our binoculars. Who knew that penguin necks (and sea lion necks, for that matter) were so flexible?


Magellan Penguins

At one point, we see something jumping through the water. We can’t tell what it is, but watch in fascination as it comes closer to shore. A much bigger penguin proudly emerges from the water and we realize that he is an Imperial Penguin, standing taller and with bright orange beak, feet and under-wings. He stands in one spots and continues to groom himself for the entire duration of our stay here.



Imperial Penguin (and friend)

A bottle of wine is ordered for our two hour trip back to Ushuaia – beer and wine being cheaper in Argentina than Coke or Pepsi. We engage in a lively conversation with one of the guides on the catamaran and two young guests of the tour that day. We talk about politics and language, tourists and Argentina; all of them are Argentinean, learning French, and they all speak English remarkably well.

Right on schedule we are on the dock in Ushuaia. We are exhausted, and take a taxi from the port to our hotel, and have dinner in the dining room before falling into bed just after 10:30. Thankfully, there is a message waiting at the hotel that our tour tomorrow morning won’t pick us up until 9:45.

Plenty of time for plenty of sleep!

Today is Gay Pride Day in Buenos Aires, and our friends Marcelo and Pablo are coming back into town to show it to us. We walk to the meeting point, and the 4 of us head down into the craziness of Plaza de Mayo, the huge square near the Casa Rosada.

This is the 2nd time I have been in the Plaza de Mayo during a political demonstration: the 1st was in May 2003, when Nestor Kirchner was sworn in as President of Argentina, the 1st elected President since the economic crisis of 2001. That was an incredibly moving day, the sense of hope hanging so powerfully in the air. Today is different, it is just a party: Argentina long-ago enshrined gay equality, and in Buenos Aires domestic partnerships have full status. Pablo and Marcelo don’t live in Buenos Aires, so can’t register their partnership, but they tell us that they are heading to Spain in January to visit Pablo’s family in Barcelona, and that they will take advantage of the new Spanish law, and will get married there.

At about 7:30 p.m., somebody finally decides that it is time for the parade to start, and out of chaos order emerges. It is actually quite amazing to see.


Pablo and Marcelo at Gay Pride

We follow the parade up the Av. de Mayo to Congresos, the square in front of the Argentine legislature, where there is a big street party. By now it is getting dark, and just as at home during the summer, it is well after 9 p.m., so the 4 of us walk the 10 or so blocks back to our apartment for a glass of wine before we head out to dinner.

A couple of bottles of wine later, it is midnight and we are ready for food. We are in no hurry tonight: Greg and I fly to Ushuaia tomorrow at 5:30 a.m., and we have all agreed that there is no point in going to bed tonight, the only sensible thing to do is to stay up until it is time to head to the airport, and then sleep during the 4 hour flight south.

We head to Babieca, a café around the corner from the apartment that we have adopted as our local, and where the staff has quickly become accustomed to seeing us. We have a leisurely meal, and all of a sudden it is after 2.

We take a cab downtown to a bar that Paulo and Marcelo know, and find that it is just starting to get busy, and clearly everyone there is celebrating Pride. We spend an hour chatting and then it is 3:30, time to say goodbye.

Happy birthday to Evan Ayotte!

While we were in Salta, we discovered that our friend John B. is visiting Buenos Aires, where he was born. This is his first time back since he was 7, when his parents decided that their future didn’t lie in Argentina and moved their family to Canada. We meet at 10 for coffee, and spend a couple of hours getting caught up.

We are lunching today with Michel and Milt, the American couple we met in Salta, and John decides to join us. The 5 of us head back to the wonderful café Greg and I found in Patio Bullrich, and spend a great couple of hours joking and laughing and enjoying life.

After lunch, John heads to his hotel to pack for his flight home tonight, and Michel and Milt do the same. Greg heads home to work on the journal, and I head to the travel agent, to pick up the tickets for the rest of our traveling around Argentina. We have not had luck with travel agents here, and today is no different: for our trip to Ushuaia, on Tierra del Fuego, we had been told that no economy class seats were available and that we would have to fly business class. Our desire to go there outweighed other considerations, and we reluctantly agreed, despite the price. When I arrive today to pick up the tickets, I discover that in fact only 1 seat on 1 of the flights is business class, although we have indeed been charged business class fares. It takes hours for this mess to be cleared up, and because this trip starts on Sunday morning, I have to wait while it gets cleaned up.

We have a quiet evening in tonight, as tomorrow and Sunday will be long days.

We have two things on today’s agenda: 1) to get back to Buenos Aires; 2) the performance of Benjamin Britten’s opera “Death in Venice” at the Teatro Colon.

The early morning flight home is uneventful, despite being late, and by 12:30 we are back at the apartment. We are glad to see Buenos Aires, and feel “at home”.

I walk to the theatre hoping to be able to buy tickets for tonight; we had not done this before as we were originally not to arrive back in Buenos Aires until 11 p.m. tonight. Our changed plans allow us the chance to see the opera. The theatre takes has a commanding position on Av. 9 de Julio, called the widest street in the world, with its huge obelisk visible all the way up and down the avenue.

The opera is being staged at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires’s masterpiece of acoustical engineering. Based on Milan’s La Scala, but an order of magnitude larger, it is a completely self-contained facility, its workshops and rehearsal rooms deep under the streets surrounding the theatre. It is also world-renowned for the fact that there is not a seat in the house in which the music cannot be heard clearly.


The front and side of the Teatro Colon


Av. 9 de Julio and the obelisk that dominates it

That is not to say that it has good sightlines, however: it is a horseshoe-ring style of theatre, with 6 tiers, and most of the seats on the sides and the upper tiers have impaired views of the stage. This is, unfortunately, where the only remaining seat are; but I buy them anyway.

We spend the first act of the opera craning to see a portion of the stage, although we have absolutely no problem hearing. The singing is truly wonderful. We are amazed at the stamina of the tenor, Nigel Robson, who is singing Von Aschenbach: he is onstage for virtually the entire act, and as the opera is more or less an interior monologue, he sings non-stop.

During the intermission, we indulge in a glass of Argentinean champagne. Here in Argentina, it is the beverage of choice, not only here at the opera, but as in Australia, anywhere and anytime.

Fortunately for us, more than a few members of the audience clearly didn’t enjoy the first act of this difficult and introspective opera, and we realize just before the lights go down that there are going to be plenty of empty seats during the second half. We quickly move to much better seats, and are glad to be able to see the second act. The staging is incredibly inventive, and we are glad to have been able to enjoy it.

We walk home through the streets of Buenos Aires talking at length of this opera, its meaning, and its truths. Although at this hour every restaurant in town is still eager to serve dinner, we were up early for our flight home, and our exhaustion overwhelms any hunger, and so we opt for bed.

We told the hotel front desk last night that when the tour came at 7 a.m. this morning to pick us up, they were to say we were unwell and wouldn’t be going. We are both happy and relieved to have cancelled out of our second day of uncomfortable travel. We sleep in a bit, and then take care of a few mundane chores, like buying toothpaste. We clearly did everything there is to do in Salta on our first afternoon here.

It rained all through the night, and it continues to rain all day. We find out later that yet again we have brought the rains with us. This is true desert, and they got 15 millimetres of rain over 24 hours in an area of the world that gets 50 millimetres in a normal year.

We decide to try to get back to Buenos Aires earlier than scheduled. Unfortunately, the evening flight tonight is full, but we can get on tomorrow morning’s flight, cutting our visit to Salta 12 hours short.

Another rainy afternoon, another movie. Only our 4th movie since leaving Canada in January. This time it is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. We pay our $1.50 each, and the two of us have the entire theatre to ourselves for the length of the movie.

We are tempted by the description in our guidebook of one of the restaurants in town, El Solar del Convento, and at about 9:00 p.m. we head there for dinner. Even here in provincial Salta, we are still too early, and they quickly finish the vacuuming before they seat us. I head to the men’s room, to discover a young man scrubbing the floor, still getting the place ready for the evening's guests. Our meal is excellent, the wine is excellent, and the service is of course excellent. We leave, glad to have at least one nice memory of Salta to take home with us.

It is bright by 6:00 a.m., a bit overcast as we shower and get ready for our long day of touring Salta and Jujuy provinces. The bus arrives right on time, we meet our guide, Yako, pick up a few more, and we are off for 13 hours of enforced togetherness. We are a motley crew: Greg and I, two Brits with their 23 month old daughter, 2 young French women, a young Dutch couple, and the last 2 people we pick up, an American couple who proclaim their innocence almost as soon as we start chatting – they didn’t vote for him! When they find out we’re Canadian, they start laughing and asked if we saw that hilarious red and blue map of North America, and we bond instantly.

Our first stop is at the start of the Tren a las Nubes, the Train to the Clouds, the line that goes over the Andes to Chile. Completed in 1949 and an engineering miracle, it reaches an altitude of over 4,500 metres, making it the 4th highest railroad in the world. But almost from the time of completion it was outdated, and today it is used only for tourist trains, and not during the summer, the rainy season in this part of the Andes, because there are so many earthslides that there is real danger for the train, and its passengers.


One of the viaducts on the Tren a las Nubes



The Andes



We continue on, stopping in a small village for coffee and handicrafts. From there, we climb up the mountain to an archaeological site that predates the Incan invasion of the area. We continue on, and stop for lunch in San Antonio de los Cobres, feeling straight out of the wild west. One of the tours we were offered stopped for the night here. We are quite glad that we decided against that option.


San Antonio de los Cobres

After lunch we head cross the border into Jujuy province, and head for the giant salt flats of Salinas Grandes. Along the way, we see many vicuña, the wild animals (and endangered species), relatives of the llama and the camel, whose coats are the source of a luxurious wool.


Vicuñas

Salinas Grandes turns out to be a huge salt lake, although the water is actually under the salt flats. The locals mine the salt by carving holes in the surface, which fill with the lake water and then evaporate, leaving the salt behind.


Salt flats and harvesting pools

We start our long trek home. To do this, we go over the highest pass of the day, just over 4,100 metres. The drive down is dramatic, through the spectacularly beautiful Lipan valley, and into the town of Purmamarca. Unfortunately for me, and a number of others, I have a bad case of altitude sickness by the time we get down the hill, and between the headache, the vertigo and the nausea, I can think of a million other things I would rather be doing. Greg and Michel, one of the Americans, convince me and Milt, Michel’s husband, who is similarly afflicted, that ginger ale will help, and despite my nausea I force down a bottle.


The road down

Finally, the bus starts the 2 hour final leg of the trip back to Salta. Soon it starts to rain, and it continues to rain for the rest of the trip. By the time we get back I am feeling fine, but we are so glad to get off the bus we bid the briefest of farewells to Michel and Milt, and are gone. We go straight to bed, not bothering with supper, totally exhausted by the day. It is after 9:30 after all.

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The alarm rings at 3:45 a.m. to rouse us for our 4:30 ride to Aeroparque , the downtown Buenos Aires airport situated by the river. Almost a year later, these early hours still kill me. We have a 6:00 a.m. flight north to Salta where we will be spending the next four days exploring the Andes, their lowlands and following the route of the famous Tren a las Nubes, the train to the clouds. We have ordered a “remise”, a prearranged, non-taxi car hire, and he is scheduled to pick us up outside our apartment at 4:30. The ride is confirmed by phone, in Spanish, at 4:25. We wait until 5:05 and out of frustration, hail a cab. Buenos Aires is a city that never sleeps, and it seems there is any number of cabs to take even at this bleary-eyed hour.

Southern Winds airlines is pleasant enough with tons of leg room and a nice inflight snack. The two hour flight is full of snoozing, and completely uneventful. We arrive to a sunny, crisp and clear day, our hotel van waiting to bring us into town and our hotel.

Our first views outside of Buenos Aires are not surprising: wide, flat, spring-fed valleys surrounded by long, high, and very dry mountain ranges. The city of Salta is pleasant enough, the main square is the center of the town’s café and business life. We cannot check into the hotel until after 11:30, so we drop our bags and check out the many tour and excursion outfits that line our street, leading to the main square. We opt for 2 days of touring, our last day will be a free day to explore the town and “hang out’ until our flight in the early evening. All tours are full days and start at 7:00 a.m., and our first day’s tour will be a 13 hour day.

Booked and ready to go, we continue to wander the inner part of the city, quickly realizing that there isn’t much to see other than side streets that surround the “9th of July” main square. The usual child hawkers ply their trade on the square, their dirty faces imploring you to buy Holy Virgin Mary trading cards. Gangs of teenagers, baseball caps askew and cigarettes hanging from their mouths, trail you for your shoeshine business, not remembering that they got you not ten minutes before. This is all very familiar to us.


Plaza 9 de Julio


The Cathedral on the square


Iglesia San Francisco

Our room is comfortable and by Argentinean standards deluxe. It is now after 2:30 p.m., and we grab some local empanadas and pizza and a big bottle of “Salta” beer. The streets are all but deserted as we leave the restaurant; siesta is in full swing. We wander back to our room and join in.

Doors and windows start to unbolt again around 5:30 p.m. We wander a bit and settle at a café on the square for beer, sandwiches and the bustling life of Salta playing out on the square in front of us. Other tourists come and go around us, Spanish, German and Dutch; all are represented here at the café. They too, are continuously approached by the kid-hawkers and we watch and laugh as the pitching continues.


The view from our table on the square

Our early morning tour calls, and we catch the last bit of BBC World news before falling off to sleep.

We have a very quiet weekend. The weather is very spring-like. We walk around the neighbourhood, doing our chores, umbrellas open. Sunday afternoon we take in a movie, an American thriller with Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, and Willem Dafoe, called The Clearing. With a cast like that, you’d think it would be good. It was disappointing, but it was a couple of hours out of the rain, and with ticket prices about $1.50 each, how can you go wrong?

We have spent one week of spinning our wheels in the delightful city of Buenos Aires but admittedly we are feeling very frustrated with the process of booking flights and organizing the rest of our Argentinean itinerary. We have visited or emailed 4 travel agents, and have not heard back from any of them. Greg followed up with the one that we had put particular hope in and her response was that she would have something for us via email last Tuesday. I guess they are not so hungry for the tourist dollar.


More jacaranda, in Plaza San Martin!

Today we take our own destiny in our hands and walk downtown to a travel agency that I found on the web. Our time is running out, and we are also trying to make arrangements for our friends Deirdre and Mark from Chicago, who are arriving for 10 days in a week and a half. One of the locals has told us that we must say to anyone doing work for us in Argentina that “we want to buy today!” And this is what we say to Hernan, the very helpful agent at Les Amis travel. Everything is done within an hour, and we are set to leave for Salta on Monday morning at 6:05 am! Ugh!!

We head to Patio Bullrich, a beautiful old building that has been turned into one of the trendiest shopping centres in Buenos Aires, and celebrate success with a delicious lunch. We both choose the same thing: green risotto with arugala. It is delicious, and the beautiful white wine, a cabernet sauvignon/chardonnay from Mendoza, complements it perfectly.

We stroll through the area, looking in the windows of the designer shops along Av. Alvear. The imported goods are as expensive as anywhere else, but we are tempted by the domestically manufactured goods, which are a fraction of the cost they would be anywhere else. We manage to fight temptation, at least for today. We are astonished at the number of women we see on the streets here carrying real Vuitton bags. As expensive as they are at home, they represent a huge percentage of the per capita income here in Argentina, where people make much less, and where their incomes have been reduced by 2/3 in foreign currency terms since the economic collapse of 2001.


Mansions in the Av. Alvear area

We have arranged to have dinner tonight with Louis and Fabrice. We choose to go to Cabana Las Lilas, said by many to serve the best beef in Argentina, and many will tell you that Argentinean beef is the best beef in the world.

Our reservation is for 10. When we arrive, there is a line out the door, and we wait about 20 minutes for our table. Without any question, the meal is fantastic. The beef is delicious, the wine is delicious, the service is delicious, better than the excellent service we are quickly becoming accustomed to. And the price is less than ½ of what we are used to paying in Europe for an ordinary meal out. There are still people waiting to be seated when we leave, well after midnight.

We head to a club for a drink, but it is too early. So we move to a disco, not too far away. By now it is almost 2, and it is still too early, but it quickly starts to fill up. By 2:30 the place is jammed. And just as quickly, the smoke becomes impossible to deal with, and we head home, glad for the fresh air as we walk the 1 block to the apartment.

The day rises sunny and bright; a piercing blue sky that is complimented by those still-flowering, incredibly purple jacaranda trees. Rain showers occasionally harass the tourists but never long enough to dampen anyone’s spring sprits.

We walk about ten minutes from our apartment in Recoleta, to visit the Cementerio de la Recoleta, the famous cemetery where the rich and famous of Buenos Aires are buried. The saying goes “It is cheaper to live extravagantly all your life than to be buried in Recoleta.” There is probably no other place that says more about Argentinean society.


Recoleta

There are indeed, extravagant, splendid and sometimes over-the-top monuments crammed into small, narrow plots. Some of the older crypts are in need of some attention, their offspring long dead, and the current generations either lacking the funds to maintain the graves, or having lost interest in the ritual. In some cases, you can reach in and touch the ancient and dirty coffins, cobwebbed and dust-encrusted. We see famous family names, recognizing them from the names of many of the city’s sweeping avenues and streets.


Opulent graves…


Untended graves…

We wander over to one of the more famous monuments and pay our respects.


One of the many buried in Recoleta

Lunch is outside in one of the many restaurants that line the park and cemetery. We aren’t surprised to hear so much English spoken in this chic and popular neighbourhood, and we linger over some wine and finally some coffee as the sun comes and goes. We stroll through the expensive shops and stores of Av. Alvear. I am still fighting that dull throb behind the eyes that Lufthansa left me with and we are home just before 5 o’clock and ready for a welcomed nap.


Jacaranda covered lunch

An unplanned walking tour is planned for today, covering the areas heading north towards the Plaza San Martin across the Av. 9 de Julio, past the Falklands War Memorial, to the Torre de los Ingleses, into Puerto Madero and finally up Av. de Mayo, across Calle Florida and home.

It is a lovely spring day; the occasional 5 minute burst of warm rain scattering the less-prepared tourists. We have had our umbrellas stowed in our daypack since day one of the trip, and they have proven handy on many a rainy occasion.

The Av. 9 de Julio is a massive, 18-lane avenue that sometimes takes 2 lights to cross. We have been warned about the taxi drivers and the bus drivers, who don’t care about pedestrians and particularly tourist pedestrians. The Av. is always busy and is a treat to drive down at night, the bright lights and billboards lighting your way; your careening cab driver racing in and out of the lanes, seemingly unaware of the other cars inches away.

We walk into the Retiro neighbourhood and towards the Plaza San Martin, historically the main tourist draw in Buenos Aires. The jacarandas continue their scented purple bursts, the canopy covering the square. We stop at the main monument to San Martin, the liberator, who vanquished the Spanish in Argentina in 1810. Yesterday, we saw his grandiose, flag-bedecked, and heavily guarded tomb in the Cathedral. The square is surrounded by several beautiful mansions and is home to a rich literary, artistic, and cultural history that along with the many bars and cafés that dot the area creates a sort of Argentinean SoHo.


From left: jacaranda in bloom; detail of monument honouring San Martin

We turn towards the Torre de los Ingleses, a gift from the British to the Argentineans to congratulate them on their independence from Spain. Interestingly enough, right across the Av.del Libertador, is the main memorial to the 1982 Falklands War, referred to as the Malvinas War here, a sweeping simple monument, and watched over by two, young Argentine soldiers, their blue and gold uniforms glinting in the occasional quick burst of sun. The paradox is glaring.


From left: Torre de los Ingleses; Malvinas War Memorial

We continue into the Puerto Madero area of Bs As and discover a new area full of vibrant cafés and restaurants. It is a reclaimed old port area that had been abandoned only to be revived and redeveloped in the’90s. Promenades, head offices and condos line the boardwalks. It is also home to a thriving and wild biological reserve. The sun is hiding itself in a sudden, cloud-filled sky and so we walk up Macacha Guemes, grab a coffee and the bathroom, and continue our stroll along the pedestrian-only Calle Florida, trying to avoid the hawkers and leather-sellers on this honky-tonk shopping street.


From left: Puerto Madero; Calle Florida

We walk our neighbourhood this evening searching for dinner, and discover a traditional Argentine BBQ but there is nothing traditional in its décor or service. Sleek and trendy and relatively slow for a Monday evening, we laugh with our waiter as he attempts to serve us in English. There is a full salad bar and our servers come around with various cuts of meat: lamb, chicken, pork and of course, the famous Argentine beef, all carved at the table from long roasting skewers. We politely decline the sweet bread, tripe and various offerings of entrails. We quaff a lovely Argentine red and are again amazed at the price of the meal: 110.00 Argentine pesos, including the tip. That works out to be about $40.00 Canadian!

Sunday is a quiet day in Buenos Aires. Avenida Callao’s six lanes of frenzied traffic are less boisterous on Sunday morning and the sun is shining brightly as it rises from the east and crests the living room window in our studio. We must wait again today, the service man from Fibertel is coming to work on the net connection that has been newly installed in the apartment. He is scheduled to arrive between 1 and 3 pm. Scheduled is an optimistic word.

We wait until 3:45 and don’t want to waste the rest of this beautiful spring Sunday afternoon and we head out. Our plan is to visit Louis and Fabrice at the Argentinean cat show that they are judging. We grab a cab (incredibly cheap here) and soon are in a neighbourhood that is not much travelled by tourists. We have the opportunity to see how real porteños work and live, for the neighbourhood is alive on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. It is also alive with the fans of the Boca Juniors and the River Plate, the 2 Buenos Aires football teams, who are battling it out in the River Plate stadium this afternoon. Men are jammed around the televisions sets in gas stations, ice cream parlours and anywhere else they can find a television to watch the game.

The cat show is truly a local affair, and we pay our entrance fee and wander around the quaint exhibition, checking out the breeds of cat. We spot Fabrice and Louis doing their judging, complete with translators. Between cats they smile and nod at us in acknowledgement. I snap some photos and plan to email them to them.


From left: Fabrice and Louis doing their thing; 3 anxious contestants and their owners

We have a very brief conversation and they invite us to join them tonight at Palacio for some dancing, and we agree. We head out into the late afternoon sun and take linea A, the oldest (and ricketiest) subway line in Buenos Aires, to the Plaza de Mayo, and do the tourist thing: the Casa Rosada, the Cathedral and finally a walk along the pedestrian shopping street, Calle Florida.


From left: the Casa Rosada; the Cabildo; the Plaza de Mayo

It is now after 7:30, and we walk south to the apartment, stopping to window shop along the way. When we arrive, we put our feet up and open a bottle of wine, before walking around the corner to our “local” haunt for a quick dinner before our 10:00 club date.

We arrive about a half hour late and in true Buenos Aires style, we are only two of a handful of people there. This soon changes, and by 11:00 the place is full. We spot Fabrice and Louis in the crowd with their friends, and we have a couple of beers and a couple of dances before we walk home and our beds at a very respectable hour of 1:15!

A brief interlude concerning food and drink in Argentina:

Already we have been really impressed by the variety and quality of food and service being offered here in Buenos Aires. If these high levels and consistency remain the same elsewhere in Argentina, then they will receive the coveted followsummer.com reward for service and quality!

All the restaurants we have been to, whether they are for lunch, late afternoon coffee, or dinner, have been a consistently happy, no-issue experience. White shirts, and black ties are the predominant uniform; occasionally we see a quilted vest or dark apron thrown in for good measure. All staff, whether they be front of house, wait or bussing staff, are neat, brushed, and scrubbed.

You are always met with a friendly “hola” or in the better houses, “buenos dias”, “buenas tardes” or “buenas noches”. A table is found very quickly for you, there is never any harrumphing about lack of a reservation, and a basket of bread, a cordial (on the house) and a small “amuse guel” arrive immediately, and very shortly after that the bottle of water “con gas” is placed on the table. Even with a language difficulty, one is never made to feel the fool about ordering.

Service is quick and efficient and always impeccably timed. Courses come and go without you feeling rushed, the service has that subtle feeling of being there and yet being imperceptible. Clean table cloths and napkins (always cloth) are always present. Paper coasters are a small but vital part of your cocktail or water glass. Your food arrives and in many cases it is French service (which we never saw in France), the food arriving on serving dishes, and the waiter plating it at the table.

Your meal finished, coffee and dessert are offered discreetly, unlike in France, where offence is taken if you do not partake (sorry François!!) in the after-meal sweet and caffeine being offered.

The bills arrive, and everytime we are left breathless by them. With the level of service, the quality of food and the small niceties thrown in, we expect them to be huge. They never are. We have not eaten with this level of quality and service since we were in Asia. Now all we have to do is find the right clothes to wear to dinner from our limited followsummer suitcases.

The alarm goes at 9:45 – the service technician is arriving at 10 to fix the blinds. I feel better than I should.

Greg is first for waiting today, so he waits, while I go buy more emergency supplies; every day we’ve been without our luggage (this is day 4) the list pf what we consider an emergency supply gets longer.

By now we have the Lufthansa luggage numbers memorized, and the dialling is constant. Needless to say, the number is either busy or unanswered. It amazes me that they can be on the phone at 1 moment, not on the phone the next, but not be anywhere near the phone when they’re not on it.

Sometime shortly after 3, I head downstairs to pick up yet more emergency supplies, the list having grown since this morning. Standing at the gate is a perplexed man – on the weekend there is no security in the building and a gate is put up that prevents anyone from actually being able to ring the buzzer. He asks in Spanish if he can ring the bell, but before he can get there, I’ve recognized that the papers he is holding are Lufthansa lost luggage tags. I ask in broken Spanish if he has 3 pieces, and he says “si”. Happy days!!!! Finally, we can really start exploring Buenos Aires by day. Except that we are so tired today that we have a very quiet afternoon, an early supper, and are asleep by the time everyone else here is starting to think of going out for dinner.

It is spring outside today – rain is in the air, but the sun is out. The jacarandas are in full bloom, adding a canopy of bright purple above and a carpet of spent, faded purple under our feet. We agree to take turns waiting for Lufthansa, and this morning it is my turn to wait. Greg heads out, camera in hand. 3 hours later, he is back, sandwiches and Buenos Aires guidebooks in hand, and it is his turn to wait.


From left: Plaza Rodríquez Peña, around the corner from our apartment; 2 views from our balcony

I head off to the travel agent who found our apartment for us, to try and get some plans made for our travels around Argentina. We had tried to do some of this in Paris, but it proved impossible. Then I spend a bit of time wandering around, remembering the layout of the city.

When I get back to the apartment, I find that our bags have not yet arrived. We try, again, to call Lufthansa for a status update, but the number is either busy or not answered.

Around 6 the phone rings. It is Marcelo and Pablo. They tell us that they and Pablo and Miguel and another couple are heading out about midnight to go dancing, and ask if we want to join them. “Sure! Why not?”

About 7 the phone rings again. It is Lufthansa. Can we be downstairs in 2 minutes? We sure can! Down I go, and the delivery guy is waiting for me. He proudly hands me 1 bag. While I am happy to see it, I am not happy about the fact that the other 3 don’t seem to be on his truck. He of course can’t speak English, so gets someone on his mobile who can. Apparently there wasn’t room for all the luggage on last night’s flight – more will be on tonight’s. And in the interim, we are to make sure that someone is home all day tomorrow to receive the luggage if it comes.

We cook ourselves some supper, then take naps. At midnight, we meet the guys, and the night begins. About 4, half the group decides to head home, while Marcelo, Pablo, Greg and I feel the night is still young, and we head to another club. It is packed! We dance till after the sun comes up, and then bundle ourselves off home. Pablo and Marcelo, for their part, head back to Miguel and Pablo’s to pick up their bags, for they are taking the 7:45 a.m. bus back home.

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Bienvenidos a Argentina!

Sometime during the night we cross the equator one more time, our 5th crossing so far this year. And then finally, at 8:20 a.m., 1 day late but right on schedule, we arrive in Buenos Aires, the city who’s unofficial (or maybe even its official) motto is “there’s lots of time to sleep when you’re dead”.

We make it through the immigration formalities quickly, and head to the baggage carousel. We take up our position, and wait. And wait. And wait. And all of a sudden, we realize that all of the people still waiting look familiar: and they are! They are all the people who were supposed to fly out on Tuesday night. Somehow, apparently, our luggage didn’t make the flight. Funny coincidence that it is the baggage of the group that got bumped.

We all race to baggage handling, to be told what we already knew: our luggage is in Frankfurt. It will be put on the tonight’s flight, so we should have it early tomorrow morning. We are told that we can spend a bit of money while we wait for our luggage. And that tomorrow we will have to spend the day at the apartment, waiting for the luggage to be delivered.

The drive from the airport is easy, and we are at the apartment we have rented, in Recoleta, the heart of Buenos Aires, faster than we expect. We get the keys and I begin exploring the neighbourhood, looking for grocery stores and restaurants. I discover that within 1 block in any direction there are at least 6 supermarkets and 30 restaurants of all description, in addition to shopping of every description.

We pick a restaurant for lunch, and gasp in shock at the prices – for about the price of 1 Big Mac and 1 Coke in Europe, we can both eat a 3 course meal and have a bottle of wine.

Greg heads back to the apartment, where we are expecting some service calls. I do a bit more exploring, then head to 1 of the supermarkets to pick up some emergency supplies, like toothbrushes. Standing behind me in line are 2 guys who make some remark to me that I don’t understand. When I tell them politely that I don’t speak Spanish they both switch to English. When they find out that I am visiting from Canada, they insist on meeting us for a drink later to tell us what we must do in Argentina.

I head back to the apartment for my nap, and at 5 or so, Greg and I head off to meet Pablo and Marcelo. It turns out that they are visiting from a town about 350 kilometres away, where they both teach at the university, that Pablo is originally from Barcelona, and has lived here for 6 years. They have also arranged for the four of us to have dinner with their friends Miguel and Pablo, who live not too far away and with whom they are staying here in Buenos Aires. And so, just like in Berlin, within hours of arrival, we have already been taken under the wing.

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