But things have been going great here!

The trip with mom was a great time.  She loved Iguazu — of course I already knew it was incredible.  We went to both sides this time and got to go to a bird park on the Brazil side too.  We got to see a pretty cool bird park with all kinds of endangered and I guess normal birds too.  My favorites were the toucans… you could touch them inside the big aviaries.  They’re so cool!

We spent a couple days just wandering around BA seeing all the different neighborhoods and attractions, then headed to Bariloche on the super luxury class bus.  20 hours still, but in this bus your seats lay back 180 degrees and you have a foot support so really you have your own little bed.  On top of that, they’d bring you little appetizers, apertifs, a drink with dinner, and a couple after.  High class travel.

In Bariloche, we rented a car and drove LOTS to see all the parks.  One circuit to the north of town took us along a bunch of beautiful blue and green lakes and through one snowy pass on a dirt road to a quiet little town on a lake where we had lunch.  All the mountains all around would come in and out of the clouds and they were always covered in a fresh dusting of snow.

We headed towards El Bolson a couple days into the trip (yes, that’s the town I was stuck in back during the infamous landslides a month and a half back…).  Luckily it wasn’t raining, but it took us two tries to make it through the pass since it was so snowy high up.  We spent a night in El Bolson in a little cabin waaaaay up high on the side of the mountain overlooking town.  We had a kitchen and everything, so we made pizza and sampled a few of the varieties of beer from the local brewery.  We decided their fruit beers were the best we’ve ever had!

The next morning, we took a walk trying to get up to the “Bosque Tallado” or “Carved Forest” which is a place where a bunch of artists carved statues out of trees burned during a forest fire years back.  We walked and walked, but had to turn around when the snow got up to our shins and it was too slippery to keep going up the steep trail.

From there, we drove to El Maiten where we met up with Mauro for the Mapuche New Years.  The ceremony was held in the evening up in a little mapuche community way on the side of the mountain.  We went up late in the afternoon and found that it was VERY hard to walk there because the trail had thawed and was really muddy.  We stayed talking to some of the families there for a little while eating torta frita and drinking mate before we had to run down to town again to grab more supplies.  Luckily going down, it was starting to cool off and freeze the ground, so it was much less muddy.  We got dinner down in town and I met up with Mauro around 10 to head back up for the actual ceremony.

When we got there, it was VERY cold and windy, so they were adding logs to the ceremonial bonfire and passing mate around.  Shortly after they serve up a traditional stew outside around the fire.   After, everyone introduced themselves saing who they were and where they were from — some people had come from communities miles and miles away and none of them had cars.  One guy told me he rode a horse 6 hours to get there.  After midnight, the real ceremonies got started.  Singing and dancing started, then they “planted” four bamboo sticks with Mapuche flags attached which symbolized the four seasons.  After, they sang and prayed for the sun to come up and stayed there until sunrise.  I really wanted to stay for all of it, but the next day, we had to leave for our next destination, so I had to get sleep.  In all, it was one of the most interesting things I’ve done the whole time I’ve been here.  I had already talked to a lot of Mapuches, but it was great to actually SEE the culture.  I also really liked the idea of having the new year on the winter solstice — from there the days get longer and longer again, eventually bringing spring and a whole new year’s cycle.  That makes more sense than our somewhat arbitrary one.

After that, we went and took a LOOONG drive south on Route 40 through Esquel and Trevelin, then up little dirt roads through deserted national park lands back to El Bolson, arriving pretty late after dark.  We spent our last night there just down the street from the brewery (tried more new kinds and had delicious steak for me and stuffed winter squash for mom… mmmm, food was GREAT around that part of town!).  The next day, we spent the rest of the afternoon around Bariloche doing a bit of last minute shopping and pasta eating in a local italian place before returing the car and hopping on a flight back to BA.

We made it in time to BA for mom to meet the ENTIRE family and friends since they were all over for Joaquin’s birthday.  He’s the host grandson if you forgot… We stayed up late celebrating with everyone, but managed to get to bed early enough to make it to Tigre the next day.  We wandered around a market there and had lunch, then took a boat all around the delta and stopped on an island for a walk.

Mom left last Sat. and I had a couple days in BA before I left Monday on a plane for El Calafate in Patagonia.  I’ve been here for almost a week now and I LOVE it.  Everyone said that everything would be closed here and terribly cold, but it seems like there’s plenty open and the weather isn’t unbearable at all.  In fact, I bet it’s actually BETTER to be here now than the summer because there aren’t huge crowds everywhere you go.

The first day I was here, I took the “you can’t miss it” kind of tour to the Perito Moreno glacier — that’s what the region is MOST famous for.  It was unbelievable.  It’s huge.  Miles and miles long sliding down the mountains into a milky-turquoise lake.  Where it drops into the lake it’s a couple miles wide and around 20 stories tall.  It’s one of the few glaciers in the world that’s still growing.  In fact, it’s always moving.  When you’re in front of it you can hear it all the time — groans, cracks — ranging from little pops to gunshot sounding snaps, to thunderous rumbles that would echo between the mountains.  Every so often you’d see a chunk break off into the water with a boom.  Sometimes you’d hear crack from inside then a splash, but you’d never see what it had been.  All the ice was a beautiful colors ranging from white to every shade of blue.   We even lucked out and it was a relatively clear day — you could see miles up the glacier into the mountains at the edge of the southern ice field.

The next morning, I got up early for a bus to El Chalten, a town 4 hours to the north.  I guess it wasn’t actually THAT early… to me, anything before light feels really early, but here since it’s still midwinter, it doesn’t get light until around 9:30.  Anyway, on the bus, I met a couple of super friendly kids from Denison — Marge and David, a brother and sister.  We shared a room in the hostel and hiked together a couple times.  The first afternoon we were there, we went to a pretty waterfall a couple miles from town, then headed back to the hostel to cook dinner together.  The next morning, we got up early for a hike up to a lake and glacier before they had to catch their bus back to El Calafate.  The hike was amazing.  The trail went up a couple mountains, then weaved along a river valley and over a couple hills until we were hiking through knee deep snow, trying to keep in the prints left from people before us until we finally came over the top of one last hill to see the lake frozen below us.  Every so often, icebergs from chunks broken off the glacier stuck up out of the ice and we could see the glacier dissapearing up the side of the mountain into the clouds.  As we took a short break there before turning back, wind started absolutely howling through the valley and the the clouds lifted showing us all the snowy mountains in front of us.  The “Torre Range” which includes the famous Cerro Torre, a mile tall needle of stone.  Not long after, we left ad started the slippery 7 mile descent back to town across the snow and ice.

The next day when I woke up it was cold and a little rainy, so I took a break and hung out in town talking with a couple of spanish mountain climber/ skiers who were at the hostel just relaxing.  We cooked dinner and shared a few drinks that night before bed.  My last morning in El Chalten, I took a walk up through the mountains to a place at the foot of the famous Cerro Fitz Roy.  I lucked out again with weather!  The morning was perfectly clear, but as I was turning around to head back down, it started clouding up again.  I realized as I was nearing town that I was a couple hours early, so I headed off the trail to the top of a mountain that overlooked town and had a beautiful 360 degree view towards Cerros Torre and Fitz Roy, out of the mountains to a huge lake, and up the river valley towards more glaciers.  The wind there was howling and snow flakes zipped by completely horizontally.  Sitting there snapping photos of the mountains around, I saw a pair of condors come soaring up on the drafts from below.

Finally, I made it back to town with wet feet and the rest of me frozen solid and had just enough time for a coffee before the bus back to El Calafate.  Now here I am… I head back to BA soon and from there I’m going with the host family to Cordoba and then towards Chile via Mendoza after that.

After this week, I’m really not sure what the summer has in store for me.  It looks like my internship might be falling through, so I may not be staying in Santiago for my last 6 weeks here.  If not that, I’m really not sure… there’s plenty of places to travel to.  I loved the Argentine Patagonia… maybe Chilean Patagonia or north?  We’ll see.  I’ll try to keep on top of my updates.

Also, I have about a zillion photos I want to upload.  I’m going to maybe try tonight, but internet is pretty slow, so if that doesn’t work out, I’ll upload them as soon as I can.