Chau Argentina

The last week, like all of them, was a good one. Last weekend my friend Eugenia and I went to a little town south of Salta called Cafayate. Amazing how friendly the little towns of Argentina can be; when we got into town around 11, the main plaza was full of people of all ages, everyone sitting around, or riding donkeys or bikes (the 2 or 3 person bikes were amazingly popular there, good memories of the big yellow bike from way back when) around the plaza, having a drink or some dinner. This continued well into the morning where you could still find people hanging out in the plaza until 2 or 3am. Everything very laid back and friendly. And the kids, in February in northern Argentina are always playing "carnaval" which means that they are have free rein to throw water balloons at anybody they want and people don`t get angry. Even women heading to work dressed in a suit, it`s phenomenal. And the bus rides are always fun as the bus is constantly being pegged by 4 year-olds by the side of the road.

The first day in Cafayate, and much to my friend`s dismay, we road bikes (individual) and hiked to a waterfall (30 or 40ft). Not the easiest thing to get to, but well worth it. And the rock that you see underneath the falls on the left you could actually crawl underneath in a little cave and come out behind the waterfall.
Cafayate is set in a beautiful valley that includes sand dunes in one part and the same phalic and arch-shaped red rocks that you would find in Utah or Arizona in another. The colors in the whole valley are wonderful and on top of that it`s wine country...so our last day, after a stressful morning at the pool, we headed out to a winery for a really good tour and some pretty decent wines. Another interesting thing was that the sky was full of white butterflies our whole time there, almost surreal. The beauty, however, came to a halt as our bus probably killed a few thousand of them on the ride back to Salta.

I now find myself in a little town in the very north called Tilcara, which is in the Quebrada (Valley) of Humahuaca. Villages of Adobe Huts dot the landscape that itself is incredible. The people here are much more of the indigenous type that you don`t find as much to the south. Pretty impoverished but at the same time cheerful and friendly people. The colors here as well are incredible, the best example of which is the Cerro de Siete Colores in the village of Purmahuaca which I just got back from a few minutes ago (I stayed for about 30 minutes...not much to do there)
Today was a lot of walking...first on a hike amongst Cacti that didn`t go exactly as I had planned. Then to a super deep canyon where I checked out a nice waterfall and basked in the river for a bit before doing some climbing in the canyon that was pretty harrowing...a long way down and not much room for error.

Anywho...this`ll be the last note coming from Argentina--a country that I have grown very accustomed to and will for sure miss. You can tell you`ve been in a place for a long time when you recognize or know the words to all the music on the radio. So then, time for Bolivia!

Salta

So I think that I was unfairly harsh on Tucumán. Sure, not much to do there, but the government buildings lit up at night were a sight worth seeing and there was a pretty good all you can eat place. I met a kid who was thrilled to have met an American, first time I´ve had that experience; and clearly shows the lack of tourism and probably also that the little guy doesn´t read many papers.

Salta now, a great place. Reminds me a lot of Virginia in the summer, with a similar moutainous landscape (a bit bigger here) and even smells the same (cut grass, bbq, etc). I came to meet a really fun friend who lives here and who has been showing me around the city. Within the first hour I was here we walked up Cerro San Bernardo, which affords beautiful views of the city and the valley it calls home.

This afternoon we´ll head out to San Lorenzo to ride horses. This weekend it´s on to Cafayate and Cachi to check out some of the colorful canyons and little towns that make this part of Argentina famous. Should be a good trip.

Tucumàn-YA!

Yes that`s right folks, San Miguel de Tucumàn, not a very exciting place. Dilapidated is the word that repeatedly pops up in my head. My room, first of all. My room boasts a 20ft ceiling (included, gaping hole) and no windows, while the Petit Hotel itself has several open ceiling (purposefully this time) grown over courtyards, lots of dark corners, and an overbearing feeling that the building (and it`s owner) is about to collapse...interesting place. This might be a stretch of the memory, but it`s very much like Great Expectations (film). Although I don`t think I`ll have the pleasure of staying here another night, I`ll be better for the experience of the one night. This dilapidatedness extends to the city, the central park, and just about everything with exception of the sparklingly new Bus Terminal.

So, yeah, today is just a stop-off day to "check out" Tucumàn, albeit against the advice of my Salteña friend. When I arrived this morning after 22 hours of semi-cama and max-AC I decided I wasn`t interested in another 4 hours to Salta. And you, how are things?

Brazil

Back in the saddle! That´s right, I finally pulled myself away from the comfortable life that I had managed to create in Buenos Aires, and am back on the road. Wasn´t easy to leave good ole Bs. As., but as of now I´m just thankful for the great experiences I had there...who knows what the future holds.

That being said, I got through the aforementioned 18 hour bus trip without problem and have now been in Puerto Iguazú for two days. Yesterday, lacking time and motivation to do much of anything, I decided I would head over to Brazil to have a looksy. The thing with Brazil is that for Americans, it costs $100US just to cross the border. Only one reason for this: reciprocity. The U.S. decided we would charge Brazilians and now I won´t be visiting that country (other than yesterday). When the U.S. started taking pictures (and fingerprinting) of every person who enters the U.S., Brazil followed suit in blatant mockery, only taking pictures of Americans when they crossed the border. You have to admire their sense of humor. (On a side note, I find it amazing that I´ve met round the world ticket travellers who avoid stopping in the U.S. because of the ridiculous hassle they encounter at the border...among other reasons, of course)

Anyhow, so the deal is that you can "illegally" go in for a day to see the Brazilian side of Iguazú Falls and you don´t go through customs, don´t have your passport stamped, and subsecuently, don`t pay. This seems like it might be a pretty grave security flaw, but I didn´t mind employing it to my advantage. So, in total it was only an hour and a half in Brazil (the falls were closed, didn´t feel like buying Reals). So, a stamp in my passport for leaving Argentina, then one coming back...but none for entering any other country. Mysterious. But really, even in an hour and a half it is obvious that Brazil is very different from it´s neighbor(s) (the language, for one) and has a strong culture well worth another visit.

After a big night out, I was up this morning as the clock struck 7am to head out to see the world-famous (if you haven´t heard of them...now you have!), can´t miss it(!), "worth the Odyssey of a bus trip," Iguazú falls. They were right. (Begin tourguide voice) Another UNESCO site, Iguazú is a crescent shaped serious of waterfalls (275) that is over a mile long (2km) and falls 450ft in its highest spot (so says my website informant). This incredible landmark and the river that creates it form the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

Some very brave men built the catwalks that take you to the very edge, over, and under these impressive falls. At the top of the Garganta del Diablo (Devil´s Throat) the mist from the crashing below rises all the way back up soaking everyone on the platform...then continues upward to form a cloud of mist that can be seen for miles. I`m pretty confident that descriptions don´t do it justice, nor will this photo, but you can see it was an impressive sight. Or just take my word for it.
And, right, as for future plans...I head out tomorrow to Salta, a mere 26 hours in Bus. Good thing I have an affinity for long periods of time sitting or I´d really get sick of these busses! Salta is in the north of Argentina and said to be completely distinct in it´s own right, another landscape, culture, etc that Argentina has to offer. I´ve got a friend who lives there and will be fun to catch up with for a little bit. There´s also a very slim chance that I could head to Paraguay tomorrow to visit some friends from Vanderbilt...but I managed to forget that they were there and already booked the bus to Salta. We´ll see.

Banco Rio

I don`t know if you`ve already heard about this, and if so you can stop reading, but there was a bank robbery here last week in Buenos Aires that has been called the robbery of the century. I`m a bit fuzzy on the details, but 4 guys walked into a bank, robbed it, left through a raft in a tunnel which then got them to their jet skis. $50million later, no one has a clue who did it. They were long gone while the police thought they were still holding hostages and the only thing people think now is that there was some "mastermind" (obviously) who is probably part of some intelligence organization (because he is clearly more intelligent than the one investigating him), and he might be a foreigner (not giving Argentines credit to pull something like this off). Anyhow, it`s worth reading about if you get a chance.

So I write about this because I don`t have much going on in my life that is terribly interesting at the moment. Been stagnant for quite a while...and while it`s nice to rest a bit, not having to sleep in a hostel or in a bus every night, it really is no good for the interest of the blog. So tomorrow I head off, 18 hours on a bus to Iguazu, a Niagra Falls like (but a lot bigger, apparently) waterfall on the border of Paraguay and Brazil. This is the first leg of my long trip home, by Bus through South America until flying home from Caracas in May.

Anyhow, the adventure should soon pick up again as simultaneously my life is bound to get less comfortable (excitement and comfort do not coexist on this trip). So, hope to have some good things to write about soon...

A Short History...

So, in Córdoba now, it´s as beautiful as ever. Lots of lakes and rivers nearby the city which become resort vacation spots in the summer. Beautiful pueblitos great for a day trip.

So, here´s some backtrackin of what´s been going on recently....

...I`m spending Christmas in Buenos Aires and luckily will be surrounded by friends that I`ve met over the last few months, some from Venezuela and others from the road. It`ll be a truly international Christmas with friends coming together from 4 continents and my first spent in the Southern Hemisphere (it`s 85 degrees today!). We`ve been cooking a lot and trying to make it feel Christmassy despite the perfect weather. I`m lucky enough that one of my friends that I`m staying with, Negro, is a Chef (his job), which has been amazing thus far and doesn`t seem to quit. Then for New Years it`s off to a friend`s beach house at the posh Pinamar to end the year right while getting a tan--tough life.

I haven`t written much since Thanksgiving because I`ve been on the move so much with little time to stop and organize things. In the past month I think that I have lived enough good stories to entertain hours of conversation...but I`ll try to just write a couple of bits and pieces while leaving the rest for another time.

I left Pucon, Chile (see attached map), to return to Argentina on a decrepit bus (fully loaded) and a gravel road...rain filling the skies. Amazing drive crossing the Andes on such a road. At the border crossing (my 2nd at this point), Volcan Lanìn, I met a Swiss guy named Andreas who would travel with me for the next week or so. After contemplating a climb of Lanìn, we moved on to Bariloche, Argentina where we quickly gathered together some gear and got up into the mountains. Andreas is an experienced mountaineer (trained in the Swiss Army, climbed in Nepal, etc.) and I felt lucky to be up there with him. He convinced me that we could be the first of the year to do a pass between two huts that had yet to beattempted because of all the snow...there was plenty and it was a pretty harrowing experience to be climbing in snow that was at places 9ft. deep and one missed step could have sent you down about 2000ft. Especially considering my equipment--used boots that I`d bought that day. My $10 sleeping bag didn`t help too much also when we were camping on snow the second night in -15 Celsius! But overall, the 3 days afforded us some spectacular views, some good boot skiing, and all in all an amazing time.

Next I met up with a friend of mine from Holland, Marc, that I had travelled with a bit before, and we went back over to Chile to see the island of Chiloè which eerily resembles the North of New Zealand...also, parts of the archipelago have just within the past year been hooked up to electricity and it is a really interesting fishing and farming culture that differs from mainland Chile. En route to Chiloé, as well as on the way out, we had to spend a night in Puerto Montt which seemed to us to be a pretty depressed (and depressing) rainy place. That is where we met our enterprising friend Franco who had us sleep the first time in his house and the second in his Mom´s house...he was an interesting little person that you had to meet to fully appreciate. Then back to Argentina to fly down to El Calafate via LADE, a government subsidized airline which at times can actually be cheaper than taking a bus...very nice to save 30 hours of bus trip! Oh yeah, one of the highlights of Chiloè was seeing a blind man who wore a toupee and had a little bit of an Elton John style going on--we found this first strange that someone who can`t see was so worried about appearance...but then decided that the people he was travelling with were just pranksters. It was funny, I digress. In El Calafate we had a great day that started with a stunning ridge hike, then we went to the Glacier...which is a very famous tourist attraction here. This glacier, Moreno Glacier, is amazing. I`ve seen, and walked on glaciers before, usually they are just there, moving very slowly, not too exciting. However, this one is so famous because of how close you can get to it and how enormous it is. The face of the glacier that looks over the lake is between 60 and 80m tall, about 200 feet. I completely lost my sense of scale when I first got there because you feel like you are very close and that it isn`t so big. Then you hear a piece fall off, what looks like a little pebble until it hits the water and is followed a second later by a sound like an enormous clap of thunder. So this is what people do, go to the glacier for hours just to listen to it`s amazing size and to hopefully see a big piece fall off. We were lucky and after our two hours (from 8-10pm, around sunset), right before leaving we saw a huge slab of the wall come off. Really loud (although looked like slow motion from the distance we watched it happen), then after about 60 seconds the big piece came charging up to the surface from the bottom of the lake and caused another big eruption. It was amazing, and I think the "best picture to tell the story" is "BPTTTS" in the "Argentina" album where you can see a tiny little person between the camera and the glacier..and this person is still very far from the glacier (we thought about 200m, maybe more). Good stuff.

After that we headed to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, in Chile, which is South America`s most famous park. Beautiful views, but we didn`t pace ourselves quite well enough. Walked 15miles the first day (which included seeing a girl I went to high school with, in the park...small world) and 12 hours the second (which was a lot more than 15miles) with packs that seemed to get heavier with every step. After 10 hours the second day Marc called it quits and my pack got a bit heavier as I started carrying his stuff as well. It was nice, though, to arrive to the campsite and see a few people I had met a couple of weeks ago...so we had a good chat until I couldn`t stand up any longer. The park was amazing, though. Then, I decided to skip Ushuai, the world`s southernmost city on Tierra del Fuego, and started what would become a 4 day, 40 bus hours, and one night sleeping in a bus terminal odyssey back to Buenos Aires (6th border crossing). Because of the close time of my first connection I didn`t have time to shower after I got out of the park, which of course made the next four days even more fun! The one night that I wasn`t sleeping on a bus I slept in the station (all the hotels were booked due to some convention in town...), but luckily enough five separate friends of mine that I had met while travelling wondered into the station at different times and kept me company for a little bit. I was a pretty sorry sight with my sleeping bag, next to all of my homeless friends. My friend John, who`s from VA and was even more delirious than me, suggested jokingly that I should hire one of them to act as bodyguard while I slept...decided against that.

Anyhow, that´s a bit of insight into my whereabouts and wanderings.

That´s it. And in other news my camera is officially out of service due to the unrelenting efforts of a certain unnamed "friend." So we´ll see what´s to happen with that situation...but one thing for sure is that new pictures are not being taken at the moment...boo.

Christmas and the New Year

It`s a bit strange to start this little story right in the middle of my travels, but Christmas and the New Year seems like as good a time as any and maybe in the next little while I`ll try to backtrack so that the pictures (jamesrichards.myphotoalbum.com) make sense.

After travelling around Argentine and Chilean Patagonia for the last little while, I arrived in Buenos Aires after 4 days of non-stop travel. My friend Angie who I met in Caracas was nice enough to have me as her guest and I showed up bright and early the morning of the 19th. We embarked on many a day filled with adventures and field trips until the big day was upon us (24th, here). Angie`s roommate, Negro, his Mom Kitty, Angie and I made up the Christmas family even though the warm weather and general cultural differences made Christmas seem like something very far away that was bound to come in about 6 months. Regardless, we were graced with some amazing cooking by Negro (professional Chef) and Angie, presents at midnight from Kitty, stockings the next morning from Santa, and most importantly, great company. Angie, one of my blogger mentors describes it much better....angie.nomadlife.org

Christmas day was very different. Without the normal routines that we agreed had been the same all our lives, the Christmas crew (now including my friend Andreas from Switzerland) set out on the city looking for something to occupy the time. What we found was a pool hall that played Aerosmith with absurd frequency, almost to the point of insanity. And that was Christmas! Different, yes, but definitely still fun and in congruence with the normal Christmas doldrums.

Between Christmas and New Years was a lot of time spent with a friend of mine Rosario that lives here and that I met in Mendoza (ARG). Then, on the 30th we packed our stuff up after she finished work and headed to the beach (Mar del Plata) on a 1 AM New Years Eve bus. Arriving early and armed with the justification that really, New Years only comes once a year, we found a beautiful hotel on the beach and toasted away 2005 in high fashion. The first day of 2006 then set a good example for the rest of the year, waking up to swim laps in the pool, eating a huge breakfast and lounging on the beach before we headed back to BsAs on the late bus.

All in all things are still going quite well. Extraordinarily well. My next move will be to Còrdoba tomorrow night (12 hours in bus), I`ll let you know how it goes...

OK, this time for real...

So, roughly a month and a half later and in the next year...I have finally found the motivation to give this blog thing another try. Seems like a good thing, and hey, everybody`s doing it! I would just like to take this moment to strongly reccomend that you set this page as your homepage and to encourage the posting of comments. Muy bien.