Sudamerica 4 anos despues

The trouble all started when we reached I-85 and found out someone had been thoughtless enough to get into a major accident which resulted in closing down the interstate for several hours, and thus we missed our flight to Miami.  Yes, I know that’s how you people like your stories to start, otherwise what would you be doing reading this blog? Welcome once again to another installment of my adventures in some random place.  I would tell you to grab a glass of wine and sit back and see what kind of mess I can get myself into again…but let’s face it—I know you people so know you already have some kind of libation in hand. So let’s just get started.

So where were we?  Oh yes, loitering at the American Airlines counter at the Charlotte airport giving our sob story about the inconsiderate actions of our fellow drivers to the airline agent who probably thought we were lying and/or didn’t care either way.  She attempted to reschedule us on the 12:30 flight, where we were listed as numbers 5 and 6 on the standby list.  An hour later we sat at the gate as they loaded passengers 3 and 4 or the standby list and closed the aircraft door, and watched our dreams of sitting on Annie’s boat with a margarita in the Coconut Grove marina followed by lunch and swimming at South Beach go down the toilet. Instead, we got to spend 5 hours at the Charlotte airport waiting for the next flight to Miami, drinking overpriced margaritas and eavesdropping on other travelers, who clearly had expense accounts to be able to afford multiples of the drinks. 

This point in our tale would normally be a good time to introduce our nemesis, er, rather, travelling partner, and make a case as for why this was all her fault.  But most of you already know I was travelling with my sister Mary, and since her reputation apparently precedes her (as we will discover later in our story), no introductions need to be made. And of course it wasn’t her fault, but since everything in life has to be someone’s fault, it is more fun to pretend that it was hers.

Anyway, fast forward about 16 hours where we are deplaning in Buenos Aires to discover we have made the trip by ourselves, while our luggage stayed to relax a bit longer in Miami.  LAN airlines (which we travelled on) were very good about the whole thing and even gave us $140 USD to make up for it.  So I suggest that if you haven’t lost your luggage in a while, you know that means your number is due to come up sometime soon, so you should book your next few flights on LAN, who will likely treat you better than an American airline, which would have given us a toothbrush and sent us on our merry way.

We decided to rent an apartment in Recoleta, a very nice treed section of Buenos Aires that I thought Mary would enjoy sleeping in better than San Telmo, where I usually stay, but no matter where you try to stay in San Telmo you will end up on a bus line that will be noisy and go all night long.  One of the best things about our apartment was our balcony, where we indulged our inner voyeurs and probably spent more time than was necessary drinking wine and peering in the windows of our neighbors.   One night we watched as the guy across the street did his laundry, ironed it, swept and mopped the apartment, and then set up the coffee table with wine glasses and plates, propped some nice pillows on the floor and placed candles all around the apartment.  Then he ruined the whole thing by closing the blinds.  Whatever.  It’s not like we were actually going to still be awake by the time he started his date since they don’t consider eating dinner any earlier than midnight to be civilized. The blinds stayed closed on and off over the next day and then Mary spotted a woman opening them sometime mid-morning of the following day.  We watched a balcony party at another apartment one night, and at another we spotted the cat coming out once in a while to use the litter box on her balcony on several occasions.  We were kind of sad to leave our little life there, as we felt like we were part of a family, and of course are now dying to know how the neighbor’s relationship is progressing. Anyway, here are some observations on life in Buenos Aires 2012 as compared with 2008, which is the last time I was in town:

• ·         The disturbing lack of cats at the Jardin Botanico: last time I was in town, there were dozens of cats lounging around under trees and strolling around clearly not missing any meals. This time around we saw only a few and it looked like the food budget had gotten a bit tight as they were not as full-figured as on previous occasions.  The city really needs to look into this, as why would one visit the botanical gardens if not to view cats?  Puzzling.
• ·          The apparent loss of direction in the lives of street dogs:  used to be that they all looked like they had important business to attend to, places to go and people to see.  This time around there seemed to be a lot of laying around in the street—clearly this town has been infiltrated and populated by a gang of Peruvian dogs, whose napping in the middle of streets as cars and bicycles whiz by is legendary.  Feel free to refer to a previous post on Latin American dog behavior for a comparison analysis.
• ·         Things that remain the same….the continuing obsession with the Malvinas situation (although it has been and remains a little unclear why they really care) and the escalation with wanting Areolinas Argentinas to be the only airline to have flights to the Falklands.  Currently they don’t, and the only flights to/from the Falklands go through Chile, who has a better relationship with the UK.  
• ·         La Boca: of all the months I have spent in BsAs, I never took the opportunity to check out la Boca, which has certainly capitalized on their visitor attraction status as an area for artists.  It was very cute, but has perhaps seen a bit too much of a proliferation of kitschy tourist shops.  I did find a nice painting which I purchased on the street from the artist though, so it was worth the trip over.  We also discovered what may be an Argentine ability to predict rain.  The waiter at the restaurant we had lunch at told us it would rain at 3, and sure enough at about 2:50 the skies opened up.  Must do further research into this phenomenon.

And so after 5 lovely days reconnecting with Buenos Aires, we headed off on a 4 AM flight to El Calafate. During our brief two days there we visited the Perito Moreno glacier, where we spent approximately 7 hours.  The hostel said we would have about 4 hours, but we went by public bus and so had 7 hours, which was probably 3 too many to view the glacier and take a walk around.  Anyway, after the arrival of our luggage in BsAs, things started to go pretty well on our trip, which is normally a sign to cue the wild dogs.  Again, see a previous blog post about being too thankful when things are going well…..in this case, it was clearly time to cue other undesirables who can irritate your trip.  As my New York friends will know, I am of course talking about bed bugs.  Everybody in the world may be pretty sure that bed bugs only inhabit NYC, but I am here to tell you that they too have learned the pleasures of travelling and have taken to the road. 

Being budget conscious and having stayed at this hostel before, we decided we could do a couple of nights in a shared dorm—but in our defense it did only have 4 beds in it with a private bathroom, so did not seem like such a big deal.  After the first night, I had a bunch of itching mid-day next day, but thought perhaps it was the emergence of some mosquito bites I might have gotten in BsAs since they were active there.  I also have clearly had a break with reality and decided it would be OK to store my backpack under the bed.  Must be getting stupider as I get older, but we needed space and it seemed harmless.  Middle of our second night there I woke up itching all over, turned on the lights and was confronted by my bedmates.  Now you people know I am not averse to occasionally sharing my boudoir with carefully selected and vetted persons, but I do draw the line at non-humans (well, cats are OK—but they too have been carefully selected to be flea-free). Anyway, combat ensued and I left a few dead bodies around as a message to their friends and we bolted for the bus to Chile as soon as possible and after sorting everything as well as I could in my backpack.  Mary, of course, was completely bite-free.  This defies logic considering I looked for and saw bugs on all of the other 3 beds in the room.  The only explanation for this is that Mary’s reputation as a non-tasty treat (at least for bed bugs!) preceded her so they high-tailed out of her bed promptly upon her arrival into it.  Whatever. 

Any of you that have been unfortunate enough to make the acquaintance of these nasty creatures knows that once you have numerous bites, you look like you have some kind of pox outbreak—it is very nasty and ugly (we counted 37 bites just on one arm) and I was terrified to let people see it, lest they assume, perhaps correctly, that I was carrying them around as pets. Thankfully we were in Patagonia and it was fall, so wearing long sleeves was not a problem.

OK, I am tired of this conversation…..so moving on to Ecocamp, the purpose of the whole trip! After what passes for a short bus trip in Latin America (only 6 hours!), we arrived in Chile and picked up our transport to the ecocamp.  Ecocamp is a sustainable tourism project in Torres del Paine national park that uses hydro and solar power, composting toilets, local staff (and owners) and is comprised of a number of domed tents made to withstand the Patagonian winds and snow. We did some amazing (and long!) hikes there and got to enjoy different types of Pisco Sours—the national drink that they are in hot debate with Peru over who invented—each night.  On our second day there, we did a 7 hour hike to the French Valley, and got to witness first-hand the devastation of the forest fire in December 2011.  This was apparently the largest fire the park has ever seen, set by some Israeli gringo who was burning his toilet paper.  The story (as best we could gather) is that a guide witnessed him trying to run away from the scene.  Eventually he was apprehended since there are only a few trails and eventually they all end at a lake of some kind, so the police were waiting there for him when he ran out of places to run.  The fire destroyed 20,000 hectares and the park was evacuated for a week or more.  In the end, the fellow was transferred to Puntas Arenas since the authorities feared for his safety in Puerto Natales (not surprisingly, the local people were not happy with the fire) and by some kind of snafu, was allowed to leave the country after only paying a $5000 USD fine.  He is not welcome in Chile again. 

Upon our transfer to Puntas Arenas for our flight to Santiago, Mary really had to go to the bathroom.  This being Patagonia and there being no stores, rest stops, or other places to relieve oneself (unless of course you are a man) our driver stopped by a local farm to see if we could use the loo there.  For the price of 3 bucks a piece, we got to use the toilets and then had to visit the farm’s pseudo zoo.  We are not big fans of seeing animals trapped in small spaces, but it would have been rude not to, so we did in fact see a puma on this trip…finishing her lunch…guess we would not have seen one any other way, but we are still of mixed mind about the whole thing.  On the flip side, there was a llama that was in love with our guide and followed him around like a dog, which was entertaining.

Things not happening in Patagonia?  Yep, the total lack of being able to predict the weather.  They can tell you about the sunny day while standing in the middle of a rain storm. Of course Patagonia will regularly see four seasons in one day (or hour) so perhaps they are better at the predications than previously thought, since sooner or later they will be right no matter what happens with the weather.

Fast forward to Santiago, where we stayed in a decent hotel in the London-Paris section of town, which had nice winding cobblestone streets.  While in Santiago we got to marvel at a cloud of smog that rivals the best LA has to offer, and attached you will see some fun pictures of the Andes trying to stick their noses out of the smog cloud to get a breath of fresh air.  We visited the museo de la memoria, which is a museum dedicated to the Pinochet overthrow of the government on September 11, 1973 (eerie, huh?) and the ensuing reign of terror imposed by the dictator on the people.  It was an awful time in the period of Chile which only ended in the 1990’s and we were ashamed that we were so ignorant of these events. Note to self to become more educated……

We also went to the Teatro Municipal and saw a performance of the Trisha Brown dance company.  We purchased the cheap seats, which came with their own red headed step child entrance around the corner—meaning no access to the lobby or refreshments and we had to purchase our own program.  That turned out to be a bit of a waste since the description of the dances in the program did not help us in any way to figure out what the hell we were seeing.  We left scratching our heads, but that was not the first time and is unlikely to be the last time I am sure!

The final days of our trip were spent in the lovely old port town of Valparaiso on the coast.  The weather was great, we got some exercise by climbing up and down all the hills, and got to enjoy a great walking tour of the city where we learned all about its history. We visited Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s house on top of the mountain and enjoyed a private tour of the harbor.  Yes, we could have waited for the bigger boat to fill with random people that they enticed in, but we had to get to the airport so it was worth paying a bit extra to have our own private guide and crusty captain. Having strangely forgotten about Semana Santa, which I took into great consideration when planning the trip, we were shocked to discover hundreds of people milling around the bus terminal and having to wait almost two hours to fit on a bus to Santiago.   It was all good though as it turned out the departure time listed on our itinerary was in US time rather than local time, so we were still early J

We made it back to Miami in plenty of time to make our connecting flight (they have redone the immigration center in Miami so it is much better than it was—you should give it a try again if you have gotten into the habit of avoiding Miami like Times Square) and our possibly bug infested bags, tired of travelling, decided to come along for all the scheduled flights. Drat.  We would not have minded getting paid to leave our bags with bugs intending to colonize our homes behind. 

Thanks for checking in again friends—tune in next time.  Not sure where and when the next time will be, but likely it will involve languages we are poor at expressing ourselves in (probably English), questionable local foods, and perhaps even a visit to the local police precinct which if not enjoyable is usually at least never dull.  Not on the guest list?  Yep…..bed bugs. 

Photos can hopefully be found here...

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