Iguazu Falls, Argentina (2008)

After our second short stint in Buenos Aires, we flew to Iguazu, to see the famous waterfalls.

On the morning of our flight, I woke up with a sore throat and a stuffy nose, and was afraid I was getting sick, but it went away soon after we arrived in Iguazu, so I later concluded it was due to smoke inhalation.

For once we had a lazy morning; we did do a little more shopping at the Galerias Pacifico but otherwise just hung out at the hotel until it was time to go to the airport.

We arrived in Iguazu in mid-afternoon. There was a small hiccup when one person went looking for a bathroom and ended up outside the baggage claim area, but she had all the baggage claim tags. In the end we apparently looked sufficiently clueless that the guy was convinced we weren't luggage thieves and let us through.

It was a short ride by car ($12.50) to our lodge, the Riotropic. The lodge grounds were quite pretty, and our room was large, but wooden walls meant poor sound insulation and encounters with some creepy crawly things on several occasions.


When the first person went to take a shower, the rest of us heard a blood-curdling scream a few minutes later as she'd discovered a gecko on the wall of the shower. She soon reported that the shower pressure was absurdly bad, and the shower "stall" was basically the entire bathroom.

For dinner, we headed into the town of Puerto Iguazu. We ended up at a place called El Quincho del Tio Querido, where we had a fabulous dinner. The entrees were about $7-8 each, the decor was nice, with colorful tablecloths and lights strung up along the ceilings, and there was even live music. I ordered the "Lomo Michael" special which turned out to be beef loin wrapped in pancetta with a delicious gravy, served with cooked apples, prunes, onions, carrots, and bits of jelly (almost like cherries). The overall flavor was a little sweet, almost Asian, and they'd cooked the meat properly medium rare, for once. Yum!


I also had a "licuado"; a shake of sorts with papaya, peach, banana, and pineapple. In the end we were all really happy with our meal. Afterwards, we stopped by a souvenir shop and discovered the T-shirts were really cheap there, so we bought a bunch.

The travel day had been somewhat rainy, but luckily for us, the next morning dawned bright and clear. After our hotel breakfast (quite tasty, and served on a patio), three of us caught a taxi to Iguazu Park. The entrance fee was about $10, which we later agreed was very reasonable. We spent some time trying to book a moonlight tour for that evening, and decided on the $23 option with dinner at La Selva, instead of the $13 option without dinner.

By the time we actually entered the park it was after 9:30am. We walked the Green Trail to the station, and then continued on the Lower Circuit (aka "Circuito Inferior") to San Martin Island.


Along the way, we saw some great views, some with rainbows, and lots of small animals (lizards, birds, butterflies, and other insects).





I think this must be some kind of giant rodent; they were all over the place.


These coatis were too fast for me; I only caught their tails.


We met up with the fourth person for lunch; she'd stayed back at the lodge that morning. Lunch was not exciting (pizza) and not cheap. Afterwards we took the train to Devil's Throat (aka "La Garganta del Diablo"), through which flows half of the overall volume of the river. It was an amazing feeling just to stand there at the top getting sprayed by the mist and looking all around. My camera kept getting wet, but it was well worth it.



We rode the train back down and then took a "Grand Adventure" tour. As we were waiting for the tour to start, there was a small commotion among our fellow tourgoers, and we looked up to see several toucans.


The first part of the tour involved riding in a 4x4 through the jungle. After that there was a boat trip, during which we got drenched by several of the falls, including the San Martin (the second largest fall). I thought the jungle part was kind of hokey and we'd spent plenty of time walking around the jungle earlier in the day already, but the boat part was really fun.

We spent our last hour on the Upper Circuit, until we were subtly herded out by a park ranger. The moonlight tour got cancelled due to weather and/or lack of a moon, so we got refunded and went back to town for dinner. This time we ate at El Charo, which was about the same price as El Quincho, but the food was noticeably worse in comparison. The four of us ordered various types of lomo, with pimienta, ajillo, champignon, etc., and it was all okay but not awesome like the previous day. We did discover caipirinha by accident; someone ordered it because she saw "azucar" and thought it would be a soft drink, but when it turned out to be alcoholic, she had the rest of us help her finish it. I decided very quickly that I was a fan.

Back at the lodge, we had an incident with someone discovering ants in her hair, and I managed to break the flusher on the toilet, but eventually we all got to sleep.

On the day of our return journey, we slept in and got up around 9am. Our air conditioner had gone wonky overnight so we were pretty cold in the morning, but luckily no one got sick from that. At breakfast we ran into a couple from Los Angeles who spoke excellent Spanish. Their month-long itinerary included Mendoza, Bariloche, El Calafate, and Ushuia. I was madly jealous.

We caught a taxi to the airport at noon and arrived at 12:20pm. The check-in agent automatically moved us up from our 2:10pm flight to a "12:25pm" flight which he said was leaving 20 minutes late anyway. It ended up leaving at 1:10pm, so we got to Buenos Aires a bit before 3pm. We claimed our luggage and found a car to take us to Ezeiza (the international airport) for $25. The air was even nastier than before, and it was at this point we finally found a newspaper and figured out what was happening. It took us about 15-20 minutes to get the car, and the ride took another 40 minutes, with me covering my nose with my sleeves practically the entire time.

Once we got to Ezeiza, the rest of our trip home went smoothly.

I'm quite amused reading through these notes now, because I wrote that I bought a Peruvian alpaca scarf at the airport, because "who knows when I'll be in Peru?". I guess there's no way I could have known that I'd be hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu only a year later.

Peninsula Valdes, Argentina (2008)

On our second day in Argentina, we took an early morning flight from Buenos Aires' Jorge Newberry airport to Trelew, a small Welsh-influenced city in Patagonia. One of my friends developed really terrible stomach pain sometime in the middle of the night (which persisted for the rest of the trip), but we packed up her stuff and she managed to stick it out through the ride to the airport, the two hour flight, and a subsequent bus ride to our hotel, where she spent the rest of the day.

The rest of us were picked up at the airport by Cuyon, our tour company. Our tour guide's name was May and she spoke excellent English. There was one other passenger, a Spanish-speaking girl named Silvina. We headed to directly to Punta Tombo, about an hour away. Punta Tombo is the home of the largest Magellanic penguin colony in South America. It cost us about $7.50 per person in entrance fees, but soon we were surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of small penguins. There was other wildlife as well; mostly guanacos (similar to llamas), rhea (large flightless birds that looked kind of like small ostriches), and even an armadillo.




The penguins were clearly the stars of the show; they came super close to us and were often right next to our feet. We were strictly instructed not to approach them, but May said it was fine if they approached us. We spent several hours there enjoying the friendly penguins.




Afterwards, we took a bus to a small town called Gaiman where we had Welsh tea (for $8.50 per person) at a place called Ty Gwyn. The portions were very generous and the tea was unlimited. This photo only shows one plate of three; we were served jam and butter, scones, cheesecake, chocolate cake, pastries with dulce de leches, pastries with coconut and jam, apple tarts, fruitcake, and more.


We couldn't come close to finishing the whole spread, but packed the rest for later. We did walk around Gaimen for a few minutes after tea, to look at the unique houses; they'd used white stone from nearby bluffs to build them. The local industry was still primarily agriculture, and the surrounding farmland was lush and green in contrast to much of Patagonia, due to the town's proximity to the Chubut river. There were sheep with lambs nearby, and tall poplar trees planted as wind screens. On the way back to Trelew, we even passed by a canal with some wild flamingos.

From there the tour guide took us to Puerto Madryn, where we checked into our hotel, the Hosteria Solar de la Costa, where our friend was waiting for us. The total cost for the day's tour was $110 USD per person.

For dinner, three of us walked into the town of Puerto Madryn and found a nice-looking restaurant called Placido. We spent a total of $40 on sauteed calamari with veggies, cod, salmon, Patagonian lamb, and a couple of glasses of wine. Not bad.

The next morning, all four of us had our free breakfast at the hotel and were ready to go at 7:15am, which was our pickup time. By 7:45am we were getting worried, and then at 7:50am the agency (not the same tour company as the previous day) called to say they were having van trouble, and would be over in "a few minutes". At 8:15am we had the hotel call to figure out what was happening. Again, they said they'd be over shortly. At 8:30am we called Cuyun, the previous day's tour company, and asked them to come get us. At 8:35am the first tour company's van arrived, but we were pretty mad as they were an hour and 20 minutes late, so (with the help of the very nice hotel staff) we pretended we'd already left. At 8:38am the Cuyun van arrived, and we went on our way.

We went first to the Center for Interpretation of the Peninsula Valdes. The most impressive thing there was a right whale skeleton, plus a pretty vista of the isthmus outside.

From there it was a few minutes to Punta Norte, where we saw two or three large groups of sea lions. I thought it was especially cute when a mother sea lion returned from the ocean, and her calf went waddling down the beach to meet her.


At the next stop, Punta Cantor, there were a few penguins, but nowhere near as many as the previous day at Punta Tombo.


There were some elephant seals as well, but they were pretty boring and immobile. We did walk to a spot where we had a nice view of the mouth of the Caleta Valdes.


We'd hoped to spot some orcas, perhaps even as they were hunting the seals, but we were told they could only be seen at high tide; 7am or 7pm, so we were out of luck. We had lunch at Puerto Pyramides; the food was not very interesting but afterwards we walked around outside the restaurant and there were some random things lying around; old railroad equipment and the like, so I took some photos of those.

We got back to our hotel shortly after 5pm. Two of us decided to venture out for dinner; the other two stayed at the hotel. We walked along the shore a bit, bought some postcards and tasty Yenelen chocolate, and then had a light dinner at Cantina El Nautico. Unfortunately we'd left our best Spanish speaker at home, so there was an amusing exchange when I asked if the restaurant was "abierto" (one of my few Spanish words) and the guy at the door told me "ocho", so we had to go away and come back fifteen minutes later. Initially I was afraid reading the menu would be a huge ordeal, but luckily I tend to pick up food words best in any language, so we ended up with some pretty tasty "arroz con camarones" (rice with shrimp) and a salad.

We had another mad scramble the next morning; we'd been told the airport shuttle would come "as early as 7:30am" so we'd planned to wake up shortly before 7am. I forgot to set my alarm, so I didn't get up until someone else poked me at 7:05am. At 7:10am we got a call which was all in Spanish. I thought he said 7:15am and I thought I was saying 7:45am but basically no communication was happening. Anyway, finally I said, "Si, transfer" and hung up. At 7:15am the receptionist knocked on our door and said that the shuttle had arrived, setting off a frenzy of packing. We got everyone packed and out the door at 7:30am, but the shuttle driver was visibly annoyed.

After that our transit back to Buenos Aires went pretty smoothly; we mailed some postcards and did some souvenir shopping, but the only thing that looked vaguely interesting turned out to be a fruitcake, so that was the end of airport shopping for me.

Buenos Aires, Argentina (2008)

I get a lot more vacation days than D does every year, so typically I'll plan one trip a year without him. In 2008, I went on a week-long trip to Argentina with three of my girl friends. We went to Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls, and the Peninsula Valdes, to see the Magellanic penguins.

Our flight from San Francisco to Miami was uneventful, but we refused to buy sandwiches at $10 apiece, so we were pretty hungry when we landed. Miami International has really terrible food, and several places were closing already, so we ended up at Manchu Wok eating pseudo-Chinese food.

We got to our gate at around 10:15pm for our 11:20pm flight and discovered it'd already been delayed until 12:45am. To make a long story short, the scheduled departure time went from 12:45pm to 1:00am to 1:45am to 2:30am. We finally took off almost 3.5 hours late, around 2:40am, and were served a dinner of chicken and rice. I slept for over 6 hours and then awoke to find a breakfast of croissants and yogurt.

We arrived in Buenos Aires around noon and bought a $22 ride to town. It took a little over 30 minutes to arrive at our hostel, the V&S Hostel Club, where we checked into a 4-person room ($60 with private bath).

For the rest of the afternoon, we walked around checking out the major tourist areas. First we walked through the Plaza Mayor and Casa Rosada area, then down Florida Street.




It wasn't too crowded because it was a Sunday, but there were still lots of street performers and vendors selling snacks.

Afterwards we walked to San Telmo, where we walked through the weekend antiques market in the Plaza Dorrego, and the shops on Boliver and its adjoining streets.



We stopped at a cafe to get a "snack", and ended up with a giant pile of empanadas and an equally giant slice of flan with dulce de leche.

After that we wandered around near the water for awhile before heading to Siga La Vaca for dinner.

The appetizers there were decent; lots of sliced meats, cheese, olives, spanish omelet, and some interesting salads, but the meat was too well done all around. (We tried beef, chicken, and pork.) I'm guessing we could have asked for rarer cuts if we'd spoken better (or any) Spanish. The sauces were yummy so I ended up slathering my meat in mystery red and green sauces. Dessert was pretty good; I ordered something totally indecipherable on the menu, which ended up being ice cream with raspberry sauce and candied chopped almonds. Despite the overcooked meat, it was a rather large meal, so we walked all the way home in order to try and digest it.

We spent the next two days in the Peninsula Valdes area of Patagonia, but returned to Buenos Aires around noon on the third day. Upon arriving at Jorge Newberry (the domestic airport) we tried to get a "remise" (like a taxi but with preset prices). The cheapest quote was for $7.50 but with a 40 minute wait. Next cheapest was Manuel Tienda at $8, but with a 25 minute wait. We went with a quote for $10 with "no wait" which ended up being 5-10 minutes anyway. Oh well.

The driver Felipe was very gregarious and even managed to have a pretty prolonged conversation with the one member of our group that spoke some Spanish. I only understood the part where he asked what we thought of Argentinean men and whether we had boyfriends.

After we checked back into our hostel, we went sightseeing again. Unfortunately one of my friends was having some serious stomach pain so she stayed home, but the rest of us walked down 9 de Julio towards the obelisk, then to Avenida de Mayo. We stopped at the tourist information booth to inquire about getting to MALBA (a museum in Palermo) and discovered it was a bus ride away, so instead we asked about tango shows, and were directed to Cafe Tortoni. There, we bought four tickets at about $15 per person for that evening's show.

We'd heard a lot about the famous Argentinean "mate" drink before arriving, so when we saw a place called "Mate Bar", we decided we had to stop and try it. The waiter was super nice and brought us an order of mate with cookies even before we ordered.


We added a quartet of "pinchos" which turned out to be beef, chicken with veggies (kind of like fajitas), battered fried thin slices of meat, and chunks of breaded fried mozzerella with marinera sauce. The friendly waiter even instructed us on how to drink the mate; pour hot water, stir with sugar, drink, add more hot water, etc. We paid about $10 for all of our food and drink, and went on our way.

Next up was a visit to the Recoleta district. We walked up Alvear Street admiring the fancy houses, hotels, and shops, and then checked out the park at the end, the Santa Pilar church, and the famous Recoleta Cemetary which houses Evita's tomb. The cemetary was smaller than I'd expected but the tombs were grander. Some were quite modern and the coffins were mostly above ground and visible through glass doors!




We had a mid-afternoon snack at Freddo (ice cream and milkshakes), and then walked up Quintana to the Plaza San Martin, where we saw the English Tower (a gift from the local English community), the Palacio San Martin, the monument, and the square itself, where there were lots of couples (old and young) making out. Hmm.


For some reason, the air was terribly smoggy; much more than on the previous Sunday, when we'd been wandering around San Telmo and the Plaza Mayor. A few days later, we finally figured out why; some farmers had set fires trying to clear land for crops, but the fires (over 300 of them) had gotten out of control and consumed thousands of acres, creating a thick blanket of smoke over the surrounding area, including Buenos Aires and parts of Uruguay. We were extremely lucky that our domestic flights weren't affected; we flew out of Jorge Newberry on April 17th and back on April 19th. On the day between, all incoming domestic flights were all diverted elsewhere. Whew!

On the way home we bought some candies and cookies at a "25 hour" store, to take home as souvenirs. We also stopped by the Galerias Pacifico to admire the nice painted ceilings, and then headed back to the hostel to pick up our sick friend.


Around 7:30pm we arrived at the Tortoni Cafe. The show was surprisingly good! I especially liked one segment which included two guys doing percussion with ropes and drums, and the live music was also better than I'd expected.


That night we spent some time using the free internet at the hostel to chat with some ER doctor friends, to try to remotely diagnose our sick friend. There was an episode that involved me and and of the other girls running out to a pharmacy which was just about to close, and trying to communicate with the cashiers using charades and poor Spanish. Luckily, the security guard (of all people!) spoke a few words of English, so we got what we wanted. Actually they were all really nice to us; I'm guessing it was obvious that we were in dire need of assistance. In the end we felt slightly better it being nothing life-threatening, but still didn't know exactly what was wrong.

language proficiency

I'm leaving Saturday for a trip to Argentina with some friends. We've been corresponding a bit with various hostel owners and tour operators, and have been a bit frustrated with the poor English that we've been encountering. It generally takes several back-and-forth emails to get any questions answered, and given that email response time is usually at least 24 hours (if not several days), it's been taking forever to get our plans finalized.

After spending a lot of time parsing a particularly cryptic email, in which the syntax barely resembled English, and several words were outright Spanish, I started to wonder what I'd sounded like when I was chatting with the French tourists in Vietnam last week. I've basically forgotten any tense except the present tense, and my vocabulary was never very good to begin with, so I describe lots of things in roundabout ways; I'll say "the meal we eat later" instead of "lunch" if I've forgotten "dejeuner", etc. I guess I should be grateful that they all humored me and continued to converse with me. In fact, several of them were quite pleased that I attempted any French at all.

Must remember to have patience with people's English next week.