Turning North

NOTE: This is just a short post to catch up. I am in Buenos Aires at the moment, but the internet cafes here are pretty lousy and/or non-existent. Unfortunately, I can´t add any photos until I find a better cafe. Sorry.

Prior to arriving in BA, Drew and I spent time in El Calafate (in Argentinian Patagonia) and Puerto Iguazu (at the Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina border). This post will cover El Calafate and a subsequent one will address the north.

There are only four important things about El Calafate.

1) It is not Ushuaia. We finally finagelled bus tickets out of Ushuaia to a hole affectionally known as Rio Gallegos, Argentina. The only thing interesting in Rio is carafour, which is a cheap, depressing, South American version of Wal-Mart. Four hours later, most of it spend wandering the aisles of carafour, we manage to catch another bus to El Calafate. We left Ushuaia at 5 AM and arrived in El Calafate at 1 AM the following day. Then we spend two hours wandering the streets looking for our hostel. We arrive around 3 AM.

2) El Calafate is so important that it is one of the few cities to actually use a definite article in its name. Sort of like ¨The Ohio State Univeristy.¨ Admitedly, we refer to Washington, DC as ¨the District¨, but that is not as pretencious since it is only the short form of the official name. Besides, DC has something to be pretentious about. All El Calafate has is a glacier.

3) There is a big #$%&¿@* glacier just outside of town. It´s big! Like the size of New York City big! Its about 5 km wide and tens of kilometers long. It´s impressive, assuming you like large chunks of ice.

4) I learned to make a new drink - The Lenin. It is a surprisingly okay combination of vodka and beer. This make be old hat to all of you, but I had never heard of one. I googled it and didn´t see anything promising, so i will bear the mantle of bringing the Lenin to the USA.

Okay, that sums up El Calafate. At this point we got desperate and just decided to skip out on the whole two-day bus ride to Buenos Aires. We bought plane tickets and instead hung out at the airport with a bunch of Harvard grad students while they tried to fix our plane. In retrospect, the bus wouldn´t have been much longer.