Home at Last

Six countries, four months, and we finally made it home.  Now comes the fun part.

While I was traveling I bought a lovely alpaca overcoat and stupidly sent it back to Washington, DC for safekeeping.  This is the result:

The DC Alpaca Project

Enjoy.

Throughout the trip South America has given us little gifts to treasure - rainbows, chicken feet bobbing in soup, termites, etc.  This time she went out with a bang.  We left Panama on Saturday evening and arrived in DC early on Sunday morning.  By Monday afternoon I was in Georgetown Hospital for emergency surgery.  It was nothing serious, but it would have been really problematic in a South American hospital.  So for a parting gift we got North American health care.

It is good to be home.

Why is this man better than you?

Because he is joining us in Panama!!!

That´s right, Tom will be appearing as a special guest for the last few days of this trip. Tom is a bit of a bad role model, so there probably won´t be any posts from Panama.

One of a Kind

This is the only kosher McDonald's, but who would have guessed it was in Buenos Aires. How a Mickey D´s becomes Kosher is beyond me, but unfortunately, it was closed for the sabbath so I guess it will remain a mystery.

To the Falls

According to Frost, fences make good neighbors. Apparently waterfalls make good borders; in this case, between Argentina and Brazil.

I was a bit leery about going to see Iguazu Falls. First off, it is a twenty hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, and I am getting a little tired of buses. However, everyone raved about the falls so we went. I have to admit it was well worth it. What does Iguazu have the Niagara doesn´t? First, Iguazu is bigger and in the middle of a jungle so that sort of adds an element of the exotic. Second, Iguazu has yellow fever.

I really think the threat of tropic disease adds something to the whole experience.

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.

Buenos Aires

If Paris and New York City had a kid, it would be Buenos Aires.

It shouldn´t be hard to get into trouble here.

Anywhere but Here

Okay, I am ready to leave Ushuaia now. Theoretically, this should be a simply task, but it is proving devilishly hard to do. There aren´t daily flights down here and the next batch are booked up for a week. Buses are a similar situation. Apparently, getting off the island is a lot harder than getting on.

New Years down here was an interesting affair, but not at all what I expected. I thought ringing in the new year at: a) the end of the world and b) Argentina, would guarantee a great party. I was wrong. By 7 pm on New Years Eve everything started to close - bars, restaurants, shops, even the casino!!! By 9pm it was a ghost town. There were a few restaurants open, but all of them had set menus that started at about one-half Argentina´s GDP. Drew and I ran into some other Americans wandering the street (ironically, the same people we had Christmas dinner with) and together we found a tiny little family-owned joint for dinner. People eat dinner late here, so we finished up just after midnight and headed it to find a club.

Nope. There was one club with a party that evening, but the club didn´t open its doors until 2 AM. The cover charge was about $50, but that was less of a problem than figuring out what to do for the hour and a half until the club opened. There weren´t any bars open to linger in so we all wandered back to our hotels. By 2 I was fast asleep. Sad.

This is in stark comparison to Chile and Christmas. Drew and I disembarked off of a ship at 7 PM on Christmas Day in a tiny town in southern Chile. I assumed that nothing would be open on Christmas in South America. Wrong again. Restaurants were packed, bars were full, and there were even some places to change money if you needed it.

I am deeply skeptical of Argentina´s reputation as a great party country. Buenos Aires has some catching up to do...