Articles by Miranda

After a nice ride on a coche cama, we are in the University town of Córdoba. Pretty much halfway between Buenos Aires and Mendoza. It’s a cool misty morning, but if the fog lifts we might take an afternoon tour around the countryside and see what’s shakin’.

Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay did turn out to be a beautiful city. The old part is quite touristy but very quaint, with roughly cobblestoned streets (especially the ones they say are original portugese construction). Lousy gradation and compaction of the base,… Dad says he never would have let it pass inspection. We highly recommend Uruguay. The small part of it we saw was great, and from conversations with locals we hear that the rest of it is quite spectacular as well. I really thought we were paring down the list of things to see here, but noooo.

Tonight we take another night bus to get to our final destination before the departure point. We made a phone call to Mendoza yesterday and were instantly remembered and are warmly expected tomorrow morning. Yay, what a way to cap off a trip.

p.s. I finally put some new pictures up. They may not be in order, but oh well

Well, two years in a row of *just* Chile and Argentina was too much to take, so we had to leave these known countries and set out anew (now I know we were on another *continent* already this trip, but it’s not actually another *country*). So here we are in Montevideo, Uruguay. After having achieved the unbeatable feat of swiming in three oceans in a single trip, we are feeling pleasantly worn out from a day in the sun. I was glad that the weather today wasn’t the same as yesterday, though I would have gone into the water anyways, lightning and all (yesterday we sat out a wicked storm at lunch, the lovely old market building that we were sitting in was being buffeted by gales and rain was finding it’s way in every corner and falling on some unfortunates). Uruguay turned out to be even cheaper than other areas in South America, both in accomodation and food. Oh, and they know how to cook steak rare… how rare (okay, enough play on the rare-rare thingy)! With all that we’ve seen here, it’s amazing that it’s almost tourist-free. The city of Montevideo is full of amazing architecture, friendly people, sandy beaches, and punchbuggies (come on! Dad and I should be black and blue by now, but we’ve decided to opt out of the punch part of it, to prevent an escalation into something more…)

Tomorrow we take a bus to the (supposed to be) lovely city of Colonia de Sacramento, spend one night there and then take the boat back to Buenos Aires (or Rio, if you think “outside-the-box” like Dad… wacko). Then we’re on a night bus to Cordoba, begining our trek across the continent back to Santiago.

Watch out, the Wild Roses are turning towards home!

Hola from Buenos Aires!

Well, our first night was short but punctuated by thunder and lightning, as the heavy humidity we encountered upon our arrival at the airport in BA turned into a night-long storm. We woke up to more rain, but by early morning it was dry, if cloudy. We met up with Zoe, Harry’s friend, for lunch (she’s studying spanish here for six weeks). Then Dad and I went about planning our last week here. We booked a boat to Montevideo, Uruguay, where we will spend a couple of days. I plan to swim in the Atlantic ocean, thus beating my record of two oceans in a single trip which I did last year. I expect that this will be a slightly warmer dip than the Antarctic.

Then tonight Dad and I were making our leisurely way back to the hostel trying to find a restaurant on the way, and we stumbled across a great little family-run place. Dad ordered chicken and I ordered a steak “muy jugoso”, meaning “rare”. When the food arrived, I had two pieces of meat, neither of which was rare, but it was obvious they had tried (rare is not something normally done here; despite their great reputation for steak the argentinians like it well done). So as often happens when in a country where you don’t always know what you’re ordering, I didn’t say a word, ate what was given to me. Fine and done. Except that a very strange thing happened… the waiter came to the table, looked at the meat that I hadn’t eaten, and said,’this isn’t juicy, this is dry, I’ll bring you some more’. And sure enough, a few minutes later a brand new steak was brought to me, much thicker cut than the last, very juicy. Without me saying a word! Or even thinking of it! As I said before, in a place where I don’t totally understand the language, sometimes even I don’t know what I’m ordering, but I don’t mind when I get myself into a situation where what I ordered may not be what I *expected*, but who am I to say that the waiter made a mistake? This time, I did know what I *tried* to order, but from previous experience knew that rare steak is a rare thing in Argentina (haha). And the cost for this feast? Two bottles of wine, 1/4 chicken, fries, salad, and what came out to three steaks… including a generous tip, under twenty dollars.

Anyways, it was a rare (again, haha) display of extraordinary customer service in this lovely country that makes this small familly restaurant stand out in this six-week trip. People and places in this wide world of ours will never cease to amaze me. No wonder this bug is catching.

Well, it’s departure day finally. No more sleeps (it’s almost like waiting for Christmas). Funny, I used to get this feeling when I was first leaving home for a trip, that mixture of anticipation for something new and unknown mixed with the trepidation that something might go wrong and end up cancelling the whole thing. But now that I am a certified world traveller (not certifiable, I don’t think) the departure date has gotten to be more of a relaxed thing, since I’ve travelled to the unknown several times and it’s worked out, one way or another. But this next step really is a big one, and really is into the undiscovered territory, at least by anyone I know (including Nana and Grandad, who have been all over this small world of ours). So I get that feeling again. What will tomorrow bring? Or the day after? Ahh, I can’t wait.

you’ll notice a couple of new pictures, these are from the past couple days here in Ushuaia. We’ve had sunshine now for three days in a row, so we’ve been getting out of town and seeing the countryside. I got to teach a couple Israelis how to build a snowman at the base of a glacier. I don’t think it shows in the picture, but even the snow has a blue tinge to it.

Bye for now!

Okay, now that the initial Yahoo!! is out of the way, here’s some actual information on the trip. It’s an 11 day cruise on an 80 passenger boat, leaving Usuaia on Feb. 11th and returning on the 22nd. The crossing of the Drake Passage takes two days each way, leaving 5-6 days for visiting the Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands. Weather and ice-permitting, we attempt two landings per day, some on the islands and some on the continent. We’re supposed to have great chances of seeing several types of penguins, whales, sea lions and birds. Oh, and icebergs. Oh, and glaciers. So for the next couple of weeks any tanning I do will be from reflected sunlight off ice and snow. Oh yeah, what a holiday!

Cost… not for the faint-walleted.

So, since Dad is a pretty sporadic storyteller, and I’ve been mostly occupied with uploading pictures, here are a few more descriptions of what we’ve been keeping ourselves busy with. Torres del Paine was great. Really neat terrain, in that the whole trail system is a big circle surrounding a group of amazingly photogenic mountains, with all the hard climbs shooting off towards the center for better views of the rocky peaks. For those of you out there who have attempted rock climbing, the Torres sure look like they’d be a challenge. But people have made it to all of the peaks (between 1958 and 1963). After all that hiking, we decided to take it easy by boarding a (not)luxury cruise-liner (read-cargo ferry) for what was supposed to be a 38hour trip through the Straights of Magellan and the Beagle channel. The extra day we spent in a small enclosed bay waiting out a storm sure seemed like a smart idea when we finally got to Puerto Williams and heard stories about boats caught out in the waves, with one big cruise ship down near Antarctica ending up crashed on rocks and having to evacuate all on board. (don’t worry, I’m sure that won’t happen to us) After spending a relaxing day in P. Williams (which WE consider to be the southern-most city, not this uppity Ushuaia bullshit though they do have the marketing behind them) we bought passage on another small familly-run boat to get us across the channel to the North (see? not furthest south!) and into Ushuaia. The captain and crew were really friendly, it was nice and personal, especially since we were the only four passengers. Oh yeah, the other two in our group were another father-daughter pair, Kewal and Juhie. They’re from the States and have three more weeks to go, part of which they will be spending in Rio during Carnaval. Really great people.

So yeah. That’s it for now.

Well well well…

Well, the next few days are all taken care of. We’re really finding that there are some important connections down here that have to be booked ahead, due to a combination of schedules and complications. So there was the missed sailing from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales due to boat breakdown, then down here on the southern tip, we’re finding that either they don’t have the sailing route we would like or that they go so infrequently that we really have to match our stays and stops to fit it in. So our stay here in Puerto Natales/Torres del Paine is a bit short so that we can make it back to Punta Arenas on Wednesday to catch the boat from there to Puerto Williams (so many Ps to keep track of!) But we are booked for that sailing. Puerto Williams is on la Isle Navarino, which is just South of Tiera del Fuego.

So the next three days will be spent hiking in the national park, which we’re looking forward to. We just met a couple of girls who recently returned from a nice little continent to the south, and they gave us what we hope will be valuable information. I guess we’ll see.

So that’s what we *will* do. As for what we *have* done, we visited the Municipal Cemetary in Punta Arenas, which Grandad told me about before we left. The hostel we stayed at in P.Arenas was run by a really friendly and helpful couple, they pointed us in the direction of a great restaurant where we got to try the Chilean delicacy, Curantos (well, I shouldn’t say delicacy, it was basically a heaping plate of oh so slow-cooked meat and potatos – no knife necessary). We’re trying to put together how to cook it once we get home. Maybe some of you want to be in on that?