I haven't since my second post written the location of my posting because it's always been Salta, but now as we're wrapping up and traveling around some more, we are now in El Calafate in Patagonia. We saw a huge glacier yesterday! It was really cool. But ok, last Wednesday we left early in the morning to Chile! Woo hoo! South American country number two! We left very early and headed North into Jujuy. Chile is a long, skinny country to the West of Argentina on the Pacific Ocean that straddles the Andes mountains from the Peruvian border in the tropics almost to Antarctica. It isn't too different from Argentina in that, like most of South America, it is Spanish-speaking (Normal Spanish, though, with none of those zha-zha-zha's they have over the border.). It took many, many hours to get to the border. We passed through all those places we went to those other times: San Salvador de Jujuy, Purmamarca, the Quebrada of Humahuaca, the Salinas Grandes, and after many hours of steady upward driving through Jujuy province's altiplano region (The combined Spanish words for high, alto, and flat, plano). It was, as promised, both very high and quite flat. The four of us got varying levels of headaches because of the altitude. We saw vicuñas, or possibly guanacos, we're not sure how to tell the difference. After many hours, we arrived at the Argentine border control. Some paperwork later, we got permission to leave the country, and then did so. But there was no Chilean counterpart to that border station. At least none that we could find. We doubled back a few times, but we saw no stop, so we headed into the country thinking we were illegal for a few hours But we weren't. They just have border control in the nearest town so that the border controlers don't have to drive hours across the Atacama desert everyday. That was where we were now, the Atacama desert. According to Dad, this is the driest place on Earth. This first town, San Pedro de Atacama (Pop. 3,264), was also our final destination. By this time it's evening, so after making sure we weren't illegally entering the country and didn't have to turn around and make the 12-hour drive again, we checked into our hotel. We tried to go out to see some of San Pedro's natural wonders, but it was too dark, so we turned around and stayed at our hotel. The entire day of driving, we were sweating in our short sleeves wondering why we ever listened to the people telling us to bring warm clothes, but when the sun set, the temperature dropped dramatically. I guess that's true in a desert. We were huddled by the fire in our layers at our restaurant (May I point out that we are Minnesotans visiting a tropical desert, and we were the ones with the most layers?) when only hours before Maggie and I had had to put bags between us so we would stop sweating on each other. After dinner, we went to bed, now cold, not hot, but still with headaches from the height.
Headaches improved, and spirit of adventure revived, we got up very early on Thursday (Again!? Why???) to see the magnificent desert around us. First, we headed towards the salt flat, trying, and failing to go to a lagoon down a rough dirt path, and stopping once more at the tiny town of Toconao (Pop. 862) and seeing its valley with ancient art. We went further to salt flat (Atacamian style!), which, unlike Argentina's, is not flat--it looks more like an endless pile of white rocks than a gigantic salt cube. And in the salt flat is a lagoon with flamingos! Cool! We looked at them for a while, watching them swim and fly around the lagoon. After that, we turned around and went to the hotel and the ate lunch downtown, and then went to a rock landscape outside of the city. I know that at least once I've used the word "otherworldly" when describing the landscape in Humahuaca or Cafayate. Apparently, whoever named the Valley of the Moon thought the same way I did. And they sure weren't wrong. The land was definitely more lunar than terrestrial. I'm not really sure how to describe it, actually. It was a series of rocky hills jutting out of the earth with sand inbetween them. It was really cool, a lot like many of the other drives we've done. We ate, again, at the hotel, and went to bed, again, early.
We woke up very early on Friday (Seriously?! How many days am I going to have to do this?!) to head back home (For a detailed report of this, read Wednesday's entry backwards.) At night, we went out with Karina and Daniel and Karina's mom.
We hung out more with them Saturday afternoon at their quincho with some friends. After that, we went to Chiara's birthday party. She had friends there, but I didn't see them much. My time was split between Francisco (who was sick, poor thing.) playing a variant of Bingo and Adri and Fran's friend who engaged in more violent, and exhausting, activities. We got her a toy dog stuffed with makeup and things we got at the last minute (Apparently we weren't the only ones who put presents off, because, as May 1st was Labor Day in Argentina [Actually, for some strange reason, this is because that's the day we used to celebrate it--because of the Haymarket Massacre {Yay, APUSH.}. I don't know why we switched dates and the rest of the world didn't when it was our day to begin with.], almost every shop was closed. Chiara got a lot of makeup from the pharmacy.)
On Sunday we left Salta to Patagonia, where we are now. Daniel lent us his car to drive to the airport since we are no longer renting our car. We left on a plane to Buenos Aires, and when we got there, we went straight on another one to Bariloche. Bariloche is a ski resort/national park town (Incidentally, it is also where my Argentine classmates are planning to go to celebrate when they finish High School.) on the side of Lake Nahuel Huapi in Nahuel Huapi National Park and not far from the Chilean border. As it turns out, we didn't have to take a day-long drive through the Atacama desert to renew our 90-day visa-free stays. We could have just hopped the border in Bariloche or El Calafate. When we stepped outside the airport and saw the tour bus, it turned out it was not, as promised, wheelchair-accessible. With some effort, Mom was carried onto bus and off again at our hotel. We couldn't go on the tour that night, but a wheelchair-accessible bus was promised for Monday. So we walked around the town. Bariloche (or Geneva might be a better name) is a little city settled by Swiss immigrants made to look like their homeland. The city center is wooden and the main street is a little one lined with little shops selling chocolate. It looks out on Nahuel Huapi Lake, so we walked down to the lake after walking around the town, and we saw a skating rink over the water. Someone (Maggie...) suggested we should go skating. So we did. Dad got frustrated quickly not being able to find out the exact formula for skating correctly (Pshh... What a mathematician.), but Maggie and I lasted longer. That was my first time skating ever, and I showed it. Funny that my first time skating wasn't in the Land of Ten Thousand Frozen Lakes, but with our Latin American neighbors to the South. We ate at a restaurant in the town Sunday night, and went to bed.
Our tour group didn't bring a wheelchair-accessible bus on Monday morning. After an argument between Dad and the tour guide, we just settled on renting a car ourselves and not worrying about the tour group. So we went on a drive to the North side of the lake and took the boat ride we had been trying to organize with them from there to Arrayanes National Park. An arrayan in a type of tree that exists in only two forests in the world: the one we went to, and one on an island in Nahuel Huapi lake. But you've probably seen one anyway. This is the forest Bambi lived in. The trees are pretty cool. Figuratively and literally. After that little excursion onto the lake, we drove back to Bariloche and stayed at the hotel until dinner, when went out and ate Italian.
On Tuesday we drove the "Tronador" route up towards the mountains. (Other than to sound like something out of "Homestarrunner", I have no idea why they would name it that.) It is just what one would expect from a route up to the mountains from a lake: a long dirt road with many views of both. At the top, though, there is a glacier. It's almost disappeared in recent years because of heating, but you can still see a little bit behind a mountain. Apparently you can hear rumbling if you catch the top of the road under the mountains at the right time. And we did. I, at least, heard a rumble from up above that sounded like thunder. Sadly, I can't tell you why it rumbles. I have no idea. We came back to the town and ate out again on our last night in Bariloche.
On Wednesday we flew to El Calafate, even further South. El Calafate is one of the most Southerly towns in the world. It's almost at the tip of the continent. El Calafate is named for a berry that grows here. Wikipedia's translation for "calafate" is "Magellan barberry". If that makes any sense to you, you know far more about botany than I do. I'll just keep calling it "calafate". Anyway, on our first day here, we (surprise, surprise) discovered that Mom couldn't get into the handicap-accessible bus, so they (quite helpfully, I'll admit) ordered a private car for the four of us. Eventually we made it to our hotel and checked in. We went to town for a while. It's sort of like Bariloche, but smaller. And then we came to the hotel and ate there.
On Thursday we took our car (and chauffeur) to Perito Moreno glacier. WOW. That is one impressive glacier. It is, first of all, gigantic. Gigantic and blue. Sadly, Mom had to stay with our driver while Maggie and Dad and I went on a walk to look at it. The glacier is at the top of Argentine Lake (the biggest lake in the country) overlooking it. Perito Moreno is one of the most visited glaciers in the world (and it's not hard to see why!) and it is larger than the city of Buenos Aires (a city of 12 million). It is just like mountain glaciers look in pictures: it's an enormous piece of jagged ice crammed between two mountains. It is white with a blue tint, and small bits are always falling off. It's too big to even see the whole thing at one time, so we took a walk from on end to the other, where Mom and driver met us. And on the way a huge chunk of ice (maybe 5 feet by 40 feet by 80 feet) broke off the glacier and crashed into the water below it. It was sooooo cool!! (Again, figuratively and literally.) And Mom even got to see it, eventually. On the way back, we saw a boat cruise up to the glacier that Mom was able to get on. So we all four got to get up close and personal to the glacier. It was amazing.
And today, we are checking out of our hotel and we are going to go back to Salta on a plane soon.
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