Tourists

You certainly meet all sorts of people traveling. And it's easy to generalize about them. I'm not saying these are my observations necessarily, but Americans are often seen as being naive, loud, and badly educated in world affairs. These stereotypes I have to say do have a ring of truth to them...but then, that's how they came to be the stereotype. I'll also say Americans are usually always fun and easy-going, have money to spend and are willing to spend it.

Argentines are seen as being self-absorbed and preoccupied with sex. Germans: unfriendly and uptight. The Japanese...well, huge groups of them will seem to move as one organism oftentimes. But then it's inevitable that the Japanese are going to be a little more difficult to approach and shy when their language is so different from the Western languages...they just can't communicate with us oftentimes so they stick together in those tightly knit groups. Find a Japanese that speaks English and you can be sure that they'll be happy to talk to you. The French are viewed as being snobs and unfriendly to Americans, though I've never experienced this and have always enjoyed hanging out with French people, both in France and in other parts of the world. Australians: big drinkers, gregarious, and knowledgable about the world.

There a quite a large number of Israelis traveling down here. In fact, I meet far more Israelis than Americans on the road. A lot of them spend some time traveling after completing their obligatory military service. A couple of the hostels I have stayed at have been almost exclusively Israeli...they do seem to stick together, and those hostels were pretty good deals I have to say. Can´t say I find them especially fun or engaging (not to generalize an entire nation or anything) but I have learned quite a bit about Israel from them.

At any rate, I could go on and on about stereotypes and my observations of the people I've seen and met. I will say that I almost always have good experiences with the other tourists I meet. My view is that the attitude you give others is often reflected back at you. If you're cool with them, most all people are going to be cool with you, whether their French, Argentine, German, whatever.

Adios Argentina

I am outta here. Off to Chile today and not going to be returning to Argentina this time. Guess that means I need to waste the 20 pesos I still have in my pocket. Had a pretty good time here in Bariloche, it is quite the Alpine oasis in the middle of nowhere, although can´t say the rafting was as good as in West Virginia, though the people I met were pretty good. The longer I travel the less I care about what I actually do and the more I care about what kind of people I stumble across.

This means I am officially leaving Patagonia as well.... I had considered taking a plane to skip through the desolation...but ended up taking a bus the whole way. Didn´t want to cheat with a plane...I reckon riding the bus and seeing the continent is part of the experience, so I will continue with buses until I reach Peru. Can´t say the scenery in Patagonia affected me the way it has many writers over the years (if I should dare call myself a writer)...but then it´s basically an empty desert wasteland and I have actually seen a few such places...the Iraq-Syria border, West Texas, the Outback, and 29 Palms come to mind.

Feliz Navidad

Well, cannot say i am happy to spend another Xmas away from home, especially here in this little backward town in Patagonia, but that is how it goes I guess....

Comodoro Rivadavia is my current location. Had lunch at the local Petrobras gas station, which is about the only place open in this town. I asked for tacos off of the ¨Mexican menu¨and ended up getting fajitas. I asked two different waitresses (yes, there where waitresses in this gas station...) if my meal was the tacos and they both said yes. Just because the all speak Spanish certainly doesn´t give them the same concept when it comes to food.

Speaking of food, actually, one of the things I am going to miss most about Argentina is the asado or barbecue. When the Argentines go to have an asado they basically grill up a ton of meat, add a little salad and bread, and along with some red wine go to town. No potatoes or other extras that you don´t want or need. Mostly just a lot of good meat.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Cities_of_Tierra_del_Fuego.png

Perito Moreno

The Perito Moreno Glacier is indeed quite an impressive sight. Glad I took the 5 hour bus ride to view it for an hour. It is about 5km wide, 15km long, and 40m high. I had expected a glacier to be very smooth on top but it was quite jagged, not sure how anyone can take a walk on it, but they do have walks you can do on the glacier. The glacier moves about 2m a day, which is much more than I though glaciers moved...but it does not gain or lose ground as the ice that accumulates in the mountains evenly replaces the ice that the glacier loses daily to calving. Once again, the sounds and sights of the ice falling were impressive...but did not get to see any large scale ice shedding from the glacier. PM is one of the few glaciers around that is not receding, which was nice to hear....

After the glacier I ended up riding to the next town with the tour guide. I asked her afterward the tour about bus schedules and she told me there were no more buses that day and that since I was headed the same way she and her husband were I would just have to ride with them. I was like...¨ok...sure...great!¨ Worked out well and got down there to Rio Gallegos in time to catch a night bus northwards to Comodoro Rivadavia where I spent Xmas day. Conversation in the car was not all I could have hoped for but can´t complain. At the end I thanked them and mentioned that if they ever needed anything in the STates or came to visit to let me know and she responded that she was too scared to visit the States after what happened to the Twin Towers. I reckon therein lies the reason they live in such an out of the way part of the world.

Glaciers

We disembarked the boat everyday at least once. We would take zodiacs into the shore and go from there. One day we did a nice little hike to the top of a ridgeline (nothing too strenuous keeping in mind the expenses of the trip, this was an older more coddled crowd). Cannot really remember the point of that hike other than to view the spectacular scenery around the bay we were in...oh yeah, that was the point.

Probably the best excursion was the trip to see a couple glaciers close up. I was very much impressed at the time, especially with the sound the glacier makes when it calves and drops ice into the lake. Much louder than you might expect. Anyway, after having seen the Perito Moreno Glacier (entry to be added later), my memories of the glacier trip with the cruise have been superseded a bit. But it was cool to be out out there on the water experiencing the cold and rain. That must sound rather weak...no, this was not a scary, super adventure of glacier viewing...but it was cool...I swear it was.

My first cruise

Ok, so I took a 3 day cruise on the Mare Austalis. The cruise ended several days back, but I am just now getting some time on the computer to type this up.

So my first cruise...well, first of all, this was a very nice boat. The cruise cost me $1300 for 3 days so no comfort issue existed. That price did include everything, including drinks which was a pleasant surprise. There were probably about 110 passengers from 21 different countries with the States having the most of any one country with 19. Everything on board was done in English and Spanish. The first day I decided to eat my meals at an English speaking table. Since these turned out to be the people I spent the most time with, this was an important decision. Wound not say I regret the decision, but the group I was with was not the most interesting group...4 other Americans, a British girl, and an older South African couple. Could not really hear a word of what the South African couple said in 3 days so that nullified much of what would have been interesting about them. At one point I ended up alone at the table with the S Africans and got to talk about S Africa and the Marines and all that. They ended up wondering why I do not go back into the Marines as they said the last thing I should want would be to end up like the others at my table whose lives are essentially meaningless in the sense that their lives have no effect on anything or anyone than themselves...these words coming from a mild mannered man who looked like a leprechaun. Needless to say, I was pretty surprised to hear such a frank opinion, but glad for it as people with forceful opinions are certainly more interesting than people who do nothing but agree with you all the time. I´m sure living in S Africa is pretty interesting these days and that older couple has certainly seen many changes in their lives.

So the ship was decent size, about 70 meters long...but it certainly rocked and rolled quite a bit when we rounded Cape Horn. The vast majority of the trip we were in the Straits around Tierra del Fuego, but since we had good weather the capitan decided to take her out into the ocean to round the Cape. The Cape is actually just the southernmost island considered a part of the continente. We disembarked on the island before sailing around it. The island is pretty small...you could probably walk the perimeter in an hour or so...and the only inhabitants are a Chilean sailor and his family who do a year long tour in a lighthouse. Now that is what I would call hardship duty.

Anyway, I suffered a little bit of seasickness at times but nothing serious at all. There were people on the trip that had a bit more of a problem though.

and a little more

Thinking about blogs though, I guess a big reason I didn´t want to do one earlier was for fear that it would be boring since it´s bound to be longer and contain more mundane topics than the letters and emails i sent out before...those were intended to be concentrated information that would be entertaining and readable. With this format though, my readers will be able to determine their own level of involvement since I won´t be sending them anything at all.

So, here I am in the hostel using the free computer. Been in this place for a few days now. Usually don´t stay in hostels where I´ll have to share a room with strangers anymore, but this town tends to be a bit expensive so I´m doing it. Generally, I don´t sleep well with other people around, but this place has been different. I think partially because it´s nice and cold here...always sleep better in the cold...something about being warm in the cold... Given how far south we are though, it´s really not too cold...highs of about 55 during the day. I had read that there was some sort of ozone layer problem down here that causes sunburns easily; I´ve found that to be true as I really haven´t been outside that much today but still have a red face even with complete cloud cover. Incidentally, Dad if you´re reading this I think I´m ready for that propecia if you can get some...my fair seems to be thinning at the cyclic rate these days. As for the hostel...you certainly hear quite a few languages being bandied about. In fact, I´ve yet to encounter an American in this place. I´m sure there are Americans about...I believe most of my fellow countrymen tend to inhabit more posh places to stay than the bare-bones $12 a night hostel.

As for yesterday, I went hiking up toward a glacier. I wasn´t really sure what to expect as for the hike up there. The glacier is located about 1000 meters above sea level up on a mountain. I had heard there was a chairlift that would take you up there...but it only took me up to about 600 meters above sea level. I hiked up another 200 meters or so I would guess before turning around due to the ice and snow coverage. My sneakers just weren´t suitable to continue heading up. There were some people up there though. I had a nice time sliding on my back headfirst down the mountain. What I wouldn´t have given for some skis, but it was pretty fun sliding down on my brand new gortex jacket. With the walk out to the mountain and back, the hike ended up taking the whole day...which was good since I needed the exercise for sure. I certainly do get more aches and pains afterward these days. Tendinitis in both Achilles, hips aching (these achy hips are a new thing), ingrown toenails throbbing as my toes bang against the ends of the shoes as I was walking down hill. But I´m fine today.

Ushuaia

Ushuaia...I am indeed at the end of the world. The southernmost ¨city¨ in the world. Roughly 70,000 inhabitants here apparently. The scenery rather reminds of Vancouver or Iceland with the mountains and bays. Quite spectacular...but that didn´t stop my scuba guide from calling this place the asshole of the world. Being so far south the sun sets around 2300. Been down here a few days now. I´m waiting for my cruise to begin. I had wanted to go to Antarctica but those cruises were running a minimum of 5K even with the ¨last minute¨ price I had hoped would save me $$, so I decided to take a shorter and much cheaper cruise through the Straits of Magellan to Punta Arenas in Chile. Still not a cheap cruise by any means, but supposedly it´s worth the price. I will of course tell all about it when it´s over...for now all I know is that we´ll see a lot of...nature. But I know there´s no internet on board...3 days without internet, don´t know how i´ll survive...maybe it will encourage me to get out and live a little more.

I have indeed been getting out a fair amount though, although today I took a day off from outdoor activities and spent the day in the library working on my spanish by reading ¨choose your own adventure¨ stories in spanish. I never was any good at those things...I always end up dead by a stupid decision...I´ll chalk my failures up to my suspect reading skills...but then my reading skills in spanish really aren´t bad at all anymore. Anyway, I apologize if the writing here isn´t the best. I suppose I`m going to do this blog as more of a stream of consciousness type writing as opposed to serious, edited writing...if you´d call what I did before serious. So, the scuba, yeah, decided to check that out. Only other time i scuba dove was in Vietnam back in June. Enjoyed that experience thoroughly so thought i´d give it another whirl, this time in the cold waters. Of course, you use a dry-suit in the 10 degree water...I had thought a dry-suit meant the suit would be dry...completely dry. Not so, although not much water gets in except through the gloves. Almost all of your body is covered...the parts of your face that aren´t quite covered do get painfully cold when you first get in...but thankfully my body acclimated quickly enough. Didn´t see a whole lot other than king crab nesting grounds but it was good. I was more interested in the technical aspects of diving than seeing stuff anyway. I did it on a Sunday so I was the only student; the other 4 guys were the instructor and 3 of his friends, which definitely helped make it more of an authentic experience for me since we spoke spanish the whole day. Carlos, the instructor, actually invited me back to his place for lunch with his family afterward. Ended spending most of the day there. All in all, a great day...always good when you really get to know local people.