How much can you spend on chocolate?
Hikey days were ahead of us. Better to forget partying in Buenos Aires or playing the waiting game at Peninsula Valdes. Now it was time to get active again and for Richie to dust those (walking) hiking sticks as we started to wander deeper into the legendary outdoor opportunities of Patagonia.
If you have ever looked at Argentina on the map you probably know it is huge. I do not know what had happened to my geography knowledge when I uttered the words “it’s kinda like Finland”. Yeah, times four.
Thus we embarked to another 20 hour bus to get to the Switzerland of Argentina - Bariloche! We had been spoiled by our first longhaul bus from Iguazu Falls to Buenos Aires that included blanket, pillow, and a proper dinner with wine. The wine was quite shite as the Irish would put it but it was the type we like - free - so of course we finished the tiny bottles. The buses to Puerto Madryn and now to Bariloche were disappointments after that, you had to bring your sleeping bag inside to get some cover from the blasting AC and prepare your own foods in order to avoid starving.
Bariloche looks like a little mountain village in the Alps or at least tries hard. And as a good Switzerland- wannabe, they offer chocolate on each corner and each shop between the corners. Not thinking about the fact that we were already about $1,200 over budget, I happily spent exactly $52 USD on chocolate during seven days. Breaking my own chocolate eating records here.
Sad thing about recording every expense on Splitwise-app is that you can't escape the facts about your spending habits
Bariloche is about chocolate, microbreweries, hiking, snow activities and lakes. Exactly seven lakes. One of the most popular activities is to rent a car and drive the route of the seven lakes, stopping on each “mirador” (viewpoint) to look at these aformentioned lakes.
Can I tell a secret? They all look pretty much the same.
Also we discovered an Argentinian recipe for how to construct a mirador:
1) Find the spot for the most beautiful views towards the lake
2) Now move about 100m -200m to the left or same to the right and find a spot with tall trees and bushes
3) Voilá, you have a mirador!
Nice views right?
It was challenging to peek through the obstacles at some places to get a glimpse of that blue water reservoir but then we just ditched the car and walked to the better unmarked places.
The hiker-thief
All that driving for a full day made us (me) grave for a day out walking. Bariloche is not short of hikes and one could do amazing multi-day treks over the mountains. The refugio (hut) - network is good and it’s free to spend the night there. The only problem can be the fast-changing weather, all the walks in the National Park were closed on the day we arrived due to high winds and falling trees.
Out of the two hikes we did, Refugio Frey was a perfect one, not only because of the clear blue sky weather we got. There’s two ways to reach the hut; the adventurous way of scrambling on rocks and over mountain tops or through peaceful strolling in the woods with a moderate climb at the end. Adventorous one was the one I wanted to do but to begin it you need to take a skiing chairlift up (or add extra 4 hours of walking - no thanks). And guess what they charge for this chairlift?
$25 USD. One ticket. One person. One way.
No thanks.
Easy forest-route then.
At the top we encountered some seventy army men and we learned they were there for the yearly climbing training. Apparently the area around Refugio Frey is bursting with routes and during summer time you have a hundred people pitching their tent around the premises. I have to say I’ve become more and more happy about our timing in Patagonia. Even now when it’s the shoulder season (fall), there are a lot of people everywhere - in hostels, trails, viewpoints.. I can’t even think how crowded it is during summer time!
Look at that view!
I can think of only one more thing worth mentioning of; we ate spaghetti bolognese for dinner seven days in a row. Welcome to budget-traveling.
Animal adventures in Argentina: Puerto Madryn
Those who have been reading this blog since we started our travels (almost a year ago!) know we had some disappointments on the way concerning animal encounters.
- Arrived to a town in Tasmania called Penguin just after all the penguins had left.
- Drove to a small town in New Zealand just for penguins – who weren’t there.
- Paid $400 AUD each to snorkel with whale sharks in Coral Bay, Western Australia. You guessed right – they were nowhere to be seen. Or actually just couple hundred kilometres North in Exmouth where we were couple of days earlier. Duh.
On a positive note, on that snorkel trip we did see everything else from manta & sting rays to whales, dugongs, more whales and dolphins.
And the greatest comeback was me fixing Richie up to get picked “randomly” from the audience of over a hundred people to feed dolphins in Monkey Mia in Western Australia. You should have seen the looks on the faces of all the kids and their parents when an almost two-meter tall twenty-something gets chosen for this cute activity!
Thus the stakes were quite high for our next Argentina stop. Puerto Madryn was always looming on the planning list but as it added a diversion to our route to Patagonia, we almost considered dropping it until we found out it was ORCA SEASON!
And not just any orca season, ORCAS SNATCHING SEA LION BABIES FROM THE BEACH season. You just don’t see this shit anywhere else in the world.
Could we be so lucky? Could the stars be aligned to make all this happen? For once being at the right place at the right time?
Well, no.
But I’ll come back to that later.
Puerto Madryn is the “base camp” for wildlife exploration in this area. You can see penguins (second biggest colony in the world, maybe now third as they found a new one in Antarctica), elephant seals, sea lions, Southern Ballena-whales, black-and-white dolphins (that look like mini orcas), regular dolphins, orcas, armadillos, local camels as we still call them (official name is guanaco), local emus, rabbits, pumas.. you name it.
You’ll need to either join quite expensive tours totalling $75-$100 USD / day or rent a car and drive and drive and drive to reach the animal spots. As we wanted more opportunities to spot the orcas, we rented a car and stayed inside the Peninsula Valdes National Park area to avoid paying the park entrance fee every day. On the first day though we drove to the opposite direction to Punta Tomba to check out the penguins, finally! During the drive there we joked half-heartedly about the possibility of no penguins. We figured that’d be our luck. Second biggest penguin colony without penguins.
Luckily we were wrong! It’s not exactly the advertised 400,000-500,000 penguins but enough to make us very, very happy. Until you have seen a penguin swim and bathe (they were clearly washing themselves by doing barrel rolls) you haven’t really experienced joy!
This successful first encounter made us hopeful for what was to come. Checking the National Park and Punta Norte Orca Research- Facebook pages, confirming high tide times, estimating driving times… orcas we are coming for you!
There’s two places where orcas are normally seen. Punta Norte which houses a sea lion colony and Cadeta Valdes with elephant seals, sea lions & an “attack channel” where only professional photographers and film crews can go. You are most likely to see these glorious predators during high tides and those are 1,5 hrs apart on these two places. Thus depending on the day you might get two high tides = better chances.
We spent the first day driving around and sitting in Cadeta Valdes. Talking to people who were on their third day of orca search with no results. But we also got our hopes up as a group of 15 orcas had been seen – just not at the usual spots but in a place were they haven’t been spotted in two years. So they were definitely around..
Second day’s first high tide was at 7.30 am in Punta Norte. We had to start the drive at 6am to make it through the gravel roads with our white Ford Fiesta – not exactly the same as driving with our Toyota Landcruiser 4WD in Australia…
Then we waited. And waited. Watched sea lion pups play at the water. Thinking if it’s disturbed to hope a predator would come and eat them? And really hope for that?
No orcas.
It was time to switch location back to Cadeta Valdes to wait for the 17.45pm high tide. Only 8hrs to go. We are pretty good at the waiting game when Kindles are fully charged and you have a place in the shade. Eating self-made sausage sandwiches and yesterday’s pasta cold, buying hot water to make your own coffee (did I already tell you Argentina is expensive?), gazing at the sea, hoping to see a black fin or two emerge from the water.
Eight hours later, cold and wet from sitting in the rain for the last hour, it was time to admit defeat and head back to the base camp while there was still sunlight left.
No orcas.
When I am a famous writer I’ll come back for a month to live in a hut with views to the sea. Write and wait for the intelligent black and white friends to show up. Until then the Youtube clips and documentaries are all we have.
Buenos Aires aka. "trying to be 20 again."
The writing tips I have been reading recently say "Get straight to the point. Cut the first dreamy sentences. Hell, cut the first paragraph." So here we go.
Choose Buenos Aires if you want to party. Choose a party hostel, choose sleeping until 6pm, choose cheap bad-tasting beer. Choose hostel drinks, choose boozed-up-brits-abroad as company. Choose the toilet that hasn't been puked in by 9pm. Choose a club and music of any genre, choose dancing until sunrise. Choose repeating this seven days a week until you're broke - physically and economically.
OR
Choose to be over thirty, go to bed at ten, try to have a drink one night, fail and get an Uber home. Or even better, choose to have awesome local friends, have an asado, drink wine at Palermo, walk the pretty streets, buy tickets to see Queens of Stone Age and Foo Fighters and see only latter because of an astonishing queuing system (fill up a stadium from only one entrance surely gets everyone in on time!).
Awesome book store in an old theathre
Any thoughts on which route we took? Yeah. We stayed at the party hostel which was nice for socialising but oh boy I could not do the seven days a week partying any more. And I don't enjoy an everyday toilet lottery (I wonder what someone has left there this time?!).
Buenos Aires is by far the best choice for a city we could live in in Latin America. Big, clean, safe (as long as you don't wonder somewhere you shouldn't), food, culture, night life, beautiful parks.. not the cheapest though and after two weeks in Argentina we are hundreds of dollars over budget.
Oh well. Time to eat noodles.
(Can you guess what movies we have watched recently?)
Of course Buenos Aires has the fanciest cemetery of them all. La Recoleta Cemetery:
Goodbye Colombia, hello Argentina
After two months, our time in Colombia came to an end. In order to make it to the Southern Hemisphere and Patagonia we had to book flights to Argentina instead of going to Ecuador and continuing going down by looong bus rides.
First stop in Argentina/Brazil: Iguazu Falls. And thus my camera has hundreds of photos of roaring water.
One thing all the blogs tell you is that Argentinian side is better. We visited Brazil side first and thought that it can’t get better than that. It can. Argentina’s side rules.
You had to queue for the photo spots. What a pressure, didn't see any true bloggers trying to take hundred photos while others wait.
If that looks impressive (and I am not talking about a shirtless Richie), the Argentinian side takes it up a notch.
Train to take the tourists to the falls
Random Mexican place in Argentina
I feel like that is enough waterfall photos for a while.
In our first hostel we also got to witness our second bed bug occasion. After last one (where I spotted the bugs before they got anywhere luckily) I have become an inspection-expert. Going through our bed frames I found eggs and old shells and once I lifted the top mattress, I could see the full-grown bastards crawling from the seams. Obviously the whole mattress was infested!
I have learned to listen in awe at the hostels' explanations once you confront them.
"They are the bugs that come out when it rains!" And live in the mattress?
"Oh I thought we had cleaned." Yeah sure you get rid of them by regular cleaning. Not.
"They can't travel from bed to bed." How did they get here?
"Those are mosquito bites." One hostel told a girl whose arms and back were full of nasty marks after one night at the hostel bed.
We got a private room (full of old shells as well but nothing alive) but of course they sold our beds to other people the next day. Luckily the people in the dorm told the girls and they complained as well. And only then they took the mattresses out!
I did inspections for couple other people in the dorm, should really start charging for this...
With warm regards,
Bed bug free Heini & Richie