Dogs and Desserts.... There were many of both :)

When we got to El Calafate we spent the rest of the day exploring the town, which had one main street and a lot of dogs. El Calafate is a very interesting town in the way it’s set up. As you drive in from the airport, you’re on a really wide road. The road is actually an old runway from an old airport or some such, so when the snow melts you can see the “runwayness” of it. This road ends at a plateau above the town, and there’s a road that goes around the cliff like edge winding down. It’s not too steep or too high, but there’s a lot of really loose dirt. To walk down into town from up here (our hostel was right at the end of the runway) you could walk right down the edge. Obviously this was not always successful – loose dirt, snow, slush, you get the picture. We also walked up it quite a few times. The winding road was long and dirt anyways.


Our first supper there was eaten at La Lechuza Pizza. (This was our first experience with La Lechuza in El Calafate. They have 3 locations, all different.) We picked some very tasty pizzas, though I don’t remember what they were, and we forgot to take pictures of them. That night, we scheduled a boat trip to see the glaciers, and the guys went to get food so we wouldn’t have to buy food on the boat the next day (Friday the 25th). The only problem with this plan is that my food somehow got lost. They’ve promised me that Jeremy made my lunch and that it went into the box in the fridge, but sometime in there (probably when Steven spilled the box taking it out of the fridge?) my sandwich disappeared. This resulted in Steven buying my lunch on the boat. The glaciers were beautiful, as were the icebergs, and we did get to see the glacier calving off into the lake. That night we partook of La Lechuza #2 - the original La Lechuza, which happened to be a bit fancier than the pizza establishment. Tasty things were eaten here as well.


On Saturday we went around looking for souvenirs and things again, and Jeremy and I ended up walking up to the highest part of town and walking a little bit out there. We randomly decided to eat at La Lechuzita (a La Lechuza with a more relaxed feel, more for families with small children) and found Russ and Steven there as well. It had been sunny and nice for most of the day so far, and we decided to go ice skating that afternoon. The town is right on Lago Argentina , and the ice skating area was on the opposite end of town from our hostel. As we were renting our skates it started raining, and we thought it would just pass. But it didn’t. We wound up being the only idiots out there ice skating in the rain. I will admit this would have been TONS more fun if it either A) hadn’t been raining or B) had been closer to the hostel. Anyways, we went just fine, just being soaked by rain for quite a while, and then Russ and Steven ended up falling down at various times for various reasons (snowball dodging, that sort of thing). I was still up just fine, as was Jeremy, until a little bit later. I don’t know what happened, but I wound up sitting on the ice in a couple inches of freezing cold water in the only pair of sweatpants I had. After this, we turned in our skates and got some of the tasty food next to the lake (chocolate dulce de leche cake for me that was supposed to only be one piece but might have been a quarter of the original cake, some kind of sausages for the guys). The walk back was not a pleasant one. Turns out my feet were NOT wet when we left the rink. They were when we got back. Also leaving the lake we picked up a couple of stray dogs, and the number grew to 5 or 6 before we got back to the hotel. They decided that they should hang around outside the hostel waiting for us for quite some time. That night I went to bed early and the guys went out again to try out the librobar (book bar) that they’d seen.

On Sunday (27th) we took a taxi up to P. Moreno Glacier. It was supposed to take an hour to get there and an hour to get back, but the horrible weather made it take 2 hrs to get there. We didn’t get nearly as much time as we had allowed for, because of this, but that was ok – the weather was still kind of gross and it’s mostly outside. When we got back we had time to watch the Argentina vs. Mexico soccer game (with the Argentines that ran the hostel) which was thoroughly satisfying. When the game was over we took a taxi back to the airport and flew out for Bariloche.

Ushuaia Awesomeness

Well, I’m officially a horrible blogger, especially when I have catching up to do. Hopefully I can get all of that done today, in more than one post for the ease of my readers. :) I’m enjoying being back in the northern hemisphere but missing Argentina. Communicating with people is maybe a little too easy now – none of this “Let’s play charades so we can try to understand each other!” Anyways, right now, I’m sitting outside on the patio with my computer, watching Dudley sitting on Dharma because the ground is hard. Oh, Dudley.


We got to Ushuaia on June 21 without any incidents (except that Jeremy had lost his luggage on the way to Buenos Aires and it had not yet arrived in B.A.) and got moved into our bed and breakfast type place. We had a living room, where the two couches were beds as well, a kitchen, and a bedroom with two twin beds. We even got to make breakfast and various other foods! After getting moved in, we went to check out the town.


We got in somewhere between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, so though places were still open, they were trying to close for siesta. We found an eating establishment that wasn’t closed yet, and the guys were able to get a huge plate of meat. There was actually a window through to the “kitchen,” where they had a very large fire with lots of meat roasting over it. It could have made me ill if I had a weaker stomach. The rest of the day was basically spent getting ourselves oriented in the town – it seems like we did lots of that on this trip, which is cool for us, but not so much for you, Dear Reader.


On the 22nd (a Tuesday) we set up our excursion for the next day (which I’m not going to spoil), and then we grabbed a taxi to take up the hill to a nearby ski resort that was opening in the next couple of days. We hung out at the base, and I petted a dog or two while watching people hike up the bunny hill and board down. We decided to try to find some of the trails on a map (even though these trails are designed for summer hiking), and started hiking up the main slope. We got to one of the higher chalets and stopped to take pictures for a while, then Jeremy and I headed back down, and Russ and Steven went up quite a bit further. That night I was still pretty beat from the 15 hour time difference, so I went to sleep, and Jeremy’s luggage showed up at the airport. They wouldn’t bring it to him, however, so he had to walk to the airport. Russ was kind enough to go with him. (They COULD have taken a taxi… though I do think they took one back.)
This is how I dealt with the cold. It's called "Layered Jenise"



The excursion we had planned for the 23rd (Wednesday) was 4X4, snowshoeing, and dogsledding!!! The 4X4 part of the trip took up most of our time – we got stuck three times and had to get out so they could winch out the Land Rover. It was rather epic. We even drove in a lake, and on the shore of the lake “Oh, snap, there’s a tree on the ‘road’ or usual path we take right next to the lake. I guess we’ll just have to go around it, into the lake.” We did this for a long while, and everyone was quite impressed with the state of our stuckness, except for the last time, when it was just because the ruts were too deep to actually drive in. So we were just chillin there. The snowshoeing was entertaining, and it felt good to get out of the Land Rover and walk for a bit. The boys wound up having a rather extensive snowball fight, and I wound up getting pushed into and covered with snow.The sled dogs are some of the craziest dogs I’ve seen. They’re all super-super thin because they burn so many calories every day, and they all LOVE to run. When they know someone’s taking that sled out they all go crazy, like they’re shouting, “Pick me!!!! Pick ME!!!!”

The last day in Ushuaia was spent shopping for souvenirs and (on Jeremy’s part) working. Later we flew out to El Calafate, our next stop in Patagonia.

And now for the journey TO Argentina...

The morning I left Australia, I had to be up at 4:20. Yeah. Sarah’s flight for Cairns left at 6, and my flight left at 9, but we wanted to be there an hour before hers, and we wanted to leave together. The night before I didn’t go to sleep till late-o’clock either because I “wasn’t tired” – might have been because of the upcoming travel and nerves associated with that. By the time my flight to L.A. left I was rather tired. Then I did the good deed of giving up my seat so a family could sit together – giving up my window seat, moving to a seat in between two very large men. Nice, but large. I didn’t sleep the entire flight. 13.5 hours! By the time I got to L.A. I hadn’t slept in over 20, and if you know my sleeping habits, this is NOT A GOOD THING. I was tired and cranky and confused but managed to get myself to the right place, when I was told by a very mean security person that I “probably wouldn’t be able to check in yet” so I should just “go find a place to sit for a couple of hours” …yeah. They don’t have any comfortable places to sit outside of security at LAX. So I sat on a hard bench for a couple of hours. The nice thing was that I did have my phone and was able to call mom and call Jeremy. Both of which cheered me up. Getting through security went pretty quick and then I was able to sit inside of security for a few more hours. Geesh. Did I mention that at this point I was STARVING and the terminal I was in didn’t have food before security?! Yeah. A bad day was had by all. The flight from L.A. to Mexico City was uneventful but sleepless, and I still have Mexican pesos left from when I bought Starbucks in the airport there (hungry, again…). I did use up some pesos to buy the latest Runner’s World and a couple of packs of gum. The flight from Mexico City to Buenos Aires was also uneventful but this time sleepfull (I slept through breakfast!), but when I finally got through customs in B.A. I started freaking out a little. Jeremy was nowhere to be found. Russ had gotten in the night before, so he was with Steven, and eventually they were supposed to get to the airport to bring us both back, but Jeremy was supposed to get in a few hours before me. This would result in him waiting for me, would it not? Turns out his flight was overbooked and he didn’t come in until Sunday, so I wandered around for a bit and a nice Argentine who hardly spoke any English tried to help. I eventually paid a few pesos and checked my email at a communication kiosk and found out what had happened, and walking out of the kiosk basically ran into Steven. YAY! And we got food. DOUBLE YAY! We went back to the hostel in our reserved bus thingy and I was able to get a bit of sleep. Several hours. When I woke up, we went to a market thingy and shopped around for a while, me not buying anything because of my lack of pesos. This was Saturday, in case you’ve lost track, which you probably have because I lived Friday the 18th twice. It was mediocre to sucky both times. Sunday we got to meeting, but Jeremy showed up about ½ an hour before we left, right in time for breakfast! After meeting we went out for coffee with some of the friends – one of the girls reminded me of Marcela sooooo much!!! After coffee we went to visit Steven’s host mom, as he had stuff he needed to get from her apartment, and after that we changed and went to yet another market. I believe it was a good thing that we went to the markets BEFORE I got to an ATM. Monday morning (the 21st of June) we flew out of B.A. for El Fin Del Mundo – Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost city in the world.

The rest of Argentina shall be coming hopefully before too long... everything is neatly journaled in the form of a calendar and there has been no shortage of adventure... as Jeremy mentioned, maybe it's more helpful to measure things on a scale of "boring to interesting" rather than "good to bad"... I think maybe using both would be the most beneficial to my dear readers, though... Haha!!!