So I´ve got to say that it´s been an interesting last few weeks. We started this adventure on a very EASY cruise ship in Antarctica. Everything included, we knew where we´d be staying every night. Ya know, the all-inclusive sort of thing. Then reality hit. We got off the ship in Ushuaia and BAMMMM. tons of people. No places to stay. Wind. Rain. Heavy Backpacks. Can you say rude awakening/tough transition??
Ushuaia, the southern-most city in Argentina was friggin expensive. The cheapest budget place that we could find was about $90/night. Yeah, not ideal since we're on a long trip, not this short "American" vacation sort of thing! The setting there was pretty awesome thought, a huge mountain range, glacier, and bay around the city...not too bad. We had another AMAZING lamb feast there. For some reason the lamb down here is just completely different than what we get at home. They barbecue it for like 8 hours, have a delicious chimichurri sauce (garlic and who know what else is in this delicious goodness), and make it some of the most amazing meat that you could ever have. I may be a convert from steak...weird I know...
After sitting on a cruise ship for 18 days, let´s just say that we weren´t exactly in the world´s best shape. If you´ve ever been on a cruise (I never had before this) you basically eat and drink until you pop. Oh, and for ours we got to get off twice a day - not every day - to check out cool penguins and stuff. Anyway, Lisa and I decided that we needed to get ourselves back into shape to start some of the infamous Patagonian hiking later...and decided to climb about 2000 feet straight up from sea level at the port to the glaciar. Yep. That´s how we roll. So this one day "trek" was 6 hours up and back. Ouch. Let´s just say sore was an understatement. It was just a precurser of what was to come...
The "end of the world" (fin del mundo) has a certain traveler cache. You can tell that people come down here just to say that they were at the southernmost point in the continent (it´s actually at Cape Horn, which we were lucky enough to visit!), but it makes no difference to most people.
As an aside - we did visit Tierra Del Fuego national park and the end of the highway that goes from Alaska to Ushuaia. Beautiful doesn´t describe it...
So we got sick of Ushuaia after 3 or 4 days (it was friggin cold and windy down there - one day we came in out of the sun to book a bus, then looked out the window to see it snowing outside. wtf. Needless to say, the weather is variable at best!), so we booked a bus up to Punta Arenas, Chile (there is no overland route directly north to the rest of Argentina!), which is a 12 hour bus-ferry-bus ordeal. Yep, good times sitting on a bus all day with NO stops. Are they insane? It´s like the opposite of the chicken buses in central america that stop on every corner! Luckily, the buses are incredibly comfortable..reclining seats...someone serving treats and coffee...but unfortunately not cheap.
A few takeaways for now...
1) it is NOT cheap down here. Basically US prices the entire way so far, which doesn´t fare well for a long trip
2) You MUST know spanish. Thanks Sra. Grigsby for all those vocabulary words in 9th grade!!
3) Traveling around is fun...but there has got to be more to it - we´re still looking for that great spot to volunteer, improve our spanish, and hang out for awhile
4) Cheap hotels are not that clean. Yep, big surprise.
5) LIFE IS GOOD. We´re excited about all this traveling and trying to figure it all out...next steps, etc.
Scott
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