We got up the morning of the second day of our Bolivian safari and rushed to get dressed and packed in the cold. After a quick breakfast, we waited as Matias loaded up the car, watching a funny episode of a sheep trying to sneak food as the people who ran the hotel kept chasing it out of the kitchen.
Our first stop was Arbol de Piedra, otherwise know as Stone Tree. Seemingly for no reason right in the middle of the desert, these tree-like stones jut up from the ground. They look as if they grew up from the soil, but they also have that carved-by-water look to them. We’re still not sure what formed them. (more…)
Lauren: Beth and I walked to the Pamela Tours office at 8am to begin our 3-day tour of Southern Bolivia. We met our other traveling companions, Katia from Spain (currently living in Ireland) and Brendan from Ireland who we had previously run into on our Valley of the Moon and Valley of Death tour, and our infamous torture-fest geyser tour. We met Marcus, from Germany, for the first time and the 5 of us all piled into the van bound for the Chilean border.
Once there, there were two large tour buses in front of us waiting to get their exit stamps. Our guide went to check things out and came back to inform us that the border patrol exit official was still asleep and we’d have to wait for him to arrive. We chatted in the car for over an hour while cars and tour groups piled up behind us. Finally, the immigration official arrived (Beth: He was pretty obviously hung over), we got our stamps, and took off to the Bolivian border control, an hour away and several thousand feet higher. (more…)
Beth and I rose at 3:40 in the freezing cold to get ready for our nine hour tour to see nearby geysers. We threw on 9 layers, the first being our bathing suits since we had been told that we should jump in the thermal pool near the geysers later in the day. We went outside our hostel at 4am and got in the bus that would take us to the geysers. Unfortunately, we were the last ones in and were jammed in the back, which would be part of Beth’s undoing. (more…)
Saturday afternoon, we grabbed a bus to Calama leaving at 3:30pm. It was another 20-hour bus ride, so Lauren and I settled in, reading and napping (respectively).
Around 11pm that night, the bus stopped. And waited. And waited. I managed to wake up and Lauren informed me that we hadn’t moved for 45 minutes. We finally asked the conductor what was wrong, but he blabbed at us in Spanish going 90 words-per-minute. We asked him to repeat, which he did, just as fast.
Our departure from Argentina took us through the snowy, winding hills of the Andes. The border control was located on top of one of the mountains, with 18-wheelers lining up for miles on the twisting roads leading up to immigration. We made it past the rather thorough inspection, bought warm ham and cheese sandwiches, and began our descent to Santiago.
We were excited for Santiago because we were staying with a good friend of my friend Shayna, Lorena, and her boyfriend, Daniel. I was looking forward to meeting Lorena, someone I had heard about for years, and Beth and I were psyched to be out of hostels and into an actual home. (more…)
When we arrived at the Mendoza bus station, Lauren and I grabbed our bags and headed to a corner to reorganize our stuff so we could carry it more easily. While we were standing there, a man came up behind us and started to grab Lauren’s daypack. I turned around immediately, preparing to punch him.
It was Taylor.
We had convinced Taylor and Shosha to join us in Mendoza for a long weekend vacation from Buenos Aires for wine tasting. The Lonely Planet had described Mendoza as the Napa Valley of Argentina, and we were excited to be enjoying California at non-California prices. (more…)
Our ride to Bariloche from Calafate was a 3-bus 29-hour fun fest that kicked off at 4am. On our first bus ride, I handed the cell phone to Beth, who put it in her pocket and slept through it falling out and onto the floor.
When we arrived at our first stop, Rio Gallegos, Beth mentioned off-handedly over our breakfast of fries and eggs, “I had this moment of panic on the bus that I’d lost the cell phone, but then I remembered that you had it.”
After months of being in temperate zones that ranged from hot to the seventh ring of hell, Beth and I were excited about the prospect of a little cold weather. We arrived in Ushuaia, bundled and layered (with almost all the clothes we owned), welcoming the views of Winter Wonderland.
As we drove into the most southern city in the world, we oo’d and ah’d as the moonlight cast an illuminating glow on the vast white valley and snow covered mountains in the distance. It looked like something out of a Stephen Spielberg movie. We woke up no less stunned by the view from our room, white peaks jutting up before the vast freezing ocean. (more…)
To start our trek to the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina, Lauren and I were facing two long bus rides. The first was to Rio Gallegos, estimated to be 36-40 hours. From there, we’d have to catch another 12-hour bus ride to Ushuaia. Most people break this up into at least 3 different bus rides over 3-5 days, but the season wasn’t right to visit the sites in-between, so Lauren and I decided to fill our daypacks with books and get it over with as fast as possible.
But as a goodbye present from Buenos Aires, we nearly got robbed for the second time in that city.
While Bon was with us, my six year old laptop started to show its age. The monitor started blinking out on occasion, probably because the plastic shell started falling apart months ago, leaving some vital internal cables exposed. (And it was emitting small amount of voltage through its frame, not enough to shock really you, but maybe 15 volts — enough that if it touched the inside of your arm, it hurt.)
The laptop had been a college graduation present from my parents. When I got it, it was state of the art: 3.5 lbs, slim and fast. By the time we left the US, the good old Pentium III was pretty outdated, but perfect for our trip: small, light, competent, and mostly worthless, so if it was stolen, we wouldn’t be too upset. (more…)
We got up the morning of the second day of our Bolivian safari and rushed to get dressed and packed in the cold. After a quick breakfast, we waited as Matias loaded up the car, watching a funny episode of a sheep trying to sneak food as the people who ran the hotel kept chasing it out of the kitchen. 
