My Adventures and Travels

El Chalten, Argentina. Trekking capital of Argentina. Home of Fitz Roy. Need I say more? This picture sums up why I needed to go here! A 3 hour bus ride from El Calafate brought me here. One interesting thing is that the bus stops at the national park office and it is mandatory to get off and go in and listen to a talk-either in English or Spanish-about the park, safety, and keeping it clean. They pretty much figure if you came to El Chalten, you are going to be spending time outdoors. So we got our talk, suggestions about hikes, and trail maps. I felt ready! It was an absolutely gorgeous, perfect day: a fact that I appreciated even more after the next 2 days here! The bus took us the last few minutes into town. I checked into my hostel, and they recommended that I take a short hike to take advantage of the weather. I did as suggested and hiked up to a nearby overlook where you could see the town of El Chalten as well as the famous Fitz Roy and surrounding range. I also went to a n...

So if you find yourself in Calafate, the only thing to really do is see the nearby Perito Moreno Glacier. That is why people go there, prettymuch. There are tons of organized tours with all variety of activities, but I just bought a bus ticket and checked it out on my own. It is an amazing, beautiful place. The glacier is moving forward at about 6 feet a day, and the coolest thing is watching and hearing big chunks "calve" off into the lake. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. You can see from the water that the glacier recently calved here  I kept waiting all day for this piece to break off, but it didn't! For some reason I love signs warning of danger. You can see in the lake where all the glacier pieces collect. Sometimes they completely block the water flow from the lake on the left to the lake on the right, and it's quite a show when the "dam" busrts! When people asked what I wanted to do for ...

When we woke up the morning after the hike in El Bolson, it was raining pretty hard. I felt like I timed it just right, if it's going to rain all day I might as well be on a bus, right? I got a cab into town and hung out at the bus station/travel place. I was a little nervous, this was to be my first REALLY long haul ride: to leave at 11am and arrive at 1pm the following day. What would I DO for all that time? What if I sat next to someone who smelled bad or something? All I could do was download some new books on my kindle, buy a bottle of wine, charge all my devices, and hope for the best. It was a long time. But it wasn't *that* bad. I did a lot of reading, sudoku puzzles, logic puzzles, sleeping, movie-watching, eating, and sleeping more. The bus class for pretty much all long-hauls is "cama" which means bed. The seats are big and do recline really far back, and have more than adequate leg room for my short self. But they don't go totally flat and it's n...

After the hustle and bustle of Bariloche (okay, it wasn't that bad), El Bolson was a welcome change. It is kind of a hippie town, lots smaller and more art-sy, but still with good beer. Adrianne and I were down with that. The first night there we stayed less than a mile apart, as we couldn't get into the same hostel. We walked into town--all the nice places to stay are outside of town--and hit up the local artisan market, including a street/busker show, ARTISAN BEER, and various neat things that I did not have room for in my suitcase. We missed the bus so decided to check out a cerveceria while we waited for the next bus. It was not so bad. That night we had dinner at her hostel, which was yummy and fancy homemade pasta and the hostel's homebrew. Dang, do these South Americans love their carbs or what? But it was good to carbo-load, we had a hike the next day. The next day: we teamed up with a lady from Wales, a guy from Australia, and a girl from London to do a hike ...

I had my first bus mishap when I attempted to leave Pucon. I bought my ticket in this little store with the name of a bus company on it, so I foolishly assumed that bus company would be the company my bus ticket was for. SOUTH AMERICAN ROOKIE MISTAKE: Assuming things will be a certain way, because that certain way makes sense. Long story short, Pucon has about 10 different bus stations, and it's a small town. I went to the wrong one and missed the bus. Luckily, my destination (Osorno) was a popular one and buses left for it every couple of hours. I had to eat the ticket price, but luckily it all worked out. I took a roughly 4-hour ride to Osorno, which is where I had to go to connect to get to Bariloche. This time I made it, AND there were tickets available to Bariloche, too. Yippee! That ride went over the Andes, over the Chile-Argentina border, and was supposed to take 6 hours, but took about 7.5. Luckily it was really scenic. Getting across the border was time-cons...

My route to Pucon wasn't direct or even really intentional. I'd read about it when I stumbled upon a blog, while searching for different bus routes that would bring me south, into "official" Patagonia. And by "official," I mean a place that was actually in my Patagonia travel book. Anyway I read about Pucon and it sounded neat, but I wasn't planning on going there. From the bus station in Pichilemu, I got the bus to a tiny town called San Fernando. I was planning on buying a ticket there to a town called Osorno-because from there, I could get a bus to Bariloche, Argentina. Well in South America, you generally can't buy a ticket until you are physically in the town you need the ticket from. So...I arrived in San Fernando and went to every ticket office, and NO ONE had a ticket to Osorno. So I looked around at all the advertised places that the different bus companies offered and one did go to Pucon. So I bought a ticket. Then I got online (most bus ...