Jun 10
The driver, if you could call him that, swerved precipitously around yet another car followed by a truck, passing on the right,. Yes, you read that correctly, on the right! He must have been going about 95 mph on a curve! Passing on the right during a curve!! Didn’t he ever see those trucks indicating which side was okay for passing and which wasn’t? Apparently not.
We took a plane from La Paz, Bolivia down south to the Bolivian wine country to a city called Tarija. The south of Bolivia often gets slighted by the more famous and larger cities in the country like Sucre or La Paz. If you find yourself tired of the dirt, noise or high altitude associated with these other locales, why not hop on a quick flight to sunny, laid-back Tarija and its surrounds? Vineyards, bodegas, and dry desert rural valleys are calling you!
The next adventure was about to begin. It started in Sucre when I met a girl who told me of a great experience she had. While in La Paz, she discovered a company called 'Deep Rainforest' who organized a 6 day tour aboard a homemade raft. Each night you would stop along the river and camp. Occasionally there would be hikes to try to spot monkeys or other wildlife. Showers consisted of plunging into crystal waterfalls, streams or for the very brave, the murky pirhana-infested, caiman-lurking waters.
This is a continuation of my last two posts about trekking the circuit in Torres del Paine. Click here to read part 1 (which is an introduction to the park) and click here to see part 2. Part 3 was the most challenging of the trek but with the greatest challenges, also come the greatest rewards.
Finally we were going to get our big chance to do the circuit at TDP! The prospect had me nervously excited as I hoped we could carry as much stuff as we had packed for such a long time, every day. Three years ago we failed. I hoped for the best this time around.
Did you ever have the feeling the universe was conspiring against you? No matter what you do, things just keep going wrong like some spirit of all the bad karma in the world was suddenly in control of everything that was happening. Is this what being in mercury's retrograde felt like? If so, it described our first days in Esquel perfectly.
Visiting the northwest of Argentina was one of the highlights of our trip in South America so far. However, I found it a bit daunting when planning our time in this region. There is so much to see and do, where do you start? We knew we wanted to rent a car for sure to give us freedom and flexibility but for how long? Where would we rent the car? I scoured the internet and guide books for answers.
Did you know you all have an inner gaucho? Well you do and I recently discovered mine. In case you don't know, gauchos are the South American version of the North American cowboy. Riding over the pampas on their horse with no name, the nomadic gauchos lived their lives by hunting cattle. Much like the cowboys, guachos were thought to be the honest, strong, silent types, but proud and capable of violence when necessary. Gauchos often carried a faćon (ginormous, sharp knife) tucked into their pockets and they often used only their faćon for eating. They ate, almost exclusively, meat. Even though I am a former vegetarian, I long to be a gaucho. Waving around my faćon, eating my beef and laying in the sun. I finally had the chance.
We arrived to Tigre, Argentina on our first morning. We weren't really supposed to go to Tigre. We were going to go out about 2 hours to the Pampas, to an older city with a long history of gaucho culture (gauchos are the south american version of cowboys). But we were so tired from our travels and the supervolcano that took place before the travels, that we decided to go to a city closer. We had read about Tigre and it's proximity to Buenos Aires and how nice it was. So we decided to go.
Infused exposures 