The Near End of a Journey

I have been here in Bariloche for 3.5 days. It has been different than I thought it was going to be. It does not smell like chocolate even though this is the chocolate capital of Argentina, there is no snow where I can touch it (although that isn't all bad because I am sick again and it's been a challenge to keep warm-even inside-with the clothes I brought). It has been a very beautiful and mostly relaxing experience, however.

On Monday, we reserved a car for using today (Wednesday). We wanted the car for Monday but there were none available and the only one available was the most expensive car but we needed it to be able to do one of the activities which I will touch on shortly. After we worked all that out, we went to find the kiosko that sold the bus tickets we needed for our trip on Christmas, and then we went ice skating. We paid 50 pesos for an 1hr of ice skating in the smallest ice skating rink I have ever seen. We did not stay for an hour. We went to try to grab a quick lunch at McDonalds but it had closed at 4. We got there right after 4. I was disappointed. I wanted a mocha...I wanted Christmas in a cup. We went back towards the hostel and had a late lunch/early dinner at La Alpina; a little Germanish restaurant. It was pretty good, slightly over priced but oh well.

Tuesday (Christmas) we took the bus to a lake, I dont remember the name right now but it started with a G. Near the lake was a waterfall that ended up in the river. We all thought the walk would be longer but it took us maybe an hour to get up to the waterfall, most of that time was to walk down the road to the trailhead. It was a little overcast and very windy so it was pretty cold. We waited for the bus to pick us back up, got on the correct number bus but it apparently took a different route back (explain how that works. I have no clue. Same numbered buses run the same route. I have no clue how that happened). We got kicked off the bus in the middle of no where. We made the bus driver give us the "conductor" part of our tickets since we didnt have other tickets and then we had to wait for 20 min in the cold for the same numbered bus with a different route back to take us where we needed to go. It was the weirdest thing.

 <This is a picture of what is talked about below>

Today we picked up the car and drove out to see the 7 lakes. It was by far the most beautiful drive I have been on in a very long time. We stopped at a lot of really great spots; the best was Punto Panaram. I took some really cool pictures and a few panaramics with my tablet. It was really windy and chilly everywhere we went. We also found this Germanish-looking artesian spot. It was pretty much a tourist trap, cute but over priced. I didnt buy anything.

Tomorrow we're heading back to campus. No more cold, just lots of heat. Hopefully I will survive. I'm planning on buy some chocolate here tonight and I completely forgot about it being super hot up there so I left some chocolate in my room. I will be putting it in the freezer with my name written all over it as soon as I get back to campus.

Anyway, until next time.

Christmas, Penguins, and Chocolate

It has been an interesting two and a half weeks of traveling for me. I began in Entre Rios Argentina, the province the university is and and now I'm sitting on the wrong side of the bus to see anything exciting until the valley opens up driving through Rio Negro, another province much further to the south. Since I'm on the bus, and have been on a for almost 50 hours in the last three days, I'm slowly running out of things to do. I will try to keep my Christmas travels, thus far, in chronological order.

Part 1: The Beach

During the first week of break, I went with three friends (Megan, Tanique, and Erin) to Punta del Este in Uruguay. We had a contact with a local taxi driver that helped out ACA students in the past. He charged us $200 USD to take us to Punta del Este and back. Since I had other plans the following week and needed to be back at a certain day/time, the taxi worked well for us. There are buses to Punta, through the Uruguayan captial Montevideo but since that bus runs once a week, we decided to take a taxi.
We left Wednesday, December 12th, at 7 am and drove the 10 hours to Punta del Este. It was a nice drive, not very eventful. Once we arrived in Punta it took us quite awhile to locate our hostel. We stayed at a place called F&F Hostel. It was a cute little hostel with a pool and nice staff. It was kind of loud at night but since we weren't planning on getting up very early anyway, it worked out. We were five minutes walking distance from the beach, and let me tell you- Ocean City, MD has nothing on Punta. The sand was soft and not very shelly. The water was still chilly since it hasn't had much time to warm up from the Arctic currents. It was still really nice and the sun was warm.
On Saturday, Megan and I set of on what was supposed to be a moderately long walk to find the lighthouse on the point. It took us over an hour on what ended up beingthe hottest day we were in Uruguay to find the Lighthouse and then we had to walk back. Yes, I made the journey solely for my parents. I'm not a crazed lighthouse fan like them.

I woke up with a fever on Sunday morning so I didn't do anything on our last day at the beach. It was fine since it was raining all day pretty much. Our taxi driver came to pick us up Monday morning and before midnight that night we were back in the Villa.

My next trip (the one I'm currently on) was on Wednesday,so I had just enough time to do laundry, do a little grocery shopping, and repack.

Part 2: Penguins and Chocolate

Wednesday night Anna, Dylan, Miguel, and I headed to Parana on the 7:30pm bus. Parana is about 1 hr from the Villa. Miguel was coming to hang out for the night and return to the Villa the next morning. Our hostel was nice but small. We arranged with the attendant to have breakfast prepared for us at 6:30 am and for us to pay and still make our 7 am bus. Unfortunately, the lady that was working in the morning was late. We had to take our breakfast to go and practically run to the bus terminal (which was only 2 blocks away) to get to our bus on time. We made it was about 5 min to spare, loaded our luggage and climbed on board. The bus was nice, large seats that were pretty comfortable. We were on that bus for 30 hours.
I slept for a while. We had to take several detours, some because of flooding and a few in Rosario (about 6 hours from the villa) because people were protesting something and burning tires in the streets. They weren't being violent so don't be worried about my safety. It seems they do it all the time here.
The detours set us back several hours. They fed us lunch (ham and cheese sandwhiches, luckily the ham was easy to get rid of) and dinner (which was at 2 am). Finally, around 1 pm on Friday, we arrived in Trelew. Trelew is the "home base" for going to Punta Tombo (penguins) and Peninsula Valdez (whales, penguins, seals, sea lions, etc). We only had time to go to Punta Tombo.
Saturday morning at 9 am, we loaded on some kind of a tour bus and headed for the penguins in Punta Tombo. We arrive at 11:30 and spent an hour and a half walking among the penguins, literally. If I had wanted to touch one, take one home, take more than one home, I could have. There were babies and adults. It was fantastic! I took a lot of pictures and had a great time. The tour van/bus took us to a Welsh town, Gaiman. There was an optional Welsh tea thing you could do, I did not participate. We then left to go back to Trelew. There was another optional  museum stop. Dylan, Anna, and I decided, like the Welsh tea, that we didn't want to pay anything extra so we had them drop us back off at our hostel, El Agora. Our bus for Bariloches was leaving Saturday night (last night) at 9:30 pm. We worked it out with the hostel for us to be able to stay there until our bus left.
It has now been 13 hours since we left Trelew. We're driving through vallies lined with snow caped mountains, streams, lillac, and green shrubs.
While this region is still pat of Patagonia, like Trelew, the landscape and vegetation are very different. In eastern Patagonia, it is dry, brown, and dusty. It rarely rains and the only green section is along the Chubut River (which is what the province Trelew is in is named after). Here, in western Patagonia, it's green and fresh. Today is cloudy but I'm sure the mountains look spectacular in the sun light.
Right now the bus is playing what I believe is Madagascar 3 or 4, in Spanish. I understand most of what they're saying.
Today is December 23. I thought being away from family and familiarity would be harder during Christmas. While it hasn't been the easiest thing I've done, and while it doesn't quite feel like Christmas here (lack of decorations and the overplaying of Christmas songs on my non-existant radio) it's been better than I thought. Christmas isn't quite the same without family and friends, but it's not going to kill me and it's about time I get used to things being different and doing them on my own. :-)
Hopefully we'll arrive in Bariloche soon. I'm not sure where we are, whether we're on time or not. But Merry Christmas everyone!