My trip to the end of the world (and back)

Since this blog only has a few hours of credibility before Jacob in Charleston takes over, I decided to post this unfinished account of my trip to Patagonia. I should be posting pictures from this as well as Colonia (and finishing this...) at some point in the next few days....

My flight leaves in just a few hours, and it's really weird for me to think that this semester is over and that I am heading home. It has definitely been a good experience, and I hope you have enjoyed the blog (despite the sporadic posting...).

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3
We left Buenos Aires on time (1 hour late) and got into Ushuaia around lunch time. Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, is located in the province of Tierra del Fuego and is home to about 60,000 people, of whom 48,000 were not born in Ushuaia. Despite the miserable climate (it is summer and it was still snowy and below freezing), there is little poverty and is pretty isolated from a lot of the social problems that plague the rest of the country. The government is by far the largest employer, and that is followed by tourism, which is followed by....well...that's about it.
After checking into our hostel, we spent the afternoon touring the Beagle Channel (yes, that's a Charles Darwin reference), which separates Argentina and Chile. We saw lots of birds, lots of seals, some sea weed that smelled like fish food, and what many people mistakenly think is the Faro del fín del mundo (light house at the end of the world....which evidently no longer exists). We ended the day by cooking dinner at the hostel and lighting the menorah with two Israeli travelers we met on our boat ride.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4
We started off the day by taking a taxi ride to the edge of town where one can apparently hike to a glacier (in good weather). We were really enjoying the hike through the wintery scenery until it started snowing really heavily, the wind picked up, and we were kind of caught in a whiteout. We ended up losing the trail and decided to call it quits and retreat. No glacier, but more of that to come later in the trip.
We spent the afternoon at the prison-turned-museum/art gallery/community center/gift shop that is basically the reason Ushuaia exists. To Argentina, Ushuaia is kind of what Australia was to Great Britain, and many famous Argentines were incarcerated there at one point.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5
Luckily the weather was much better, because this day included some pretty incredible scenery. We did an 8 km hike on "La Senda Costera" in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, which alternated between forrested hills and rocky beaches with incredible views. The pictures of this will be much more descriptive than anything I can write.
We spent most of the evening waiting at the Ushuaia airport, as Aerolineas Argentinas had the foresight to email us saying our flight was leaving an hour early. Unfortunately, they didn't tell us that it was then delayed two hours, but we did eventually make it to El Calafate.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 6
While we were planning to spend the day at Parque Nacional de los Glaciares (roughly 1 hour from El Calafate), we ended up missing the bus due to a combination of misinformation from our hostel and our own lack of looking at our bus tickets to see what time it actually left (whoops...). After trying unsuccessfully and rather expensively to chase the bus in a taxi, we decided to postpone the glaciar until the next day.
We spent the afternoon at the Reserva Natural Laguna Nimez, which is right in between the town and el Lago Argentino. Among other things, the reserve is home to a lot of flamingos, which was pretty cool to see.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7
Glaciar attempt 2 was much more succcessful. The Perito Moreno Glaciar is pretty darn incredible. We started out with a boat ride, which draws the response "wow this glaciar is really tall" (about 25-30 stories above the water), and then walked along a series of observation platfroms that drew the response "this thing goes back reeeaaallly far". Here too, the pictures will be more descriptive.
We continued straight from Perito Moreno to El Chaltén, where we spent the remainder of our trip. Here, we lit Chanukah candles with the huge group of Israelis that made up about half of our hostel.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8
El Chaltén, a 3 hour drive from El Calafate on a recently-paved two-lane road, is probably the most isolated place I have ever been. It has a population of just 500 and was founded by Argentina in 1985 in an attempt to end a border dispute with Chile (ie--if Argentines are living there, it should be part of Argentina). The only phone and internet access is through satellite.
This lonely little town also happens to be the trekking capital of the world...or of Argentina...depending on who you ask. Despite the snowy weather, we did a day-long hike to the base of Mt. Fitz Roy. The actual mountain was unforunately covered by clouds the entire time, but we still had some amazing snowy views.

To be continued...

A traditional Uruguayan Thanksgiving

So I have only a quick update today because it's almost 3 am and I have a flight that leaves in 6 hours, but this blog only has 12 days of legitimacy left, so I feel like I need to take advantage of that.

Last week, our program took us to Colonia, Uruguay to celebrate Thanksgiving. There seems to be a general awareness that this holiday exists (probably because most of the TV programs in this country are from the US with Spanish subtitles), but the arrival of the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock is not quite viewed with the same significance down here. Colonia is a beautiful colonial town (as the name might suggest) located directly across the Rio de La Plata from Buenos Aires. It is between 1 and 3 hours away depending on how much you pay for your ferry ticket, and you can see the BA skyline off in the distance from the Colonia waterfront. It also happens that the director of our program runs a bed and breakfast there (as well as a lemon exporting business with the produce that this estate yields). Basically this guy is the man. All 100+ students that came on this trip ate a great Thanksgiving lunch in a tent on the grounds of this bed and breakfast (which, in Spanish, translates to "el bed and breakfast"). Hopefully I can get some pictures up soon, but be prepared for colonial architecutre, cows on a beach, and everything that might come between those two.

As I mentioned above, I will be leaving Buenos Aires in 6 hours (but not for good!). I head tomorrow to Ushuaia, Argentina, which, as you can see from this MAP, is the southernmost city in the world. It's basically the same distance south from Buenos Aires that the east coast of the US is to Colorado. On Sunday, I head to El Calafate, which is located near the PERRITO MORENO GLACIAR. I return to Buenos Aires next Friday evening and have a few more days to say goodbye to the city before heading back to the US for good the evening of Tuesday, December 14.

More updates soon!