Happy St Patty's Day, South America Style

Strictly speaking that would actually mean NOT celebrating at all, as St Patty's Day is not actually a big deal in Latin America (I can't imagine why not?). I imagine in the larger cities, particularly with a large tourist base (for example, Buenos Aires) and an Irish bar, likely had some sort of celebration, however, J and I found ourselves in tiny Cafayate, Argentina. Clearly neither one of us had any anything we had to do, we decided to honour St Patrick by renting bikes and bike to some wineries (which is pretty much the only way I likes to bike - when it involves wine!). By 12:30 pm we had drank approximately 3 or so glasses of vino and were feeling pretty good. In Cafayate, unlike in Mendoza, all the wineries are right IN the city (or at most ten minutes outside of the city) AND it was flat! All things I like. On the way to the second winery I was feeling a little bit deliriously happy, biking down a quiet country road, in the sunshine, surrounded by mountains, at 12:00 on a Thursday in Argentina(!). I couldn't stop myself from belting out a little 'the hills are alive' a la Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music.

After our third winery we decided to make a stop at the town goat cheese factory, which was about three kms outside of the town centre. We were only .5 kms from the factory when my back bike tire busted and the wheel refused to turn. I dragged the bike the rest of the way to discover that the factory was closed. We stil are not sure if it was actually closed or if they were on 'siesta', which they take very, very seriously here. (We can't quite figure out business hours on this continent.) We turned around and took turns dragging the bike the 3 kms down a very dusty dirt road, while simultaneously getting eaten alive by mosquitos. But, even that couldn't ruin our lovely, lovely St Patty's Day. Admittedly, the goat cheese empanadas and vino MAY have taken the sting off....

Happy (Belated) St Patrick's Day, lovelies!

This land was made for you and me.

But mostly me. Okay, so not really, but seriously, a town with over 20 wineries in and around it, as well as a goat cheese factory must be at least a little bit made for me, no?

I suppose I should back up a little. The 'land' I am referring to is Cafayate, Argentina, a very small town in northwestern Argentina (about 200 kms south of Salta, which likely doesn't mean much to most of you...). Aside from the wineries and all the goat chesse there is an amazing place called Quebrada de Cafayate (Cafayate Canyon) on the way into Cafayate from Salta, which is what made our bus ride into Cafayate both extremely beautiful and slightly terrifying - there were large parts of the road that had been washed away as recently as two weeks prior because of too much rain. It did not help that J and I were sitting in the front seats on the top floor of the bus, where you can't really see how close you are to things (it often looked like we were going to drive directly over the cliffs).

We arrived (safely) in Cafayate and went to our hostel  (recommended by the lovely Laryssa, a Canadian we had met in Buenos Aires). It was everything she promised and came complete with a very helpful and friendly owner (it did not hurt that he was also extremely attractive). 'Mr. Hot Stuff' (as he will be known forevermore because we never actually got his name), took us on a tour of the canyon, which was beautiful and awe inspiring. One of the best things about local guides is that you can ask them questions and get real answers (and some insight) that is generally more accurate than the assumptions I make (you know what they say about assumptions...).

According to Mr. Hot Stuff tourism has been on the rise in Cafayate for the past ten years, which has been both good and bad for Cafayate and its people, as is often the case. There has been a large increase in jobs opportunities for people, as previously the only options were to work in the wineries. Jobs are obviously a positive impact, however, things have also become extremely expensive in Cafayate (land in particular), which makes it impossible for regular Cafayateños to purchase land. He said that they now say that Cafayate is not for Cafayateños, rather it is for the rich people.

Cafayate is extremely small and the pace of life is quite slow (the prime example of this was 'Norma', who ran the best and busiest (and yummiest!) empanada joint in Cafayate. She was not bothered in the least by how busy they were and she moved at the same pace and maintained the same surly facial expression). It was in Cafayate that I was really able to remind myself that yes, sometimes bad things happen in South America (to tourists and to South Americans), but this can be the case everywhere. I was reminded that there are many more similarities between people than there are differences, and was able to see the people there as they are - people working hard to make a living and provide for their families. It was nice to remember this and to see people as they are, people. Not just a potential assailant (which is sadly sometimes what happens after you have been victimized -whether it was four years ago or four weeks ago, I am not sure that residual fear ever completely goes away), and that is a very welcome change.

Thanks Cafayate (and Mr. Hot Stuff, of course).

Cyclist Extraordinaire, I am not.

I love the idea of cycling. For so many reasons. It is good for the environment, it is cheap, and it is excercise. All things I love. In theory. The problem is, in real life, no matter how I try to convince myself, I just don't like it. It is hard and it makes my knees hurt. To be fair, I would likely be better at it (and possibly enjoy it more...) if I did it more than three times every four years, but that is neither here nor there.

So, this weekend I find myself in a little place called San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. You know, the driest desert in the world. There are so many things to do there, one of which is go by moutain bike to the 'Devil's Canyon'. I thought, okay, I can do this. Even though my last South American bike experience was a bit of a disaster (I blame that completely on the vino and chocolate!), I thought I would give the bicycle another whirl. You know, give it a fair shake. It can't be that bad, right?

So, J and I rent these bikes from a small Chilean man who was running an internet cafe/heladeria (which basically means he sells ice cream)/and bike rental shop. Those things all match, right? So, after he gets all our information and money, we are off, equipped with a map, and of course a picnic lunch (we never leave home without a picnic lunch. Peanut butter and banana on a fresh roll? Yes, please!). The first part I was all impressed with myself. I am clearly not as a fast as J, but I am nearly right with her (which was not the case last time, when I could hardly see her). Things were mostly  flat, and the scenery was so beautiful, I almost forgot I don't like biking. We were the only people on the dirt roads, and we were IN. THE. DESERT. It was amazing. Or, it was amazing. Until things started going wrong. Very wrong. Vertical up a mountain wrong. Did I mention I don't like biking? This leg of the journey improved ten fold after only a minor meltdown resulting in J changing the gears on my bike for me, and I could almost enjoy things again. It really was like nothing I had ever seen before. And, the best thing about riding uphill? Eventually you get to go back down. The way down was awesome (and easy), though my forearms are a bit sore from braking the entire way down, and my bottom still hurts four days later. These bikes were definitely not equipped with gel seats or any kind of shocks. So, here we are, biking in the desert, I am feeling pretty good. Until we reach the river we have to cross to actually get to the Devil's Canyon. We have passed over tiny streams (I thought we were in the driest desert in the world, why is there so much water?!?!?!?) without incident (not even a muddy rear end), but this time J bikes through and her feet go right under water. As I have the benefit of learning from what I thought was her 'mistake', I figure that I will do the improved version. I decided I could avoid getting my feet wet by going really fast leading up to it, and then throw my legs up in the air, to avoid getting soaked. What I had not anticipated was that I needed to keep pedaling in order to get through the water. The result was me, falling off my bike, into the river. I was not terribly happy, but hey, I'm in Chile. How bad can it be? We continue on, get to the canyon (which is really cool), and then have our picnic (always my favourite part of things). After our picnic we turn around to go back to the town. We arrive back at the river and we decide to try something a little different. We decide this time one of us (and by 'one of us', I clearly mean J) will jump across the river, and the other will hand the bikes across, and then follow by jumping. She gets across, no problem, I hand the bikes over (mostly no problem), and then I take a running leap. And I land half in the river. Of course I do. My sneaker is again very, very wet. And now muddy.

The good thing is that we were in the desert. The sun in the desert is extremely strong. So, we arrived back at the hostel with two hours to spare before we had to meet to go on our sandboarding tour, and by the time we had to leave my sneakers were bone dry. Dusty as all get out, but dry as can be. Which is nice, because I am not sure I can imagine anything less comfortable than sandboarding down a giant sand dune with wet sneakers. As a side note, sandboarding is awesome, and soooo much fun. If you ever get a chance to do it, you totally should.

Professional sandboarder?

Maybe.

Cyclist extraordinaire?

Definitely not.

Muchas Gracias, Apple Genuises.

I would just like to take a little minute to send a HUGE shout out to Apple. I know, that is kinda lame, but I feel like I need to express how extremely pleased I am that I chose to bring my iPod touch, instead of a discman (as I did on my last trip...). And I am all about expressing gratitude.

Despite what they may say on 'The Big Bang Theory', I think the peeps at Apple are truly worthy of the title 'genius'. My podular has kept me company (and entertained) for countless hours on multiple bus trips, and I am so pleased with being able to listen to podcasts and even purchase new music if I so choose, which means we can get some of the songs we hear everywhere here (for example, the Brazilian tune 'Chora Me Liga'. It plays EVERYWHERE!). It has also allowed us to have internet at almost every hostel, because they all seem to have wifi (which is incredible to me, and so so different from four years ago, when no one would have had a cell phone with them, let alone a laptop!).

I just felt I needed to send a little gratitude to Apple. So thank you, Apple, for making those potentially brutual bus trips some of my favourite times (well, the gorgeous views help, but still).

Not that they need it.

Baby, you can drive my car.

During the past couple weeks in Chile I have noticed a lot of differences between the cars here and those in Argentina, particularly in Buenos Aires, where the cars were mostly very small. There were lots of Mitsubishis, Fiats, some Kias and, for some strange reason, lots of Jettas with very tinted windows. As I have previously mentioned, Buenos Aires traffic is crazy, and there are about 13 million people living there, so you can imagine they have a small parking situation on their hands. I would never want to drive there! In Chile, for some strange reason, we have noticed there are many more cars that you would see in North America: Fords, Toyotas, Chevrolets, and...wait for it....Mazdas! There also seem to be more mini vans (complete with car toppers) and pickup trucks, both of which we definitely never saw in Argentina. But what I notice most are the Mazda3s, which is making me miss Mr. Stanley. Not driving specifically (and definitely not paying to fill the gas tank), but perhaps just the freedom that accompanies having a vehicle.
Oh, I forgot to mention the plethora of small children (toddlers, really), sitting in the front seat (sometimes on the driver´s lap), or just roaming around the cars. Same cars as in North America, but apparently not exactly the same rules....

This ones for you, Stan. I sure hope grampy is taking good care of you.

Valpo. You should go.

Valparaiso, Chile, that is. It is just called Valpo by people here. You know, like me.
J and I spent about three days in Valparaiso, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. The entire city is built into a very steep hill, overlooking the ocean. When I say the hill is steep, I mean they have encorporated outdoor, public elevator-like devices (called 'ascensors' in Spanish), as part of their public transportation systems. These bad boys are OLD, but they seem to do the trick. All the houses are painted bright colours and there is graffiti everywhere. It was esthetically so interesting, and we loved it there.

I think our favourite part was the day we decided to go for a walk to this museum we weren't terribly interested in, and then decided that instead of actually going into the museum, we would take the public bus to the bus station so we could purchase our tickets to La Serena, Chile, which was our next destination. During our walk we had seen the bus we needed to get on pass numerous times, so we knew we were in the right place. As we were walking we had seen one go down off the main road, so we followed it and decided to wait at  one of the bus stops, which happened to be right under an open window in the house. We waited for about five minutes, until the man from the house came out and in very patient Spanish explained to that we were not actually waiting at the bus stop and that we would have to return to the street we had been walking down. We joined the several other Chilean women also waiting for the bus and boarded when it arrived. We paid our fares (which is always a bit tricky. I never seem to actually know what the fare is), but there were no more seats left. This was a bus, but really more like a large van with lots of seats. It was really the first bus that felt to me like we were in Latin America. Chile, Argentina and Uruguay are all quite developed and definitely have nothing on Guatemala in terms of their bus systems. No chicken buses here!

The bus driver took great joy at barrelling down the hill, taking corners at full speed, shaking up his cargo (read: us). I expelled more energy trying to prevent my bottm from banging into those sitting all around me than I had doing anything else that week. J and I could not stop smiling at the experience, and once we reached the city center, which was where the bus station was located, a Chilean man (who had offered us his seat earlier in the ride) leaned over, and in perfect English suggested that we may want to get off at the next stop and turn left. As we started to walk to the front of the bus we realized that the driver was also looking up to tell us that this is where we wanted to go.

Chileans are so helpful. Valparaiso is lovely. You really should go.

The 'Sassy Princess'....

We arrived in Santiago on Friday (February 25) in the afternoon, after a seven hour bus ride through the Andes! It was amazing. So incredibly beautiful, I almost couldn't believe it.

Well, the parts I saw were beautiful.

I have always had a wee problem with staying awake in moving buses (first year university I had an extra two hours of sleep every day, on account of the bus commute...), and unfortunately after not going bed until extremely late two nights in a row before we left Mendoza did not bode well for me. I am pretty sure that I saw the most important parts of it. It was definitely a slow, uncomfortable ride, mostly because we were squished in a small mini bus/van, instead of the big fancy buses, but the beautiful mountains more than made up for it.

When we crossed the border into Chile we had to go through both Argentine and Chilean customs, which is pretty standard. What is not standard, however, is the process we had to go through to get our luggage into the county. As in Canada, upon entering Chile you have to fill out a form for customs, declaring whether or not you have any fruits or vegetables, and a long list of other products. We did not have anything that was specifically on the list, though we had found peanut butter in Iguazu (which is a little bit like gold here), and I was really not interested in losing it. Anyways, after returning from the bathroom there were three bags that the customs officers were looking at, and of course two of them were ours. I am not really sure if they were trying to intimidate us, they selected our bags randomly, or if they were just thinking our giant backpacks were a bit ridiculous and they wanted to have some fun with us. They made J actually open her bag, and start pulling things out (better hers than mine! She has one big pocket with a zipper, and her bag isn't stuffed. Mine is two separate pockets and is always stuffed to the brim. One wrong movement and it is all over, and I would almost have to start from scratch all over again). After asking us seventeen times if we had dried fruit (I was concerned that one might have gotten in there, making a liar out of me, I was eating a lot of raisins the previous week). They eventually got bored of us, they sent our bags through the scanners a bunch of times, and I blurted out every food I could think of stuffed in my bag, including the beloved peanut butter, the olives from our lovely tour (I also did not want to part with them, but I wanted to go to a Chilean jail much less...because that is clearly what happens when you incorrectly declare things??), and packets of jam stolen from random hostel breakfasts. Apparently none of that was offensive to Chile, so we were in the clear, and we were allowed to enter their beautiful country.

Thank goodness.

We arrived in Santiago, and by the time we got all our stuff off the bus and figured out the exchange rate (only after I had paid the equivalent of about $7 Canadian in bank fees to withdraw $8000 Chilean pesos. Approximately $16 Canadian. I always have a period of extreme confusion when the currency changes...), and found a taxi, we were both so ready to get to the hostel. We had booked one online out of the guide book, so we gave the address and we arrrive at what is definitely NOT a hostel. We are told by the woman at the address, and various people on the street (who were extremely eager to help us) that the hostel that had been there is no longer in existence. The kind taxi driver took us to another hostel in the neighbourhood. They were booked but they were nice enough to contact another hostel in the neighourhood for us and gave us directions to walk there. We arrived at a large purple monstrosity, with no sign on the front and were feeling slightly apprehensive. The old man who was washing cars on the street assured us that this was the hostel.We were greeted at the door by a Chilean dude who was also extremely helpful, and gave us all kinds of tips. He informed us the hostel is called the 'Princesa Insolente', which in English means the 'Sassy Princess'. He also gave us his business card which identified his name, and title, which was 'Latin Lover Host'.

Oh dear.

The best thing was that we soon figured out that this is actually the hostel we had made the reservation with, it was just a new name and address because the old one had suffered extensive damage in the earthquake last year, it had relocated and opened with a new name. So, we didn't lose our deposit, and now we are staying in the world's most beautiful hostel. No jokes. Everything is pink and purple and animal print with some Asian inspired decorations. I pretty much want whoever is responsible for this to come and decorate the home I don't have....

The best thing about it is the kitchen. They have every appliance you could ever want, including a blender, sandwhich maker, toaster, and probably others I can't remember. Tonight for dinner I made a peanut butter banana wrap and then put it in the sandwhich maker. If you have never done this before, stop reading right now and go do it.

DO. IT.

It is so delicious, it was all I could do not to eat eight of them. The kitchen also has a stock of oil and all kinds of spices for us to use. This NEVER happens at hostels. What usually happens is that we buy oil, and then people steal it. Its awesome.

Oh, and I almost forgot about the beds. Which are like real, at home beds. With duvets! I have had a nap every day we are here. For two reasons, one, I think I am getting sick, and two, because it is a delight. The last hostel we stayed at I was scared to touch the beds, so this is a welcome change.

I know traveling isn't supposed to be about where you stay, but sometimes, that is what makes the difference (well, that and the people you meet, of course). It has provided us with a place that felt temporarily like home, which was welcome because the last two hostels we stayed at bombed (anyone headed to Iguazu Falls do not stay at Marco Polo Inn, and those headed for Mendoza, avoid Mendoza Inn). Two nights ago there was a 'tequila night' here, which was quite fun, and ended in debauchery (for some, but not for us). There was even a professional CFL football player here (which we were able to confirm...). It was all a bit crazy.

Anyways, that was terribly disjointed. I was feeling a bit like I needed to gush a litte. We are leaving Santiago tomorrow to go to Valparaiso, a beach town two hours north of Santiago, and I am feeling a little sad. Yeah, I liked Santiago (for real, its beautiful, and clean and the mountains are RIGHT THERE all the time, and today we went on another vineyard tour), but I am most sad to leave the nice kitchen and the comfy bed. But, if I was that concerned about comfy beds and well stocked kitchens, I could have stayed in Canada for a lot cheaper.
Over and out. Valparaiso, get ready. We hear the hostel we are staying at has delicious homemade brown bread and goat cheese for breakfast, so we are really excited about that.

Its the small things, really.