Christmas Vacation

 Currently, as I write this, I am sitting on the floor at the bus terminal in Rio Gallegos Argentina, surrounded by luggage and my 5 companions.

This is the first installment of my blogs about Christmas vacation. I figured writing every few days would be easier and I would remember more than if I wrote all at once at the end.

Day one of our trip was Monday, when we hopped on the 8:55am bus from the villa for Buenos Aires, myself, Rebekah, Mady, Kourtney, Spencer, and Daniel. It’s about a 6 hour bus ride, and once we got there we got taxis and found our hostel we had booked for the night. For the record, I thought I had conditioned myself to taxis in other countries, but the driver we had from the bus station took “crazy –driving” to a whole new level. We were honestly driving in the other lane in oncoming traffic, and at one point were parked there waiting for traffic to move in our lane for us to get back into it. I was on the side of the taxi facing the oncoming traffic as it honked and veered around us, and I sent up some desperate prayers for safety! After getting to the hostel we wondered around town for a few hours, found a bank, bought some groceries, and made ourselves a vegetable soup and bread for dinner at the hostel. The next morning we got up early and left the hostel about 6:15 in taxis for the national airport. Once we got there we found out that a gate had not yet been assigned to our flight. We had about an hour to wait before boarding started so we weren’t worried, but as the hour went by we began to wonder. Finally, 5 minutes before our plane was supposed to board our gate was assigned and we made it through security and boarded with no more worries. I sat next to two Israeli gentlemen who were part of a group that had just finished their time in the Israeli army and were spending 8 months traveling the world. They had been partying all week in Buenos Aires and were very hung-over,  and enjoyed pointing out to me all the people on the plane that were high, because they’d been at the same party the night before. It was interesting, but they were very friendly and we chatted for awhile till they fell asleep for most of the 3 hour flight. On our descent into Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, we had a spectacular view of snow-capped rugged mountains like the kinds on postcards. Despite being the middle of summer, Ushuaia is VERY cold right now. I’m not sure I would like to experience what winter feels like.  After our taxis took us to our hostel, we dropped off our bags and walked around to explore the city. It’s population in about 55,000 people. It’s built along the water, with mountains all around it. The town is built on the side of the foothills, our hostel was a bit of an uphill walk, but not bad, and it was a really nice little hostel. Our room that had a total of 8 girls in it, had heated floors, they served breakfast for us every morning, and we had a decent sized kitchen to cook our meals in. In fact, we’ve been doing our own cooking the entire trip. We found out that it is much cheaper, and a lot more fun to do it that way. Breakfast in the hostel, a snack of crackers or fruit for lunch, then pick a meal and buy the groceries for it, and make ourselves dinner at the hostel.

The next day, Wednesday we walked down the hill and signed up for the 6 hour boat tour to see the penguins!! It was super fun, and we definitely lucked out weather-wise. It stayed dry and even sunny for most of the day until after we had gotten back to the hostel and were making dinner, when it started raining. One thing I learned about Ushuaia is that weather reports don’t seem to mean a thing. The weather can change from one minute to the next, to the next, from wind and rain to sunshine to snow, and back again without any apparent rhyme or reason. After we ate it had cleared off again and we walked around town some more, got some more pictures. The sun doesn’t set until about 10 or so in the evening, and rises about 4:30 or 5 in the morning right now.

Yesterday we slept in a bit in the morning. After breakfast we walked around and looked at all the touristy shops in town, then caught the city bus to the edge of town where someone had told us about a road we could walk out to some beaches. The weather was clear and sunny (with an occasional snow flurry) and very windy and very cold! We walked out a dirt road along the edge of the shore, and took pictures of the ocean crashing on the gravel beaches. We even found a glass wine bottle with a cork, so we wrote a note in it and threw it back out to sea.

This morning our bus left Ushuaia at 5am, the start of our first long bus trip: 18 hours to Calafate. We’ve completed the first 13 hours now. It would have been a much shorter bus ride, but we had to pass through Chile on our way here so we had 4 border stops, entering and exiting Chile, and entering and exiting Argentina, which took up what felt like hours. But I’m not complaining, I got my passport stamped, proof I’ve been in Chile now! We also got to cross the Straights of Magellan on a ferry which was cool. Luckily the weather has been good today as well, because apparently buses get stuck sometimes when there’s a storm and they can’t cross the straights. THAT is the trip so far. We’ve got about an hour more to wait, and then we’ll finish the rest of our journey to Calafate. The plan is to spend about 3 days there, then bus to Bariloche, spend about a week there, and then bus the rest of the way back to spend New Years in Buenos Aires. We’ll see how it goes!