Well so much for numerous installments to my blog! As usual I procrastinated, and have been putting off finishing this for nearly a month now.
We made it safely to Calafate about 1 in the morning, and walked about two blocks to our hostel. The next day we slept in, checkout out the town, and just relaxed. Sunday we bought our tickets and boarded the bus to take us to the glacier Perito Moreno. The glacier was incredible to see, and I'm so very glad we got to go. It was massive, even though all we could see was the tail-end of it really...and I took sooo many pictures! We spent most of our time watching intensely to see if we could see chunks fall off and splash into the lake that the glacier juts out over, and we were rewarded a few times to hear the loud crack and see the giant splash as ice hit the water. There are really nice walkways built into the side of the hill across from the glacier. We ate our lunch out there, in site of the glacier. We spent about 6 hours there, until our bus returned to Calafate, and by the time we left, what with the sun and glare and cold wind, we all had very red chapped faces! But all very worth it.
The next afternoon we packed up and headed out on another bus, this time a 27-hour ride to our next stop, Bariloche. Can't say I remember much of that bus ride, mostly sleeping, and staring out the window, but it honestly wasn't as awful as I thought it might be. We spent several days in Bariloche, taking pictures, walking around town, enjoying the lake and the beautiful view and the sites of the town. And of course, eating chocolate! (as Bariloche is the "chocolate capitol" of Argentina). We left Calafate on Tuesday, got into Bariloche on Wednesday. Thursday we went for a hike around a peninsula that had a road around it good for biking or hiking. We hiked, and ended up walking over 10 miles before we gave up and finally reached a point where we could get on a bus back to town. We were all a bit sore and tired the next day so we took it easy, shopped for groceries, and hung out at the hostel. That night we had a little White Elephant gift exchange among the 6 of us, since it was Christmas Eve. Mady and Rebekah walked into town to check out the Christmas Eve mass at a cathedral we had seen earlier, but the rest of us were tired and just relaxed at the hostel. The next day we wanted to do another hike so we ate breakfast early and headed out to the bus stop to wait for bus number 10 which would take us where we wanted to go. Two Israeli guys we had met who were also staying at the hostel asked to join us so we said sure, and they came to wait with us. Well, we ended up waiting for two hours, because apparently buses run on different schedules on Christmas day, just nobody knew exactly what. Finally, we made up our minds to take bus number 20, which would take us to the area we had hiked earlier, and just explore some more there. The Israeli gentlemen had given up and wandered off to do their own thing by this point.We decided that we would take whichever bus came first, 10 or 20, just in case 10 finally showed up. A few minutes later bus 20 came around the corner...and right behind it, bus 10! Well, we had already said we'd take the first one that came, so we got on 20. It took us to the place we told it, which was supposed to be a forest for hiking. Turns out there is a hotel with the same name, and that's where the bus dropped us off. It was in the same general area, but farther than we wanted to walk, so we ended up just walking around on random roads, most of which were probably residential. We found a cool church on the top of a hill, so for our lunch we just laid out in the grass on the side of the hill the church was on, for lack of a better place to eat our sandwiches. So we chilled on the hill side in the sunshine, ate our sandwiches, then Rebekah read the Christmas story from the Bible out loud to us, and we all laid out in the grass and took naps. I'm sure we must have looked like complete bums to anyone that saw us! After our nap we started walking back towards town, and eventually caught a bus the rest of the way. That night we had planned on just ordering a pizza, because we had been told there would be places open that night. Turns out almost nothing was open, so our Christmas dinner was a bit odd. Even the grocery stores were closed so we couldn't make food. We walked around town and eventually found a sort of kiosk that was open, and a gas station. So I had pasta, pringles, and yogurt for dinner! Not at all like Christmas dinner at home, but definitely unique.
The next day we checked out of the hostel in Bariloche and headed to another town called Villa la Angostura for a few days. We'd wanted to rent a car, but it just seemed to be too big of a hassle, since those with licenses didn't have credit cards, those with credit cards weren't old enough, and those old enough couldn't drive stickshift. SO, we just bused, and opted out of visiting San Martin de los Andes, another town a few hours away we had planned on driving to. Which was just as well, because as it turned out we found plenty to do in Villa la Angostura. We stayed in a really cute little hostel. It was definitely different from our hostel in Bariloche, which was mostly filled with younger people and seemed to have a lot of parties going on (though it was Christmas time). This hostel was family owned, a little smaller and quieter. I really liked the town too, it seemed much more friendly, and had lots of cute shops, and we found a store with amazing ice-cream, cheap too! And the people that worked there were very friendly too, they got to know us pretty well, as we went there several times while we were there! Villa la Angostura was definitely my favorite place on the trip.
The first day we were there, we did all in all a kilometer hike out to a part of this forest that had a bunch of Arrayan trees. These trees are kinda special, because they have this bark that is always cold to the touch. Don't ask me why, but it's true. They are a light reddish-orangy color and really do feel cold when you touch them. The trees were way out at the very end of a point of land, so we had to hike all the way to the end to see them and boy was I tired! But luckily there was a ferry you could take, and we opted to take it back, which was a fun ride. The next day we did another fun hike, this time out to a waterfall. It was a pretty intense climb for a bit to get up to it, sometimes it felt like it was straight up hill (I guess parts of it where) but so worth it at the top. We tried putting our feet in the creek water at the top before the waterfall, but it was SO cold, it honestly hurt it was so cold. And we could look out over the top of the waterfall and see the valley down below us. Very cool. There was a very nice lady that lived in a house at the beginning of the trail and when we were first headed up the trail she came running out to meet us, to ask if we wanted to buy anything, because she could make us different kinds of food. We took her up on her offer on our way back down and bought some cortas fritas (kind of like fried bread) which were mighty scrumptious.
The next day we wanted to check out this other waterfall we'd heard about, the Green Waterfall. It was too far to walk so we hired two taxis to take us. We had planned on sending the taxis back to town and then just having them pick us up at a certain time later, but when we told our driver that he told us it would cost more to do that than to have him wait for us, because it was only about a 10 minute walk to the waterfall. So, as soon as the taxis stopped, we jumped out, ran down the hill to the viewpoint, snapped some pictures, and jogged back to the taxis. Probably took us about 15 minutes total. So, that waterfall was a bit of a fail, plus there was nothing green about it! But it was still cool to see. We also walked around a trail that went around this pond, it was really pretty. The next day, Wednesday, we went back to Bariloche, which was only about an hour and a half bus ride. We spent the night there and caught the bus to Buenos Aires the next afternoon.
We got into BsAs the next day, Friday (New Year's Eve) at about noon, got to our hostel, and showered and relaxed, then walked around town for a bit till we found a place to eat. That night Mady and I met up with Lauren and her family, and we all went to the apartment where Krista and her family were staying and had dinner. (Lauren's and Krista's families had flown down to spend Christmas with them in Buenos Aires). After dinner we went back to the hostel and then with the rest of our group walked to the Plaza de Mayo, to wait for midnight and watch for fireworks. There were a lot of people there, but not nearly as many as I had expected. I had thought there would be thousands of people, but apparently most of the people in the cities leave for the beaches on New Years, or at least that's what I heard. The fireworks were fun to watch, but also not as exciting as I had thought they would be. So New Years in Buenos Aires wasn't as thrilling as I had thought it might be, but it was still fun. The businesses in town will shred up old papers from the whole year before, and during the days before New Years toss the shredded bits out their windows like confetti, so the streets are covered in paper. The next day our plan was to visit museums, the zoo, go back to the Rose Garden we had visited on our school trip earlier in the year to BsAs, see the giant Flor de Buenos Aires (a huge metal flower that is supposed to open and close with the sun, and follow the sun across the sky) and maybe visit the planetarium. Well, that plan didn't really work out. Turns out absolutely nothing is open on New Years, despite the museums hours saying they were open on holidays. SO, no museums, no planetarium, no zoo, no rose garden. We walked to most of the places, just to make sure they weren't open. We did get to see the giant Flor and take pictures there. We hung out on some park benches in the shade there for a few hours, talking and playing card games, before we walked on to look for more places that might be open. We had really nothing to do all day, until our bus left at 11 that night. So we walked a lot. It was really really hot that day too. Nothing was really open for lunch either, so we stopped at a gas station adn ate lunch there, and just hung out there for a few more hours because it was air conditioned, and waited out the hottest part of the day. We spent most of that evening looking for a Starbucks which we never found. Finally it was time to catch our bus so we taxi-ed to the bus terminal. We were a bit worried, cuz bus terminals are a bit sketch especially late at night. In fact, we had been nervous all weekend, because a lot of people get robbed in BsAs. Two other ACA students had had things stolen from them at the beginning of Christmas break, one guy had his wallet with all his money and his passport stolen from him, he even saw the person that stole it but they got away, and the other guy had his wallet and passport and another girl's computer he was taking back to the States for her stolen from Starbucks, about an hour before he was supposed to board his plane to go home for Christmas. Sooo, after hearing these stories we were all a bit nervous, but thankfully we were able to get on our bus and had no problems at all. Our bus did apparently have some mechanical problems so we had to sit at the terminal for over an hour before they moved us to another bus, and we were finally on our way back to school, where we arrived a little after 6 that morning.
So, that was Christmas vacation. An amazing three weeks, filled with adventures and incredible sights. I'll admit I was very happy to be done traveling though, and to not live in a suitcase anymore, or have to sleep in strange hostel beds every night! So that's that. Anything more will have to wait for another blog.
