Absolutely amazing! Iguazú falls is one of the most spectacular natural wonders I have ever seen. It's worth spending the day here and seeing the falls from both the Argentine and Brazilian sides, but if you're short on time, the Argentine side is nicer and offers a better view.

If you're traveling on an American passport, you won't have to pay the US $100 visa fee to cross over to the Brazilian side of the falls for the day.

Posted 6 months ago

From Buenos Aires I flew to to Ushuaia, at the bottom of the island of Tierra del Fuego, which is between the Straights of Magellan and the meeting of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It's a really small town and not at all impressive, nor is the 1 runway plus shack "airport," but the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego is quite cool.

Friday I went to the park with a German and a Canadian I met at the hostel, and we got the 1/2 price Argentinian entrance fee because we kept our mouths shut while the bus driver paid and asked for the tickets. We got to some sort of dirt road and walked about 5 km to the end of RN-3, where there's a sign that reads something to the effect of END OF THE WORLD. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF RN-3. BUENOS AIRES 3,033 km ALASKA 17,981km. Some silly pictures were taken. End-of-the-world jokes were made. End-of-the-world jokes were beaten into the ground. We eventually got sick of said end-of-the-world jokes.

The next day I walked around town, took a bunch of pictures, and saw the sun rise over the Beagle Channel, which was really nice but kind of creepy in a way,because the mountains encircle the city, and because of the contrast between them and the sun, and because it takes the sun a lot longer down there to rise than it does as you go further north towards winter (correct my physics if I am wrong, but that seems to be the case), there was basically a black space with a jagged top, and the sun made this eerie orange glow over it, while above it the sky was still fairly dark. I think I have a picture of this—it's sort of hard to explain properly.

The original plan was to go to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, and then make my way up to Bariloche. But, that's not how it wound up because naturally this country is way more enormous that I thought, and the roads in southern Patagonia, well, suck. To reach the glacier at El Calafate would have been minimum 15hrs by bus, and then another 30+ hrs by bus from there to Bariloche, not including the layover time. Of course I could have flown to Bariloche, but that would have also involved an overnight stop in El Calafate and almost 1,000 pesos. Or, I could fly to Bariloche via Buenos Aires. So I just took a plane back to Buenos Aires and took the bus, which I think was probably the best thing to do given that what I've heard about Calafate is that the glacier is pretty cool but the town is a dump and it's probably not worth all that effort of getting there and away to see it.

Posted 6 months ago

A nice place to go, especially if you're into wine. Mendoza has dozens of wineries that are open to the public and offer tours of the production process.

Mendoza is also a good place to set out for horseback riding in the Andes, hiking, and touring around.

Mendoza doesn't seem that much different from the rest of the Andean towns I've been to, but the ride through the Andes was absolutely amazing. You go up and up and up and up, the weather is shitty and cloudy and gray, you start seeing snow on top of the mountains as you and a zillion other trucks and buses zigzag up a really curvy road with numbered curves (at least 20 on the way up) until you go through this tunnel that is sorta long, I think. When you come out on the other side and pass Centro Migraciones Cristo el Redentor, you are evidently on the other side of the continental divide (the streams are going the other way) and in the distance you see the clouds opening up as the mountains diminish. I.e., as soon as you cross the border into Argentina, the weather stops sucking and becomes beautiful within 5 minutes of travel from the border. I find this hilarious. The mountains block all the crappy weather from being blown over from the Pacific and keep them in Chile. Then you go down and down (the descent into Argentina is way less steep) and the vegetation on the mountains gets more and more dense as you drop in altitude, and you see little 2 foot wide streams get wider and wider and eventually become really blue lakes. Then civilization starts to appear, ever so vaguely, and then you are in Mendoza.

Posted 6 months ago