Before I go into too much detail on Chile, I figure I should try to catch you up on everything else. After Rio we went to Buenos Aires (BA) for a few days. As usual we walked around and visited most of the tourist sites. We saw the Casa Rosada or pink house, like our Whi
te House, Recoletta Cemetery, where Eva Peron and many other Agentine greats are buried, and Avenida 9 de Julio, which is one of the widest avenues in the world, spanning an entire city block (at least 6 lanes each way). At this avenue is when I almost lost Micah for good. Carried away in a photographic frenzy we strayed from the usual pedestrian flow and ended up stranded on one of the medians, away from a cross walk. In an attempt to rejoin the crowd, Micah started running diagonally across the 6 lanes. Unfortunately she had completely misread the flow of traffic, and about halfway across the cars started speeding towards her. Screaming, she high-kneed it safely back to the median. Thankfully she made it okay, but she sure did cause a scene... Anyway, one of the best parts of BA was meeting up with some friends we'd met in Rio. They lived in BA and invited us over for a traditional Argentinian bbq. The bbq was on a balcony at the top of an apartment building. The mix between the beautiful weather, amazing view of the city and stars, delicious food and entertaining company made for a great night. We had more meats that I can count, including a disturbing blood sausage and some mystery meat they could only translate as a gland. I thought both were good, Micah thought differently. At dinner we met a girl who had just graduated from Yale where she had played soccer and was currently in BA playing professionally. It was great to talk with her and she invited us out to play at their weekly pick-up game that Sunday, but unfortunately we had just bought bus tickets to Iguazu Falls for the following day. After dinner we went to a huge BA night club where you had to have your name on a list to get in. Evidently our friends knew somebody, because we got in and even got VIP bracelots that got us into the special upper lever of the club. It was definitely an interesting experience but we were surprised that 99% of the songs were ones we listened to in the US. We danced for a couple of hours until we were exhausted and had to call it an early night by BA standards, around 3:30.From BA we took a 17 hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls in the very NE part of Argentina, which shares a border with Brazil and Paraguay. We stayed at "The club med of hostels" as described in the advertisement. It really was pretty nice with a huge pool and nightly entertainment ranging from dance shows led by women in giant feather hats and thongs (imagine a
Vegas show) to amazing tango dancers, and it only cost $12 a night! Iguazu Falls was beautiful. I had never seen a big waterfall, so I was undoubtedly amazed. It is rumored that when Eleanor Roosevelt flew over Iguazu all the said was, "poor Niagara", so I am assuming these falls truly are as inspiring as I found them. We spent the whole day walking along to the various falls and even decided to make a two hour trek to the "hidden" waterfall. Little did we know the horrors that would aw
ait! Once we hit the rainforest area of the trail, we made the mistake of looking up and discovered, to our horror, that EVERYWHERE above us were enormous spiders hanging in their webs. I don't know where the fun reputation of rainforests came from, where they are known for big powerful cats, beautiful butterflies, entertaining monkeys, and colorful birds. This is a lie. We quickly discovered that the rainforest is a horrid and wretched place, and literally spent two ho
urs hunched over, ducking and dodging in an attempt to avoid the grotesque beings above. I actually spend the first 30 minutes in the sweltering heat wrapped up in my rainjacket, hood on and zipped because I was quite positive one of the spiders was going to dive-bomb me and that is an event I would not have survived. In the end, we saw a few toucans, some monkeys, and the waterfall which we found a small reward for all of the terrors faced...From Iguazu we took what was supposed to be a 23 hour bus ride to Salta, in NW Argentina. An hour in the bus broke down, we had no lights, no tv, and no toilet paper. Finally we made it to Salta, where we had our little adventure I wrote about in the last blog. From that point we decided to ditch bikes for awhile and try our luck with a car. Our original plan was to rent a car for a few days and hit all of the big stops. To our dismay, the only cars they had were manual. We thought long and hard about whether it was realistic to rent one anyway and attempt to learn to drive standard on the fly, but after a long debate and some advice from home we decided to just pay for a guided tour to the Salinas Grandes (Salt Flats) instead. A few hours in we were laughing at the prospect of us attempting to learn how to drive a manual on the hilly and curvy mountain roads. One was so curvy in fact, they had actually counted the number of curves and it was one of the fun facts they told us. I believe the number was 318! The en
tire tour was beautiful. First we went through the rainforest that doesn't like rain. Evidently the area receives little rain and when it does it causes massive mud slides. Instead, the forest grows by getting water from all of the fog. From there were went through the beautifully colored mountains, striped in blues, greens, reds, oranges, and purples. The wide range of colors is created by the oxidation of the various minerals. The climax of the trip was the Salt Flats, located on a huge flat at the top of the mountains. All we could see was an endless desert of salt broken only by the mountains in the distance. A river still runs underneath the flat, and we were able to see squares that had been dug out, only a meter or so deep, which filled up with the perfectly clear water from below. The whole day amazing, and needless to say, we were thrilled with our decision to NOT try to do it on our own.From Salta we were hoping to go straight to Valparaiso, Chile but unfortunately, or fortunately in hindsight, we had to bus to Mendoza, Arg. to get a bus over to Chile. We decided to spend a day in Mendoza, which we spent trying to mail home gifts to our family's, only to learn, what is evidently quite common knowledge, that we couldn't mail food to the U.S.!! And, the other fairly small gifts I had were going to cost me $134 to send! I replied that I found that ridiculous and walked out. This meant that Micah and I, literally after days devoted to gathering presents, were stuck hauling bags of jam, peanuts, cookies, clothes, trinkets and jewelry around the world, or at least until we tested our luck in Australia.
The next morning when we woke up to catch our 8:30 bus to Valparaiso we heard about the earthquake. Even though the first reports of damage did not sound too bad, after talking with some people at the hostel from Chili, we were convinced to change our bus to the next day and to go straight to Santiago instead. We took advantage of our extra day in Mendoza to explore its famous vineyards. The first one we went to was Routtini, and after seeing the price tag of $3000 on a bottle of wine we quickly excused ourselves before we could break anything. From there we decided to try out a chocolate, liquor, olive oil and sweets tour next door. Did you know green olives and black olives grow on the same tree? The only difference is that green olives are picked two months earlier and aren't as ripe. Real eye-opener right there...
The next morning we decided to go ahead and take our bus to Santiago and hope the airport would be open by Tuesday for our flight. The bus ended up being an event in itselft. We got up early, and weighed down with our huge bags, tent, jams etc. headed to the bus station. In the back of my mind I was worried I had left my camera charger, but put off checking for it until we got to the station and could put everything down. Well, when we got there, I made a mad search through my bags and concluded that it was gone! It was 8:37 and our bus left at 9. Weighing the importance of my charger vs. the 23 min. until the bus left I decided to make a run for it. Keep in mind I had not run since November, the hostel was not necessarily close, and I was wearing jeans. I took off at a sprint, which quickly turned into a jog, and soon after became miserably lost! The directions to the hostel were not complicated at all, but in the rush of the moment I attempted to take a short cut which did not pan out as planned. In a terrifying moment I realized I had no money with me to get a taxi, I didn't know where I was, I was past the point of being able to breath, drenched in sweat, camera chargerless and the bus left in 10 minutes! Finally, after being misled once, I got back on track and forces myself to keep running back to the station. I showed up at 9:05, frantically running up and down the terminal, and could not find Micah or the bus anywhere! Finally after the 3rd time of asking one of the terminal attendents for help, he told me my bus would not be there until 9:30. I walked back around the back of the station where I found Micah sitting calmly with our bags, right where I left them. The bus didn't end up leaving until 10. One part of me was thrilled and relieved that I had made it back in time, but the other was annoyed that I could have spend an extra 45 minutes trying to find my charger. Then, when we boarded the bus, we found our seats had been double booked. By a stroke of luck, they had left all 4 seats on the top level at the front of the bus open.
We sprawled out in the front and enjoyed our panaramic view of the Andes during the 7 hour bus ride. The ride was gorgeous, but terrifiying at times seeing as they had no railings along the windy mountain roads. From our seats it literally looked like we were hanging off the mountain on a few of the turns and all the passengers would let off a tiny squeal then sigh in relief when we successfully rounded it. All in all the ride was great, and to our great relief we were not forced to pay the reciprical fee at the border which has been introduced in 2010. In Argentina and Chile, when a US citizen enters the country they are now forced to pay $131, the exact same price it costs to get a US visa. Annoying, but fair enough. It has been two days since my run and my legs are still sore to the touch...Once we reached Santiago we really began worrying about our flight. While there was hardly any visible damage around the city as far as we could see, evidently their glass airport hadn't held up as well. The rumors were that the airport wouldn't open until Friday and they weren't rebooking passengers until the 12th!! This meant we would miss Australia completely! On the day of our flight, we called and heard that miraculously they had opened the airport for 15% of the flights and our airline said ours was still on! When we arrived at the deserted airport we made our way to a gia
nt tent which was serving as the makeshift terminal. We crossed our fingers as we approached the white board that had all the scheduled flights listed and our hearts dropped as we searched and searched for our missing number. We called our parents who began making the necessary calls and thankfully Mr. Stephens got through to the airlines. By this time Micah and I were sulking, dreaming of the great times we would have had down under, as we caught a bus back to town. Right when we arrived we got a call that will go down in trip history telling us the flight was still on, just postponed to 2 am!! We celebrated with steak sandwhiches and a pizza, a few drinks and a giant plate of steak, cheese and onion french fries! We then triumphantly returned to the tent. The airport that had been deserted mere hours earlier was now teeming with people. The whole scene was complete chaos, with no lines or sense of organization, just hundreds of people waiting around with their luggage. We were told to stand around until we heard an announcement about our flight and at that time make our way to the tent. Well we stood, and sat, and laid, and walked and we heard no announcements. A bit antsy, we finally pushed our way to the front of the mass and discovered their "announcements" consisted of a soft-spoken man saying the flights, no microphone, no speakerphone, not even yelling! Frantically we learned our flight had already been called and when we got into the tent we discovered we were the only ones in line. They looked at our passports and after an exchange of uncomfortable looks, they told us we were not on the list because we had not called some office we had never heard of. After explaining that if we missed this flight we would miss our flight to India which would cause us to miss our flight to Nepal etc. etc. etc. they quickly made arrangements to get us on the plane. The lady actually made up a boarding pass using a sharpee and a piece of paper which was sufficient enough to get us through the "security" they had set up. Because we didn't have a real ticket or seat numbers, we had to board last and just pick whatever seats were open. With our giant back packs, tent, jams and the rest we triumphantly boarded to the amusement of the rest of the passengers who thoroughly enjoyed watching our struggle.When we landed in New Zealand the first sign I saw said "owners of cricket bats must carry a wood permit." I knew right away we were going to have issues at customs. Any country that requires permits to carry wood cannot be a welcoming place, and it was not. As our bags went through the machines, everyone of ours got flagged and checked by hand. After a short argument about the confiscation of our dear jams, the security guard, in an overly self-righteous tone went off on a speal about what was defined as a liquid. "Anything drinkable, pourable, sprayable, spreadable..." At that word my heart dropped, because if there was one word to describe our jam it was spreadable. Heart broken after being parted with our jams (11 bottles that we had hauled around for weeks!!!), aloe vera and tent stakes we made our way to the final leg of our flight
Emily
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