Click here for photos from this day. End of first long day in Argentina. It’s been an interesting one, culminating in me sitting in a bean-bag chair working on my 3.40 peso beer – A delicious 1 liter bottle Quilmes Cristal. That works out to about $1.25 CDN. That’s more like it! In the room, a german, couple Scots, and a Dutch guy, all enjoying a couple bottles of red wine. Flashback to arrival in BsAs. No problem getting through customs. Off to baggage claim. World’s slowest conveyor belt. Time passes. I finally get my backpack. Wait another eternity, no 2nd backpack! Oh shit. Yup, somehow, Jody’s bag never made it. Bad news. Sadly, not a hell of a lot we can do. Report is filed, but I’m not holding my breath. We manage to navigate buses downtown, and check into our hostel. the tiredness doesn’t help. We shower and re-group. Personally, I say it’s all part of the adventure, but with no clothes and toilettries, Jody may not agree. Luckly, stuff is relatively cheap. I think the new plan is to replace and move on. We’ve got the toilettries replaced, which is a good start. We move on to a preliminary exploration. BsAs is a big city. Compared to Lima, Peru, BsAs clearly has more wealth. I’ll reserve additional comparisons between the two nations until I see more of this country, but at first blush, it would appear Argentines are a bit better off. That’s if for now, gotta finish my beer and hit the hay. It’s been a long 29 hours.
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05/03/08
Greetings folks. Well, as you’ve already seen by the bonus post added to the site, I started my day with a rather taxing attack on Baldwin Street. Although my cycling day was to be 90km, I still had to give it a go on the way out of town, as it would be my only chance to ride up that street on my bike while in New Zealand. What a way to start my day! I was totally exhausted at the top, but had to bounce back quickly, as the next part of the ride was a rather long climb up to around 500m to get over Mount Cargill, which is the scenic (i.e. torturous) way out of Dunedin heading North. The day was a hodge podge as far as weather, scenery and accomplishments go, so without any further ado, I invite you to browse my little map and to read on for a few more exciting details.
For pictures from Mendoza, click here. Quick final post. I´ve got 20 minutes to wrap up this blog, pick up my laundry at the Bubbles Lavados up the street, and meet the group for supper, and a briefing on tomorrow´s activities. We arrived early in the morning to this beautiful city. Jody and I opted out of any city tours or any responsibilities. Instead, I got some laundry together, and explored the city on my own. Local busses, trolleys, and just plain locals in general. I´m really enjoying practicing communicating down here. I ended up getting a private tour of the city hall by a security guard, who took me to the roof of the building for some very impressive views and chit-chat, even though we were both out of our language comfort zones. It was quite cool. I then went to a very large park honoring San Martin, the man largely responsible for liberating Argentina. There is a mountain-top monument to this, the greatest of National heros. The location is known as Cerro Saint Gloria. It was a nice view, and nice moment. Then, local busses back here, and now I´m writing you. It was a bit funny, because a lot of the tour group opted to take a bus tour of the city, paying a bit of coin for it. My personal city tour, using local busses and my own two feet, was almost the same thing, but cost me 3.5 pesos, instead of 25+ pesos paid by the rest of the group. Of course, I didn’t go quite as far, but I still saw most of the main sights, and even crossed paths with them twice! Well, gotta go. Just realized it´s October 31st. Hope everyone´s having a spooky night, and I guess we´ll see you in less than a week now. Till then, enjoy the week!
Good news everybody. Today I can finally write about getting out of the safari vehicle and actually doing some real hiking. Mind you, I’m not talking about a multi-day challenging trudge or anything, but at least the dust in my nose would be from kicking at the dirt rather than by driving through it, so that’s something. Our first foray into the hills was a hike up Mount Lemagrut, which is one of 9 craters in the Ngorongoro conservation area. Although we’d be trekking up to 3100m this day, we were starting out at about 2400m, so the overall altitude gain and loss wasn’t going to be that great. This would however serve as our first acclimatization hike of sorts, and give us an idea how we might do as a group on the more challenging days ahead of us. This is also the first time I’ll be sharing a nice map of the trek with you all. As you might expect, I carried a GPS with me for most of the trip, and made a number of maps to show you where we went. Along with the map you can also head to flickr and check out the set of pictures and videos from the day. Once you’ve taken all that in and set the scene, come on back and read the rest of my tale!
06/02/08
So, what is Waitangi Day you ask? Well, it’s a national holiday here in New Zealand. Sort of like Canada Day, but not quite. There aren’t massive celebrations everywhere, but it is a significant date for Kiwis. This is the day the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by the queen, which recognized the land claims and rights of Maoris. Of course, things are still not settled for Maoris, so as a result, there is not much celebrating, but rather, a fair bit of protest on this day in certain parts of the country. However, it is still a federal holiday, which means food places all charge 15-20% extra if you want to eat. Ha ha. Guess I’ll be eating noodles and peanut butter sandwiches today! At any rate, I’m still in Fox Glacier township right now, enjoying an almost complete day off. My only activity was about 25km of biking and hiking, to check out the stunning views of the Southern Alps from here. The rest of the day is hopefully for laundry, Internet, phone calls, etc. etc. Yup, I’m resting and getting ready for the next few days. Read on and check out the map for a bit more info.