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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14/01/08
Happy Monday to you all! As you’ve probably noticed, I was unable to post anything last night. This wasn’t because my hostel didn’t have the facilities, but rather because according to the manager there, the Internet was down all across New Zealand. That’s too bad, because I was hoping to get you caught up on my exploits. However, as I now find myself in essentially the middle of nowhere (Raukawa Falls), I still won’t be able to post anything. I have high hopes for tomorrow however, as I’ll be in a town of over 40,000, so surely they’ll have fixed the Internet there, right? Hee hee. Well in spite of that, my trip continues, and I have a new post to write for you all. Today Ralph and I bid farewell to Tongariro National Park, and made our way (mostly downhill) to the Raukawa Falls Adventure Centre, which is a YMCA camp, but also has cabins for independent travelers. We got a cabin for 15NZD each. Not bad. The location isn’t too shabby either, with some really cool falls nearby, as well as a flowing river behind our cabin. So, read on for my little story, and don’t forget to check out the day’s map. With the return of reliable power, I can give you an accurate map now 🙂
Howdy world. Well, I suppose I’m breaking some cardinal rule of Las Vegas by writing this post, but lets just say I’ll stick to the relatively family friendly aspects of the trip to share with you all. To save you the wondering, yes, I did see ‘The Hangover’, and yes, things went down a little like that. Not quite to the extreme, but there were some interesting moments for sure. In respect of the code, I’ll keep this post short and to the point, and just give you an overview of the whole trip. For a great overview, just click your little fingers over to my flickr site and peruse some pictures and video from the weekend. Then come on back and read the whole sordid tale, including the why, the where and the what.
27/02/08
Howdy gang, and how are you all doing today? Me, well, it was a soggy day for ActiveSteve. As such, you’ll have to forgive me, but there aren’t all that many pictures on my map. You can still see my route and all the stats, but not much for entertainment value I’m afraid. For the first while, there really wasn’t all that much reason to pull out the camera anyway. The scenery was just more rolling farmland, with sheep, deer and cows, much like the last few biking days. It was also really coming down, so I was pretty bundled up. Overbooties on, arm warmers, gore-tex jacket done all the way up with the hood over my helmet, and even my ski gloves to keep my hands warm, so as you can imagine, the camera wasn’t in a ready state as it normally would be! All that being said, I guess I can fill up a couple more paragraphs with some info on my day and evening in the beautiful Curio Bay area of the Catlins Coast. So, read on, dear literati.
Click here for pictures from Salta. Howdy folks, well, I´ve got a rare bit of free time to write up a post in the sort-of middle of the day. It´s just around 4:30, and I just got back from my lunch, and have free time till 8pm, so let´s just pick it up where we left off and talk about yesterdays journey. I talked about getting on the train to the clouds, and then subsequently finding out it would be a mini-bus to the clouds. I´ll have to be honest though, sometimes, these little changes are just what you need. This tripped proved to be well worth it. Although by the end of the trip, we all agreeed that these particular clouds weren´t very soft and fluffy, and could use a spot of pavement 🙂 As it turns out, the road we travelled was pretty bumpy, and filled with lots of cargo trucks laden with lithium brine and borax. These are some of the things that get mined from the salt flats that exist in the altiplano at high altitudes between here and Bolivia. We got an early start to our day, boarding the bus at 8am. The trip was to last for about 12 hours, and we had a great guide named Pablo to fill us in on all the gory details of the areas we´d be seeing. read on…