Travelogue

Howdy all! I guess it’s high time that I write a bit about my recent last-minute vacation down to the Caribbean, isn’t it? As I mentioned in my last post, as a result of changing jobs, I decided to take a week off between the two jobs to refresh myself. Incidentally, for those of you who are wondering what this new job is, well, let’s just say I opted to stay in the Government for now. I received a promotion in the CRTC, and as such moved up a few floors, got a coveted window cubicle, and have an entirely new workload. Whereas before I was a Senior Analyst, dealing with applications and tariff filings, I’ve now moved into a Network Evolution Policy role. This means that I’m much more self-directed, and will be researching and reporting on a range of interesting topics such as net neutrality, digital rights management, new media, and so on and so forth. As you may imagine, this is much more interesting to me than what I was doing before, so I’m cautiously optimistic about this new post 😉 Staying in the CRTC has also guaranteed that I can still go ahead with my plan to take a leave of absence and head to New Zealand. However, there have been a few high-level changes to it. First, I’m only going for 4 months instead of 6 months. Second, I’ll be leaving at the beginning of December, rather than the beginning of September. Regardless, it’ll still be an awesome trip no doubt, and will carry me through the cold Ottawa winter! Anyway, I’m rambling on about work, when I should be telling you about Puerto Plata. Read on!

Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Arrgh! Although I should be happy that we arrived back in Canada safe and sound, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’m no longer living the life of a rich man in Argentina. The flights back were pretty routine. The only real snafu was Jody sadly lost the pendant on a nice necklace that she picked up while we were down there. It was a sad moment. The trip took us about 15 hours of total flying time, and a combined 2 hours of lay-overs in Santiago and Toronto. I used my last pesos to buy a couple beers and waters in Buenos Aires. I ended up spending all but about $5 US of all the money I had converted.

Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Last day in Buenos Aires left. We started the day getting all our bags ready so that we could check out before deciding what to do with our last 6 hours. By 9am, we had our bags packed, and left behind the counter. We hit the hotel restaurant, where we hooked up for a final breakfast with most of the group. 2 of the group had left the night before at 2am, heading off to Rio. Lucky for them, they had more vacation left to enjoy. Sadly, Jody and I were facing work in under 2 days. The last weekend. Boo. We had to make a decision on what to do. We had a little bit of shopping left to do, but we were also interested in visiting a world-known landmark, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. This is arguably the world’s best opera house. It has a long and storied history, which I couldn’t possibly get into in this brief post. We’d heard it was beautiful, but on our first weekend in town, had walked by it, and thought it wasn’t open, due to construction. We’d later learned it was in fact open, you just had to find the right entrance. The only obstacle in our way was that we hadn’t made reservations, and heard you really need them to get in. Oh well, it was our last day, and we wanted to take the chance. Read on…

Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Hi all… the time has come to look back on the final couple days of our trip to Argentina. When I last wrote to you all, I was seated in an Internet cafe in Mendoza writing about that great city. I was about to hop on the overnight bus to Buenos Aires, a trip lasting 13 hours or so. In order to prepare for this, I picked up a litro of cerveza, and some snacks at Norte, a local grocery strore. Funny enough, I got searched by the security guard. Guess I looked shady. Of course, all I had were some chocolates I bought at the local chocolate factory. Tartufo. If you’re ever in Mendoza, I recommend you stop by there. They are an ice cream, as well as chocolate factory. Mmm delicious. I dragged some of the gang there, and the only person who wouldn’t buy anything was Sabine, our little Swiss miss. She felt it would be unpatriotic to buy chocolate in Argentina. Oh well, I couldn’t convince her otherwise. But I digress. We got to the bus station, and I headed to the bar with my new South African mate Allen for a quick Whiskey. Yup, somewhere along the line, he sort of convinced me I should start drinking whiskey. And you know what? It’s not half bad. So, we had a quick Johnny Walker Red Label, then boarded our final overnight bus. It was a pretty sweet ride as usual. The on-board attendant was a really nice guy, and popped in a DVD called ‘The Classic Project’, which was a music video collage of hits from the 80’s. We all had a great time just guessing the songs and singing along. We figure most of the other passengers didn’t really enjoy it as much as us, but that’s life. Suffice it to say, it was yet another long bus trip where I didn’t sleep too much. That’s where the beer helped me though. I managed to squeeze in a couple quality hours of sleep anyway. I wanted to be somewhat refreshed for our last full days in Buenos Aires. Read on for more about the last day.

For pictures from Paragliding and Mendoza, click here. G´day once again from the road. My last post before Buenos Aires will be about the incredible experience I had this morning. After yesterday´s bus trip, on the way back, we had to think about what we´d like to do today. Jody wasn´t up for returning to the same area again. However, I was very keen on getting to the top of a mountain. I don´t get those chances too often. I was pretty much desperate to find a trekking group. Last night, I wandered the streets asking various tour companies about options. Sadly, there were really no intense hikes to find to my liking. It seemed my best option would be a 2 hour trek to a mountain top, followed by a series of rappels back down, followed by lunch and a couple hours soaking in hot springs. Sounded right to me, and wasnt too costly. HOwever, not knowing our bus plans, I couldn´t commit on the spot. The trip was due back in town between 6 and 8pm, but I didn´t know when we´d leave. Read on.