(Detour) Chile

So we decided to take a detour into Chile from Mendoza. There is a 8hr bus route that goes from Mendoza to Santiago Chile over the Andes. It only cost us 40 bucks US and the bus has seats that recline all the way back. The buses in Argentina are really nice and cheap.






This part of the Andes contains the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, it would be the highest in the world if not for the Himalayas. Mount Aconcagua

Mount Aconcagua (we think that is it in the picture) at 6959 meters (22000+ feet). We passed a sign on the way near here that said route Aconcagua so I am assuming this is it in the center. The Andean Plateu is very high in this region which makes the mountain seem like an easy climb since you don't have to ascend that far to reach the top. However the oxygen deprivation and bad weather claim lives here every year. This year has actually been pretty bad something like 6 people died since January trying to reach the summit.

At this point we are coming over the pass. We are in Chile now, the border into Chile was just a little before this a lot of hair pin turns to get down, but it wasn't that bad. They put in Wedding Crashers (the English version with subtitles yay) for us to watch probably to distract everybody.

Our first meal in Santiago Chile Sea Bass flambe!
One interesting thing to note is the exchange rate, it is 570 Chilean pesos to 1USD. That sounds pretty good except that there currency is super inflated and that there comparable one dollar bill is 1000 pesos (anything under 1000 pesos is reflected in coinage). So the sea bass cost 13000 pesos or 13.000 as they like to write it which is actually almost 26 USD. Yikes! And I was wondering how such a nice restaurant could be so cheap Doh!

There is Cerro (Mt.) San Cristobal, a hill in the city's most popular park near where we stayed that has a very good view. Santiago is huge, with 2/3rds of all the people in Chile living in Santiago.

The Virgin Immaculada statue on the top of the hill with built in terracing and benches so that masses can be held on the top of the hill.

This is another way to get to the top of the hill, the locals call them the “eggs of death”. We took a different way on a locomotive that chugs up the hill by a balanced cable system – they call it a “funicular”.

This is the capital building in downtown Santiago Plaza de Armas.

big cathedral in the plaza also – guidebooks highlight the Spanish colonial architecture that makes up this whole area.

A view of the Plaza de Armas – where people come to protest, or just hang out on break from work, or play chess.

Santiago has a major subway system with 3 levels. It is very very easy to get around Santiago and even Chile that matter the buses are cheap nice and go everywhere.

Since we were so close to the Pacific ocean after all our time away from it, we decided to go see it. We took the metro to the bus station and went 75 miles to Vina Del Mar in under an hour and a half. It cost only 5000 pesos total (10USD) for both of us! We found a nice hostel and got a great view.

This is on all the post cards in Vina Del Mar the “Reloj de Flores” or flower clock, it works!

Ahh the Pacific, haven't seen you in a while. The buildings in the background is the Valparaiso area which is the main city, we didn't have time to explore.

Another ocean shot, this one facing North.

A really pretty shot of the sunset from our room.

Mendoza - Our last stop in Argentina

Mendoza is the wine country of Argentina. It is a nice town of trees and parks - and lots of vineyards.

This is the entrance to San Martin Park a huge park on the east side of the town. Argentinians like their parks for sure.

This statue is on the back of the $5 Argentine peso. It is on the top of a hill in the park and is supposed to show Argentina being liberated.

A tree lined street - even though this area gets little rain they have an extensive canal system (also used by the vineyards) that brings water into the city and it flows right along the streets.

Our first winery tour - the Weinert vineyard - Germans who moved to Brazil and then decided Argentina was a good place to start making some wine.

Downstairs at the Weinert Vineyard (where they keep the good stuff) - we learned the temperature and humidity, as well as the type of wood, all impact the flavor of the wine. Argentina is best know for its Malbec variety of wine and we definitely sampled a few bottles while in Mendoza.

This is what the lighting is really like downstairs, it's pretty dark - Joe played with the shutter speed of the camera in the other pictures to make them look brighter. All the casks had the year, the type of wine, and how long it needed to age written on the front.

The monster cask - this thing held hundreds of hecto litres of wine - how they measure it in metric units.

This was at a second smaller winery (less sophisticated machinery) and this is where the grapes go in to be squashed (not by feet anymore - thank goodness).

These are the more current types of casks (second winery) - French Oak (the type of wood is VERY important and also VERY expensive).

Our tour also included a olive oil plant (EVOO for all you chefs). That thing is where the olives go in to get mashed by the big stone.

Then the olives get stacked up on sheets and squashed some more until all that comes out is nice clean oil.

This video shows how they bottle the wine at the first winery. The first stage rinses the bottles then blows air in to dry them out, it then moves on to the filling stage, then the liquid leveling stage, and finally the corking. The wine in this video is their Rosé not the Malbec.



We learned so much that day! :)

Ushuaia - the End of the World

Ushuaia - "Fin del Mundo" (End of the World) was our last Patagonia stop - a little over 600 more miles and we'd be touching Antarctica. The town is a mix of new tourism and old village and the scenery went from mountains to lakes to farms to oceans.

The End of the Road!This is the end of the PanAmerican Highway inside the Tierra del Fuego National Park. It says Alaska 17,848 Km (roughly 11,000 miles)! (Our next road trip? Just kidding!)

Inside the park - Lapatia Bay heads out to the Beagle Channel.

Dramatic contrasts between the water, sky and glacier chiseled mountains.

A peat bog - spongy!

Lots of different type of birds - this seems to be a hawk of some sort.


4 groups of indigenous people lived here prior to Europeans - the Yamana were in Ushuaia.

A display from the Yamana museum showing how they lived in huts by the water- it was an egalitarian society (men and women shared power and duties) and only the women knew how to swim! It's only a little over 600 miles to Antarctica, but aside from a make shift loin cloth they never wore clothes! The guess is that their diet of seal (including it's blubber) helped to keep them warm.

We rented a car and drove out to see the Atlantic to a place called Cabo San Pablo - it was deserted and this eerie shipwreck lay on the shore.

Close up of the shipwreck - it had obviously been there for some time - very rusty.

As we were leaving Cabo San Pablo - it was a strange mix of farmland, forest, then coast - it was very windy and we felt very far away from the rest of the world.

The trees are green, but windblown at top - the branches are covered with moss and there is a fungus called "Chinese lanterns" that hang from the branches (see the bright green in the middle of the tree?).

These are guanacos - lama like animals farmers keep - they also are found in the wild high up in the mountains.

Our drive back - mountains rise up as you get closer to Ushuaia.

These guys were right outside the city with prime real estate viewing the mountains and the channel - they were friendly too!

A view of the Beagle Channel - it is huge! Massive cruise ships come and dock almost every day and tankers and naval boats are moored at docks in the bay.

The breakfast area of our hostel (Hostel Aonikenk) had a great view of the channel every morning.


Here is part of the view

El Calafate Day 2 Hiking the Glacier

On our second day we took a boat across the channel to trek on the Perito Moreno glacier - here is our first view on our way to get to the ice

The guide is explaining why the Perito Moreno is unique - it continously "balances" itself by growing and then "calving" off shards of ice and even though the climate is relatively warm for a glacier the incessant winds make the glacier advance quickly - almost 3 feet a day!

Here is the whole Patagonia icefield with a cut out of the Perito Moreno glacier on the right.

The "big ice" looms ahead of us - people are at the lower right in the pic to give some perspective

The group ahead of us - those little black things in the middle of the picture - we had great weather too, clear and sunny skies

Here are the special spikes (crampons) to make us secure on the ice

Here is a video to give you a feel for what it is like walking on the ice.

This is one of the many holes in the glacier caused by water melting the ice all the way down - could only see 40 feet down. Kinda scary - you could easily fall in.

What better than a drink of whiskey after some ice treking, especially when it is your 30th birthday!!!!

Glacier ice makes all things taste better!

A cool view of the blue ice and blue sky

Yay! We survived! (It wasn't that hard, really)

Another panarama of the south face of the glacier - too bad we couldn't trek the whole thing!

As our boat returns us back across the channel

Inside the actual Glacier National Park at one of the overlooks.

These shards have all "calved" off the glacier at some point - this is the north face of the glacier - you can constantly hear cracking and groaning in the glacier - we thought at first they were gunshots they were that loud, some even shook the ground.

This area is why the Perito Mereno is so famous, the ice ruptures in this spot once it closes the gap. There is video all over town of this section of the glacier rupturing back in 2004 - it had basically built up all the way across the channel as a huge dam - then one day came crashing down - they heard the crashes 50 miles away!

Here is a video of the Glacier from left to right.