Argentinidad

I find Argentina´s national psy­che fas­ci­nat­ing. Of course, as an out­sider, it is dif­fi­cult to define, pre­ten­tious even. But as a for­mer Euro­pean, I feel a con­nex­ion with this coun­try. Argen­tini­ans like to eat (late), drink (good wines), smoke, dance, lis­ten to music, talk and hang out in groups, seem to value their fam­ily, and love kids.

An Argentinian Coin Story

Every­where there are signs: “¡no hay mon­eda, no insista!” (we do not have change, don´t insist). So instead of receiv­ing, let´s say, 25 cents for change, you will get a bub­ble gum or a candy. Great. But we still don´t have change.

Buenos Aires By Night

We arrived late the first night and we fig­ured we would have to starve until the next day, because noth­ing would be open. Yeah, right… We found an hos­tel in the micro­cen­tro, right by Avenida 9 De Julio (the widest street in the world!) and we barely had to walk ten meters before see­ing bars, food, book­stores, cafés… What a sight!

Colorful Boca

Work­ing class “La Boca” is a bar­rio of Buenos Aires, famous for its col­or­ful houses and home of the Boca Junior soc­cer team. Ital­ian immi­grants set­tled there, at the mouth (“boca”) of the Riachuelo river, giv­ing the place a strong Euro­pean feel.

Busing 3,048 Kilometers...

Bus rides are pretty tir­ing. We try to sleep as much as we can, but between the police check points (“Señores pas­sajeros, por favor, su pas­aporte o su cedula de iden­ti­dad…”) and the many many stops, it is hard to doze off for more than a few hours. Not to men­tion that at every stop (includ­ing gas sta­tions), the dri­ver will yell “cinco min­u­tos, no más” and that we will jump on our sits and run out­side for fresh air, a smoke, bath­rooms or a snack.

Ice Field And Icebergs

As the sun hit the face of the glac­ier, around noon, we wit­nessed sev­eral huge chunk of ice col­laps­ing in the Canales de los Tém­panos (Ice­berg Chan­nel). Enor­mous blocks sud­denly crashed into the water, caus­ing a huge wave, tem­po­rally clear­ing the water of other ice­bergs for a few minutes.

Torres Del Pain(e)

The boul­ders were not sta­ble. We stepped on rocks that would move down­hill, avalanche like. Other rocks appeared huge but offered lit­tle help, because they were unsteady. I was quite scared to be hon­est. We were high in the moun­tain with no help what­so­ever, no trail, we were tired and worse of all — we would have to make our way down, which I was afraid we might not be able to.

Ushuaia, The End Of The World

Trav­el­ing to the South­ern­most city in the world is pretty excit­ing. Sure, it´s a silly sym­bol, but it´s fun to sit by the sea­side and imag­ine Antarc­tica is right there, barely 1,000 kilo­me­ters away. To know that Canada is 13,000 North. To reach the end of the road, literally.

We were not pre­pared for how bizarre and expen­sive was Ushuaia though.