Final post... more than likely....

OK, folks.. there was always the possibility that this blog would be a complete and total flop and now we know that the truth of the matter is that it basically IS worthless!  Oh, well... it was worth a try... we´re in Buenos Aires and it´s an amazing city... vibrant, architecturally fascinating, laid back population, warm air.... incredible food!  TANGO!  Hoping upon hope to be able to fit in (not that we have a super busy schedule, of course, but the logistics are often in the overwhelming classifiacation!) a class in Tango dancing!  This is the Tango city!  These dancers are spectacularly beautiful and dramatic!  Our hostel for the first 2 nights here was way too full of young party people... In fact, we did not see one person within 35 years of our age!  Too loud music.... Now, we old folks are tucked comfortably in to the Hotel Ritz, which sounds really classy... it´s another hostel with more young people, but we did see another couple who rival us for the oldest competition!  It´s in a great location, right in the middle of everything that this city has to offer!  When you´re in a city such as Buenos Aires, BE in the city, not out in some barrio that is separate in any way whatsoever!  And, so soon we will be back home to our individual and wonderful lives.  We are living up these last days of Argentinian laid back attitude, fantastic food options, sites that are beyond the wildest imagination of the Wild Basin PachaMama!  This is a transitional move here in Buenos Aires because suddenly we are hearing a great deal of English being spoken... just when we thought that maybe, just maybe, we were beginning to think a little bit in Spanish... a LITTLE!  Posts in Spanish are welcome!  Muchas gracias!  Mucho amor!  Hasta pronto! 

Hot and even humid!

February in Argentina!  We are in Tucaman, on our way to Mendoza. Got on a bus in Cafayete at 6 a.m. and arrived here at 12:30.  It took a tad longer than expected due to a huge, house sized boulder that had fallen out of the steep hillside and diminished the strength of the road!  We all had to get out of the bus and walk a brief distance while the bus came along behind us, carefully!  Thought we´d be jumping right on a bus to Mendoza, a looooooong 13-14 hour bus ride.... the longest, by far, of this entire journey!  However, here we are travelling on Saturday AGAIN, along with everybody else... and there was no bus with seats until 7 p.m. tonight!  It must be said that this was a very nice bus, finally!  Peru and Bolivia don´t offer the most lovely of buses!  Argentina, as I recall and have heard, has super comfy, clean buses that make you feel like you´re on an airline instead of a bus line.  So far, it´s not QUITE up to the dream standards, but we´re holding out high hopes for tonight´s excursion with a cama (bed), comida (food) and bebidas (drinks).  We shall see!  Stay tuned!  The ride today was spectacular... snowy peaks in the distance.... rolling green velvet covered hillsides.... sparkling streams.... flowers (hibiscus!) blooming.... smooth bus ride without rattling bus parts threatening to disengage from the bus, or lack of air conditioning!  This was good!  Keep your fingers crossed for us for tonight!

Coimata Falls Hike....

Got a lift into town from our HOTEL that is too expensisve for the poorest country in S. America, which means it is SUPER NICE, where we caught a micro bus out to where we walked along the road for 3 miles to a gate through which we passed into yet another road to hike about an hour to a fantabulous waterfall!  It required taking off boots and sox no less than 4 times to cross rivers.... some more challenging than others!  Flowers blooming in the most brilliant way... yellows, reds, oranges, purples, pinks.... ahhhhhh... birds singing happily and us finding our way through bushes, forest, over boulders up to this two tiered waterfall where Tom, who will do almost anything to get himself into the center of a photo, climbed onto a wet, windy from the waterfall boulder where I took his photo... you would see it here if I could figure out how to show you... Hiked back down, stopping to take a dip, of course, in a lovely swimming hole, crossing all of the same places and taking shoes and sox off and on again and again until we came to a French and Belgian restaurant of incomparable quality!  OMG!  Great food, greater wine and the greatest view from the deck where we fully enjoyed the last of the sunshine  before trekking back the way we had come in the morning.... retracing our steps and now back at this lovely Hotel in the country... ahhhh.... Are we dreaming..... Continue sleeping..... dream on....

Solar de Uyuni.. The Salt Flats

We had been debating this trip since long before leaving home.  It´s the rainy season.... the huge salt flats will be covered in water.... it´s a must see, in nearly everyone´s opinion.... it´s not cheap to do the standard 4 day trip by jeep... what to do?  We ran into another couple with grey hair (travelling in South America for a full year!) and they wanted to do it, for sure and share the jeep, etc.!  OK!  We´re in!  Let´s do it!  We met at 7:30 in the morning with one big backpack to be tied on top (it had a rain cover on it AND the driver, Rolando, wrapped it in plastic tarp.  There it was, riding along with bottles of Coke (argh!) and water, as well as gas tank, stove for cooking, etc.  We were off and heading through interesting country with Candelabra cactus as well as the Peludo cactus that is absolutely adorable with hairy fluffy fuzz all over the upper portion of it!  Lots of brightly colored birds of yellow and turquoise, many llamas vicuñas, alpacas, burrows and even the strange and interesting big rat-rabbits called Viscachas!  Nice Toyota Land Cruiser and Rolando had the most diverse and amazing collection of music for us to enjoy... much of it right on for our age group!  Took us all back in time!  Included some Green Day, which I never thought I would say I liked, but I am saying it now!  10 hours that first day, to an elevation of 16,500 ft.!  Saw some snow, had a bit of hail and too much rain!  Wild, muddy, steep, bumpy road, taking us through some major water courses, brought us to our ¨basic¨accomodation only to discover a bit of dampness had seeped into my pack AND my hiking boots, which were INSIDE the vehicle, got soaked when a plastic water bottle that the cook, Angela Marta, was sleeping on broke and leaked into my boots!  Rained hard throughout the night, but was looking much more hopeful in the morning, as we continued our journey, U2 blasting from the speakers! 

This second day brought us to a lovely lake with many flamingoes walking along it´s shallow shoreline.  The most beautiful ones were at Laguna Colorado, where the pink algae and the pink flamingoes, with mountains in the background, creates a most magnificent site!  Passed a hot spring that we soaked in, happily!  Visited some fumaroles (geysers) that although impressive, pale when compared to our Yellowstone Old Faithful and surrounds!  More ¨basic accomodations this night, in another very small little pueblo, again with a common dining hall where Angela Marta and Rolando brought us red wine with our dinner!  No toilet seat, which is always a sad site for our eyes and an uncomfy situation all the way around!

Day 3 brought us to incredible canyonlands like rock formations that begged to be scrambled up and over.  Rolando and I climbed up one that presented some fun bouldering problems and we celebrated on top by photographing one another in our victory poses!  Managed to get ourselves stuck in the mud in our Toyota!  Two other vehicles have been travelling along with us for parts of the day and this day we stuck (no pun intended) close together just in case of anyone getting stuck!  The mud was clear up to the doors on the drivers side and he had to climb out the window and began digging and jacking up the vehicle (with the help of the other 2 drivers), gathering large rocks to put under those tires.  We eventually had to all get out on the other side, minus shoes and socks, pants rolled up, and slosh across to wait with the other passengers (from various points around the world!) while the rains began to fall, we bagan to get wetter and wetter and the car continued to be mired in the mud!  One of the vehicles drove back around and hooked up a tow rope and to our great joy, pulled us out!  Yay!  Slept this night right on the edge of the salt flats in a hostel made of salt blocks!  Honestly!  All of the tables, stools, beds were made of salt... even a salt candle holder for our candle lit dinner! 

Our sunset journey out the Salt Flats, with sparkling apple cider, was a trip!  The vast enormity of this expanse of flat, salt earth, covered in water, leaving the distant mountains looking as if they are floating islands, truly is a must see site!  Tom and I rolled up our pants and waded out into it, the water cooler and warmer depending on depth and currents.  It never went above mid-calf and sometimes was just a skim of water.  The colors in the ground, the sky the clouds, was magical and the entire scene otherworldly!

The following morning we awoke at 5 a.m. for our sunrise visit back to this remarkably unique place and this time drove out into the distance to take more incredible photos, eat breakfast in the original salt hotel that sits right on the salt flats and has fanciful salt sculptures and carvings throughout.  Crazy photo ops of odd perspectives, i.e., me in Vira II and Tom balancing in my outstretched hand!  When we get this photo download figured out, if ever, we´ll share some of them!

That final day put is in a different jeep for the trip back to Tupiza and we took off at noon on our journey of 5or 6 hours.  An hour out we were brought to a complete standstill by a roiling, rolling, deep and 35 to 40 foot wide water course blocking our progress totally!  Some said we´d be there for one hour before the water subsided enough to allow passage... others said 3 hours... we waited... walked on nearby sand dunes, took photos and after an hour, our driver decided to go for a Camino Antiqua (old road) that he recalled from his 20 years of driving in this part of the world.

Off we raced, with a line of other jeeps following behind us.  This old road was not easy to see or follow through the brush, but we continued our search, our barely make it over the ditches and washed out areas, until we came to an unpassable zone and had to all get out and help hauling rock, digging and finally making it through!  That wasn´t the last time!  We continued to come to these obstacles, over and over and over until our 5 hour trip to Tupiza turned into a 10 hour trip!  The adventure continues!

Colca Canyon

Canyon de Colca is deep and wide and big and huge, similar in depth to our Grand Canyon, but with very different topography... and we hiked down into it with our backpacks!  What a knee killer!  Took us 7 hours and began to sprinkle by the time we got down to the bottom where we were advised to stay in the OASIS by the Lonely Planet guide book.  We had become so anxious to reach the bottom, where we had been seeing the piscinas (swimming pools) for the last several hours!  Once there, we had a look at the palapa where we would stay and it was BASIC!  Double bed (made up with linens, so we did not carry our sleeping bags and pads, gratefully!) and a table to put some things on... otherwise, dirt floor (with mud already forming where the water was running in!), bamboo walls and a thatch roof (with plastic reinforcement to keep the water from entering from above!).  Dinner to be served in a separate building in several hours.   Up to the ¨bar¨ (outside with a very leaky thatch roof overhead and no walls around it!) where lots of foreign languages were being spoken.  A few brave souls did jump into the pool, but we were not two of them!  It was rainy and chilly!  Dinner left a great deal to be desired!  The room was full of folks and it had the feel of an expedition in there, for sure... roughing it!  The outhouse - toilet was a couple of inches deep in water.... makes one wonder about that water! 

High points on the way down into the Canyon were the Condor who flew past barely inches below us, the snake who surprised Tom just under a step that he was stepping down and a cool lizard, not to mention the incredible views and blossoming flowers! 

Left fairly early the following morning in order to get ourselves out and to a bus to take us to Arequipa.  We managed to get ourselves just a tad lost and ended up climbing a rock wall, skirting corn fields, until we found our way to a road that brought us right to our Hostel.... PACHAMAMA!  Nice Hostel  with a nice name (!) run by a guitar playing, very cool young man!  Great food!  Fun atmosphere!  Highly recommended in Cabanaconde! 

The not so happy ending to the story is that we no sooner made it back to Arequipa than Tom found himself spending a great deal of time sitting on the porceline throne.... and I followed a couple of days later!  Argh!  That food down in the Canyon was NOT highly recommended... the high recommendation is to stay somewhere besides OASIS! 

Airport adventure NYE!

Stephanie, who lives downstairs from Tom, had agreed to drive my little water droplet back to the garage at the Tom home after we got to the airport for our flight in the wee hours of the morning.  Tom drove.... Stephanie took the wheel after we got out and said our farewells.  Nothing happened!  Figured she must not know that the clutch had to be fully to the floor in order to start the car.... opened the door to tell her.  She managed that... killed the engine immediately... frantically moved the gear shift all over the place.... looked ashen.... so did I..... told me it had been a very long time since she had driven a stick shift.... averted my gaze and noticed the little Echo lurching off and away from DIA.....

Curious

We are curious about how this works!  So, here goes.