They say that
if god mixed up the whole world and rolled out just one country, that country
would be Chile. If the rest of Chile is anything like the magical 5 days I
spent here, I’d say they were right...
It’s a total
tourist town, but I didn’t care, it’s still a sweet place. My hostel was also one of my tops for the
trip. Hostel El Refugio had it all, a couple friendly girls that spoke perfect
English at reception, hiking maps ready and printed on the walls, all activities with
prices, times, and explanations, and a 4-day weather forecast with accompanying
daily activity recommendations. The people
staying there were also great. By the
time I arrived on Sunday, it was already getting late. Luckily just as I was getting settled some
other travelers offered me the rest of their dinner, and some wine!
My first day
I opted for a hike to Lake Caburgua and then Ojos de Caburgua (the waterfalls). I’ve noticed that
nearly every town in South America has a walk to a waterfall, but this was
actually something special, 4 different falls all feeding into one large pool,
pretty sweet:
To break up
the trip I made a pit stop on the way to Pucon, just 2 nights and a couple
little hikes. The hostel wasn’t anything
too special and I’m pretty sure I was the only one who spoke English, but I
took these photos:
I’ve liked
Bariloche a lot. I’ve spent the last few
days hanging out with Brenda (Canada/Irish) and Ray (full Irish), we did a nice
bike ride around Lake Nahuel Huapi with a bunch of good view points yesterday, and today
we went on another hike up to the waterfall.
Bariloche just has a very nice feel, sorta like home.
I took these
photos:
View of Lake Moreno and Lake Nahuel Huapi from above
Gorgeous golf course along with the Llao Llao Hotel
Brenda, Ray, and I after the ride
Bariloche is famous for chocolate, but it was hot, so chocolate gelato it was
I also met a
cool group of Dutch girls traveling and they said, ‘while you’re over here, you
have to go to Pucon, and climb the volcano.’
With just those words I was sold, and off I went to Chile…
It’s by bus,
and called cama suite… but still very nice
Bus travel
in Argentina is very well done, buses leave every day, usually every hour, to
any destination all over the country.
The bus ride from Buenos Aires to Bariloche (The Lake District) takes 20
hours and covers more than 1,500 kilometers, paying the extra money for first class is well
worth it.
The setup is
sweet, the top level of a double decker bus for views of the landscape as you
travel, a steward who gives you lunch, dinner, drinks (including
alcohol), a seat that lies all the way flat for sleeping, a personal TV that
played some English movies, and even Wi-Fi.
For my money, it’s a better upgrade than coach to first class on an airplane, and for
only about $25 US more it’s a no brainer.
About 15
hours later on the bus…
What a mind
trip! After watching 2012, in English,
while having a hot meal for dinner, with red wine and then a night cap whiskey,
I was out cold before midnight. I
stirred a few times when the bus stopped, but woke about as often as in a
hostel, and came to when the sun was rising and my watch read 40 after 7
(unsure if I’d just drove through a time zone).
All I could think was first class night travel is amazing, and that I
was concerned that we were already there, we still needed breakfast!
It’s sorta weird,
my first 21 hours bus trip was the worst experience of my life, the later was a
great time. I got to see a lot of the
Argentine countryside while basically sitting on a couch relaxing. It sounds weird, but I can’t wait for my next
20 hour bus ride in Argentina (but good news, I still have three left…)
Everyone
knows that South Americans are crazy about their futbol (soccer), but there
certainly is a difference between imaging a crazy raucous stadium and seeing it
firsthand thinking, ‘man these Argentinean futbol fans are crazy!!’ This is the difference.
The barb-wire keeps the fans off the pitch
Four Australians
and I joined the other westerns in a van accompanied by local futbal fans as
guides to the stadium in San Lorenzo.
The ticket price was nothing to brag about, but it did come with
transportation to the game, a free beer, and navigation through the crowd which
ultimately was priceless.
We had to get to the of that
You have to
get to the match at least an hour early, which at first sounds insane, but
became clearly evident when standing in the large crowd of San Lorenzo supports
all chanting the singing local songs, and pushing the crowd forward into the
gates blocked by police in riot gear. It
felt more like being in the Warp Tour mosh pit than lining up to enter Candlestick.
After a bit
of running to avoid getting trampled by locals, and a thorough inspection of my
personal space we were into the stadium, standing near a fence, high and
difficult to climb, with barbed wire at the top.
The Boca Juniors flag
We were
expecting seats, instead we found bleachers and a menacing looking crowd. As we made our way through the crowd our
guides actually uttered, ‘ok, this is the part where we have to walk by the
hooligans, I’m not sure what’s going to happen, just keep your hands on your
stuff and move quickly…’
South
American stadiums are a free-for-all, they don’t worry about things like
‘aisles,’ ‘emergency exits,’ or ‘having all your front teeth (as most of the
fans seemed to just have focused on keeping just the one).’ I was all for our plan of taking the most
nosebleed seats we could find, being the fly on the wall (also it’s a lot
harder to throw rocks up, so we’d be safer), however that meant about 15
minutes zip-zagging our way up through the crowd, a lot of ‘permiso.’
San Lorenzo celebrating as the game starts
I’ve never
seen a crowd more excited, I’m pretty sure they were louder for the players warming
up than the cheers for the winning touchdown at the Superbowl. The crowd stands, like the whole time, it was
exhausting. They also never stop
singing, they must have sung 15 different songs, with their favorites being sung
repeatedly for most of the game. Some
insulted the other team, said ‘punto’ constantly, while others had something to
do with San Lorenzo. I’ll give them
credit, they had incredible stamina and pretty good voices.
As the game
starts shit gets real crazy, smokey flares in the team colors, everyone throws
confetti to the tune of magazines that they’ve been shredding all pre-game, in a
moment the stadium went white, and most of the red and blue balloons they had
been waving got launched into the air.
Then this massive flag, big enough to cover our whole quarter of the
stadium, gets pulled over us from what appears to be no ware, and gets waved
around, taunting the other fans.
Cooling down the crowd
Futbol fans
seem to be ruthless, for this event, 75% of the stadium was for the home team,
with just one section for the away Boca Juniors. But they don’t just get their own section,
the bleacher have a huge gap between theirs and the other side with the home
fans, with many empty seats near each edge, and police lining the sides, pretty
insane.
The only
disappointing part was that I felt like I was more into the game than many of
the fans. Like a big play would happen
and most of the crowd just kept singing, rarely getting rattled by a particular
play. In fact there were at least a good
thousand people that I know for a fact could not see the game, what the hell
were they doing?
The game was
sweet though, tons of energy, when the stadium clapped in unison I could feel
the loud ‘pop.’ and when our section jumped on the concrete steps I unnervingly
could feel the bleachers flexing under the weight.
After the
match, for safety reasons, they let all the Boca fans leave first. But even long after that, the
San Lorenzo fans sang and cheered as loudly as ever until it began to get dark,
and inevitably terrifying. Most surprisingly
was that San Lorenzo LOST 0-2. I
couldn’t have even fathomed how excited they would have gotten had the team
won, or even scored a goal.
Our group
got ourselves out of the lion’s den in one piece, back to the bus and exhausted
from standing in the sun all afternoon.
We witnessed one guy get escorted out of the stadium by riot police, and
a fight broke out in our section, with both guys running out of the
stadium. Oh, and I stepped in gum, so
yeah, it was pretty dangerous…
The life of
an Argentine goes something like this, get off work at 7, have a nap til 9,
head to dinner at 10, head to the bar at midnight, head to the club at 3, sleep
when the sun comes up. I was only going
to be in BA for a couple nights, I needed to hit up this local lifestyle.
After a
particularly long day walking around the city, a group from the hostel invited me out to
dinner, drinks, clubbing, all that. I was
actually already exhausted, but I thought, ‘it’s Friday night, it’s Buenos
Aires, suck it up.’ I went and was glad
I did, as it was a blast. We sat down to
dinner after 9pm (early for BA standards), and then went to another bar and
drank wine for a few hours. I was with
an American and Canadian girls who were about to start teaching English in BA, a Dutch
girl, and a couple Chileans dudes. When
it was about 1am we decided we had better hit up the actual bar/club, where
dancing and all that occurs. We tried to
get in and naturally couldn’t because I was wearing flip-flops (so stupid on my
part). Luckily there is a loophole in
the Argentinean bouncer getting into clubs system… guys can’t wear flip-flops,
girls can.
Problem
solved, I just switched my shoes with one of the girls, walked in wearing her
size 5 sneakers which basically covered just my big toe, then switched once inside. From there it was all red bull and vodkas
(which was actually served using the energy drink speed, which had about 10
times the sugar), dancing, and talking to Argentinean girls in broken drunk
Spanish.
The time
flew by, and though I could have slept at 9pm that night, by 4:30am I still didn’t
want to leave the bar, eventually getting a cab back to the hostel when the sun was rising.
It’s always
interesting to see how traveling changes people’s perspectives. My friend’s Helen and Mitch first arrived in
Buenos Aires 4 months ago, scared, terrified to even leave the hostel, thinking
everyone on the street was out to murder them.
The other day I met a bunch of fresh travelers just arriving from
Sidney, and they were all terrified by the city and felt like they were living
in the ghetto.
Me on the
other hand found Buenos Aires to be an unreal change, a super safe city that
felt unbelievably modern. The first day
I was able to get my head and beard trimmed, buy a book in English, visit the
market, wash my clothes, have a hot shower, and drink the water, all in about a
4 block radius and all of 2 hours.
I felt
slightly like an ignorant westerner when I asked the hostel check-in guy if
they have hot water, he gave me the look like I was retarded and I half
expected him to say, ‘yeah and we have electricity too.’ I was also shocked and leery that I could
drink the water. It absolutely blew my
mind that BA has a subway system, fuckin SF doesn’t even have a subway!!
After
exploring the city for a few days, I’ve found that it has pockets of very
nice, modern accommodations, surrounded by ghetto scary looking streets. If you’re walked down a random street you might be
terrified, jump one block over and the streets turn to cobblestone, the buildings
turn clean, and the language turns decidedly more English.
I like it a
lot here, and I’m excited to explore the night life.
