Flights to and from Uyuni pretty much only come in the “very early” variety, so very early we flew out, back to La Paz. We had a brief stay there, just long enough to get lunch, before we took a bus trip west of the city, to the town of Copacabana, at Lake Titicaca. The fun thing about this bus trip is that, about halfway there, you have to get out and cross a small portion of the lake by…
We’d brought Diamox with us on our trip to use if we needed help dealing with altitude sickness. Since Erika had been pretty well bowled over by the altitude in Sucre, she was worried about going to the much higher elevation of La Paz. So the night before we left, she took a Diamox. Big mistake, it turns out. Erika woke up far more spacey and nauseated than when she wasn’t on the Diamox. Not great since we had a…
We flew a small turboprop–just ten rows on the airplane–from Santa Cruz to the higher elevations of Sucre, Bolivia. As we were standing around in the tiny airport waiting for our bags, Erika complained that she could feel the altitude already. I doubted this–we’d just gotten there–but before we left the airport, I could too. Most of Bolivia ranges from ‘high altitude’ to ‘obscenely high altitude.’ At about 9200 feet, Sucre lies more on the ‘high altitude’ end of the…
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love” — Ernest Hemingway “Is everything okay in there?” Everything was not okay in there. He stared downward in frustration and rising anger, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Insanity, indeed. “I’ll be out in a second,” he yelled back to her. The water would slowly drain, but that’s all that would go away. The toilet was well plugged, and no amount of plunging or…
In São Paulo, our health luck finally started to run out. Pretty much as soon as we got to our apartment, I got hit with a nasty head cold that pretty much went from zero to a hundred real quick. Normally, head colds for me start with a tickle in my throat that I recognize immediately, and then I spend 2 days nursing myself with the hope of heading it off ahead of time. This one just walked up, kicked…
We were getting close to leaving for Florianopolis, and Erika was getting excited to be back at a beach for the first time in a while. Looking at pictures as we were planning our time there, I was excited too, because it looked gorgeous! And the weather forecast showed nothing but rain for all 6 days we’d be there. It’s fine, we said, it’s still days away, surely it’s bound it change. When we woke up to leave Foz do…
After our brief trip to Uruguay, it was time to put a few more Argentina stamps in our passports, and head back across the Rio de la Plata to Buenos Aires. We had a nice AirBnb for two nights there before heading west to Mendoza. We’d been excited to get a couple more nights in Buenos Aires, since we’d loved it there so much, and didn’t feel like we’d spent enough time there. We’d talked of taking another tango class,…
After over two weeks in Patagonia, it was something of a shock when our hired driver left the airport and took us into the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires. The first thing that strikes you is: oh okay, I guess the sane driving styles of Chile are gone. Whew! We got to our place for the week in Recoleta–a big, busy, upscale neighborhood just to the north of the city center–and quickly settled into our new home. It was…
In the early afternoon, we said goodbye to Puerto Natales, and to Chile, and boarded a bus for El Calafate, Argentina. It was advertised to be a six hour drive, but after all the hard work we’d done in Torres del Paine, we were both pretty excited to have a down day of just sitting on a bus, relaxing, and reading. About an hour in, we arrived at the border… and there was no electricity. We were told we would…
It was finally here: the beast, the event that made planning South America so hard, the reason for our REI registry and huge REI shopping trips. Torres del Paine! Multi-night trips in Torres need to be planned fairly well in advance, because it’s super popular and campsite reservations are mandatory. Thus, we’ve had our trip to the Torres planted as a stake in the ground for quite a while now. We’ll have another post discussing logistics and planning for this…
