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Unlike some backpacker trips, ours has been characterized by a lot of slow movement and deciding things on the fly. Not the case for Colombia. Our trip to the country only worked out once we realized we had a two-week gap in our travels before heading to Hawaii, so with that short time, we’ve had flights set, no more than two to five days in each of three cities and a lot of moving around. I haven’t had much time to sit down and blog, so bear with me and my delays.
We are now in Medellin but our trip to Colombia began just over a week ago in the capital city of Bogota. Of all the huge metropolitan cities we’ve visited in South America, including Lima, Buenos Aires and Santiago, Bogota was the one that most caught our attention, the one that offered something more than being just like any big city.
As we noticed from the architecture, landscape and even the way people dressed, Bogota is an interesting, albeit sometimes jarring, mix of modern and colonial.
I´m not sure how it happened, but we had one month in Peru, three months in Argentina but just a few days in Santiago, Chile — three for me and two for Eaman. We’ve loved how our itinerary has shaped up — especially since we wound up with two weeks in Colombia, where I’m writing this post from — but it’s funny to take a step back and look at the breakdown, especially since Chile was on the top of Eaman’s destination list.
And never have we had such little concept and grasp of a city as we did when we arrived in the country’s capital.
We did have some impressions of Chile as a whole from our nine-day stay in Torres del Paine, and they mostly had to do with how much more regimented and organized the country is compared to Argentina. For example, Chilean border control guards usurped fruits and veggies we had brought from Argentina on our bus to prevent alleged cross-country contamination.
And as we soon realized, Santiago is laced with the same strictness. At the bus terminal — of all places, a crazy South American bus terminal! — to go to the bathroom, you first pay a small fee, then you get a receipt with a bar code and then you scan that bar code to pass through a turnstyle. It definitely ensures clean stalls.
But we wanted to know more about Santiago. We took the advice of a British backpacker in our six-bed hostel dorm — the wonderfully chill Don Santiago hostel in Barrio Brasil — and headed out for a free walking tour of the city. (Well, not really free because the guides, deservedly so, expect some sort of tip.)
The tour, which lasted a solid four hours, was a fantastic way to break down the neighborhoods, learn some history and get restaurant recs. It made me realize how livable of a city Santiago is; it’s clean, the public transportation is great, and, like I said, it’s very uncharacteristically efficient for a South American city.
True, there isn´t a lot to see tourism-wise, but the culture and food scene seems dynamite. And what´s better is it all feels a lot less scene-y than Buenos Aires. The cool restaurants are actually still cool. And while three days were perfect to see the city, Eaman and I could spend a lifetime visiting all the restaurants.
Eaman and I knew we wanted to WWOOF at least once during this trip, and we thought that Patagonian Argentina or Chile would be ideal because the landscape is beautiful and working for accommodation and food would be smart considering the high-priced region. We were accepted to only one farm — some farms were full, others didn’t respond — so the choice was made for us. We’d be working for two weeks at a farm in Trevelin, Argentina, helping with a potato patch, picking fruit and assisting with jam production.
The view:
Looking back at these last two weeks, it wasn’t all fun and games. In fact, there were days when I wanted out…badly. But in the beginning, it was so fresh and exciting.
We’re now on our way to Trevelin, Argentina to begin our WWOOFing gig. There’s no internet at the farm, so you won’t be hearing from us much during the next two weeks. (Sad, I know.) But to hold you over on this New York to Nomad diet are some shots from our day-long hike we did on Friday through Los Alerces National Park near Esquel, Argentina.
It’s named after the famous tree — the alerce — that can live up to 3,000 years. You can see some of the oldest trees the park has to offer — 2,600-year-old beasts — but the only way is via a boat ride that costs an arm and a leg ($42…pricey for a backpacker!). So we did the next best thing and hiked for a good 6 hours. (We saw 300-year-old trees that were, sadly, less impressive.)
We had been wanting so badly to do a road trip somewhere in Argentina, but we quickly realized that choosing the best route (not an easy task in this massive country!) was the least of our problems. As it turns out, there are no automatic rental cars on this continent, and if we wanted to drive, we had to know how to drive a stick-shift.
It was decided early on that Eaman would drive. (I’m not the savviest of drivers and I don’t enjoy it all that much.) He had driven manual once in his life ages ago and all he could remember was that he stalled — a lot. But then, he thought, what about YouTube? Couldn’t the viral video hub teach us how to do something that the non-North American world learns to do when they’re teenagers?
We did find a video –there are tons actually — and in El Calafate, Eaman practiced, while Dutch and English backpackers offered him a few tips in between fits of laughter. By the end of his personal training session, he had a decent enough handle to know that he could probably sort of do it.
But once we arrived in Esquel, there turned out to be a bigger problem* with the car rental. Where the heck was the Avis? Our reservation had a downtown Esquel address, just a few blocks from our hostel, but when we got to the address, there was nada of the sort in sight.
With just two days to spend in Bariloche, we knew we didn’t have time for much — not that we minded considering how active we were in El Bolson. But we knew we wanted to bike the 60-some km Circuito Chico, a popular route that can be driven, biked, or if you’re ready for a long day, walked. It takes you through lakes, mountains, hotel resorts and if you’re lucky like us, on an adventure with a crazy Argentinian man.
We went on the ride with a friend from our hostel — Annika from Germany — and early in the route we noticed a couple of guys had stopped to pick cherries on the road. Since that sounded like a genius idea, we joined them. Pretty soon we were chatting with them — Alberto, a half-German, half-Argentinian jewelry distibutor and his 19-year-old son, Juan, who was on holiday from university in Buenos Aires.
When we all got our fruit fill, Alberto invited us to ride with him and Juan to his favorite secret spot. Now, if I were alone, this would be a blazing red flag, and I’d high-tail it out of there. Solo backpacker female goes to secret spot with local man and son? No thanks.
I was comfortable with Eaman there, so we all agreed to follow Alberto’s lead. And that’s when the got equal parts crazy and hilarious.
We’ve left El Bolson and are now in Bariloche, Argentina — a beautiful, albeit far more touristy, ski resort town in the Rio Negro Province. For the first time, we had a really hard time leaving somewhere when we drove off from the amazing La Casona Odile. It was such a good fit for us, and we felt so at home. At the same time, the world is so big, there’s so much to see, and we had a big bike ride in mind for Bariloche, so off we went.
But before I completely move on, I of course need to close up shop on my other reason for El Bolson — the nature.
A little background first: El Bolson was a hotspot for Buenos Aires hippies in the 1970s and has since come to be known for its artisan crafts, sustainable practices (though all of Patagonia seems to be good at that) and pristine natural wonders just a hop, skip and a jump away.
Every other hike we’ve gone on — Colca Canyon in Peru, glacier trekking in El Calafate and the W in Torres del Paine — involved bus rides of two to five hours to the actual start of the hike. But in El Bolson, nothing took more than 30 minutes to reach.
We had three full days to spend outdoors, so we analyzed it — the way Eaman and I always do — and broke it up like this:
Thursday: Easy to medium hike to Cerro Piltriquitrón and artisan market
Friday: Medium to hard hike to Cajon de Azul
Saturday: Reward ourselves with a day at Lago Puelo, a rocky beach in the next town over.
Last night we rung in the new year at our hostel, La Casona de Odile, which threw an incredible dinner and dance party. The festivities began at 8:30 p.m. with canapes, appetizers and berry punch in their backyard and continued indoors with a lavish three-course dinner.
We’ve been at hostels for group dinners, like the one we went to in El Calafate for Christmas Eve, but this dinner felt different. You could tell how much love was put into creating the meal, which all the staffers helped to make. This hostel is such a community, and they made us all feel like we were sitting to dinner in our own homes. Everyone had such a huge smiles serving us, and I’ll admit, after cooking our own food the last few weeks, it was really nice to just enjoy the food (and not wash dishes).
They offered a full, delicious menu — both veg and non-veg:
- Spinach and cheese empanada and quiche // Beef empanada and quiche
- Wild mushroom and spinach lasagna // Lamb stew
- Flan cake with dulce de leche, cream and raspberries
It was maybe one of the best meals of my life.
Last year, I remember thinking that 2011 would be a year full of change and adventure with this trip in September, but I couldn’t tell anyone much about it because it was fairly under wraps. It’s hard to believe a whole year had passed since then and now we were celebrating 2012 under the stars in Patagonia.
I feel so lucky to be on this journey, and with my best friend along for the ride. Cheers to 2012 and many more adventures to come.
