Tag Archives: Travel

Photo Friday – Mt. Nemrut, Turkey

1 Jun

Giant stone heads at Mt. Nemrut

We were incredibly bummed to not be able to pull off a trip to Easter Island while we were in South America, so when we heard that there we a different type of giant stone heads that date back to around 62 BC in Turkey, we were determined to see them.  It’s in the middle of nowhere on the eastern side of Turkey, and to see the sunrise on the heads you need to drag yourself from sleep at around 2:45 in the morning (give or take, depending on the season) in order to get to the mountain and climb up to the top.  While it’s no Easter Island, it’s definitely lovely and we’re glad to have made the journey.

As an aside, if you do end up going, try to remember that you aren’t the only one who got up before dawn to see this site.  The jackasses below insisted on taking all their group photos RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE HEADS as the sun was rising, thus preventing everyone else from getting a clean shot of the ruins with the pink morning light.  A number of us asked them to please move for a few moments so we could all get a picture, but they refused.  The obliviousness/obnoxiousness/self-righteousness of certain types of tourists really wore on our nerves throughout this little side trip, and reminded us why we generally avoid group tours.

Don’t be a jerk, remember other people want to take photos of that big famous monument as well.  Snap your picture and move out of the way.

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The Argentina Roundup

28 May

The Statistics

Number of days spent in country –  43

Cities/towns visited – Mendoza, Bariloche, El Bolson, Esquelle, El Calafate, El Chalten, Ushuaia, Buenos Aires, Iguazu Falls, Salta, Humahuaca, Purmamarca, Cafayate, Angostaca.

Number of different lodgings – 12 hostels and a couchsurf

Flights – 1

Bus journeys –  26

Combi/collective/taxi  rides – 9

Bike Rentals – 1

Days of rain – 4

Budget

Total US dollar amount spent – $5522.62

Average cost per day, per person – $64.00

Argentina is not as cheap as it used to be.  Our ‘Local Travel’ category of the budget was by far the biggest chunk of spending here – long distance buses are triple the cost that they were in 2009, and flights are as expensive for foreigners on the domestic airlines.

Average lodging cost per night – $15.35 per person.  Hostels were pricey in Argentina compared to other places in South America.  We ended up in dorms often, though we went for a double room, even with a shared bath, in a few places.  You could do cheaper, especially if you are willing to stay in the party factory dorms, or sacrifice location or cleanliness.

Most expensive lodging – Reina Madre Hostel in Buenos Aires – a private room with shared bathroom was $23.25 per person.  The second most expensive was the Freestyle Hostel in Ushuaia which was $20.50 per person for a DORM.

Least expensive lodging – $9.30 per person for a dorm room in a little hostel in Angostaca.  We got stuck there overnight while on a road trip through northern Argentina.

Average food/drink cost per day (per person) – $14.30 – We consumed an obscene amount of cheap empanadas, usually for lunch.  We often cooked dinners in at the hostels because of the high cost of eating out.  We did go out for dinners sometimes though, or ate at the hostel when they had an asado night.

The Best

Empanadas!

Hostel Empedrado in Mendoza.  They have private rooms as well as dorms, clean bathrooms, TWO kitchens with plenty of cookware, a small pool, hammocks, free glass of wine every night, free empanada making class, good wi-fi…and FREE LAUNDRY!!!  It’s just an overall winner.  It is a little bit outside of downtown, but not more than a 10 minute walk.  You can book online, and if you’re headed there in the summer make sure to ask for a room with air-conditioning since some only have fans.

Hiking up to Fitz Roy in El Chalten. Looks like a fake background…but it’s not, it’s just a bad exposure!

El Chalten – Yeah, the town.  If you like mountains you will LOVE El Chalten.  There are multiple day hikes that get you way out into the hills with some of the most spectacular mountain scenery we’ve encountered.  Take your time and spend more than a hot second there, you won’t regret it.

Big Ice Tour in El Calafate – Even though we got ripped off by the travel agent who sold us our tour, this still goes down as one of our favorite activities.  It really was worth it, especially if you’ve never been on a glacier.  If the cost is too steep for you, look into a trek on the Viedma Glacier out of El Chalten.

Taking a break from biking in Bariloche

Biking around the Circito Chico in Bariloche – We haven’t gotten around to posting about this ride, but it’s a 25 kilometer ride around beautiful meditteranean colored lakes just outside of Bariloche.  You can rent a bike for the day and set out at your leisure.  There are many places to stop along the way for picnicing, swimming, or just gawking at the scenery.  The bike rental will only set you back about $18 and you can get there with public transportation.  Your hostel should be able to reserve you a bike, otherwise any travel agent in town can also, just make sure they don’t charge a commission for it.  You’ll get a map from the bike place, but don’t worry, it’s a loop and basically impossible to get lost.

The Worst

We really loved almost everything in Argentina, and the one major exception was Hostel Pudu in Bariloche.  We heard that it was fantastic, and perhaps it used to be, but now it’s just run down despite the bright and shiny website.  One of the hostel owners spent more time getting high with the guests than doing other things…like cleaning the bathrooms, which were disgusting.  There was a pretty high price tag for a dorm room, and I have to admit to sheer laziness or we would have moved after the first night.

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Blue Mosque – Istanbul, Turkey

25 May

Blue Mosque main interior dome – Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul has so many things to see, we could easily spend months here and never be finished.  One of the first must-see items on our list was the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, which is more famously known as the Blue Mosque.  The nickname comes from the multitude of blue tiles that adorn the inner pillars and domes.  It’s one of the most beautiful buildings we’ve seen on this trip, and we walked out with dozens of photos of the interior mosaics.

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Being Lost, And Found, In Strange Lands

22 May

Being in a foreign country, especially when you have a minimal grasp of the language, is both exciting and exhausting.  Travelling on a budget means that we pretty much never hire a tour guide, and we always go for the public transportation options.  Guidebooks are okay for getting a general idea of how to get around using public transport or our own two feet, but often the book falls far short of any real help.

Once in Valdivia, Chile we knew that we could get to a small park reserve by bus, but we just weren’t sure of the times, or where to catch it.  We asked our hostel, who told us a bus number that was totally incorrect.  We asked the tourist information office. Twice. They gave us the correct bus name, but couldn’t be specific about where it stopped.  We asked 7 different people who worked in the general area and they all pointed us in different directions.

FINALLY, the next day, we found the bus stop and, surprise surprise, it wasn’t anywhere near any of the places we’d been directed to.  Once we were on the bus we asked about specific return times since the reserve was nearly 50 kilometers outside of town.  We were told there were two return times – 2pm and 5pm.  As the reserve was the last stop, the driver assured us that this is where we needed to be to get picked up.

We were at the stop at 1:30pm, just to be safe.  We waited. And waited. And waited.  Finally, at 3, we started walking.  At 4:30 we managed to hitch a ride with a very nice couple who spoke zero English and didn’t seem to understand our Spanish very well.

Justin attempts to get us a ride on the long walk back to Valdivia…we had seen nothing but these sheep for 45 minutes.

Thankfully, they were able to drop us reasonably close to a town that had another bus that could take us back to Valdivia.  It was an adventure, to say the least.

My point is, sometimes getting around can be tough.  Every once in a while though, we encounter a stranger who helps us avoid yet another fiasco.

Today we were attempting to get to one of Istanbul’s oldest Byzantine churches, which is a bit off the regular tourist circuit.   We knew we could take a bus, but the place we had to get on was riddled with buses and we had not a clue which one we needed.  After asking about 7 different drivers, all of which just waved us towards the general direction of another dozen buses, we were approached by a man who asked (in English!) if we needed help.  We told him where we were going, and as luck would have it, he was also going that way.

Then we realized we couldn’t pay the fare in cash, we needed some sort of metro card, which we didn’t have.  The man paid our way with his own card and refused our multiple attempts at paying him back.  He then rode with us to our stop, got off with us, and led us for the 20 minute walk through winding streets to this little church.  There is no way we would have found this place on our own.

The whole time he’s helping us I was thinking, “What does he want? Is he going to charge us something for this?  Is he really dragging us to a carpet shop to try and sell us something?” but no, he was just really nice.  After getting us to the church he wished us a happy day and went on his way.

Every once in a while we are reminded that in this huge and crazy world there are genuinely kind people, and we are very thankful that we encountered one of them today.

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Photo Friday – Family Pictures in Buenos Aires

18 May

Buenos Aires has a fantastic Sunday antiques market, the Mercado San Telmo.  We spent an afternoon wandering around among the stalls and we came across this box of old family photos.  When we find relics like these I’m forced to wonder, “Who were these people?  Why have their photos ended up here, selling for 5 cents a piece to strangers who know nothing about them?”  I am both fascinated and saddened by this because I think of my own family, and wonder what could have happened that all these family photos have ended up for sale here.  There are years of memories, vacations and celebrations jammed into this box, their stories lost somehow and leaving us only to wonder what might have been.

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Photo Friday – Love in Peru

11 May

Bridesmaids sprinkle flowers, and well wishes, on the head of the bride and groom.

Today we are attending the wedding of two of our most dear friends (congratulations Julie and James!) so I thought it only fitting that the photo be wedding related.  When we first started our journey we were blessed with the opportunity to attend a wedding in Ollantaytambo, Peru.  It was an incredible experience, one that we will definitely never forget!

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The Uruguay Roundup

6 May

The Statistics

Number of days spent in country –  15

Cities/towns visited –  Colonia, Montevideo, Punta del Diablo

Number of different lodgings – 3 plus a couchsurf

Local bus journeys – 8

Combi/collective/taxi  journeys – 0

Boat rides – 2

Bike rentals – 1

Days of rain – 1

Budget

Total US dollar amount spent – 1,228.50

Average cost per day, per person – 43.88

Average lodging cost per night – 38.40

Most expensive lodging – Hostel del Diablo – $41/night for a private room with bathroom and a patio looking out to the sea.

Least expensive lodging – Willy Fog Hostel and El Viajero  in Montevideo were both $13 per person for a dorm room, including breakfast

Average food/drink cost per day (per person) – $20.15  We ate out for pretty much every meal, and drank a healthy amount of beer and wine.  Lunches we generally had empanadas on the beach, but we went to basic restaurants most nights for dinner.  We could easily have spent a lot more on food and drink, but we chose mid-range restaurants with only a few exceptions.

Best:

Best. Empanadas. Ever.

* Empanadas – Kiosco Alba at the end of the ‘pier’ where there are trinket vendors.  These go down as the best empanadas we had in all of South America.  They are made fresh to order and are STUFFED with fresh fish, or ham and cheese.  They are fried, yet they aren’t greasy.  They are incredible, and there was always a wait, but it was well worth it.

Mmmmm…grilled meat….

*Parilla meal – Huge slabs of grilled meats are typical in Uruguay, especially in Mercado del Puerto.  It’s incredible just to walk around and marvel at all the grills going at the same time, and you have more than a dozen choices for lunch.  We ate at La Chacra with our couchsurf host, and had some of the best steak we’d had on the trip thus far.  A tad pricey, but well worth it.

We took a break from biking to take photos with the massive Montevideo sign

* Bike ride along La Rambla – Do yourself a favor and rent a bike at Bicicletta Sur on Aquilas Lanza and Durazno.  For a dollar an hour you can spend all day cruising up and down the coastline, stopping for ice cream, empanadas, and whatever else catches your fancy along the way (like the giant Montevideo sign above…).  There is a well maintained path for both pedestrians and bikes.

Playa Grande in Punta del Diablo

* Playa Grande in Punta del Diablo – It’s already a super chilled out beach town, but we hear it can get pretty crowded during high season.  To get away from the masses, head over to Playa Grande, just a few minutes walk up the coast.  You’ll find an expansive beach that you’ll have nearly all to yourself since most people don’t want to make the trek over the sand dunes.  If you walk all the way out to the end of the beach you’ll be at the beginning of a nature preserve where you can marvel at the foliage and maybe even spot some sea turtles.

Worst

* El Viajero Hostel in Montevideo.  It was clean, well located, and had a good breakfast but all of those things can’t make up for terrible layout and a bad staff.  The room we had didn’t have a window, which made it swelteringly hot in the night.  In addition, the rooms all faced the open courtyard where people hung out until all hours of the night – the noise was deafening.  The staff was indifferent at best, downright obnoxious at worst.  We left after only one night.

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Photo Friday – Hornocal Mountains in Northern Argentina

4 May

Way more than 7 colors….click on the photo to view it in a bigger size

In March we embarked on a whirlwind road trip through northern Argentina with our friends Kristin and Bryan from Happy To Be Homeless.  Purmamarca has it’s share of fame for the ‘7 Colored Mountains’, but I had heard rumors of a more spectacular hillside located somewhere outside of Humahuaca.  We set off with nothing more than a hand-drawn map the owner of our hostel made us, and a few hours (and a few breakdowns in our beater of a car…) later we made it!  The mountains were just as stunning as I had hoped, and completely devoid of other tourists, except for one truck whose occupants looked at our tiny rental car as if we were insane to be driving such a little tin-can up the side of a mountain with…less than ideal road conditions.   You’ll need your own car, preferably a 4-wheel drive.

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6 Months!

2 May

It’s our 6 month anniversary of being on the road!  Time certainly does fly…We’ve spent a half a year tromping around South America, yet we still feel that we’ve just barely scratched the surface of this amazing continent.  We could spend years here, but we’re heading off to explore another part of the world next week.

We still have some catching up to do on country-specific ’round-ups’, but in the meantime, here’s a quick breakdown of our travel stats from the first 6 months:

Average cost per person, per day (not including Antarctica) – $43

Continents – 2 – South America and Antarctica

Countries visited – 6 – Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador

Towns or cities visited – 53

Beds slept in – 56

Bus rides – 101

Taxi or combis – 34

Boats – 25

Planes – 6

Swiss Army knives lost – 3

Random weddings attended – 1

Empanadas consumed – we should have kept track…the number is probably in the high hundreds.

Regrets – 0

Our next leg includes Turkey, Israel, Jordan, India and Nepal; if you’ve been to any of those places don’t be shy, leave us some tips in the comments!

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Mas Grande – Feeling Like a Giant in Bolivia

30 Apr

Generally you can find anything you need for day-to-day life in most parts of the world.  Toothpaste?  Yup, even Colgate.  Shampoo?  We’ve found it everywhere.  Lotion?  Yup.  Fleece sweaters.  Check.

The one exception has been flip-flops for Justin in Bolivia.  We each have a pair of super cheap rubber flops for showers and whatnot, and they tend to wear out about every eight to ten weeks.  Justin’s had his current pair since we were in Puerto Varas, Chile way back in January, so he is WAY overdue for a new pair.  Not only are they almost totally worn through, but the little prong between the toes keeps popping out of the sole causing him to stumble and hop around like a maniac at random interludes.

Justin's busted flops

The problem is…he has gigantic feet.  Justin is 6’2″, not including his curly mop of hair.  His shoes size down here is a hefty 45.  We had looked for replacements in Salta, Argentina, but he didn’t find any he liked and eventually we ran out of time and needed to head out to Bolivia.

It turns out, he should have just bought the ugly pair in Argentina because we didn’t stand a chance of finding what we needed in Bolivia. We searched for days.  We walked into every store we saw that carried sandals, picked up a pair and asked “Tiene 45?”   We’d point to Justin’s feet and the vendor, astonished, would invariable shake his or her head and reply.  “No, el mas grande es 43.”

Defeated, we eventually gave up and continue to repair his sad little shoe with the duct tape we brought wound around a pen.  I suspect we’ll run into the same problem in South East Asia, so we better stock up before we get there.

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