Montreal

Some would say the best part about travelling is coming home. I'm not sure if I'd agree, but it's true that after a trip you come home a different person than when you left. Cliché, but true.

You just see the world differently. You take fewer things for universals, because you now know the reality you're used to isn't necessarily the same for everyone. You realize you'd gotten used to new things you hadn't even realized you'd gotten used to. You notice how many things at home have changed, and how many things haven't. You've changed.

Though I'm back in Montreal I haven't quite gotten out of trvaller mode yet. It's like I'm a tourist in a place I know well. After living 6 years in the same apartment, I'm now living on the other side of town, on the other side of the tracks.

New jobs, new experiences; fitting, for a person who feels completely renewed.

Pics from Nova Scotia

My siblings Matt, Mark, Natalie and I got together for dinner in Halifax on Thursday night, before going to catch one of Matt's bands play at the Attic.


Winter at Melmerby Beach. Warm winter = not much snow

New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Population:10,000. Tallest building: 6 storeys.

Chile once more!

I've learned the secret to a smooth, wait-free trip across the Chile-Argentina border. Go in the middle of the night. Not only are there very few cars and busses crossing over, but the customs agents just want to go home, so they wave you through no matter how sketchy you look. My trip over the border in September took 3 hours; the way back was no more than 45 minutes.

My stint in Santiago was meant as a little downtime, chilling with my good friends Claudia and Jessica, before heading back to Canada. We stayed at Claudia's boyfriend Sebastian's house in the middle-class residential neighbourhood of La Florida. Such a change from the traffic-noisy corner of Montevideo and Marcelo T. in Buenos Aires; la Florida was rows of colourful little houses, lush plants and greenery in every tiny shoebox yard, and relative quiet, ( well, except for the barking dog I would say 85% of the homes had lurking in the yard or back alleyway...)

Wednesday I took a day trip to the port city of Valaparaiso, Chile's second-largest city, about an hour and a half from Santiago, on the coast. I'd spent New Year's 2004 there, but it was a quick rush-in, rush-out job, as we were staying down the coast at the beach and only came into the city for the New Year's festivities. I'd wanted to go back and explore it at my own pace ever since.

Valparaiso's the seedy port cousin to Santiago as capital city. It's noisy, dirty, chaotic, dangerous, working class to the core - and utterly charming. The city consists of a series of hills, or cerros, that encircle a harbour. Twisting, narrow streets amongst rows of colourful, ramshackle houses seemingly piled on top of each other spread back from the shore and work their way up the hills. Several hills have funicular-style cable car elevators or asensores that facilitate pedestrian access between the lower town and the hillside neighbourhoods. On any given hillside you find a labyrinthine network of winding streets, deadend alleyways, and small stairways and passageways. It's urban planning at its worst ( or at its most absent) and that's exactly why the city is so amazing.

As soon as you leave the bus terminal in Valpo ( as the city's affectionately known), it gets in your face. People hawking everything from used clothes to meat to jewellery on the sidewalk. I took an old-fashioned streetcar from the bus terminal to the city's main plaza, and from there spent the whole day wandering. Up and down different asensores, from this cerro to that, getting lost in a maze of colorful houses and winding lanes and then figuring out where I was. Spending as much time as I could at every lookout I came across, absorbing the breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean, and the sprawling, hilly rainbow that is the cityscape.

Mendoza

The city of Mendoza followed Malargüe on the itinerary. It was like coming full circle, as Mendoza had been my first stop in Argentina back in September. And now it was to be my last stop on the way out of the country. It was funny, everything Argentine that had stood out to me the first time in contrast to the Chile I had been used to - the accent, the insanity over football, the money, the different look of the people, the Argie mini-mullet, the real coffee, the tiny empanadas - was now a part of my life, practically. The pretty, quiet streets that had seemed so calm after the chaos of Santiago now seemed calm after the chaos of Buenos Aires.

Simon and I met up at the bus station, and hiked in the heat to our hostel. Unlike the hostel I stayed at the first time, this place, though very nice on the inside, was situated outside of the centre, in a sketchy area seemingly popular with Mendoza's ladies of the night. After a couple of games of foosball with the 5 year-old son of the hostel owners (who, sizing me up as easy Canadian prey, was QUITE disappointed I kicked his Argentine ass...), we went out for some beef and wine downtown.

The next day was something like 40 degrees. Too hot for wandering around town. Too hot for biking in the mountains. So we caught a lift with a guy associated with our hostel the Termas de Cacheuta, up in the mountains. Seriously the crappiest car ever (the dashboard was missing...), driven in typical insane Argentine fashion at breakneck speed up the winding mountain road. As many Argentine cars run on a dual system of gasoline and natural gas, we stopped for a natural gas fill up on the way. At a natural gas station, everyone has to get out of the car as it's filled, as a safety precaution. ( So I guess if the car blows up you'll be standing oh-so-safely 1 foot away, instead of in it.)

The termas were a complex of several pools of thermal mountains waters, of varying temperatures. Lots of families, though the desert plants and the overtowering mountains kept it from feeling too much like a water park. So we soaked our bones and soaked up the sun, and I actually saw someone whiter than me for once, which made me happy. Afterwards, we dried off and had a maté as the families filed out of the complex.

We narrowly missed getting stranded in the small mountain village housing the termas as we jumped onto a bus back to Mendoza as it was pulling away.

Back in town, we stopped for supper at the Automovil Club Argentina (their version of CAA.) Yes, they have a restaurant. An unlikely spot, you say? They had a wicked terrasse on the street, sweet food deals, and the place was full of happy, well-fed, if older, people.

Check out Simon's gallery of pics from the Termas.

Saturday we decided on a trip up to the Andes. I dare you to visit Mendoza, it's skyline overtaken my the Andes' impending presence, and not feel the urge to get a bit closer. The guy that ran our hostel let us in on a secret; instead of shelling out 150 pesos for a guided group excursion up into mountains, there was a bus that left every morning from the bus terminal for 15 pesos. The two main attractions, Parque de Aconcagua and Puente del Inca, were a walkable 4km apart, and the bus returned to Mendoza in the evening. Argentines pride themselves on not necessarily cheating the system, but definitely milking it, and I was more than happy to continue my habit of undermining the tourism industry by putting together a DIY excursion.

The bus left at 7am sharp and began the winding 4 hour ascent to the top of the Andes, right to the Chilean border. The higher we climbed the narrower and twistier the roads got, snaking through progressively smaller towns and villages as our ears popped with altitude. Frequent stops slowed the trip down. Though watching people load, and then unload further down the road, loads of firewood, fresh bread, and that day's newspaper, you realized that the tourists were among the least pressing cargo on the bus that acted as a important means of transport between remote communities.

We jumped off the bus at the side of the road at the entrance to Aconcagua Provincial Park. Named after the tallest peak in the Andes (almost 7000m!), the reserve is very popular among hikers, as well as the mountaineers that come attempting to scale peak. There was not a cloud in the electric blue sky, and the sun beat down on us as we did a short day hike though the park. Unlike the Andes farther south, where forests abound, here there was not a tree to be found and the day was hot! We gazed off in the distance at the snowy peak of Aconcagua (which very few climbers have been able to access this year, as it is unseasonably snowier than usual...)

Once hiking time was over, we started the descent along the side of the serpentine mountain road to Puente del Inca. This road being the main throroughfare for truckers hauling their wares from Buenos Aires to Santiago, as well as all international busses and car traffic, it wasn't quite the idyllic hike we'd had inside the park. Despite the incredible 360 degree mountain scenery. We spotted a trail ( that later turned out to be used by horseback riders) that followed an old set of railroad tracks, and abandoned the paved shoulder.

Puente del Inca is this funky phenomenon. First, it's a natural stone bridge over a rushing river. Basically the river carved a hole in the rock, so you have a bridge over the water, but it's the same piece of rock making up the bridge, and the cliffs on either side. Then there's a hotel and spa complex built on the side of the cliffs in the 1940's, that was later washed out in a flood, and now lays abandoned. But contributing to a constantly changing and evolving rock landscape is the high sulphur content in the river water, which, builds up and erodes surrounding rock faces with bright yellow mineral deposits. Besides the bridge there is a small village, consisting of a hostel, a couple of restaurants and a bunch of souvenir shops. The place is a major tourist attraction, despite the fact that due to erosion visitors can no longer cross the Puente, they can only take pictures from afar. Which is what we did, and then retired to the terrasse of a small snack bar for some nourishment, and to wait for the bus back to Mendoza.

Simon's shots of our day in the Alta Montaña.

Malargüe - La Payunia

Tuesday February 21st I got up at the crack of dawn to catch a bus to the town of Malargue, 3 hours from San Rafael. The early morning start was necessary in order to get to Malargüe for a 9am excursion out to La Payunia Volcanic Reserve.

150km from Malargüe via bumpy, winding backroads, the reserve is famous because it contains something like 300 volcanos within its boundaries. The most recent eruption was more than 500 years ago, but the effects of centuries of eruptions can be seen in landscape, most notably the black desert-like terrain. Upon closer inspection it's not black sand, but rather what you could call volcanic gravel. Different peaks and craters dot the reserve, which, given the altitude, is home to lots of llamas and guanacos.

The tour company I had signed up to go out there with is famous for the open-air caravan they take visitors through the reserve in. You're in the vehicle most of the day, but since the caravan consists of a sort of a roofed cart with benches pulled behind a 4WD truck, you get a more up close and personal experience with the landscape than you would in a traditional van.

Except when its raining. Which it was when I arrived in Malargue. Then they pull down these plastic window-style coverings to shield the passengers from the elements. Well, not all the elements. Malargüe was also experiencing a cold snap when I was there, and the day we went out would have been nippy for a November day in Montreal, let alone Argentina in the summer. Not really the day for an open-air caravan ride.

But we set out anyway.

As the twelve us as packed into the caravan, each of us layering on every item of the inadequate summer clothing we'd all predictably show up with, we were hoping that the weather would soon clear up. But, to the contrary, the higher the altitude as we climbed the road into the reserve, the colder it got, the stronger the wind, and, most frustratingly, the foggier it became. The cold and wind we could have handled, had we been able to see what was around us. But the guide's explanations just kept on coming out like "Well, over there in that cloud is Volcano such and such.." or normally, on a sunny day, from here there's this AMAZING view of blah blah blah..." The stops on the way through the reserve, which normally were for short hikes, walking around, taking in the amazing open spaces and strangely coloured geographical landscapes, were reduced to a quick run around in the bone-chiling wind and then getting back into the truck as quickly as possible. The silver lining was that the steaming maté being passed around inside the truck was all the more welcome...

And then it was mutiny - almost. Choro (our local guide/driver of sherpa-like qualities who new the terrain and the climate like the back of his hand and sped that caravan over dunes and hills like it was nobody's business) drove the truck into this nook he knew of behind a small hill where we were shielded from the wind for us to eat our lunch of empanadas and wine. By this point everyone was freezing, and sort of bored, or sort of pissed or very pissed at the lack of being able to see anything through the thick fog. There was a huge group debate on whether we should continue on into the fog, or whether we should head back to civilization. We were almost at the crater, the kind of crowning glory of the reserve because of the impressive views from the rim. Choro insisted that it looked like it was clearing up over the crater. But everyone was at the end of their rope. But one guy suggested that we listen to Choro, go onto the crater, and then if it were still cloudy from the top, turn back. And so that's what we did.

And were we all ever glad we did so. Magically, somewhere between lunch and the top of the crater, it totally cleared up, and got warm and sunny. The caravan snaked up the side of the crater, and then we got out and hiked up the rim for some of what I would qualify as the most spectacular views of my whole trip to Argentina. The Andes in the distance, the black volcanic pampa/desert terrain, dotted with flashes of yellow and green plant life, and the rainbow effects of mineral deposits.

On the way back down we got to see all the amazing landscapes we missed on the way up. Mood inside the caravan improved severalfold. For me, the near-freezing experience of the morning was worth it for the views from the top. Not everyone thought so, though, and when we got back to the company's office, there was a major bitch session with the company staff. I stayed out of it and went home to my hostel for some pasta and a well deserved bottle of wine.

Malargue - Cavernas de las Brujas

My second outing from Malargüe was thankfully less eventful than the first. Cavernas de las Brujas is a network of caves in the mountain face out in the middle of nowhere. Legend has it the caves used to be used for shamanic rituals by local aboriginals, hence the name (bruja=witch.)

You donned your helmet and headlamp, and then went into the caves for a two-hour visit that involved hanging out in the hugeentry chamber of the cave to get our eyes used to the darkness, and then much climbing and shimmying through narrow crevices, the whole puncuated by historical and geological explanations by our amazing guide Estela.

A virgin caver, I thought it was cool, though some Europeans complained it was a let-down compared to the caves they've got back home.

We stopped for what had been advertised as a "hike" at a park on the way back to Malargue afterward. The "hike" was a 30 minute nature walk with 15 other people along a trail to a grantedly pretty little waterfall. A guide stopped the group every 2 minutes to explain the fossils found along the trail to the group of bored-looking kids and ill-dressed middle aged women in flip flops and mini-skirts. Blah!

Luckily, the "hike" was followed by lunch at a restaurant featuring the region's famous chivito! Aka. GOAT ( though I didn't know it at the time...could have sworn it was beef of some sort...) Mmmm, a big hunk of goat meat on a huge bone, roasted over an open fire and eaten with your bare hands. I then understood why Malargue's chivito is famous throughout all of Argentina.