Montevideo, Uruguay

It turns out Montevideo is an awesome city. All the guidebooks call it Buenos Aires´ little brother and say it might make a nice side trip. This is the best city we´ve been to on the trip. The people are incredibly friendly - a far cry from Buenos Aires! - the food is great, the weather is better, the beaches are crowded but fun, the mate culture (more on that in a later post, I hope) is second to none, it´s very bike-friendly, and the streets are hopping at night. Unfortunately we´re here only for one night. But it´s incredible how much you can fit into a day. More pictures to come.

Pictures from the Paraná Delta

Like I said below, no roads.

Pictures from Buenos Aires

Recoleta cemetary. Evita Peròn is buried nearby.



Mate...







The ``Kentucky`` pizza.

Buenos Aires

So far we've eaten more pasta than steak. Buenos Aires has such an Italian influence that even their Spanish sounds like it's spoken with an Italian accent. Argentina is a fascinating and beautiful and diverse and sad place. Once a leading world-class city an the economic capital of South America, it was then plagued by decades of dictatorship, then, after the return of democracy, a major currency crisis that the country has yet to recover from. That's resulted on a mix of beautiful, French-inspired neighborhoods, a modern but very cheap subway system, and abject poverty evident by four- and five-year-old children left alone to panhandle on the sidewalk or hawk knives with their mothers on major thoroughfares after dark.

But it's not been all depressing. We've biked the city, visited monuments, parks, and great neighborhoods, shared a mate with a local, had beers over live music in a plaza of San Telmo, an energetic bohemian neighborhood, and ventured northwest to the Paran'a Delta, another world where portenos escape for the weekend. The houses are on stilts and each have a small dock, but are connected only by narrow flagstone sidewalks. Much like a rural Venice, there are no roads in sight. For public transportation, only collectivo launches.

Last night we had dinner at the Kentucky Pizzaria. Seriously. Before I'm accused of abandoning my travel principles, Buenos Aires is famous for it's pizza and we were told by a local that the Kentucky was among the best. (And we'd had the other local specialty - steak - for lunch.) the Kentucky has been here since 1942 and didn't disappoint, but the pizza was not like anything I've seen at home: whole olives, large cuts of ham, and hearts of palm (try finding those in Lexington). the logo featured a jockey on a racehorse, though.

I haven't figured out a way to post pictures from here yet, but I'll add some eventually.

Last trip to the jungle

Before leaving for Buenos Aires, we returned once more to the national park, this time avoiding the tour bus masses. While hiking a muddy but sparsely-traveled path, we encountered a troupe of about 15 brown monkeys playing in the treetops, including at least three mothers carrying their babies. Down the trail we ran into another, smaller troupe. Amazing what you can see when you're not on a trail with 3,000 other people. I got some pictures. Not sure if any came out well enough to see, but I can't upload from this computer anyway.

We had our first travel hiccup today. As we landed in Buenos Aires, we realized nobody knew the name of the hostel we had booked from Santiago a few days earlier, or had any idea where it was (other than knowing it was in Palermo - Buenos Aires' largest barrio. Fortunately, there was a telecom center with email access at the airport, and the day was saved.

Parque Nacional Iguazú

We came here for a waterfall. A big one. Actually 275 distinct cataratas that form a giant falls that looks like something only Jon Landau or George Lucas could come up with, no picutre (or 100 pictures or 1,000 pictures) could ever do it justice. But I´ll try anyway. (Be sure to click on these pictures to enlarge them. Seriously.)


Just before the boat took us under the falls. At this point I´m still relatively dry.





The top of Devil´s Throat. You can´t see the bottom.


This is the same butterfly, wings open and wings closed. There are lots of butterflies.


We head to Buenos Aires this afternoon, but before then it´s supposed to rain two inches. The whole town already lost electricity for an hour this morning. It is a rain forest, after all.

To the jungle

After a long day of travel (the taxi picked us up at 5:30 a.m. in Santiago today and we had to change airports during the layover in Buenos Aires) we arrived in Puerto Iguazú in time to watch the sunset at the river confluence where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay all come together. It would be a perfect setting for Heart of Darkness, except there´s barge traffic on one of the rivers.

The proprietor (actually, I think it´s the proprietor´s son) of our hotel here in the Argentinian jungle is an Italian-born, Venezuelan-raised man who went to high school in Wheeling, West Virginia. I couldn´t make that up.

A brief political aside: So far I´ve entered two countries. Neither one requires Americans (or most westerners) to have a visa. But because the United States requires Argentinians and Chileans to have a visa to enter our country, American travelers have to pay a $130 extortion reciprocation fee when we cross the border. That´s $260 of completely unnecessary expense I´ve had to absorb just to make this trip. Why on earth don´t we just let South American tourists travel freely to the United States as we do Europeans? Are you listening, Congress?

Here are a couple pictures from around town.

Pictures from the Andes

Here are some pictures from the Maipo Valley today. Tomorrow we're off to Argentina and the jungle. I'm not sure whether the Internet has made it there yet.

La Politica nacional

Sunday is the day of national elections here, and Chile is on the verge of electing it's first government from the right since Pinochet was deposed. How does that affect me, you might ask? All the bars had to close at midnight Saturday night.

Speaking of politics, the change in the mood toward Americans since Barack Obama was elected is unbelievable. I've seen it talking to locals and British/European travelers. Ever since the Iraq war started, the tension towards Americans has been palpable. (A drunk Polish guy once tried to start a fight with me in a bar in Prague just because I was American, before his friends drug him away.) Now, it's totally different. More people than I can count have gone out of the way to tell me how much their opinion of the United States has improved since we elected Obama.

But, some people out there are doing everything they can to undo the goodwill. On the bike tour we took of Santiago, our guide asked me if it was true that a U.S. politician said that the earthquake was God's punishment to Haiti. I tried to explain that Pat Robertson was a TV preacher and not a politician, and that he was crazy. I´m not sure that the message took, though.

Giant corn at the Santiago fruit and vegetable market.

































The municipal drainage ditch Mapocho River splits Santiago in half. Notice the mural of prone Jesus behind us.

















This is the ¨old¨ U.S. embassy. Apparently our envoys recently moved to a fortress across town.

Santiago, Chile

Did you know it was possible for a baby to cry scream at the top of its lungs for nine hours straight? Neither did I until the plane ride here. The kid two rows in front of me only quit after we landed in Santiago and were getting off the plane. Actually, that´s not quite true. He did quiet down a few times, and his duties were immediately picked up by the baby three rows back. Needless to say, I didn´t get much sleep on the flight here. But it´s summertime now and the empanadas are great here (they´re HUGE, more like Calzones with far more stuffing choices), so all is better.

I was talking to a guy from Germany at breakfast the morning. He asked where I was from, and after telling him Kentucky but feeling like I should say more, I added, ¨We have fried chicken, horse racing, and bourbon.¨ To which he replied, ¨I met a girl from Kentucky at another hostel two days ago, and she said exactly the same thing. So it must be true.¨ At least we´re staying on message.

Speaking of message, here´s a note to any NBA manager/publicist who reads this blog. Last night I had a beer with a British guy who´s staying here. Turns out he´s a huge fan of Rajon Rondo and Tony Delk, but he´d never heard of Tayshaun Prince. Tay, your guys need to get step it up.

I didn´t get very many good pictures yesterday (I don´t recommend buying a new camera that you´re completely unfamiliar with the day before leaving on a big trip), but here´s a couple to get started.