Wwoofing at Chakra Millalen

 Kai and I spent a couple of days in Bariloche where we met up with some friends from my Spanish class. Here are some pictures from Bariloche

 The buildings had the feel of a small swiss town.

 But we have spent the most time at a wwoofing site in El Hoyo called Chakra Millalen, which is about 3 hours south of Bariloche. We set up our tent in their field of lavender.

 The incredible mountain that was our view from the tent.

 We arrived on Jan. 7th, a Friday, and the next day we headed out on a hike with some of our new friends from the chakra (farm). Two of the girls that we hiked with needed to renew their visas by Sunday.  So we took a hike to cross the Chilean border.  There were great signs on the Argentine side, but the second we got to Chile we got lost at least 3 times before finally getting to the border patrol house.  We spent the night on the Chilean side and got back to the farm the next day - Sunday.

 Nacho, Sonja, Rochelle, Ezequiel, and Kai - our hiking group

 This one water crossing out of many on the Chilean side didn't end well for Rochelle and I as we both ended up with a wet foot.

 Ezequiel, Sonja and Kai - we took a boat on Lago Puelo to the Argentine border where we began and ended our hike.

 Back at the farm I had to capture Kai in his berry picking outfit on our first day of picking.

The farm

 Inside the common area - there were many ping pong games and communal meals in this room

 The woman who is washing dishes at the sink is Josephine who runs the farm with her husband Fabio and their 16 year old son Juan. Josephine is originally from Switzerland, but their family has owned this farm for 28 years now.  

 hanging out

 There was a lot of bread making in this wood oven made by Fabio.

 Josephine's birthday.

 Peeling Flava beans in the kitchen

 Making bread roles in the Panaderia

 We made 60 loafs of bread one day, and all the jams came from our berry picking in the morning

 On a rainy day we all sat together and gathered all of the dried oregano.

Every day we started picking or weeding at 8:30 and we done around 11:30/12.  Someone would go in early and start making lunch for everyone.  Siesta was until 5, when the full time wwoofers would go back to work.  The rest of us would continue in either reading, hanging out or going down for a swim at the river.  Dinner was around 8:30/9. Each meal was made up of what we could harvest in the veggie garden, everything was vegetarian. 

 On the last night we went to the Festival de Frutas Finas in El Hoyo - celebration of some amazing fruit, so many rasberries and cherrys.

 The massive parilla at the festival

  

This is the whole group that wwoofed on the farm.  It was a wonderful community of wwoofers.

This wwoofing experience expanded my respect for how much work goes into running a farm, and the appreciation for where food comes from.

Gas Strike

The night before leaving La Paz, 12/26/10, I was packing up to head out on my 2 day bus trip back to Buenos Aires, when we read on the front page of BBC news that there was a huge bus strike because the gas prices have just risen for the first time in 10 years.  Well I was hoping that miraculously my bus wouldn't be touched by this strike and would carry on like normal.  Sadly, as I walked up the hill to the bus stop I knew that I wouldn't be able to get back that day, and therefore would have to work on finding other ways to get back to Buenos Aires before Kai came down on the 30th.  All of the bus companies had signs in their windows that said "we aren't leaving today".  When I asked if anyone knew when they would be leaving I was giving the response, maybe Wednesday but no one was sure about anything.  Luckily, no one could come into La Paz either so there was space for my friends and I to reserve a room in the hostel for 2 more nights.  My friends left to Arequipa, Peru on the 28th, international buses began to run because they were planning on buying gas outside the country.  

I flew to Buenos on Dec. 29th.  Kai came in on Dec. 30th.  Everything went smoothly, and we have been meandering all parts of the city.  Headed off to Bariloche, Patagonia on Tuesday.

Salt Flat tour

We took a 3 day salt flat tour beginning and ending in Uyuni, Bolivia.  Here are some pictures from it.

 Emily in front, Lottie behind me, and Matt behind her.

 All four of us on Fish Island in the middle of the Salt Flats

 Piedra del Arbol - rock tree

 At the train cemetery; Bolivia used to have a great train system, but it no longer really exists.

 Our jeep and driver

 It was so windy on the second night.  This picture is from Lottie's christmas powerpoint card that she and Emily were both sending back to their family's to document their travels.

Border Crossings: Always an interesting experience

12/18/10
We got off to a late start heading off to catch our 7:50am bus to La Quiaca.  About five minutes after arriving at the bus terminal Emily realized that she left her sneakers at the hostel.  Sneakers are kind of crucial in Bolivia, as it will be getting pretty cold on the Salt Flat tour and in Bolivia. The bus was arriving in 2 minutes, and she ran to get a cab back to the hostel.  There are very few times when you want your bus or airplane to be later, but this was one of those times.  As the bus pulled into the terminal right on time, Lottie Matt and I schemed about how we would stall the bus until Emily came back.  She came back just as we began to put our bags under the bus, and we were off to the border.

The ATM problem followed us to the border town and I was not able to get US dollars for my visa into Bolivia. We stood in line and I hoped for the best. I had half pesos and half dollars.  It tooks us 3 1/2 hours to cross the border, I had to wait while customs officials changed my pesos into dollars.  We missed our train, but we arrived at the bus station in Villazon, the Bolivian border town, 10 minutes before the last bus to Uyuni was heading out.

There are not many places where you can knock on the drivers door to tell them that you need a pee break.  I wasn't the one who asked, but I was definitely part of half the group that left the bus searching for a hiding spot.

Pavement in Bolivia is a luxury, so it was not the smoothest of rides to Uyuni, we arrived at 2am happy to be out of the bus, and exhausted.

Jujuy

It was a 2 1/2 hour bus ride from Salta to Jujuy, my shortest bus ride yet.  It was incredibly hot in Jujuy so we putsed around the hostel until it got cooler out around 5pm.  There were no scheduled tours for the seven colored mountain, so Emily and I were going to have to get their on our own.

We set out to the bus station the next morning without any expectations.  We got on a clunker of a bus to Purmamarca, the town of the seven colored mountain.   At times it seemed that our bus could barely make it up a hill, but all we could do was sit back and cross our fingers that at least it would make it to Purmamarca.  We watched as people would get up from their seats with all of their belongings, talk to the bus drive and be dropped off in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't figure out where they could possibly be going from there.  It was a little nerve-wracking because if our stop was in the middle of nowhere we would be dumbfounded as of what to do next.  The guy at our hostel didn't tell us exactly where we should get off the bus or let us know that no worries Purmamarca is a little village; there aren't signs but if you ask someone they will tell you which way to get to the trail leading around the seven colored mountain.  It's a seven colored mountain because of the minerals of the rocks. Of course the second we got on the trail, I got my camera out to take a picture only to find out that I had forgotten to charge it.  But here's a picture from the internet:

Our next stop was Humahuaca, a little farther north.  We had heard incredible things about this small little town from fellow travelers that we had met along the way.  We bought bus tickets back to Jujuy 3 hours later because we didn't want to be rushed around this so called amazing town.  Well after walking around for 20 minutes we realized that the entire town was taking a siesta and wouldn't be up until 6 or so.  This became a problem when our stomachs began to grumble as we hadn't eaten lunch yet and it was 4:00pm.  We finally found what looked to be a tiny little restaurant.  An older woman came and opened the locked door, we asked if she was serving food, she wasn't but she was nice enough to make us whatever was left.  I won't go into too much detail, but this "restaurant" would not have passed a health inspection.  We survived the food and ran back to the bus stop because there was no way we were going to miss the 5:00 bus back to Jujuy.

As we were walking to the grocery store back in Jujuy we were standing on a street corner getting ready to cross when all of a sudden we looked right next to us and there were our friends Lottie and Matt who had just gotten in a few hours before.

All four of us were off to La Quica, the Argentine border town, the next morning to begin our journeys in Bolivia.

Salta: Lines lines every where

Arrived in Salta with my friend Emily Robinson from my Spanish class, and immediately were asked if we knew about the problem in Argentina and in Salta by the hostel worker.  We looked at each other in confusion and than back at the guy behind the desk, at the same time replied "no", thinking that there was something grave and dangerous that he was about to tell us.  We wiped the sweat from our brows when all he told us was that there was a lack on money in the banks, and especially in Salta.  At the time, we laughed it off telling him thanks, but I think we will survive.  However, we had no idea how inconvenient this money problem was about to become when we had to pay everything in cash.  Very quickly there were two things that we learned to hope for when we got in line for an ATM.  The first being that we would look for a sign that the ATM would accept foreign credit cards. What we found out was that because of the lack of money, the ATMs were set up to save money for Argentines, therefore, only taking their cards.  The second thing that you hoped for was that by the time it was your turn the person in front of you would walk out of the ATM with a smile on their face signifying that yes there was still cash in the machine.

Putting all of this aside, we were able to get enough money to go on a great guided tour of La Garganta del Diablo which is an incredible cave, and also taste some wines from Salta.  The guided tour was a great opportunity to meet people because it was only with people from our hostel.  Some of which we went out later.  I've been meeting a lot of Australians and Brits.  Off to Jujuy to see the seven colored mountain!

 Close up of the musican playing in La garganta del diablo cave

 Optical illusions

Uruguay with Mom

Dad left on Monday, 12/6/10, and Mom and I left for Colonia, Uruguay the next day.  We were hoping to walk around Colonia for a little bit only to find out that Uruguay was an hour ahead of Argentina and we had to run for our bus. We took a morning bus tour of Montevideo and a day bus tour to Punta del Este.  We kept wondering where everyone was, all the Uruguayans, when we found out that we were staying in the financial district and the banks are only open from 1-5 everyday, and thats basically the only time that people pile into the financial district.

The boardwalk/bike path in Montevideo

 Some things we saw on our bus tour of the city

 It was a pretty windy day

 Congress

 Mercado del Puerto had some delicious meat stands

 El Palanque - the restaurant we ate at

 On the Punta del Este tour we stopped at a look out, and there was a chairlift also taking people to this look out

 The second stop on our bus trip was to see this incredible home

 The artist whose name I can't remember opened up part of his house to sell his art

 The artist: Picasso took him under his wing, and he is a very famous artist in Uruguay

 Fish market in Punta del Este

 SEALS! Our first and only water wildlife encounter

 The famous hand sculpture on the Punta del Este beach