Trip by Numbers

Following an idea of Letizia's - here's a numeric summary of my trip, accompanied, for the non-numeric of you, by some vaguely relevant photos.

Planes Trains and Automobiles ... and bloody busses

Total hours spent in a bus: 86. 

Number of nights 'slept' on a bus: 3. 

Longest bus trip - 22 bum numbing hours. You could fly from Sydney to London in that time.

Elapsed hours flying home: 52 - as part of a total of 120 + hours spent flying or in transit.
Number of flight legs: 12 (Sydney - Auckland - Buenos Aires - Bariloche - El Calafate. Ushaia - Buenos Aires. Puerto Iguazu - Buenos Aires - Lima - Cusco - Lima - Buenos Aires - Auckland - Sydney).


There were also 30 hours spent in mini-bus tours - around Salta alone. Throw in another 20 in Mendoza and 20 or so in Patagonia. And finally, there were 4 boat trips - 3 in Patagonia (including the Beagle Channel and the Magellan Strait) and a cruise on the brown waters outside Tigre.

Magellan Strait

Kilometres hiked: 80 odd (42 Inca Trail, 40 or so in Patagonia)
Maximum altitude reached of 4200 metres - in the Andes near San Antonia de los Cobres, on the Chilean - Argentinean border (RN40), and at the delightfully named Dead Woman's Pass on the Inca Trail. I know which one I'll remember getting to the most !

4170M up the Andes

Dead Woman's Pass - 4215M

Christ the Peacemaker at 4200M on RN40

Miscellaneous

Days - or nights - camping: 6 - during which it rained: 6 (maintaining what seems like a life-long record, but there might, just might, be a dry night there I've forgotten)

88 (ochenta y otto) is the name given to this butterfly, although this particular one looks more like an eighty !


Number of public chunders: 2 - caused by dodgy Pisco Sours: 2.
Number of lessons learnt regarding raw egg: 0.
Number of guinea pigs eaten: 1. Number of guinea pigs I want to eat in the rest of my life: 0.


Number of bees who missed a golden chance to sting me: 100s.

Bee Ware !

Pairs of dorky hiking pants bought in Buenos Aires 2 - pairs of which left in a hotel who then denied all knowledge: 1. Number of times I looked like a fisherman on tour: 4

Fisher D

And while we're on fashion, number of days unwisely impersonating Axl Rose: 2.

Value of belongings nicked: $0, despite all warnings - or because of all precautions. This not counting the money spent on outrageous ATM fees: ~$150 (roughly AUD7.50 a pop - with a $100 withdrawal limit)

I took 2020 digital photos - and 12 rolls of slide film - another 430 odd photos. 1 camera battery died - conveniently on the eve of the Inca Trail. Number  of power points on the Inca Trail, to recharge remaining camera battery: 0.

1 tour led by a lady carrying a flag (my first ever) - with an outrageous Peruvian/Russian/Chinese accent. Visiting, appropriately enough, Saqqsaywamman (say it out loud).

Who am I, the red teletubbie, to laugh ?

Nights on the road: 42 (or 43 if you count December 23rd twice).
Best not to ask how many kilograms of steak eaten, but the first night (and second 23rd of December) there were 1000 grams consumed in a single sitting.
8 kilograms left behind in South America - of which only 2 have come back after a month (notwithstanding the above, but see also food poisoning and kilometres hiked !)

Number of comments on this post: surprise me !

Sneak Preview ...

First Glimpse of Machu Picchu

Stay tuned for the story behind the trip ...

Back Home !

It's probably not news to anyone - but I got back to Sydney a few weeks ago. Since then, apart from settling back to Newtown life and work - which has been remarkably easy - I've also been trying to work out what to do with my photos (surprise !) and find time to finish this blog - at least as far as Argentina and Peru are concerned ! Given that it's taken me 5 years (and counting) to sort out Cuba, I'm not too worried yet - but I am hoping to finish while the stories are fresh.

The last leg of my travels threatened to be very painful. The joys of South American airline scheduling had lined me up with a 54 hour trip home from Cusco to Sydney, with a 7 hour stop-over in Lima, before leaving at midnight and arriving in BA at 7am for the ... 3am flight to Sydney the next morning (no qualms about curfews for the Portenos) - via Auckland of course !

The reality was a lot less harrowing. For a start, four of us from the Peru group were on the same LAN Chile flight back to Lima (all with similar waits until post-midnight flights) - enough to form a quota for a trip to the centre for one last Ceviche. As seasoned Peru travellers (after a week there) we negotiated a decent rate in a hire car and strapped ourselves in for the never dull dodgem ride to Miraflores, roughly 45 eventful minutes from the airport. During the trip we arranged for the driver to pick us up a couple of hours later - imagine our surprise when he waved away our attempts to pay for the trip, saying we could settle up after the return. Such trust !

Last sunset in Lima

Dinner was sensational - and with the backdrop above and great company it was infinitely better (or very nearly infinitely) than 7 hours waiting at the airport. Of the four of us I had the earliest flight at half past midnight, and only 5 hours later I was lucky enough to be met at Buenos Aires international airport by a friend who'd kindly offered to pick me up and offer me a place to shower and change on my 20 hour stop-over.

Unfortunately my dreams of one last 1kg steak - not too mention shopping at the Sunday San Telmo markets and generally enjoying one last day in BA - were cruelly thwarted by an untimely and embarrassing (especially the public train chunder) attack of food poisoning, which at one stage threatened to delay my trip.

Drugged up, I arrived at the airport around 1am, checked in and got through customs in about a minute and a half, and looked for ways to kill 2 hours, too weak to walk and too tired to read.

There was time for a further surprise however, with a most unexpected and welcome upgrade to business class as I boarded, and even though I wasn't capable of profiting from the fine food and wine on offer, the almost horizontal seat was just what the doctor ordered for the 13 hour flight across the pacific - and I can thank that for the complete absence of jet lag since my return, not to mention my complete return to health in 24 hours.

There was time for one final surprise back in Newtown Tuesday morning (after leaving Cusco 3pm Saturday) - my coffee mug, purchased in the sacred valley in Peru, was just a little worse for wear ....

Carefully Wrapped Peruvian Pottery

So what's next ? Well, I've uploaded most of my photos now - on my fotki site (Argentina and Peru), cut down from 2000+ digital photos to less than 600. I still need to caption most of them, but feel free to have a snoop around. I'm also planning to write up the rest of the trip (on this site), to present some of the best photos in context, and share some more stories. And finally I have 11 boxes of slides to start scanning, which should help keep the post-trip glow glowing for some time yet ! I'll share the best ones here, of course.

Jumping to Salta

The next stop after my Mendozan flying experience was the north-western town of Salta, a mere 16 hours away by bus. Salta is not immediately captivating the way Mendoza is, but has a quiet elegance and easy-going feel; and with a large indigenous population in has in many ways more in common with Bolivia, a few hundred kilometres to the north, than Buenos Aires nearly 2000km to the south-east.


While town itself has a certain colonial charm, the real attraction of Salta is the landscape of the surrounding landscape, with stunning multi-coloured gorges (Quebradas), picturesque Andean villages, salt planes, wine districts and cacti-filled national parks all competing for your attention. I opted for two all day tours to try and maximise my appreciation of the area.

The first trip was a monster 14 1/2 hour epic, and followed the route of the famous Tren a las Nubes (train to the clouds), which was an old railway track built to service the borax mines in the salt flats high in the Andes.


The train line has been closed for repairs for a while, but in many ways the mini-bus is a better way to see the line, as well as stop in some of the cute villages along the way and generally admire the scenery.


After winding through the valley outside of town, the road leads up to the High Planes - Altiplano - or Puna, as the Argentineans call it, where horizons go forever, and you never know who is watching you:



After crossing a pass at over 4000M, our lunch time destination was the sleepy mining town of San Antonio de los Cobres. As can be seen -

Peak Hour San Antonio de los Cobres

- not much happens here, although at the table next to us, two people fainted from altitude sickness. After another two hours in the bus, we arrived at the stunning Salinas - or Salt Plains. More photos here.



Believe or not, there was still more to see, and after crossing another high pass


we dropped back down the Cuesta de Lipan, to the UNICEF World Heritage Quebrada de Humahuaca - destination of my next tour -

Cuesta de Lipan leading to Humahuaca Gorge

before arriving at the town of Purmamarca, ostensibly to see the beautiful (from bus window) Seven Colour Hill, though in reality we were subtly dropped at the craft markets. Another 2 hours later, at 9:30pm, it was a relief to finally get out of the bus that had been home all day, knowing that dinner was only 2 hours away !

Mendoza Wine and Flying

I could get used to luxury wine touring the way they do it in Mendoza. On Mendoza day 3, for a decent fee, we had a minibus limited to 8 visitors, along with a driver and guide (trained enologist), and private tasting rooms in all 4 wineries that we visited, where we got to taste better wines that what are normally offered to passing tourists, as well as a 4 course lunch with matching wines.

9am Tasting

The first winery we visited was the Bodega Mendel, a modern winery that left most of us a little flat - not sure if it was the 9am start of the fact that the winemaker himself preferred to drink wines young, and the wined we tasted really lacked depth and character; especially for the prices that were being asked.

The next vineyard, Bodega Sottano, was also very modern, and our host highlighted the advantages of the steel vats over the more traditional French style concrete ones. This vineyard was architect designed and pretty fancy; and as well as an excellent if traditional Malbec, provided a tasty Cabernet Sauvignon that I most certainly would have purchased if I wasn't lumbered with a backpack.

Modern Vats Good - Concrete Bad

At the penultimate vineyard, the Spanish operated Bodega Belasco de Baquedano, apart from the excellent wines, there was an aroma room, complete with tubes containing every possible odour that could be present in a wine - including bad wine (corked, mouldy ...). At the end were 6 test tubes (pun intended, sadly) where visitors could guess the odours stored in the unlabelled tubes.

Odour Room

As well here we were provided with the 4 course lunch with matching wines, which created quite the wine glass forest:

The final Bodega, Bodega Benegas, was my favourite. It is based in a 120 year old vineyard that a previous bankrupted (in the 70s) winemaker, Federico Benegas Lynch, had bought and lovingly restored, maintaining the original cellars and building and keeping much of the original equipment as museum pieces. For a change we didn't try the Malbec; instead tasting a very dry Chardonnay and an unusual pure Franc, as well as a Cabernet Franc.

Old School Concrete Vats

Para Man

What better way to follow up a day in the vineyards than by learning to fly ? Paragliding is something I've always wanted to do and finally I got my chance on my final day in Mendoza. Ultimately it was far easier and less scary than I expected, for whatever reason the only reason the only time I was nervous was on the road up; possibly due to the driver, in true Argentinian style, facing me talking animatedly while opening a pack of cigarettes and navigating the 4WD by what must just have been experience.

The Road up seen from above

As far as the actual gliding was concerned, the instructions were ridiculously simple. 'Just start running and don't stop until I say'. 'What about landing ?' I ask. 'Don't worry, I'll tell you when we get there'. So I'm running off a cliff, feel a great whoosh, and I am them suspended, running road-runner like over (very) thin air ! Once up, the views (up, down, left, right) and the sensation of freedom and flying were just sensational, and this won't be the last time I do this.

Looking Down

Looking Up

Landing, when it came, basically involved standing up as I hit the ground, two steps forward on my safety boots (sandals) and it was all over.

Mendoza and the Alta Montaña

Typical Mendozan Street

After Patagonia, it was time to visit the magic town of Mendoza, near the Andes and 1000km west of Buenos Aires. It's both an Argentina's adventure capital (Queenstown style) and wine capital, meaning there's no shortage of things for a visitor to do; but above all it's the town's laid-back personality that is the real charmer. Even though there are more than a million inhabitants, there's not the big city edge of Buenos Aires, and despite being in the middle of a desert, every street in the town is tree lined and the innovative gutters, built on the original Inca irrigation plan, act as a giant air conditioning system, cooling both the town air and (it seems) the tempers of its inhabitants.

Outdoor Air-con

I travelled here on an overnight bus from Buenos Aires with a fellow Australian from the Patagonia trip (more on Patagonia later) and despite having no accommodation organised, we quickly settled into the town's vibe and eventually found quirky over-flow accommodation in a musician's grandmother's house, barely renovated since she was a teenager, or so it seemed. The barely functional bathroom was more than adequately compensated by the peaceful garden, a real oasis given the property was on Mendoza's main bar strip.

Granny's Garden

Within another hour or so, showered and refreshed, we had the following day's activities organised and settled down for a fantastic outdoor home-made pasta, accompanied by an excellent local Malbec (Trapiche Reserve). With it's tree lined streets, mild climate and wide footpaths, Mendoza is made for outdoor dining, both dinner and lunch.

The first activity was the Alta Montaña tour, following the main highway between Chile and Argentina (RN7, which connects Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile) and climbing the stunning Andean foothills. The road was significantly upgraded in the 80s, but previously operated on a one way system (mornings West, evenings East) as it was basically a one lane (more half lane) goat track. We got to travel the most spectacular part of that route, rising up to the 4200 M mountain pass, site of a statue at the border to mark Argentinian-Chilean friendship - not always a given.

Christ @ 4200M keeps the fractious Chileans and Argentinians apart

The road has such a reputation amongst the drivers of the many tourist mini-vans here that they have developed a new hand gesture, best referred to as the shitting-oneself, formed by holding the hand that should be on the steering wheel out the window palm down, and generating droppings by opening and closing your fingers. This is gleefully produced to every passing van (there were at least 20 in the 8km half hour ascent) and some drivers have gone as far as obtaining a roll of toilet paper to wave at passing driver, in case the 'shitting-oneself' gesture was too subtle !

Give way to ascending traffic - and anyone waving toilet paper

The tour was comprehensive, with stunning views, interesting Andean villages, scenery (such a natural bridge used by the Incas, and a stone one used by the Spanish), and a view of Aconcagua, the Western hemisphere's highest mountain and a climbing mecca.

Somewhat over-rated (and touristed) Spanish Bridge

Puente del Inca

Mountain Man, previously only found at Rugby matches and beer commercials

Aconcagua - highest mountain in the world outside the Himalayas

Andean Scenery