Brett's Southern Crossing

A Bamboo Forest in Plaza Mayor

Medellin was a surprise and turns out to be my favorite big city I’ve visited.  The Colombian economy has been growing really rapidly over the past 10 years, and Medellin has grown rapidly as well.  It may be the cleanest most modern city I’ve ever seen, the weather is perfect and stays mostly the same year-round (leading to the nickname City of Eternal Spring), there are tons of good bars and restaurants, amazing ripe fruit is sold by street vendors everywhere for 50 cents per large cup, beautiful girls are never out of sight, and a new modern metro system makes getting around easy.  The perfect weather and relaxed atmosphere made me feel like I could have just dropped my pack there and never left.

Quiet Residential Street in El Poblado

I stayed at a hostel called Black Sheep, which is well run and in great shape.  There was a really fun group of people there during the time I stayed which can make a huge difference in how much I enjoy a place.  The hostel is in an upscale neighborhood called El Poblado.  I loved the area because it has a narrow river that runs down one of the main roads and the side streets have grass, trees, and sometimes even lawns.  Most big cities when you think about it are completely paved over, and it’s amazing how much a bit of grass can do to make a neighborhood feel like the kind of place you’d enjoy living.

The central city areas are designed nicely as well.  I could tell they really put a lot of thought into architecting good common spaces, with lots of plazas and mixed-use buildings.  Many places in the city have small bamboo forests with paths and benches, which are great places to relax in the shade or eat lunch.  There’s almost a zen feeling in some places!

A Butterfly Enjoys the Flowers in the Botanic Gardens

A few highlights that stood out to me were the Botanical Gardens, the cable cars, and a day trip to Guatapé.  The botanic gardens are the best I’ve seen, they’re free, and they include a jungle walk, butterfly house, and an orchid area that is covered by a massive 50-60 foot high sculpture that provides shelter to crowds for concerts and other live events.  The cable cars go up into the hills and have great views of the valley the city is built in.  They’re not the typical pricey tourist cable cars, instead they are functional part of the metro system and you can transfer from the metro trains.  Some of the poorer neighborhoods are built on the tough terrain of the hills, and the cable car stations serve these areas.  I really enjoyed the neighborhood at the top station of the cable car.  It had winding streets packed with small food stalls and one-table street bars, tons of children playing, and some great viewpoints.

Guatapé

Guatapé is a lush green area full of lakes (artificially formed by a dam).  It has an attractive town brightly painted and with storefronts covered in frescoes, as well as a massive rock that you can climb almost 1000 steps to summit and enjoy the view.  Definitely good for a day trip.

Paraguay’s capital, Asunción was my last stop before moving on to Colombia.  For a capital city it seemed really relaxed, but I suppose that’s because it’s one of the smallest capitals in South America and kind of a forgotten place when it comes to tourism.  I was glad to finally be able to stay in a hostel, both because it’s cheaper and because the staff at hostels are used to giving advice to backpackers.

The Black Cat Hostel is the only hostel in all of Paraguay, and it’s less than a year old.  I could tell that the staff (who I think were also the owners) were really proud of being on the frontier of backpacker tourism in Paraguay, and I don’t think I’ve ever stayed somewhere that was more helpful.  They put together a huge customized map of places to go and see, and seemed to enjoy socializing with the guests.

Asunción itself has all the usual capital city sites – government buildings and museums.  One of the more interesting places to see is the Panteón de Los Héroes, a monument to Paraguay’s war heroes located in the main plaza.  An honor guard in full dress uniform stands guard, and inside are statues of several Presidents and war heroes (for example, Mariscal Estigarribia, who just about everything in Paraguay seems to be named after).  The walls are covered with hundreds of bronze plaques, given as tributes to Paraguay’s heroes from government, civilian, and military organizations throughout the world.  I was able to locate several from branches of the US Government and Military.

Tomb of the Unknown Child Soldier on the left

The remains of some of the heroes and Presidents can be viewed in a circular area about 15 feet below floor level.  Also included are the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Tomb of the Unknown Child Soldier.  During the 1865-1870 Paraguay was at war with Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil (the War of the Triple Alliance). 60%-70% of the population was killed and the male population was reduced to approximately 28,000, which resulted in boys as young as 12 being conscripted to fight before the Paraguayan military surrendered.  In the 20th century, Paraguay and Bolivia went to war over the Chaco desert region which was rumored to have oil reserves.  Foreign oil companies funded both sides of the war, though I’m not sure if any oil was ever found.  Amazingly, Paraguay has only been a democracy since 1993, so as you can imagine some of the government institutions are still very young.

Brahman Cows, showing off their ribbons in the upper right corner

While I was there Asunción was also having one of it’s biggest annual events, the 2010 Expo.  The bulk of the expo has become an attraction for families, like a state fair, with huge booths run by cell phone companies, auto companies, and retail brands.  In the back are the traditional rural displays, including farm equipment and livestock.  I couldn’t help but wonder why there were only convention girls in the front of the fair…if booth babes can sell cell phones why can’t they sell sheep and genetically engineering animal semen?

Asunción has a number of other nearby places to visit, sometimes called the Central Circuit.  It includes lakes, islands, hikes, etc.  This is where I finally decided I should leave Paraguay, despite there being a lot more there that I want to do.  So many of the things to do seem best suited to summer, and I was visiting in winter.  I had been wearing thermal underwear and all my layers for over a week and was still constantly cold, and hot showers are a rarity.  I decided to return to see more of Asunción, the Pantanal, and the Chaco another time when I either had appropriate clothes or during the summer.

Since it was cold, I decided to go somewhere warm and Colombia seemed like a great idea.  I couldn’t find any cheap international fares to anywhere from Asunción, which is only served by a few international carriers so I grit my teeth and paid quite a bit to fly to Medellin.

Encarnación is located in the far south of Paraguay, just across the border from Posadas, Argentina.  Some of the earliest European settlement of this region was done by Jesuit missionaries, who built several dozen communities in the area.  Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil all have a good number of sites to visit in this area.  When the Spanish took over, the Jesuits were forced to leave, but the ruins of the cities they built are well preserved and interesting to visit.  I was a bit amazed by how intact the sites are, since on my previous trips to Peru most of the Incan sites had been stripped down and the stones used in Catholic cathedrals in the Spanish colonial towns there.

In Paraguay, the most famous site is called Trinidad and is easy to visit on a local bus.  The entrance ticket is valid for two other sites as well, and an occasional minibus for locals can give a ride from the service station on the main route to Jesus, where another good ruin site is located.  I didn’t take advantage, but guides are available at the entrances for a few dollars.

Crossing the Punte de Amistad bridge from Brazil to Uruguay (near Iguazu Falls) puts you right in the heart of Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este.  It’s crazy here, with hordes of people, thousands of shops packed with cheap and possibly contraband goods, portable grills crammed with grilled meats, ankle deep trash, and insane traffic.  The whole place reminded me a bit of a modern-day town like the pirate town in Pirates of the Caribbean (where Johnny Depp gets slapped by all the women).

The town is known throughout South America as the place to go to buy cheap electronics and imported goods, but they sell just about everything you could imagine.  Paraguay isn’t visited by backpackers much and so there’s no hostels in the city.  I ended up staying at a German owned hotel (Hotel Austria).  I often saw the family working in the hotel, including their kids, and was kind of intrigued as to what originally would have led them to move to this town of all places (though I didn’t ask).

Only Argentina really controls their border, Paraguay and Brazil allow people to pass in and out without stopping them.  My bus raced past the border to the bus terminal, so I had to find my way back to the immigrations office near the bridge to get stamped in (as a US Citizen I had to apply for a visa in advance in Buenos Aires).  The receptionist in the hotel told me it was dangerous to walk there after dark, so I skipped it the first night.  The second day I intended to go during daylight, but a mix-up with the bus routes returned me to town way later than I had planned and it was after dark again.

My strategy for potentially being mugged is to take enough money with me to satisfy a mugger, but nothing else.  I figure you don’t want to end up with someone snarling “that’s all you’ve got?!” and you also don’t want to lose a camera or anything else valuable.  I ended up having no trouble, but the main route back to the bridge was pretty creepy.  During the day it’s crammed with vendors, but as soon as the sun sets the shops shut thick steel shutters over the windows and doors and the street stalls are packed up and hauled away.  What’s left is incredible amounts of trash, homeless and crazy people burning it in makeshift campfires, and people lurking out of the bushes.  The whole place smells like pee.  Definitely somewhere I would not return, but I felt like I had to legally enter the country at some point…

The most intriguing part of the area to me for tourism was the Itapu Binacional, a massive hydroelectric dam that produces more power than any dam in the world.  It’s considered one of the 7 modern wonders of the world and provides 90% of Paraguay’s power and 19% of Brazil’s power.  On the Paraguayan side they offer free tours.  Transit to the dam is a bit complicated, but I eventually found that I could just take a bus to Hernandarias and jump off when the bus turned off the main highway, walking the rest of the way.  Unfortunately the technical tour which includes a tour inside the dam, power generation facility, turbines, and control room requires a week advance notice to request.  Instead I did the “Panoramic Tour” which is a quick 30 minute drive around the dam in a bus and was a big disappointment.

During the rainy season, more water flow through the spillway than all of Iguazu Falls

The dam flooded a huge area and destroyed a lot of the native forest, including a set of falls as impressive as Iguazu in Brazil.  I did lots of paperwork and got permission to visit one of the few remaining forest preserves, called Refugio Tati Yupi.  After taking another bus to Hernandarias, I had to take a taxi the rest of the way to the park.  I had two sets of papers signed by the park director, which the shotgun-toting guards at the gate near the road insisted on seeing.  They initially said that taxis weren’t allowed inside, but the driver sweet-talked them and we were allowed through.  A few kilometers down the road we came to a second set of shotgun-toting guards, who needed my second copy of papers.  I was a bit confused by all the security, wondering if trees were under siege in Paraguay or something.  I was surprised to find it almost like a summer camp near the lake, with picnic tables, a football pitch, and visitors center.

After spending the day hiking around the forest I was able to see capibaras, lots of tropical birds, armadillos, and anteaters.  It’s a shame, but many species are threatened or endangered now.  Near the end of the day, one of the guards had tracked down some monkeys and had me follow him out to them.  We shucked and threw out some maize, and after a while one of the monkeys ventured down to grab an ear.  They’re very nervous, apparently because people will hunt them.

Capibaras are fortunately not threatened, and they’re one of my favorite South American animals.  They’re basically a rodent of unusual size and can weigh up to 250 pounds!

I visited Uruguay twice, the first time was in February as a weekend trip between my first and second month of class (and well before I started traveling through Argentina and Chile).  This was the height of summer, and so myself and a few classmates went to Punta del Diablo to visit the beach.

Buquebus Ferry

A visit to Buenos Aires can easily include a visit to Uruguay, you just need to take a 1 hour ferry from downtown across the river.  There are very few departures to the capital city of Montevideo (which takes several hours), instead it’s common to take the 1-hour fast-ferry to Colonia del Sacramento and then connect on a 3-hour bus.  Most people are happy to do this, since Colonia is a nice place to visit.  Most people would probably use clichéd terms like picturesque, quaint, or sleepy.  Many people stop to enjoy a restaurant, or stay the night in a bed and breakfast and zoom around the town on cheap rented scooters (if the 10 minute walk from one end to the other sounds too taxing).  It’s a small town with an interesting historic quarter, which includes some original structures from the 1700s.  A couple of hours is probably all that’s really needed here though.

Historic Colonia

East of Montevideo is Punta del Este, the famous beach town that attracts South America’s rich and famous.  Steven, Nicki, Shelby and I decided to go farther east, almost to the border with Brazil to a beach town called Punta del Diablo.  This place was amazing, and exactly what what a small little beach down to be: a patchwork of cabanas, cabins, and houses; stretches of bright white sand with the ocean rolling in; a few outdoor bars with raeggetone bands playing at night; decaying fishing boats winched up onto the sand; dirt streets with stray dogs and dune buggies roaming around; and an isolated feel despite the crowds of vacationers.

Boats, buggies, sand, sun, beer....what more could you want?

When we visited it was the height of vacation season for Argentina and Uruguay, and this town of 500 fisherman that just recently scored its first ATM was packed with 15,000 visitors clutching their thermoses and maté gourds.  Still, it seemed like there was plenty of beach available and we took full advantage of the ocean and the sun, in the end getting terrible sunburns after falling asleep on the beach.

My next trip was very different.  I wanted to visit Montevideo before I left, so I returned in May.  By this time it was cold, rainy, and a bit miserable overall.  Montevideo is an oddly dead city on the weekends, but interesting to see.  I walked through the downtown area and then out to the Rambla, a path that skirts the coast and the various beaches of Montevideo out to the suburbs.  I managed to bring two cameras with dead batteries, so below I present my only photo of Montevideo:

The other main thing people tend to do in Uruguay is visit a cattle estancia (ranch), for some country life and good steak dinners.  Maybe I’ll have time on my next visit…

Iguazu Falls, dreary in the rain

Iguazu Falls is taller and wider than Niagara and is made up of almost 200 individual cascades in a lush green area tucked between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.  On the Argentine side, visiting the falls takes an entire day for hiking the various trails and taking boat tours to various locations.  It was a lot of fun, which was a bit surprising because it was raining all day and I spent almost 10 hours soaking wet!

The town of Puerto Iguazu is small but pleasant.  I think that Foz do Iguacu on the Brazilian side is larger, but I didn’t have a visa to visit so I didn’t go (although in reality, Argentina is the only one of the three countries that bothers stopping people at the border).

It’s definitely worth visiting, but consider flying – Buenos Aires is 18 hours on the bus.  I did actually get an amazing night of sleep on this journey by buying a suite-class lie-flat seat.

My last couple weeks in Buenos Aires I finally got around to doing a bit of sightseeing.  You really only need to spend 3-4 days in the cities to see most of the tourist sights, although it’s the kind of place you could easily stay for ages just to enjoy walking the neighborhoods, eating in great restaurants, relaxing in cafes, and going to special events.

In no particular order, here are the touristy things I thought were worth seeing:

Recoleta Cemetery

Where the rich and famous show off by building elaborate mausoleums.  Many of Argentina’s famous politicians and wealthy families are buried here, and it’s still a functioning cemetery where the modern-day elite aspire to rub their deceased shoulders with the likes of Evita.  The cemetery is huge and has the feel of a city, with a network of streets weaving through hundreds of mausoleums.  Most are ornate and in good repair, but some are really degraded.  I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it seems you (or your family) somehow need to keep paying for maintenance.  Some tombs were damaged and in a really unfortunate state considering there were still coffins inside.  Also, in case you were considering it putting a skylight in your mausoleum is not something I would recommend.

La Boca

Possibly Buenos Aires’ most touristy place, this famous neighborhood is known for its brightly painted buildings, art museums, and its association with tango.  There’s one street several blocks long packed with tango-themed cafes and restaurants with performers who will dance together and then drag tourists on stage to give tango a try.  If you’re interested in tango, it’s possible to take classes in many places in the city.  Attending a milonga (community tango dance) is another good option – you can watch lots of people dancing with their partners, and professors often give performances and demonstrations.  There’s something really cool about seeing aging couples dancing together dressed to the 9s.  Considering the dramatic events of the last 40-50 years in Argentina, it’s like watching a bit of history.

Downtown

There is a solid cluster of photo-ops in downtown Buenos Aires, including Avenida 9 de Julio (a massive 18-lane avenue), the Obelisk, Casa Rosada (the Rose House, where the President lives.  Tours available in Spanish), Plaza de Mayo, Teatro Colon (one of the world’s great opera houses, newly restored) and the main plaza surrounded by opulent government buildings.

Puerto Madero

This port was constructed for many years, only to be deemed too small once it was finished.  The area was instead converted into an upscale place with fancy restaurants, cafes, ice cream shops, waterfront promenades, condos, and a museum on a retired naval ship.

San Telmo

A bit sketchy at night, but packed with great restaurants, bars, and clubs.  During the day on Sundays there’s a huge antiques fair in Plaza Defensa, and at night the plaza is filled with tables and chairs for an outdoor bar.  One of the city’s most popular neighborhoods.

Palermo

The definition of Palermo has crept over the years to become an area so large it now has to be subdivided into Palermo Viejo, Palermo SoHo, Palermo Hollywood, Palermo Chico, and a few others that I’m sure I’ve forgotten!  The neighborhoods are filled with cafes, restaurants, and boutique shops, but this is still primarily a residential area and is a great way to see what a typical nice Porteño neighborhood is like.  Don’t miss a night in the outdoor bars near Plaza Serrano followed by dinner at any of the nearby parillas (Argentine grill restaurants).  Order a parillada to share among the table; they’ll deliver a massive grill filled with coals and heaped with chorizo (sausage), morcilla (black sausage), vacio (steak), costillas (ribs, usually beef), and perhaps some exotic bits like the intestines or even tripe.  It’s a great value, delicious, and about as Argentina as food gets!

Cafes and Bookshops

Buenos Aires has lots of cafes and bookshops that stand out.  El Ateneo Grand Splendid is an amazing bookshop set in a restored old theater.  Las Violetas is an ornate old-school cafe with waiters in white bow ties.  They serve absolutely massive hamburgers, and if you go with a group you can order a picada platter crammed with a variety of sandwiches.  They also have a bakery with dozens of different types of cakes and candies.  Las Violetas isn’t near much of anything else on the tourist circuit, but you can go there on the A-line subway, which is an interesting experience itself.  The A-line was the first metro in Latin America and many of the trains still running on this line are rickety antiques with wood-paneled interiors and manually operated doors.  Classica y Moderna is another neat bookshop that is a good example of a typical city bookstore.  It’s got a nice cafe up front and tall racks of books crammed in the rear.  Cafe Tortoni is classic cafe downtown, known best for its history of having famous Argentina writers, artists, and politicians among its clientele.  For Example, Luis Borges, Carlos Gardel, and Alfonsina Storni.

And More

Of course there’s plenty of other options too.  A futbol match, going to the horse races at the hipodromo, taking a train to the river delta in Tigre, going to a milonga (tango dance), etc.  And remember that a typical weekend night out is dinner from 11pm-1am, drinks for a few hours, then a club til dawn!

Video Screen in Parque San Martin

One of the cool parts of staying in Buenos Aires for so long was the chance to spend an entire World Cup in a cities with a team in strong contention to win.  I had been looking forward to it for months, and though Argentina didn’t go all the way it was still pretty nice.

Most of the Argentina world cup matches I watched in a local restobar near my apartment, and I watched USA matches and quite a few other matches in my favorite cafe in Las Cañitas.  The Argentines seemed excited if not truly pumped for the matches I saw, although I really only watched the group matches in the restobar.  So there wasn’t too much on the line.

I went to Uruguay for a weekend partway through the cup, and got two see Uruguay defeat South Korea to make it to the final 8.  The last time they had advanced so far was 1970, and I have to say they were really worked up for their knockout round match.  I watched the match in a small restaurant in a little town called Colonia de Sacramento and after they won tons of Uruguayans were zooming up and down the streets on motorcycles towing huge flags and setting off fireworks.  The news was live for hours showing crowds celebrating in the streets of Montevideo.  The next day I went to Montevideo to see Argentina defeat Mexico, and was interested to see that the Uruguayans were not supporting their neighbors!

The last match I saw was Argentina vs Germany.  All the matches had been screened on massive video boards downtown in San Martin Park.  By this time I was out of my apartment and living in a hostel, so I went with 4 English girls in my hostel to see the match.  Unfortunately Argentina was pretty much dominated by Germany so it was more of a funeral than the party I was hoping for.

After seeing Argentina dominated we were able to look very serious with this guard at the Presidential Mansion

All in all it was great to see matches in two countries who were really into the cup.  I know that in a lot of cases schools and businesses closed, and an Argentine friend told me her office had brought in TVs and popcorn makers for the staff to enjoy.  I learned a lot about the game and know quite a bit about the players now as well.

Argentina, along with several other South American countries, are celebrating their 200th anniversaries this year.  As Napoleon caused chaos in Europe, most of South America took advantage of the situation to declare independence from Spain, or at least begin the process.  In Buenos Aires there was a week of celebrations culminating in a huge parade down Avenida 9 de Julio.  In Argentina’s case, while July 9th is independence day they celebrate the nation’s birthday a little earlier in May, since the first local government was formed in May of 1810 (independence wasn’t declared until 1816).

In true Argentine fashion, the parade started well after dark at 9pm.  The floats were really well done and covered all of the major events of Argentine history including the indigenous peoples, wars of independence, political upheaval, military dictatorship, Malvinas/Falkland Islands war, the Madres y Abuelos de Plaza de Mayo, Peronism, the industrial revolution, democracy, and more.  I took a video, which was difficult since with 3 million people attending the parade it was kind of a mosh pit just to stay in my spot!

A great photo album of the festivities can be found here.

Mendoza has just about everything going for it:  Easy to get to from both Buenos Aires and Santiago, a great place to ski, surrounded by mountains (most famously Aconcogua, the higher mountain in the Americas), a really pleasant and easygoing town full of cafes and restaurants, and maybe most famously a large part of Argentina’s wine country.

I hope I can return someday, because my few days there barely scratched the surface.  It was too early for ski season, and I was just about mountained-out by this time.  So I spent 2 days enjoying the cafes and parks in the city, and a day doing the typical tourist activity of drunkenly riding bikes between wineries.

Gulp!

What made this stop great was my hostel, Hostel Lao.  It was named Best Hostel in Latin America last year, and I can see why.  It’s in a great spot, the staff are really helpful, and it has bathrooms as nice as a downtown condo.  It’s also got a nice little courtyard with hammocks and chairs.  But the best part was that they set up a great bike tour for me and a few other people in our hostel.  Most people go with a big bike company in the Maipu area, which is crowded with tourists and the wineries have high fees for entrance.  Hostel Lao set us up with a small family company called Baccus, and they in turn set up appointments at 3 wineries in a different suburb of Mendoza.  It seemed to me that we were the only ones visiting these wineries all day, and it was a nice way to do it since we didn’t feel rushed and the staff seemed happy to give some personal attention.  The last winery was an organic winery owned by a small family, and we spent at least an hour talking with the owner and vintner.  This was especially nice since she could describe all the ins and outs of adding a bit of a certain grape for color and other technical details of the process.  Her wine is mostly exported to the USA, so I feel a bit like I’ve got my own private bodega in Argentina I can shop from when I get home.