A town of attractions

(first order of business- here are my pictures up until, but not including, Pucon)

In contrast to El Bolson, which is known as a place to go and do nothing for a few days, Pucon is known as a place where you go to do everything. This town is located under Volcan Villaricca, which is covered in snow, and is also located next to a big lake, where you can sit on the beach. There are a ton of other things to do in and around the town, including rapelling down waterfalls, horseback riding, sitting in hot springs, bike riding, and rafting slash body rafting. Of all of these things, I´ve done the rapelling, horseback riding, hot springs, and (of course) hiking the volcano.

I guess chronological order is the best way to start. Horseback riding- lots of fun... my horse´s name was Pinta, and the name of our guide was Chichi. I went with 2 friends and some other people, and we had a nice time on the way to our destination, which was an 85 m waterfall. On the way back, I got my horse going really fast and everything that I learned in childhood horseback riding lessons came back... thank goodness.

Rapelling down the waterfall was perhaps the highlight of the week for me. There were 3 waterfalls, but the third was the real attraction. It was 85 m high, and the first 4 meters was really rapelling down a wall, but then the next 40 meters was just lowering myself down a rope (I was in a harness, of course). I bounced my way down and spun around 360 degrees a few times to make sure to appreciate the view that was before my eyes. The last 40 meters I was back against a wall, and at that point I hopped around in the waterfall and danced a bit in the rainbows that were all around me. I´m not sure exactly what the words are to describe the experience... it was one of the coolest things I´ve done so far on this trip.

Hiking the volcano was pretty incredible as well. It took us maybe 5 hours to get up the volcano, but not nearly that long to come down because about half of the descent was sledding down a glacier on our butts. The view from the top of the volcano was incredible- it probably was considered a cloudy day by people in the town of Pucon, but it was not cloudy where we were because we were actually above the clouds. I felt like I was in an airplane looking down at the world from above. And the status of the volcano itself? Statistically speaking, it was supposed to erupt last year already, so it was pretty cool standing on the top looking down inside the volcano. Even though we couldn´t see the lava, we could hear it from where we were standing.

Anyway there were a lot of other things that I did this week, but I´ll stop here because this is getting a bit long. I´m off in a few hours to Santiago (just for the night, I think) and then off to Cordoba, which is back in Argentina. I´ll send an update from there, I imagine.

What a week it´s been

Hey everyone

Sorry I haven´t sent an update in a little while- my trip is totally different now than it was before. What exactly does that mean? Well the last time I sent an update was before I left El Calafate, and up until then I had mostly been hiking and seeing beautiful views and I was with a great group of guy friends. From there, I took a 30 hour busride to El Bolson where I sat on an Israeli farm for almost a week just relaxing and soaking up some sun, and now I´m in Bariloche, which is 2 hours north of El Bolson, and here has also mostly been relaxing time, though we´ve done some sight seeing also around here.

Both El Bolson and Bariloche are places unlike anything I´ve seen before. The farm in El Bolson where I stayed was designed specifically to be a home away from home for Israelis traveling in South America. How comfortable and homey was it... as soon as we got there we ordered some delicious Israeli food (my friend and I ordered one hummus, one malawach, and one shakshukah, which are three traditional dishes that are just delicious) and the staff of the farm where just the most friendly and warm people I´ve met. They just want everyone to feel at home all the time, and if I had some more time I would have stayed to work there as well. Who knows- maybe I´ll go back for a few weeks if I get a chance (you don´t get paid to work there, but you get free room and food, which is all I really need anyway haha). Actually, the farm made me think about camp because we spent most of our time lounging out on the grass- people were playing soccer or volleyball, some guitar too, and just getting to know each other, and that´s my favorite thing to do at camp so it made me miss home a little bit.

After El Bolson, we headed up to Bariloche, which is a city that´s still considered part of Patagonia but is much warmer than the places where I had been before. The city is surrounded by a lot of lakes (the area is called the Lake District), and I´ve done more sight seeing here in the last few days than we did in El Bolson. One day my friend and I hiked to the top of a viewpoint where we could see a lot of lakes in the are, then we did a 2 day road trip around 7 lakes and went to a town called San Martin de los Andes as well, and then yesterday we did a 30 km bike ride around another beautiful lake area (the same lakes that we saw from the viewpoint earlier in the week). Each place is just more beautiful than the one before, but it gives me the opportunity to have a freshness of appreciation (a term I remember learning in psych 101). Each stop along the way takes my breath away and I say a quick little thank you to God for creating such a magnificent world. Then I think about my brother and how I wish he could explain to me the geological reasons for why the world is the way it is. So I get to think a little bit about everything in the end. Lots of time for thinking down here... lots of time.

Anyway, we´re heading off to Pukon, Chile in the next few days, and there we´ll hike a volcano and do some other fun things also. Ciao, in the meantime.

A glacier and some snow too

Hello there

So it´s been a little while since I wrote an update, but that´s not because I haven´t been doing anything. In fact, quite on the contrary- I´ve been so busy (and the internet in the hostel is so slow) that I haven´t had a chance to write anything substantial until now. So here´s a quick update as to what I´ve been up to over the last week.

The four boys and me have mostly been in El Calafate, Argentina, which is the town next to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. This national park holds a major South American attraction- the Perito Moreno glacier, which is the only glacier in the world that is not shrinking in size. You wouldn´t necessarily know that by looking at it, though, because it´s constantly advancing and chunks break off on a regular basis. I guess it´s unclear how consistently the glacier cleaves off walls of ice, but while we were there we saw three whole walls fall, plus lots of other little pieces. From what I understand from the other Israelis who have been there, that´s an unusually high amount of collapses to witness, so we must have chosen the right rainy, yucky morning to wake up at 5 and go see the glacier.

The other main thing that my friends and I have done in the last few days was a 3 day hike to see the Fitz Roy, which is in a town called El Chalten. This trek is about 2 hours north of El Calafate, and can be done as a day trip, with one night, or more. We, of course, chose to hike more than the average backpacker does, but we got stuck in some pretty crummy weather as well. The Fitz Roy is also a series of towers (torres), like the Torres del Paine, but in my opinion these towers are more impressive. As usual, when I get a chance to upload some pictures, I will, and then you can see the difference between the two. Anyway, so we hiked some other trails besides for just the one to the Fitz Roy, but the second day we stayed in our tents all day because it was rainy and windy and cold, and when we woke up this morning there was snow all around us. Pretty crazy, but the Fitz Roy looked beautiful, once the clouds cleared.

The news on the social front is that the boys and I are parting ways, at least for now. They´re going off to road trip up Ruta 40 (part of Che Guevara´s path in the Motorcycle Diaries), and I´m going to a farm in El Bolson to chill out for a few days with a new friend who I made along the way. Who knows what will be from here, but as I like to say, it´s all part of the adventure.

Now, if I were writing a fictional book based on this trip, this would be the end of Part I of the journey. At this point, you would put down the book (which up until now has been a page turner and have you haven´t put it down since you started reading), you´d take a bathroom break, maybe grab something to eat, and start reading about what happens next, in Part II. I´m not sure yet what Part II holds for me, but as soon as I figure it out, I´ll post and let you all know.

Long post, but I had to make up from some lost time. I´ll make sure to update again soon.