Ephemerica

After being separated from our trusty touring bikes for a couple of months, we decided to bring them down to Portland for some surgery. We decided that we wanted to convert our bikes into Xtracycles. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking—you already have bikes capable of hauling a bunch of stuff, why do you need Xtracycles? Well, first of all, one of the things that we still regularly use a car for in our normal lives is going to the grocery store. Personally, I find hauling panniers into the store to do shopping a big pain in the rear. With the Xtracycles, I can just bring in my (much easier to carry) cloth bags, load them in the store, and then set them directly into the carrier. Not to mention I’m pretty sure that my capacity with the Xtracycle is much more than I could get into front and rear panniers. Heck, I could buy a couple of kids at the grocery store and take them home too!

While I had the bikes apart, I took the opportunity to clean and replace a bunch of stuff that should have been replaced long ago, like the rear cassettes and Cindy’s bent rear derailleur. Now they feel like brand new bikes! I’ve ridden mine around a little bit, and once you get used to the long wheelbase (and the larger turning radius), it’s actually a nice ride. I think mine actually rides better when it’s loaded down with stuff. I do have to say though, after going so many months with a crap kickstand that was practically bent in half and barely worked, that I LOVE the heavy-duty Xtracycle kickstand, and also the fact that it doesn’t get in the way of the pedals!

With any luck, these bikes will continue to be our workhorses for many years to come…

Posted by Matthew on August 21st, 2008 | Filed under: General | No Comments »

We finally posted another round of photos and videos from our time in Buenos Aires and the surrounding areas, including San Antonio de Areco, Iguazu Falls, Corrientes, Resistencia, Cordoba and Alta Gracia.

Photos are in the photo gallery.

The most recent videos are:

1. A short clip from the tango show we went to at El Querandi in Buenos Aires.
2. A boot-stomping gaucho dance from our visit to La Cinacina estancia in San Antonio de Areco.
3. A short clip showing the awesome power of the Garganta del Diablo in Iguazu Falls.
4. A fountain in Cordoba performing a “water dance” to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

Hope you enjoy them!

Here’s a fun little before & after for you:

Before (March 2007)

After (April 2008)

Those flowers have definitely seen better days…

Posted by Matthew on June 28th, 2008 | Filed under: Movies, Argentina | No Comments »

OK, Seattle isn’t exactly the same as when we left. But a lot of things are, including the Summer Solstice Parade at the annual Fremont Fair—as evidenced by the picture above. In any case, we made it home safe, albeit late due to delays on both of our flights. It has been great getting to see our long lost friends, and we’ll get to see my long lost family when we go to Portland this evening.

Posted by Matthew on June 22nd, 2008 | Filed under: General | No Comments »

We’re wrapping up our time in Argentina, and getting ready to come home this week. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re filled with feelings of both excitement to return and dread of the 15 hrs of flying we have ahead of us. But after our recent bus adventures, we are at least comforted by the fact that we’ll be able to read on the plane (we both get sick when we read in the car).

Northeast Argentina was really the one part of the country that we hadn’t explored very much, so we decided to take a week and a half and do a whirlwind bus tour of the area. Having finished it, we have a bit more of a sense for what the non-biking tourist endures when they travel, and it definitely confirmed our opinion that we MUCH prefer to travel by bike.

We started with a 16-hour bus ride from Buenos Aires all the way up to the most northeastern corner of Argentina to see the spectacle of Iguazu Falls. Personally, I’m not a huge waterfall fan—I think mostly just because I’ve seen too many small lame ones touted as being tourist sites (just because water falls off a cliff doesn’t mean you should go see it!). But seeing Iguazu Falls may have spoiled me for all future waterfalls. It’s not really a single waterfall, but is actually a series of 275 waterfalls over 2.7 kilometers! The park is set up with catwalks everywhere so you can walk along both the top and bottom of the falls. They also have boat rides you can take that get you really close to the bottom of the falls—so close that they have to give you a dry bag to put your camera and shoes in. The boat ride is only 15 min or so, but you get absolutely soaking wet. Thankfully, there was some sun the day we were there (and we wore our quick-dry clothes), so we were able to dry out as we continued to walk through the park.

The last thing we did was take the train inside the park to the “Garganta del Diablo” (Devil’s Throat) part of the falls. All I can say is that this part was very aptly named. The falls here are U-shaped, and the Iguazu river dumps so much water over the edge here that the bottom of the falls are completely obscured by the mist of the crashing water…I can imagine how the first people who saw this must have thought that the Earth was opening up to swallow them. At the train station, we encountered another devilish part of the park—the coati. These small raccoon-like critters have unfortunately learned that the thousands of tourists who visit the national park every year are an easy mark for getting food, and they go about it in a very aggressive manner. Despite the warning signs everywhere, we saw coatis grab food from backpacks that were on the ground, and they even grabbed food right out of people’s hands!

After we finished seeing the Argentine side of the falls, we had wanted to see the Brazilian side as well (the Iguazu river forms part of the border between the two countries). Our guidebooks said that you typically didn’t need visas to visit Brazil (or Paraguay, also in the vicinity) if you were just going to day-trip. But the tour agency we wanted to book with told us that we DID need visas, so we decided that seeing the Argentine side of the falls was sufficient. We’ll be posting pictures soon!

Our trip continued with seeing some of the Jesuit missions that are still here from when the Jesuits came to the area in the 16th-17th centuries. One of the highlights was San Ignacio Mini, which is one of the most complete/most restored ruins of the Misiones province. It was an interesting mix of the evangelism/Catholicism of the Jesuits and the Guarani, the main indigenous tribe in the region. With the exception of the Jesuit motifs on the front of some of the buildings, the stonework of the buildings and the layout of the ruins was very much like we have seen in other indigenous ruins throughout South America. This probably reflects what our tour guides told us, which is that the Jesuits, among all the Spanish groups that came to colonize the Americas, actually aimed for a merging of Catholic and indiginous culture, rather than the subjugation employed by other expeditions.

From there it was on to Cordoba, one of Argentina’s oldest cities, which served as a capital of sorts for the Jesuits in the area. As such, there are a lot of buildings left by the Jesuits in the historic center of town, including Argentina’s oldest university, many beautiful cathedrals, and an underground crypt that was only re-discovered in 1989! We also took a side trip to the nearby town of Alta Gracia, which is famous for yet another Jesuit estancia, as well as being former home to Che Guevara, Argentina’s revolutionary hero (well, he didn’t lead a revolution here, but you know what I mean). We had been told that the Casa de Che museum might be closed in preparation for what would have been his 80th birthday this month, but luckily for us it was open. We were surprised to learn there that before Che made his famous motorcycle trip immortalized in “The Motorcycle Diaries”, that he made a trip through central Argentina by bicycle as well! Obviously riding through Argentina by bicycle is a sign of impending greatness…

Another bit of luck that we’ve had is with the roads on this bus trip. In case you haven’t heard, farmers in Argentina have been periodically blocking the roads to protest taxes on their exports. Usually passenger buses are allowed through the blocks, but fuel trucks have not been allowed through, meaning that the long-distance passenger bus lines have had to reduce their services accordingly. Without too much planning on our part, I think that serendipitously we managed to get into Cordoba when the roads were open, the roads were closed while we were there, and they re-opened in time for us to return to Buenos Aires.

One of the things that brought us back to Buenos Aires was that I had one last football match to attend—a qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup between Argentina and Ecuador (pictured above). Argentina played really poorly and barely squeaked out with a tie, having scored in the very last minute of the match. Argentina is an amazing team on paper, with an overabundance of talent, and they should have no trouble qualifying for the World Cup finals in South Africa. Nevertheless, they still have a lot of work ahead of them to gel together as a cohesive unit. The local press is having fainting spells and hoping they can perform better this Wednesday when they travel to Brazil for another qualifying match.

Well, the bikes are boxed, the cab has been reserved, and all we have to do is a little more shopping and figure out how the heck we’re going to get all of our stuff into our bags, and then it’s USA, here we come.

Posted by Matthew on June 16th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina | No Comments »

One of first priorities when we arrived in Buenos Aires was to buy jeans. We had been wearing quick-dry travel pants exclusively for over a year and were excited to feel a bit less like travelers. Once we were happily wearing jeans, we set out to explore the city.

The Boca Juniors soccer match that Matt mentioned in the last post exceeded our expectations for out-of-control fans and good soccer. We opted to join a tour group to the game so that we would feel more comfortable sitting in the general admission (the wild side), which the guidebooks tell you not to do alone. The game started with an amazing amount of confetti, balloons and streams thrown down to the field from the highest seats in the stadium. (We didn’t bring our camera, but you can see some pics here, here and here.) I was happy that the home team (Boca) won so that we would have to deal only with happy fans! The opposing fans (for River) were seated in the tier above us and were peeing over the edge onto the Boca fans below! We were happy to be sitting where they couldn’t reach us. The stadium security also didn’t let any Boca fans leave the seating area until all the River fans had left the stadium after the game.

We decided to take some more Spanish classes while we are here in order to solidify our progress. We speak English to each other too much to have become fluent, but we are both doing pretty well. The classes have been good and we have both improved mucho!

The highlight of our time here so far was a week-long visit from Jenn, all the way from NYC. We saved most of our big sightseeing for her and we had a great time. We started right after Jenn arrived on Saturday, first visiting Recoleta Cemetary (which houses Evita, as well as some fantastic tombs and scupltures) and the crafts fair there. Then on Sunday we explored the antiques and crafts in San Telmo, and watched tango on the streets while exploring the crafts fair in La Boca. We spent several days just wandering around town visiting the different neighborhoods, visiting museums and seeing the important government buildings in town. We caught some live rock music one night and a dinner and tango show another night. We also had the most relaxed wine tasting in a little boutique wine store. The tasting included a giant tray of meats and cheeses, as well as four different wines with as many refills as we wanted. We were there for several hours and finished one of the bottles in addition to one or two glasses each of the others. Of course, the store knew exactly what it was doing and we purchased several bottles to take home.

Jenn and I are friends after sharing adjoining lab benches in the Nathanson Lab, so we made it a real lab reunion when Juan, another former member of the Nathanson Lab, invited us to visit his lab here in Buenos Aires. We didn’t get to help with any experiments, but we got glimpse into the world of science here. After the lab tour, we all went out for dinner and had a fun time catching up.

Since Jenn lives in NYC and is used to big cities, she wanted to experience a bit of the country life of Argentina. So, we went to nearby San Antonio de Acero, home of the Gaucho. We visited a couple museums of Gaucho culture and learned about their tradition of making silver jewelry, belt buckles and knives. We browsed leather and silver shops and generally enjoyed the quietness of the town (well, Matt and Jenn did, I was feeling a bit sick and spent alot of time sleeping.) On the second day, we headed to a nearby Estancia (kinda like a ranch) for a “Gaucho Party.” We wandered around the grounds a bit waiting for all the day-trippers from Buenos Aires to show up, and then joined in on a short horseback ride. The main activities of the day started with a giant asado lunch, featuring a ton of meat and a few salads. After lunch, there was a show with music and dancing traditional of the Gauchos, including a fun dancing duel. Then we headed outside to watch some Gaucho games. The point of the game was to use a stick to snatch a small ring dangling from a string. Can you picture it? Put the stick through the ring, not entirely easy because the ring is fairly small and dangling from a string…and because you are at rushing towards said ring at full gallop on your horse. The Gauchos were pretty talented and managed to get the ring at least half the time. Unfortunately, unlike with the music and dancing, they didn’t allow crowd participation.

The other most important part of Jenn’s visit (for us at least) was to make sure she ate all of our favorite treats. We had alfajores, several kinds of empanadas, milanesa (we cooked some too), dulce de leche, and lots and lots of meat in different styles and cuts. Oh, and hot chocolate with churros and several argentine wines and beers.

We have one week more in Buenos Aires. Then we head out on a short bit of bus travel before coming back to the city for a final soccer match and our flight home.

Posted by cindy on May 28th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina | 1 Comment »

…is June 18. That is, assuming we make our connecting flight in D.C., since we have < 2 hr layover. And we're flying into Seattle. Since I finally was able to unload sell my mildew-ridden, mouse-infested (but highly fuel economical) car to my friend Bob, we are going to pick up Cindy’s car in Seattle before heading down to the folks’ house in Portland.

Other than that, not much else to report except we are getting acquainted with Buenos Aires. And going to some soccer matches, including the Boca vs. River (a so-called “superclasico”) match this Sunday. To overstate the importance whenever these two Buenos Aires teams play is simply not possible. Think Red Sox vs. Yankees, except turned up to 11. Hopefully the game will not disappoint!

Posted by Matthew on May 1st, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina | No Comments »

It’s been a while, so we put up a bunch of photos here. Enjoy!

Posted by Matthew on April 23rd, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | No Comments »

First of all, we finally arrived in Ushuaia yesterday! Woohoo!!! Now for how we got here…

We spent a couple of days in Punta Arenas resting and waiting for Cindy’s bike to be repaired. Punta Arenas has a nice downtown area, with a couple of museums, the best of which was the former mansion of a sheep rancher, which is now open to the public. The museum featured the original furnishings of the house, as well as exhibits on the history of Southern Patagonia. We also visited the famous large cemetery in town, which has everything from small graves (think high-rise projects for dead people) to large mausoleums. Finally, we picked up Cindy’s bike and then early the next day, loaded up the bikes and rode out to the ferry terminal.

We had nice weather for crossing the Strait of Magellan, although by the end of the 2.5 hr ride, we were both wishing that we had taken some anti-seasick meds. Since the boat didn’t arrive until after 12 pm, we decided rather than hit the road right away, we would spend the night in the town of Porvenir. Porvenir is supposed to be a cute, sleepy town—and it is, but on Sundays, it’s a little too sleepy. We couldn’t find much to eat other than a few empanadas, bread and cheese we bought from a panaderia. The next day we headed west toward the Argentine half of Tierra del Fuego. Although we were traveling on ripio, the road was quite good. And of course, we had GREAT tailwinds the whole way. On top of it all, we were spurred on by the knowledge that we only had two more days of riding on ripio, and the rest of the road to Ushuaia was paved. Our first day out of Porvenir, we were treated to beautiful views along the shore of Bahia Inutil (Useless Bay). Luckily, when it came time for us to camp, we found a small empty shelter along the side of the road where we could get some protection from the wind. The next day was a short day, crossing over into Argentina and then staying the night in San Sebastian.

From San Sebastian, we rode to Rio Grande, which is the largest town on the Argentinian part of the island. Although we were no longer traveling directly with the wind, we still had pretty good winds for most of the day. We were lucky enough to have a place to stay in Rio Grande—our Couchsurfing friend Mariana that we met in Costa Rica grew up in Rio Grande, and her father Oscar still lives here. Oscar and his family took us in, and we had a big asado (always a sign that you are back in Argentina). We had lots of interesting conversations, and learned a lot about life here on the island, which revolves mostly around four things: oil, electronics, sheep, and trout. Oscar took us on a tour of the electronics factory where he has worked for the last 20-some years supervising the construction of televisions for the rest of the country. After taking a rest day (and eating very well), we decided it was time to push on.

The next place we planned to stop in was the town of Tolhuin. We started out fighting the wind as we headed west to the point where we crossed the Rio Grande. After that, we continued to have good wind until about 40 km outside of Tolhuin, when it turned in our faces. It was right about there that we really noticed a sudden change in scenery, with flat grassy plains giving way to heavily forested hills. At around noon, we were riding down the road when we heard somebody yell our names from the side of the road. It was our biker friend Hiro, whom we had lost touch with after Puerto Natales. He was staying in an estancia (sheep ranch) near the highway with Luis, a Peruvian biker he had met on the road. We told them the story we had heard about a famous panaderia in Tolhuin, La Union, where the owner would sometimes house traveling cyclists (Veronika and Roger, and the 3 American women had stayed in the bakery), and decided to meet there later in the day. Well, it seemed as though the owner wasn’t around, so we didn’t get the free place to stay. But we did end up renting a cabaña together for the night.

The next day, we all left separately, not sure whether or not we would make it the 110 km to Ushuaia in one or two days. We knew there was a lot of climbing (over 1000 m elevation gain), and that we would be heading west, into the direction of the prevailing winds, so the difficulty factor was a bit unknown. The ride ended up not being as hard as we had thought—the climbs were not particularly long or steep (with the exception of the 10 km up to Garibaldi Pass), and the trees/mountains protected us from the winds most of the day. But the ride was made more exciting by the fact that about an hour into the day, I discovered that the rim of MY back tire had cracked, in the same way that both of Cindy’s had before. I was really hoping that my wheel wouldn’t explode when we decended from the pass at 50 km/hr! Most of the day was overcast and dry, but we nevertheless had beautiful scenery, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and forests turning fall colors, with amazing shades of red, yellow and orange. However, as we got about 20 km outside of Ushuaia, we got caught in the rain one last time. We arrived in town about an hour before sundown, and ran into the first warm hostel we could find

We are going to stay here a few more days, and do some of the touristy things there are to do here, like a boat tour of the Beagle Canal. Our friend Mariana has a cousin that lives in Ushuaia, so we are going to see about spending some time with her while we are here as well. Then we’ll begin the LONG bus ride up to Buenos Aires.

Posted by Matthew on April 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | 3 Comments »

The road from El Calafate, Argentina to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was mostly kind to us. We had a nice tailwind for the first 100 km eastward out of town, then the winds died down to almost nothing as we started to head westward. We were quite happy not to fight the wind. Our tent, however, had to put up quite a fight as the wind tended to come up at dusk. Luckily for us, the tent has been mostly winning against the wind, though it tends to lose when rain is factored in.

After four days of riding, we arrived at the park and headed straight for the park’s namesake—The Towers of Paine. We camped for the night, then headed up the trail the next morning. The hike itself was nice, but not spectacular. The view at the end, however, was well worth the effort (see picture above). We had seen the Torres from afar as we rode into the park, but were taken aback by their majesty from close up. The glacial lake at their feet was a bonus surprise. We weren’t able to enjoy the views for too long though, as the wind was strong and cold and seemed to be bringing a rain storm with it. That night at camp we were pretty suprised by how sore the hike had made us. We were happy to be biking again the next morning—no pain on the bikes, though we were feeling pretty stiff just walking around.

We rode through the park to Lake Pehoe, where we wanted to catch a catamaran across the lake in order to do a couple more day hikes. April is the low season, however, so the 3 times a day boat was only running once a day. Although there is not an official campsite near the boat dock, the company running the boats didn’t mind if we set up camp there. We were joined by another biker from Japan, Hiro, who we had been running into since we left El Calafate. Our tent sorely lost a battle with the rain and wind that night, so after stuffing our wet air mattresses, sleeping bags and tent into their respective bags, we decided to splurge on the other side of the lake and stay in the refugio. The refugio was well worth the exorbitant amount of money as we lay, tired from an afternoon hike to see the French Glacier, warm and cozy in soft beds, listening to the fierce winds and rain coming down all night.

The next day we hiked to Glacier Grey, which was the least exciting of the glaciers that we have visited so far. We have been told that if you have the time to hike past the viewpoint, for a couple more hours you end up walking next to the glacier, which is fantabulous. Unfortunately for us, that would have added much to much time to our already long day hike, so we turned back after reaching the closest viewpoint. After another night in warm soft cozy beds, we took the ferry back to our bikes and started riding out of the park.

One more soggy night of camping and a day of riding in the rain later, we arrived in Puerto Natales. We spent a couple days in town, warming up, drying out our things, doing errands and drinking hot chocolate. We left town with heavy wet snow that wet the streets, but didn’t stick. The snow didn’t last too long and most of our two days of riding to Punta Arenas turned out to be windy and cold, but partly sunny riding through only the occasional bit of rain or snow. We stopped for the night in Villa Tehuelches only to find that the only place to stay was full. The proprietor told us to ask at the municipal building to see if there was a place we could sleep on the floor. The people we talked to were extremely friendly and showed us to the community center, which was a small house with just one main room and a bathroom. The lady who showed us the way also gave us some firewood for the woodburning stove, so we had a fantastically warm, even hot, evening in the community center.

We arrived in Punta Arenas last night fighting fierce headwinds for the last 20 km or so into town. Today, we found yet another new rim for my bike (it cracked less than 10 km from town) and also new brake pads to prevent it from happening again. This time finding the rim and the mechanic was easy and we should have a new wheel by tomorrow.

Punta Arenas is our last stop on the South American mainland. We take a ferry to the island of Tierra del Fuego and then have only 4-6 days of biking left before hitting the end of the road!

Posted by cindy on April 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile | 1 Comment »

Since we recently camped outside one of these salmon farming facilities in Chile, I thought I’d pass on this NY Times article about a virus that is devastating the salmon stocks down here. I know this seems impossible, but they think that the fact that the salmon pens are too crowded and too close together may have something to do with the epidemic! The article also brings up all the major problems with salmon farming: the salmon require more food than wild fish, lots of antibiotics and hormones are used on them (released into open water, of course), and apparently the ones that escape are starting to become invasive (I don’t think they are indigenous to those waters).

Although there is no evidence that the virus is potentially harmful to humans, be aware that this salmon is sold at retailers like Costco and Safeway, among others. But I’m sure that all the readers of this blog already know that they should only buy wild-caught salmon (courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch)….

Posted by Matthew on March 27th, 2008 | Filed under: General, Chile | No Comments »