Category Archives: Argentina

It is mildly impossible to fly in and out of the wine region of Argentina without sampling delicious wines, even if your hostel doesn’t give you free wine each night!  The traditional backpacker thing to do is head out to the vineyards and rent some bikes to cycle from place to place but this sounded like a silly idea to me- I can’t recall ever ending a wine tour sober enough that pedaling seemed like an awesome idea, so I opted for the fancy wine tour instead where they actually drove you around and gave you lunch.  This turned out to be about as good an idea as expected! Continue reading →

Mendoza was a nice enough city but I admit we never got along for the simple reason that I kept getting lost in it.  This is rather embarrassing for me to admit because after so many strange cities I never get lost- least of all in something as benign as a city with a grid layout- because I have orienteered enough in strange cities that my sense of cardinal directions is really hard to mess up.  In Mendoza, however, there were no obvious landmarks visible from everywhere in the city (you can’t see the mountains in town) except, this being the middle of the desert, the sun.  And when you set out in the middle of the day instinctively supposing the sun is in the south without stopping to consider the fact that you’re in the southern hemisphere, well, you typically don’t end up where you wanted in the first place.

So sorry, Mendoza.  I’m sure you’re a lot nicer than I’ll give you credit for, it’s just you were dealing with an over-confident astronomer who didn’t stop to think about how terribly far from home she really was. Continue reading →

If you want to find a lovely little Patagonian hideaway you should head straight to the town of Bariloche.  In fact, it’s such a good spot that the town has a history as one of the places where ex-Nazis evading justice lived for several decades (and one or two may still live today), and fugitive war criminals likely know best when it comes to this sort of thing, right?

To begin, one of the reasons I loved Bariloche was because I lucked upon an awesome hostel while there that is a bit of a Shangri La of backpacker lore. Called Penthouse 1004, it was essentially a large apartment on the tallest buiding in Bariloche with the coziest common areas I’ve ever encountered, all dominated by the incredible view-

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Back in Cleveland right now no matter what this blog says, as I’m a firm believer of experiencing things over sitting around and writing about them.  But don’t worry, the Argentinian chronicles will continue…

I must admit that the gauchos of Argentina have made quite an impression on me, and because I’m a huge believer of “when in Rome” I signed up for a half day of horseback riding outside Bariloche.  This being Patagonia, the scenery did not disappoint-
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There are a few things I know in life, and one of them is when National Geographic labels a spot as one of the “Top Ten Views in the World” and you’re in town you’ve gotta go see it. And as someone turning slowly into a one woman National Geographic, I’m proud to confirm they’ve nailed this one-

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If you’ve ever had the urge to play a joke on the world by picking up Switzerland, shaking out the bankers and expensive prices, moving it halfway across the globe and filling it with fun-loving Spanish and Italians, well you’d better stop because it appears that someone has already done it. It’s in a place called Patagonia.

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