Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/9jkyxfjWtsNyqHyp8
I had a couple of weeks at home to catch up before pivoting to South America. Got my booster shot which knocked me out for a couple of days, but otherwise just hung out at home before spending an extended weekend in the city to see some friends. Met up with one of the guys I did my Tajikistan roadtrip with, who is now a consultant in NYC – we got lunch at an Uyghur restaurant in Midtown as it was the closest approximation to Tajik food with its’ samsas and plov rice. Honestly a great lunch, nice and greasy plov as well. Then hung out with my sister for an evening as she is now gainfully employed, and somehow got a job that is just as good as my old one in terms of work/life balance. She lives in this tiny two bedroom in East Village and while the place itself was minuscule, just hanging out in that area reinforced to me why NYC is my favorite city in the world. So many cheap, good restaurants and bars all walkable, it just can’t be beat. I sometimes wonder if I was unfair to Chicago by comparing it to NYC all the time. We also got dinner at this great vegan soul food spot…gives me faith that my transition to vegetarianism after retirement won’t be that difficult at all.
The next afternoon, we got lunch at a Tibetan place near her apartment, which was shockingly good and reminded me a ton of the food in Ladakh, especially with their butter tea. Hung out with some high school friends after that, including catching up with a few guys who I hadn’t seen in like 10 years so that was fun. Following day was just catching up with college friends, including dinner at this outrageous restaurant called Puglia in Little Italy that had surprisingly good food. It was an effectively all-you-can-eat family portions along with bottomless wine and live music and a club-like atmosphere with table dancing and singing with the other dinner groups, all for under 70 USD with tax and tip. At the ripe age range of late 20s, we were definitely in the oldest people here by some distance.
Had a few more days at home after this and then flew over to Puerto Rico for my friend Tim’s wedding. Even though I only really knew two people well in this wedding – Tim and his best man Ray – I had briefly met a bunch of Tim’s friends while I lived in Chicago…Tim was a senior my freshman year so all the frat guys who were here were already graduated by the time I got into college and rushed, but I knew them decently well through Tim and Ray. That said, this was quite easily the 3rd most fun wedding I have been to after Arjun and Kris last year. It almost felt like a Spring Break trip – 100 people (~50 friends and ~50 family), with the friends all staying at this beachside villa in western Puerto Rico which was the actual venue site of the wedding (or near the villa, but still close enough to always come over and hang). It was a giant 4 day extended party, hanging out in the pool each day and day drinking and chilling all the way through the wee morning hours. I think the benefit of a multi day wedding in a remote spot like Rincon, PR is that it forces people to congregate and hang out for the entire 3-4 day period as opposed to doing their own thing in the buildup to a 1 day event in a city, so that made it all the more enjoyable. A fun little quirk in this wedding was that people brought 10 bottles of Malort for the group to finish over the 4 days, bringing a slice of Chicago over to Puerto Rico. And for the most part, the people I met here were super chill, which I think like in London makes sense since your friend’s friends tend to have similar personality traits so you get along. Actually really hit it off with a couple of guys who I didn’t know too well/at all before this – one was a Delta Chi 5 years older than me and the other was the bride’s best friend in college’s husband. After the main wedding (night of day 3), which ended at 10pm due to outdoor sound ordinances, we moved over to the pool by our villa literally next door. Me and these two other dudes started chanting at people to pressure them into belly flopping which became a trend, and we were also apparently yelling “Phelps!” and launching backstroke races in a crowded ~10 meter pool of 50+ people and barging by everyone multiple times. Just an incredibly enjoyable extended wedding trip and honestly super glad I stuck with my plan of Europe–>PR wedding–>South America. I definitely think that if I ever do a wedding (as opposed to a courtroom marriage) I would pick somewhere isolated to force that sort of giant group hangout for 3-4 days straight. It’s also weird – I generally think beaches are overrated, but have really enjoyed certain beach/island vibes in places like this wedding, or Bali with college friends, or while diving in Utila in Honduras. Guess it’s more just the general social vibe and warm weather that is nice, as opposed to the beaches themselves which honestly kind of suck. As for PR itself…it honestly did not feel American at all, and had a totally foreign/latino culture, which I thought was pretty neat. Would definitely not mind coming back again for a little to really see the island.
I flew back home for a couple of days afterwards to drop my wedding stuff off, finish packing, and get an antigen test, before flying off to Buenos Aires. Wound up being almost a full month break between hanging in Manhasset with my parents and sister (she came back from the city to spend time with me), seeing friends in the city, and this wedding in Puerto Rico, but no real regrets with that. Had a 10 hour layover in Bogota on the way there, but that wasn’t too bad with my Priority Pass access. Got in late night/early morning and crashed, and my friend John (Kris’ high school friend who I had met before but only really got to know at Kris’ bachelor party and wedding last summer) got in later that morning/afternoon. We had a couple of days in Buenos Aires before heading down to Patagonia. For our first few days in BA we sort of just walked around the historic center of the city and checked out the architecture (BA reminded me strongly of Madrid and Mexico City, and to a lesser extent Milan, with its’ grand style). We also checked out a local market – the San Telmo Market – which was honestly one of the better markets I have been to (not including Central Asian/Indian/rest of Asia/Middle Eastern bazaars as they are totally different) in terms of the nifty antiques and cool trinkets that they sold. And finally, we went to a River Plate game – River is one of the two big BA teams along with Boca Juniors. It was an incredible atmosphere that honestly blew out even Elland Road in Leeds, which was itself a cauldron of noise. This was just non-stop, blaring chanting for the entire 90 mins as River won 4-0 against Gimnasia.
One “interesting”, to say the least, thing about Buenos Aires in particular but Argentina as a whole, was the shoddy quality of napkins that you would sometimes get in bars and restaurants. These were, no joke, worse than the wax paper you get with donuts or funnel cake to hold those foods in. Like actually useless at wiping and cleaning, and arguably more plastic than paper. A few other cool quirks of Argentina that were more pronounced in BA were: Diego Maradona quite literally being worshipped as a God everywhere (every single store/restaurant/bar had a shrine to him, not even exagerrating), and how ham on everything is super common (burgers, pizza, etc.). On a related note, apparently something like 2/3 of Argentinians have Italian ancestry, so you do get some big Italian influences here and there – Argentinian pizza, which tastes distinctly different from NY/CT/Chicago/Neopolitan pizza with its’ thick, crispy crust and thick (but not Chicago thick) pizza layer, milanesas being sold everywhere, using the word “Ciao” in everyday use. And even the Argentinian accent was vastly different from other Spanish accents I have heard – the biggest difference being the “j” sound for “ll” words instead of “ya”. So for example, “llamo”, which means “name”, is pronounced “yah-mo” in regular Spanish but “jah-mo” in Argentinian Spanish. Also, it seemed like classic rock music is HUGE in Argentina. So many bars would be blasting dad rock or Argentinian music that sounded just like dad rock, tons of different restaurants and hostels had dad rock decor, and the number of Beatles/Rolling Stones/Ramones (this was a surprise) shirts that you see out in public in BA was crazy, not to mention other bands.
Another thing about Argentina was their blue money rate. The official exchange rate is ~100 pesos to 1 USD, but in the black market (called the blue rate) you can exchange for ~200 pesos to 1 USD. Due to the government artificially boosting the exchange rate and the inflation rate of pesos, locals would rather store their wealth in USD than pesos, so there is ample supply for exchanging USD to pesos at the blue market rate in gold shops, corner stores, etc. If you use a debit card to withdraw from an ATM or a credit card, you get charged at the official 100-1 exchange rate so are effectively losing a ton of money, so the way to travel in Argentina is to bring a bunch of 100s with you and exchange those USD bills for pesos at the informal shops at the 200-1 blue rate, and then pay for everything in cash while in the country.
Anyways, the day after the game, we took a 3 hour flight south to Patagonia to the town of El Calafate. The town itself was shockingly very modern – it actually reminded us a ton of national park towns in the US like Moab, UT or Springdale, UT. The main attraction in El Calafate was the Perito Moreno Glacier, which is this absolutely ginormous glacier that is advancing into a river. The glacier itself is apparently roughly the size of the entire city of Buenos Aires, so it absolutely dwarfed the ones I saw in Iceland. Of course, we also did a ~5ish hour hike on the glacier. Gotta say, this was a significantly harder glacier hike than my Iceland one. Our guide led us up and down these giant ice hills – easy 20 meter minimum on a steep grade that would have been hard enough as a regular walk let alone on ice with crampons. Incredibly fun experience, and overall I would say it trumped my Iceland glacier hike as it was just on a grander scale. Like in Iceland, just an endless expanse of white all around us which made us feel like legit Arctic explorers. And unlike Iceland, this was just a much hillier terrain which made for a more intense glacier hike experience. The bright blue cracks that appeared here and there were gorgeous and made it feel other-worldly, and the various different cliffs and hills on the glacier were just the best cherry on top. Such a fun and unique experience. The only real negative here, was that there was a heavy dusting of mud on a lot of the glacier which created a brown/black appearance, which was due to the infamously heavy Patagonian winds blowing mud off from the surrounding mountains onto the glacier surface. Honestly I would argue that because of that, while I did enjoy this more than Iceland, that the Iceland glacier was probably a bit more picturesque. But this definitely felt more like an alien landscape due to the sheer vastness of the glacier.
After El Calafate, we took a 3 hour bus ride north to the frontier town of El Chalten. This was a legit frontier town that really gave me Montana vibes – makes sense as Patagonia is as frontier as you can get on Earth. Tons of tin roof structures, very strong “cowboy” feel to the bars and taverns, just a really cool little town. And speaking of Montana, even the landscapes here on the drive reminded me of the whole Montana/Wyoming/Idaho region but just on a far, far grander scale – absolute desolation but just endless grass fields with soaring mountains and vast lakes all around us. In a way, I would say it was like a cooler, vaster Scottish Highlands as well with the windswept plains giving way to towering hills and mountains. For the last ~20 minutes of this drive, we were treated to the grand spectacle of Fitz Roy mountain towering over the landscape – I managed to grab a really good photo though the front window on the top floor of the bus with my camera of this.
The main attraction in El Chalten is of course Fitz Roy, which also serves as the logo for the brand Patagonia (albeit in a stylized form). We had 3 days of hiking here, all of which basically took us to different vantage points of Fitz Roy. The first hike was arguably South America’s most famous, Laguna de los Tres. John is a much faster hiker than me (primarily due to his height…he’s like 6’4″), and I surprised myself as we were able to keep a good pace together. Our roundtrip for this hike was a little over 6.5 hours when the suggested time was 8 hours so we definitely did well here…El Chalten struck me a bit like the US where the influx of domestic tourists means that they inflate hike times to account for the subpar hikers, compared to a place like Kyrgyzstan where my hike times were slower than the suggested hike times. But this was a nice fun hike that ascended ~800+ meters over 10km, with the final 400m elevation gain coming in on the incredibly fun final kilometer. The view across the hike was incredible as you see Fitz Roy towering above the entire time, and the end was the best with a pristine lake in front of the massive, jagged peaks of Fitz Roy. We left around 730am each day to beat the crowds so had this to ourselves. We spent over two hours at the lake and by the time we left, there were probably 500+ tourists arriving at the viewpoint with countless others marching up as we went down.
The 2nd day was the Laguna Torre hike, which was the 2nd most famous Argentinian Patagonia hike. This was about a ~350m elevation gain over 10km and the suggested time was 6 hours, and we did it in 4…this was honestly a breeze of a hike that de facto acted as a rest day for us. We even got drunk the night before for St. Patty’s arguing that the day would be a rest day and thankfully that cockiness did not hit us hard. The view at the end of this was an almost equally as gorgeous as the first one, with floating bits of glacier ice on the lake providing a nice foreground for a different view of Fitz Roy as this was from the southeast while Laguna de los Tres was from the east.
The final hike we did was Loma del Pliegue Tumbado, which was also 10km one way like the other two but with ~1100 meters in elevation gain and a suggested roundtrip of 8 hours. This was definitely the hardest of the 3 hikes for me, and we did the roundtrip in about 5 hours…3 hours up and 2 hours down, so we definitely did this at a turbo speed. John was actually a bit faster than me for the final ascent, which was up the hill for the viewpoint – I actually had to stop twice on this final bit (~250 meters over a kilometer) to catch my breath, which for me means that it’s no longer an easy/moderate hike. But the view at top…gotta say, probably my favorite view in all of El Chalten (minus probably the great road view while driving into the town). Was very similar to the overlook I got on my Kyrgyzstan trek, where you see a shimmering lake ringed by spiked mountains. Just an unbeatable view that made the hike all the more memorable…I know it is a bit tougher with 1100+ meters in elevation gain, but it really deserves more fame. Unlike the prior two hikes which were horded with hundreds of tourists, this one had <30 hikers in total, who we all saw on the way back down.
We definitely got incredibly lucky with our three days in El Chalten. End of March is shoulder season and yet we were graced with no winds (Patagonia is infamous for 50+ kph winds), no clouds, sunny skies, and nice cool weather in the mornings to make the uphill pleasant while a beating afternoon sun kept us warm while going downhill. Apparently some locals were saying that we got lucky with this little patch of unseasonable weather, so the Gods were on our side. El Chalten also had some fantastic food – we went twice to this great steak and fish spot called Tapera, where there were excellent ~5 USD bottles of Malbec wine (red wine, zero acidic taste…actually good stuff). I would go as far as to say that the Patagonian Malbec is probably the best wine I’ve ever had, even more so than anything I had in Greece/Italy/Spain. There was also an excellent artisinal ice cream shop on the main street where I had some great almond froyo for a couple of post-hike ice creams. El Chalten was a bit unique in that you can walk directly from the town to any of the hiking points – no bus/car/etc. So it’s sort of cool to see a bunch of hikers covered in dirt and sweat and wearing their backpacks walking around town at mid-day onwards…for me, it felt like everyone in the town center had just accomplished something that day which is a cool thing to see at scale.
Overall, I will say that the hiking in El Chalten was obviously incredible. Not quite on the level of Ladakh/Tajikistan for me, but that’s because nothing will ever top rugged and mountainous alpine deserts. Would say that it was basically a cooler version of Glacier National Park, probably above Georgia and below Kyrgyzstan for me in terms of natural beauty. Still an amazing place with probably the most scenic day-hikes I have ever done, but wouldn’t say it was a Mount Rushmore-level all timer for me.
After El Chalten, we took a 2.5 hour bus ride back to the El Calafate airport before flying taking a one hour flight to Ushuaia, which is the southernmost city in the world. There is actually a town in Chile that is further south but that is only ~2k people, while Ushuaia has almost 30k people. Ushuaia really plays off the whole “End of the World” trope, or “Fin del Mundo” in Spanish. Everything there has to do with this little factoid, and we were joking that everything we saw was this, from “The Southernmost Irish Pub in the World” to “The Southernmost Catholic Church in the World”. They also really play up their history of being a penal colony and native american history…felt almost like a kitschy American town that plays up mediocre history in that sense. And the town itself was obviously very nautically themed, so in many ways (minus the Spanish) was like straight out of New England or the Western Cape. I feel like non-tropical seafaring towns globally all have a similar vibe.
Ushuaia is located in the island and province of Tierra del Fuego, which means Land of Fire. Incredibly badass name that has very less-than-badass origins…the Spanish named it after all the fire and smoke they saw from the native settlements when sailing around the island, which was definitely an underwhelming story. That said, Tierra del Fuego was still a very scenic area, though obviously not as scenic as the El Chalten/El Calafate area of Patagonia, which is like “vintage” Patagonian landscapes. Very heavily forested area, and as soon as the tree line ended, the hills suddenly sharply rose to vertical peaks and became snowcapped. So it was probably by far the shortest rocky-and-snowy mountains (especially when considering Ushuaia is at sea level) I will ever see in my life.
The first day, we did the Laguna Esmaralda hike. John had contracted food poisoning at the Ushuaia airport so luckily this was a rest day for him, since the hike was a stroll in the park for us – something like 8km roundtrip with ~250 meters in elevation gain but we pretty much exerted zero physical effort for this. The end point was a glacial lake that was objectively pretty, but for me underwhelming after all of the Fitz Roy hikes in El Chalten. It was like “just another” glacial lake that you see in Glacier National Park or Rocky Mountain National Park. This day was also John’s 30th birthday, so we went to this fancy seafood restaurant called Kaupe where a seafood tasting course and drink pairing cost us ~50 USD a person. Excellent food here, from king crab to sea urchin ceviche to toothfish, though the white wine was not quite as good as the Malbecs we had had earlier.
The next day, we did a boat tour to see some wildlife on the nearby rocks and islands – got some really amazing looks at wild sea lions (very loud and very smelly), tons of sea birds, and of course, wild penguins. We also caught a whale swimming in front of our boat – was not an Orca or Humpback, but we saw him (or her) galavanting around in front of us and I managed to snap a tail picture as it entered back into the water. Another cool part of this boat tour was seeing the second southernmost lighthouse in the world, about a 30 minute boatride past Ushuaia. Just a very dramatic landscape and view with the coastal mountains of Tiera del Fuego surrounding us on this channel ride. Interestingly enough, all tourist cruises to Antarctica depart from Ushuaia…unfortunately, for this calendar year the last tourist cruises all left in early March so I didn’t have the chance to grab one, but it’s definitely on my list of things to do post-retirement (realistically don’t think I will be back here in the next 18 months of retirement).
Our final day we went to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. John was still feeling a bit under the weather so we didn’t do the difficult hike here – Cerro Guanaco – and instead did a scenic lakeside stroll/light hike, the Sendero Coastal. We saw the southernmost post office in the world here (very Wes Anderson vibe), and the lakeside walk felt a ton like Acadia National Park except there were mountains in the distance. Again, objectively beautiful but was not my thing, and glad I did it but definitely did not live up to the hype of the incredible name of “Tierra del Fuego” – where I would picture desolation and destruction instead of vibrant greenery.
The morning of that final day, I woke up to a WhatsApp voice message from my dad (he never leaves voice messages), and a few missed calls from my Mom, who was still calling. That’s never a good sign, so I was already bracing myself as I rolled out of my bunk bed and went to the empty hotel lobby. Found out that my 59 year old uncle (who I was actually planning on meeting in Bolivia in the end of April) had suddenly passed away the night before from cardiac arrest. That morning was a whirlwind as I had to book last minute flights back to NYC for the funeral (luckily already had flights booked from Ushuaia to BA the next morning, because those sell out months in advance. Worst case would have been booking like a 40 hour bus ride back to BA). Was able to book night flights for the next day, after getting into BA in the afternoon. Plan was to only spend a couple of days in NY before flying to India with my mom to spend time with my grandma, since she obviously would be taking it tough. Weirdly enough, John also had a funeral to attend that Saturday – a friend of his got stabbed and then burned to death in Hawaii, which is just crazy, and he was able to change his Delta flight for free to leave on Thursday night as well. But this sudden news only made me quadruple down on my current life philosophy/plan…my uncle was a healthy 59 year old, and still suddenly passed away from a heart attack. You really never know what will happen in life, so I am (even moreso now) a firm believer in doing things now if you have the ability, health, and money to do so…no point saving things for the future when I could die in a car accident at the age of 32. Much like COVID (but obviously on a far more personal scale), it’s just strengthened my resolve to “do what I want” in life and not worry about things like status or chasing money and career prestige. I do think it’s important to have no regrets if you die the next moment, and I certainly feel that way and I would like to think that my uncle was also in the same boat with regards to his life up to that point.
We had half a day in BA to kill between our flight back from Ushuaia and flying back to the US, so we stopped by the Recoleta Cemetery. It was probably the grandest cemetery I have ever been to, and in many ways was like an outdoor cathedral in terms of the architecutre, with grand tombs built out for BA’s wealthy over the course of the past 100+ years or so. Only had under 2 hours here but we easily could have spent a few more hours slowly wandering around here.
Overall, Argentina is probably only the 3rd country I have ever been to, after Myanmar and Iraq, where I wish I had more time to travel in (obviously this was due to very different circumstances). Not including places like India, China, the US, or France here, where I’d be coming back for multiple trips, but rather as one extended trip to see everything in the country. Missed out on eating at the Don Julio steakhouse in BA which literally everyone raves about, seeing Iguazu Falls and going to a Newell’s game in Rosario – their stadium is named after Marcelo Bielsa, who was (I think) unfairly let go as Leeds’ boss this year, but is still worshipped as a God by Leeds fan. My original plan was to overland to Bolivia, so would have also seen NW Argentina (which is supposed to be similar landscapes to the American Southwest). There’s also a ton more to see in Argentina that wasn’t on my immediate plan list, like the east coast of Patagonia, the Lake District, and Mendoza. I don’t quite think I’ll be back in Argentina anytime soon unless it’s to catch an Antarctic cruise, in which case I’ll also do a Newell’s game and Iguazu Falls. So I’ll be in India until May 7, and then my plan would be to do an Amazon jungle thing in Peru before meeting my dad and sister (and potentially my mom…she’s gonna see how my grandma is before deciding to leave India to join us in Peru) from May 20-June 4 in the Cusco area and Lima. Will be with my grandma for a week-ish in India, and then will be in and out of her place while seeing relatives, going to a wedding in Delhi (friend I met at Martin’s friend’s wedding in Bombay back in Feb 2020), and probably a couple of trips in there as well. Thinking of visiting Cambodia again (only place I will ever revisit continuously along with Chernobyl, which isn’t really feasible now) and also doing a Tiger safari with my sister when she comes to India for 2 weeks end of April to see my grandma (the beauty of work from home). And also a few typical 1000 year old temples in the south in both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Think I’ll still maintain my Peru>Ecuador (have a Galapagos liveaboard booked for end of June)>Colombia plan for May-July, but unfortunately no Bolivia this go-round now. The Atacama desert (alpine desert!) and Patagonia trekking in Chile is super high on my list (along with Easter Island), so maybe doing Chile, Bolivia, and the rest of Argentina is something I’ll hopefully get to in my final year of retirement after Burning Man? If not, I’ll surely have time to travel once back in the real world, but I’m definitely approaching the stage where I realize that I have some things I’d love to see that I feasibly will not have time for since I “only” have a year and a half left.