Richard's Travel Blog

It’s been so long since I have been in a place where the connection is fast enough to upload pictures! I’ve been in Bolivia since May 10 and am still in La Paz. This post is going to skip northern Argentina. I may try to get to those pictures, but I don’t know, where else in Bolivia is there going to be another connection even this fast? The first thing I did after crossing the border was take my first train ride in a long time. Bolivia has a couple of lines. One is from Villazon on the Argentine border to Oruro, passing through Tupiza and Uyuni. It’s clunky but still better than the bus, I took it to Tupiza.

On the way to Uyuni it goes through wilderness like this. If you read my San Pedro de Atacama entry, you may say to yourself this looks a lot like that. San Pedro, Chile, is quite close to here. At times we were only a few hundred meters from the border. I could have come here from there, but was misinformed about getting a visa into Bolivia at that border crossing. That’s a lot of the reason I went back to that northern tip of Argentina. That said, I did enjoy seeing that part of Argentina. I’m not that busy.

THE thing to do down here is to either go on a one or two day tour from Uyuni town to the Uyuni salt flats, known as the Solar de Uyuni, or to take a four day tour through the extreme southwest of bolivia and see the vivid terrain and lagunas there, then the salt flats, then wind up in Uyuni. I took the second optiion.
At first the landscape looks a lot like this.

Later on there are interesting rock formations.

And the road is pretty good, though a four wheel drive is necessary in any places. Most of it is at 4300-4900 meters (about 14,000-16,000 feet) above sea level.

Four of us in a mid-nineties Land Cruiser (back when Land Cruisers were built to endure this kind of use) caravaned with another from the same tour company. Still, we got one flat. Also, we got a short circuit to the water pump. Here the two drivers are fixing the flat, getting to the fuel pump under the middle seat, and hot wiring it directly to the battery. After that, you got a shock every time you touched metal in the Cruiser. That vintage Cruiser is almost all metal inside.

By the way, that woman in red was the cook for both vehicles. We definitely came to appreciate her as well as the two guys. In my vehicle were a couple who are videographers. They would like to quit their day jobs in New Jersey and live off income from their website. Jason and Aracely’s site is pretty good. You might want to go there for video of this eight month trip they are on in Latin Aerica. Unfortunately, they are way behind and, last I heard a few days ago, they still had only Centra America ready for views. They are at www.twobackpackers.com . The other companion is a Bulgarian woman, Draga. Aracely and Jason and I stayed more or less together till Sucre. Draga went to LA Paz with her boyfriend, but maybe she and I will hook up here in La Paz now that I am here. I haven’t heard from her yet, though.

In the far southwest there are several villages. This is one of the larger ones. Note the solar panels. In the US most people in bright sunny places still don’t use them. And silly Americans want Obama to save them from the Gulf oil spill. We’re supposed to be all about personal responsibility but can’t save ourselves.

Here’s a cute village. They have a dam to make the water level even this high.

Along the way, there are some geysers. They don’t shoot up like Old Faithful in California or in Yellowstone National Park, but they are dramatic steaming cauldrens of bubbling mud and sand.

There are several beautiful lagunas. Most are filled with mineral deposits. The flamingoes like to feed off the tiny crustaceans that live there. In the first picture, that is steam rising off the water in the early morning. Like any other arid place, it warms up considerably as soon as the sun rises. Oh, those nights were cold up at that elevation!

There is a hot spring at one place, all tricked out for tourists. I didn’t go in. The thought of getting out into the cold air and dealing with my dirty, wet feet cooled me on that plan.

Okay, then we got to the Solar de Uyuni. It’s one of those World Heritage sites that deserves the billing.

It’s the larget salt flat in the world, a couple hundred kilometers by about a hundred and something. The Bonneville salt flat in Utah is the econd largest in the world. You just head out over it like you’re trying for the land speed record at Bonneville. It is F-L-A-T, but there are “islands” of rock and vegetation. From there you can climb up to get some persective on the expanse around you. One island is the top spot the tours from the town of Uyuni and the Tupiza to Uyuni converge. We park in the shade to get out of the glare, the cooks make lunch, and the guys work on the vehicles while we romp around working up an appetitie.

There are outposts around the edge of the Solar where they harvest salt. Many, if not most, of the buildings are made of salt blocks.

We didn’t sleep in that bulding, but one much lke it. Here was our room one night. It had electricity from a generator for about three hours and everything. What else along with four bottles of wine for four people do you need? A pad of blankets between the salt bed and your body made it at least two stars. This is not a tourist thing. The locals do this. They also have salt tables and chairs as well as salt play yard stuff for the kids.

That just about does it for now. From there we went to Uyuni. I’ll blog about Potosi and Sucre maybe tomoorow. I’ve got the pictures all uploaded. Be well, all of you.

Finally, I can upload pictures now that I am in La Paz. I went kind of nuts shooting photos of people at last Sunday’s market in Tarabuco, about 65 km southeast of Sucre. Most of these I just took in a ten minute period while sitting on a couple of benches in the plaza. There are a couple of food market pics, too.
I’ll upload more and write a narrative in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, for a change, there are no scenery pics.

This last one was actually taken in Uyuni. A colorful hippy chick tourist is discussing the stuff being sold by this street vendor. Don’t tourists have interesting hair?

Be well, all of you.

Hi again. I’ve covered a lot of kilometers since the last entry. At that time I was pretty far south of Santiago and the center of Chile. From Valdivia I went all the way up to Valparaiso, a port city west northwest of Santiago. As is common for me, I bagged the big capital city. Everyone says that was pretty much a good idea. Valparaiso was nice. It reminded me a lot of Lisbon. The buildings are about the same vintage, and very European, and it’s hilly. The flats aren’t very wide. Then it goes up. If the views were good, I´d post some pictures, but they aren’t. You see a big port, for the most part. The picture below is of the street where I stayed (my place was about halfway down the block on the left), and it’s pretty typical of the views.

Some of the ascents are pretty steep. Most people who aren’t driveing go up on ascensors like the one below. Some date from the late 19th century. They were steam powered then, but are electric now, though some of the carriages are original

Other than that, I don’t feel like my pictures are that interesting. But take my word for it, Valparaiso was an enjoyable place to spend a three days.
About an hour south of Valpariso is an old whaling village, Quintay. The Japanese were whaling around there until 1967 when Chile joined the international community in outlawing whaling activity in their waters and the processing on Chilean soil. There is an interesting museum, with grisly pictures of dozens of dead blue whales strewn everywhere in various phases of their processing. Here’s the village now, definitely less active than in the old days.

The coastline along there is nice. There is a lot of this along the coast of South Africa.

From there is was to Pucon. Pucon is about looking at and climbing an active volcano. Unfortunately for me, the weather was inclement so nobody could climb the snow capped volcano. Here it is from town, though, puffing smoke. I have many pictures of some of the 60 active volcaoes in Chile, but really, if you’ve seen one you’ve about seen them all.

From there it was a two day, 20 hour bus ride up to the Atacama desert area of northern Chile. San Pedro de Atacama is the local backpacker ghetto there. It’s not too bad, considering. The streets aren’t paved or anything. The thing to do there is take in the desert scenery. It reminds me of Namibia, though generally not as dramatic. One area called the Valley of the Moon is like around Swakomund in Namibia.

There are rivers and creeks flowing through this otherwise desolate area. Along them are villages. Here’s one pretty one.

There are widely spaced settlements in the Atacama. They are mostly pretty dull, but it’s beginning to look like Bolivia once you get up there. I have many cute church pictures. Here are the best of the bunch.

The Atacama has the kind of desert beauty that, even if you’ve seen a lot of deserts, is distinctive and beautiful in it’s own way that you don’t feel like, ho hum, I’ve seen this before. It’s a little of Namibia, a little of the American southwest, a little of Egypt, a little like Ladakh in Kashmir and, yes, a little of the rest of arid southern Argentina. Like southern Argentina, there are ravines and washes, lakes, and seasonal ponds. The water comes down from the Andes and forms habitat for many animals. Before this trip I didn’t even know there were fresh water flamingos. Down here, they are quite common.

That obviously isn’t so much a flamingo picture as one of the typical settings you see them in. Many people prefer the green and wetness of southern Chile. Obviously, the people who prefer the desert have a point.
Right now I’m in Salta, Argentina, a day’s bus ride from San Pedro. I came here because I was told Americans need a visa from a consulate to enter Bolivia. Salta has the nearest consulate. It turns out Americans can get a visa at the border, though they still have to pay 130 USD for it. So, I could have gone to Bolivia by way of the Uyuni salt flats from San Pedro. The border is only a couple of hours from there. But I’m glad I came. Salta is not photogenic, but it is historically interesting and the ride was very nice, through snowy passes with dramatic, bare landscape above the treeline for much of the way. After a couple of nights here, I am going to Jujuy today to look at the sights around there. My guess is that I’ll get to Bolivia in about three or four days.
I bought a ticket to Korea for June 22. I had hoped to maybe stopover in northern California for a bit, but the flights I got amounted to about 700 USD less than if I went another way. It goes through Ft. Lauderdale to LA. Then another airline takes me nonstop to Korea. It involves two red-eyes and an overnight in the LA airport, yuk, but it is cheap. There wasn’t even a way to stopover in LA and resume a couple of weeks later without that several hundred dollar difference. I think it has to do with after June 22 the peak summer season fares kick in.
So this phase of my travels is winding down. I’d like to go up to Equador, but I don’t think there is time. Maybe if Bolivia doesn’t work for me, I’ll go. I look forward to seeing Myung. She isn’t situated there yet, so I don’t know what is in store. We may work for a while, or work indefinitely. Or at least she plans to work. I’ll see what looks like a good thing to do. The course of our future has yet to unfold.
That’s about it for now. Be well, all of you.

Hi everyone,
I am in Puerto Varas, a town just north of Puerto Montt, after spending a week moving up the island of Chiloe in southern Chile. Puerto Montt is the big city in this area, but like most big cities it´s not much to talk about. This is the first stop for volcano watchers as they go toward northern Chile. There will be more volcano pictures, I´m sure. I depends on the weather. It rains every day and the visibility is nil sometimes. It poured in Puerto Montt a couple of days ago and was raining here until midday. They said you can see a volcano. (I always forget to bring my Lonely Planet to these internet cafes, so I don´t remember the name.) When the clouds broke, there it was across the lake. In the summer, you can go up there with a guide and the right equipment.

Most of my activity for the past week has been at sea level, looking at cute town after cute town. Chiloe has an interesting history and is distinctve in many ways. For one, the buildings are often this distinctive shingle.

This church dates from 1730.

The style is typical all over Chiloe.

Quemchi (not to be confused with the Korean side dishes) was particularly cute.

The largest city, Castro, has about 30,000, but even it is nice. Plus, it has some ammenities. The boats here are so colorful.

My idea of an ammenity is mussels for under 2 USD per kilo. I´m thinking these guys loading mussels must be working hard for little money for it to be so cheap in the shops.

I got over to Chiloe on the ferry from Chaiten in northern Patagonia, where I had taken the Carretera
Austral, the southern highway, from just south of Rio Tranquil. Here are a couple of typical scenes from along that route.

This next one is of Chaiten itself, taken from the ferry as we left.

The nearby volcano blew in 2008 and 2009. You´d never know from that distant picture how devastated the city was. It´s only about 10% reinhabited. Most of the city has been demolished. Most of the rest is abandonned, and ash has been piled up like sand dunes by bulldozers 10 meters high all over what was once city. Chile experiences so many calamities, it´s no wonder they feel quite able to manage that earthquake a couple of months ago. That gets me to the present. I´m heading north rather slowly. I figure to make a few forays into the mountains among more volcanoes. Maybe I´ll swing back through a pretty part of Argentina called Seven Lakes. There´s supposed to be a cooool university city, Valdivia, and you know how cool I am. There are things to see all the way up Chile. I´m torn between returning to Argentina and checking out the northwest before going to Bolivia, or going to Bolivia from here. For sure, I´ll do something. wherever you go, there you are.
Speaking of the present, yesterday was Sunday here in Puerto Varas. There was a tent set up where artisans and foodies sold their stuff. I´ll leve you with food for thought. Imagine, if you will, a Chilean garage band playing ¨Sweet Home Alabama¨. The accent was not exactly spot on.

Be well, all of you.

Hello everybody. Happy Easter.
Ever since leaving Argentina last week, I´ve been moving pretty slowly, spending a couple of days in the border town of Chile Chico, then taking a couple of days to come around the lake there and getting to Coyhaique. There´s nothing particularly interesting to report, so I´ll just post a few pictures of the area. These first are from spots along the lake whrre we stopped.

I stayed a couple of days in the tranquil village of Puerto Tranquilo on the way. The thing to do there is to take aboat ride to some interesting marble formations.

The rest of the pictures I´ve taken since blogging last are less good versions of that same stuff. So, be well, all of you. I´ll leave you with a picture of a rainbow over the valley Coyhaique is in.

Hello again. I´m wending my way up north and stopped in Puerto Natales again to see Torres del Paine, one of Patagonia´s most beautiful parks. As I expected, it was too cold and windy to attempt a hike of several days out in the bitterness. So I took a minibus tour. I have been able to upload four pictures, but some some technical reason I has yet to figure out, cannot upload any more at this time. Here are the four. The animals are called guanaco. They are relatives of the camel and look like them in the face when you see them up close. The next are two of the many beautiful mountain scenes. The last is of a lake with icebergs calved by Grey´s Glacier which can be seen in the distance.

If and when I find out what is happening with my memory card or whatever is the problem, I´ll post some more pictures. I have time. The next bus for my next destination doesn´t leave until tomorrow night. Meanwhile, I´ll get some professional help if I can find it. Hee hee, maybe I should get professional help in more than one way

Sir Earnest Shackleton slept here. This house is in Punta Arenas.

That name may mean nothing to you, but the story of his and his crew´s heroic failed effort to reach the South Pole in 1914 has enthralled millions over the last century. Those who know of it know why I took this picture. He stayed here while organizing the rescue of the crew men he left behind on Elephant Island. Do yourself a favor and look up the story on Wikipedia. Go ahead, do it now. I´ll wait.
Better still, go to Barnes and Noble and look at ¨Endurance. The Incredible Journey of Sir Earnest Shackleton¨ by Alfred Lansing, or any of the other many books with the photographs taken at the time. A couple of the pictures on the Wikipedia site are worth noticing. One is of Shackleton on South Georgia Island after two years stranded in the Antarctic. He was only 42 at the time. Also look at the picture of the James Caird, the lifeboat in which he crossed Drake´s Passage between Antarctica and South Georgia Island (no tropical paradise itself). Another lifeboat left behind at Elephant Island was named the Stancomb-Wills after Janet Stancomb-Wills, a tobacco heiress who helped fund his expedition. I didn´t know that.
I´m sure 90% of you are now bored to tears.
I rode part way back here to Puerto Natales with an Antarctic researcher who, now that fall has arrived and it´s cold, was returning to deal with all his data. So all that stuff is fresh in my mind and imagination. That was an interesting conversation.
It´s not exactly balmy even here in southern Patagonia. It´s the wind that gets you. It never stops.
I just returned here after seeing Myung off to northern Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. Her flight left from Ushuaia in the Argentine portion of Terra del Fuego. It´s the southernmost city of any size in the world and real pretty. Here´s a overview and some pics from the ¨beach¨.

The next day after getting Myung off, I went for a nice 14 km walk in the nearby national park. It was rather nice out, considering. I have a couple of nice pictures. The second is of a huge beaver dam. I didn´t see any beavers, though they say they are around. The people say, that is. I didn´t stay around long. Too windy.

It´s interesting how when you travel alone you talk with different people. I like talking with Myung of course, but couples naturally talk to each other a lot and less than they would with others. I walked in this park with a chemical engineer for a US Air Force subcontractor. I learned more about the plusses and minuses of US and other air forces planes than I ever knew before.
That kind of brings me up to the present. I came back up here to Puerto Natales thinking of walking a popular 4-5 day hike, but have thought wiser of it. I´ll take the bus tour. After this, I´ll head north again. There are no roads through southern Chilean Patagonia, so it´s a two or three day haul around to Coyaique. From there I´ll take the supposedly scenic Carretera Austal road to maybe Puerto Montt and Chloe. I don´t know about after that. There is a beautiful four day ferry ride from Puerto Natales to Pueerto Montt, through the remote glaciated fjords of the Patagonian archipelago. I had thought the ticket was almost 700 USD, but I find out it´s only 336 USD. Unfortunately the ship sails tonight. So I was thinking of taking it the other way around and coming back here yet again from Puerto Montt. The price even goes down to 300 USD after April 1, for obvious reasons. But there are some other places I want to see north of Puerto Montt. Oh well, everyone should have to face decisions like this, right?
I don´t know when I´ll be done with South America. I´m toying with the idea of just taking busses all the way up to the States. More likely I´ll burn out down here and fly to Korea. After that?… We´ve entered into negotiations.
That´s about it for now. Be well, all of you.
Here´s a last shot from the ferry across the Straights of Magellan. Many passengers. About 20 of us were human. That´s three levels of sheep in that truck. baahhh

Greetings.
Click on any picture you want to see bigger.
We finally left Buenos Aires and headed first for the lake country, on the eastern side of the Andes Mountains southwest of Buenos Aires. The main city, Bariloche, is a quite developed tourist destination with every lind of convenience for the many foreign and Argentine visitors. We hung out there for several days, kind of getting our traveling sea legs again. The best thing to be able to do there would be to rent a car and drive around looking at the many lakes with their mountanous backdrops. As is so often the case when traveling on a shoestring, we decided to forego that and take in some scenes we could do easily on public transportation. I may go back there and maybe go in with a group on a car, but for now I´m satisfied.

You can go up in many places to vistas like that above. We went to the most popular spot from where that picture was taken. I took the tram. Myung walked up. She´s a great hiker, stronger than I am, really.

If you are rich, there are plenty of high end accommodations to be had. I walked around on the grounds of a five star resort complete with golf course and took the next two pictures. My guess is that these cottages cost about $1000 per night. We passed on that. Over the hill was the view in the second picture.

I say ¨I¨ walked around because Myung was intercepted by security. They tried to make her leave the whole resort even though she didn´t know she wasn´t supposed to go on the grounds. She then only wanted to go to the hotel´s public areas to look at the shops and restaurants. Man, that screaming Korean gave everybody all the way up the food chain a ration of shit! Woke up a few dozing millionaires, she did. Their little umbrella drinks had whitecaps.
We took many pictures of Bariloche and the environs, but you get the picture. From there we took an 18 bus ride down to southern Patagonia, to a place called El Chaiten. That was the first stop along the way we are taking to see the wonderful Patagonian scenery. There is very little population on the Argentine side, which is mostly semi-arid steppe. They are in the process of paving the highway, but a lot of it is like this.

Once you head back into the mountains, it is truly beautiful. And that´s coming from a pretty jaded traveller. There are many trekking routes. The two most popular, because they are only all day hikes, are to the bases of two glaciered mountains, Cerro Torre and Mt. Fitz Roy. Here´s on the way to Cerro Torre.

It looks like a nice little walk when you look at the glade pictures but, boy, was it cold up there. Actually, it may have been about 50 degrees F, but the wind was about 70 Km an hour. We took some pictures and headed for the more sheltered lower areas. This next pictures are of Mt. Fitz Roy. It wasn´t sucessfully climbed until the 1950´s and remains what is considered one of the most difficult ascents in the world. Unlike Cerro Torre, it was nice up there by the lake at the base, no wind. By the way, Fitz Roy was the captain of Darwin´s ship, the Beagle.

From there we took another all day bus ride back down through the steppe to El Calafate. El Calafate is famous for one of the most fantastic, easily accessible glaciers in the world, Perrito Moreno. You can walk to within about half a kilometer from the face of it on a series of terraces. This place is jaw dropping. This first picture is from a viewpoint the bus stopped at. The spit of land on the right, in front of the glacier, is where you go.

At one point the glacier calved an iceberg about the size of 20 SUV´s. THAT would have been the money shot. Myung got on one of a piece of ice only the size of about four SUV´s, but for some reason I can´t upload her pictures. I don´t know what´s up with that. About ten minutes after the one berg fell off, another bigger one floated to the surface. Apparently they break off from below the water level, too. Did you see a couple of weeks ago where an iceberg the size of Rhode Island broke off in Antartica? Hmm, ships for Antarctica leave from Ushuaia for another couple of weeks…. Ah, the old shoestring problem. It´s be nice. Hmmm.
A mere four hour ride got us to where the high Andes mostly peter out. You cross a low pass and 10 kilometers later you are in the Chilean coastal city of Puerto Natales. This is mostly known as the gateway to what Lonely Planet calls the best national park in South America, Torres del Paine. We are in Puerto Natales now. It´s a lot like the Alaskan panhandle here, in the midst of a similar archipelago and at about the same latitude south as Juneau. Fall comes early and the tourist season is just about over. It´s pretty cold and very windy. I don´t have pictures of Torres del Paine because we thought about hiking up there for a few days but Myung didn´t want to go. She took a day trip today to places you can drive to. I will probably come back and try it after Myung leaves from Ushuaia for Buenos Aires and points north in five days. I may not do it, though. It´s gertting pretty rough out there. The wind and the near constant drizzle are biting, to say the least, though at least it hasn´t started to snow at the lower levels yet. There are refuges, so you don´t have to camp, but still, five day hikes in this weather can be taxing for old guys like me.
Here, at least, is a view of the Pacific Ocean from the end of the lane where our guesthouse is.

The cruise ship up to Puerto Montt leaves from here. I´ve always wanted to take the Alaska cruise, and this would be similar, through the glaciered fjords, but the $600 for a dorm bed on that boat will probably stop me. I´m going to have to make some decisions.
That gets me to our plans. Myung is pretty tired of traveling and has decided to return to Korea. She´s flying out of Ushuaia in Argentine Terra del Fuego on the 19th. She plans to go to Bolivia and Peru. She has a ticket from Limsa to Korea on April 24. That´s too soon for me, so I´m staying on. I´ll go with her to Punta Arenas tomorrow, then then see her off in Ushuaia on the 19th. (The take off in this wind and weather in that twin prop plane should be an E ticket, I´ll wager.) I plan to come back here for Torres del Paine, then go north. Maybe I´ll take the famously scenic Carrera Austral in Chilean northern Patagonia. North of there is earthquake country, so I´ll probably come back to the lake country in Argentina and go from there to some places on the Atlantic coast. then I´ll probably tour northwestern Argentina before going to Bolivia. After that, I don´t know. Maybe down the Amazon or on up to Equador. I´ve been to Peru and Macchu Piccu is closed due to severe rains and mudslides. Or maybe Equador then down the Amazon from there. Or maybe I´ll just take a series of buses to California. That´s all in the future, though, and speculation that far ahead is almost pointless. I willl join Myung in Korea after that. She doesn´t know where she´s going to put down. It depends on her opportunities. She wants to work again, so I guess that will be the main basis for her decision. I hope it´s somewhere with a pulse, like Seoul, but she doesn´t prefer to go there. She may go to her hometown of Anyang, just south of Ulsan and north of Yangsan. I´ve been to Anyang many times. I can´t say I´m excited at the prospect of living there, but I´m willing to give it a try. We talk about this a lot. I´ll keep you posted.
So, until next time, be well all of you.

Hi everyone. Well, that idea of bringing nail art to Argentina fell through. To make a long story short, Myung looked into it quite a lot. She asked around, got a lot of information, and decided it just wasn´t going to work. We were hoping it would be easier, but it isn´t. She could have made it work with a great deal of effort, and put a few thousand dollars into it with the hope of it turning out eventually, but decided against it. I don´t blame her. This project was getting harder by the day.
She´s a little low on her readily accessible money and not hot to travel anymore, so she´s decided to go back to Korea. I´ll follow her after a while. The plan now is to tour around Chilean and Argentine Patagonia for 19 days. Then, she has an airline ticket from Ushuaia, down in Terra del Fuego, for Buenos Aires. She´ll go up to Peru for some indefinite length of time. Maybe she´ll go to Bolivia or Equador. In any case, her time frame is shorter than mine. She wants to be back in Korea in two or three months and I want to stay longer. So I´m going to move more slowly through Patagonia then northern Argentina. Then I´ll probably go to Bolivia and Equador, but I might change my mind and go to Brazil. I´ve been to Peru, but I could go again.
At the end of the month we´ll go first to Bariloche, to the southwest near the Andes Mountains and the Chilean border. From there we´ll go south through Chile to El Calafate and see some sights in southern Patagonia. For a preview, search Bariloche, El Calafate and Ushuaia. For now, we are just hanging out. Last week I went to Iguazu Falls, an 18 hour bus ride from here. Myung has been there, so I went alone. The ride was actually pretty good. The bus was dreamy. I had a top deck front row seat anad slept well. Iguazu is amazing. Some places are better than their pictures. This is one of them. I think this place is better than Victoria Falls or any others I´ve seen. It´s a UNESCO World Heritage Site that deserves the acclaim. Please excuse the quality of some of these pictures. It rained the entire time I was in the park. In fact it rained so hard, it drowned yet another camera. The couple of the clearer pictures are Myung´s from when she was there on her way here from Brazil.

You can walk along the top on a series of foot bridges. This was where my camera got soaked, though it did continue to function for the rerst of the day.

Then there is an upper trail and a lower trailfrom where you get different perspectives of the different parts of the falls. A couple of these are sort of duplicates because I uploaded Myung´s too.

There are animals there also, even some panthers and jaguars, but this isn´t Africa and the numbers are low and the cats especially are ellusive. Here´s a coati and coati family. Then there are bird pictures Myung took.

I´ve got a couple of pictures from one of the botanical gardens here in town. My new camera has different proportions, I notice.

That about takes care of it for now, I think. I may blog again before leaving on Sunday for Bariloche. If not, I´ll see you when I see you. Be well, all of you.

Well, I wasn´t really expecting this, but here´s the scoop to his point.
When I got here, almost the first thing Myung told me was that she liked Buenos Aires. There was more. She had an idea that maybe she could do business here. Okay, she has said that sort of thing before. It turns out that she was feeling me out about really staying to do business, about quitting traveling at least for a while.
I did some soul searching. The fact is that I´m not weary from traveling, but I was getting too jaded about the things I see and do. Nothing was really exciting. Honestly, I felt like I could travel or not, at this point. All I needed was a better idea. Alone, I wouldn´t have stopped life on the road. There is something about instability and change that is comfortable for me, even if the sites and sounds themselves aren´t exciting. On the other hand, when I saw the twinkle in Myung´s eyes when she introduced the, then, embryonic idea of doing business, I recognised in myself a kind of enjoyment that she could be happy doing it. She has gone with me where few women would go and dealt with a lot of adversity. She has also basically lost her desire to travel and was only following me around. We have been kicking the can down the road about what were we going to do when one of us had had it. So, I decided not to find out what the bitter end to that process was going to be and told her I´d stay with her here if she wanted.
It didn´t take long for her to get an idea. Actually, we both came up with it while brainstorning possible opportunities. It turns out that fingernail art is virtually nonexistent in Argentina. We were always chatting about what niches Koreans fill in the US, that one of them is in nail art salons. Myung has no real interest in that, per se, but it seemed obvious for us that maybe if there are opportunities to get in on the ground floor of something in Argentina, this may well be one of them.
There are a number of reasons why this may be a good idea. For one, there is no competition. That is always good. Secondly, it is not a particularly difficult skill to learn, though obviously the good artists are experienced. Thirdly, there wouldn´t have to be much capital outlay to get started. The downsides include: Though there is no competition, that means there is no market yet, either. Introducing this to a culture is ambitious, to say the least. Also, Myung speaks no Spanish and mine is inadequate, though improving. Also, there are licenses, taxes and other bureaucratic matters we are no only unfamiliar with but are complicated by us being foreigners. Finally, though the capital outlays are small, as start ups go, Myung´s ¨big money¨ is in Korea and she can´t get it without going there at a cost of around $2600 round trip. It looks like I´m in the small business loan business.
Myung is nothing if not headstrong. She has gone to another country and started up successful businesses before. She sees nothing so difficult about doing it here. She has many of the same challenges as she had in China. She didn´t know the language. The bureaucracy was daunting. She needed capital. But she´s taking concrete steps every day to solve the problems and learn about this particular industry. She´s furiously teaching herself to do the art, though she would never do that for long. She´ll hire people. She is more interested in owning/renting salons, or in concessions in beauty shops, or simply selling the materials if salons find they are making money and start going it alone. She would like it to take off and she could concentrate on distribution. She´s been in contact with a corporation in Korea, Konad, which is the world leader in quality nail art supplies. They connected her with their representative for five countries South America who is based in Santiago, Chile. Myung went to Santiago last week and met with her. She returned with a load of supplies and, more importantly in terms of making real money, sole distribution rights for Konad in Argentina.
You see where she is going. She envisons nail art being as popular as in the US and Korea and her being at the top of the industry pyramid. Now THAT is putting a twinkle in her eye. I´ve never seen her in this mode. Very interesting. More importantly for me, though apprehensive, she looks happy again. I´m happy that she is happy.
I´m willing to stay just for that. I recognise that I might go stir crazy. It´s fun talking shop with her about this, but it´s her thing. We are talking about what I might do and whether I will travel without her sometimes. I haven´t come to any conclusions other than if I don´t feel trapped I´ll be alright. I´ll do something; I don´t know what. In a way, it´s a good thing I´m a master at doing nothing. I guess my focus now is on learning Spanish. It´s coming along, but my comprehension of spoken Spanish is weak still. I read pretty well, considering I´ve been here only a month. It´s a good thing I learned Spanish when I was younger and some of it is wired into my brain already. As an entirely new language, Korean was proving to be nearly impossible.
That´s about it for now. Despite the energy Myung has put into this, it´s not certain she will see it through. She is wisely reserving the right to get out if it´s too hard or too risky. I´ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, what post would be complete without a few pictures. I have nothing special. Meetings aren´t photogenic. Buenos Aires isn´t that photogenic, to tell you the truth, but here are a couple of pictures of the Cathedral where Jose de San Martin is interred and a couple of that mausoleaum complex where almost everybody else who was anybody, like the Perons, is interred. Check out the map links on the right for Argentina and Buenos Aires. Be well, all of you.