SOLIS. Astrid’s ancestral summer house lies 50 minutes from Montevideo and 30 from Punta del Este, across from Argentina on El Rio de la Plata. It is so wide you can easily forget it is a river, because you can’t see across it to the opposite bank.. It has a small tidal movement, and people… Continue reading URUGUAY
Month: February 2008
Perito Moreno – South Face and North Face
I will write about this later. It was too magnificent t short change it, and right now, I want to look at the glacier in our last hours here at Los Notros, and talk about it later.
EL CALAFATE AND PERITO MORENO
A fifty-five minute plane ride over tan folds of suede hills, then desert sand and sage will bring us to El Calafate. This land looks a lot like the American southwest, but instead of flat topped mesas of red and ochre, black, jagged mountain peaks surround the valley. We are met at the airport by… Continue reading EL CALAFATE AND PERITO MORENO
The Beagle Channel
This channel, which cuts clean through Tierra del Fuego, is named after the first ship to navigate it. the first English ship, that is, and the ship was named Beagle because of Queen Victoria’s fondness for these dogs. So the Argentinians are stuck with it. The clouds are low, so we don’t get views of… Continue reading The Beagle Channel
The National Park and the Beagle Channel
We set off in the morning in a van with Veronica and our driver. We are joined by a family of 5 noisy Germans, but Veronica, a lovely girl with yards and yards of curly black hair, has a German mother. She manages to tame the boisterous family, and so we can hear her spiel… Continue reading The National Park and the Beagle Channel
THE END OF THE WORLD
USHUAIA, 7 Febrero. Three and one half hours and 1700 miles later, we are in a different world. Buenos Aires is all glitter and thin, beautiful women and men and designer everything. Ushuaia is silver water, dark pines, snow capped mountains. The people on the plane going there are shorter, darker, more plump, and when… Continue reading THE END OF THE WORLD
A little more Buenos Aires –
We visit other parts of the city, including a very colorful area where the corrugated iron houses are painted bright green, red, yellow; any color which is available in left over paint, it seems. At least, that was the origin of the color near the dock. This is Caminitos, an area of touristy shops and… Continue reading A little more Buenos Aires –
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
We step into a warm, humid night – or morning, rather, as it is 1:00 a.m. , shaky with the fatigue of a 17 hour day, dressed in London wool slacks and cardigan (removable). Gonzalo, the man who will be our guide tomorrow, is there with a sign marked HALL. We nearly cry with gratitude. … Continue reading BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
OFF TO URUGUAY
Tomorrow morning we’re off to Heathrow Airport at 5:00 AM, leaving for Buenos Aires via Madrid. We have a wonderful trip planned, which includes Tango in B.A. and glaciers in Patagonia. From B.A. we’ll go to Tierra del Fuego, then back up slowly to Buenos Aires, and from there to Montevideo. There we will visit… Continue reading OFF TO URUGUAY