The Long Road North Part IV: Salta & Jujuy

After seven months of travelling in, out of, and through Argentina, my final stop was its far north.

After Patagonia, visiting the high Andean desert of Argentina topped my wishlist for things I wanted to see in the country. To blame was Fernando and photos he had shown me many years earlier of stromatolites growing in shallow lakes waaay up in the Andes. My timing was off for being able to join Fer and crew on a trip up to his Stromatosite, but I was assured that there was plenty of other interesting stuff to see in the region, Fer’s former PhD advisor Ricardo even hooking me up with a detailed field guide for finding some fossil stromatolites.

So I kidnapped one of Fer’s grad students, Flavia, a friend who I had met two years prior when she was a student and I was helping teach the Geobiology course, and we set off to do some exploring.

I picked up Flavia in her temporary home of Tucumán, or rather I met her at the bus station after an overnight bus from Córdoba and we both jumped on a bus from there to the city of Salta. From there, we picked our way to the car rental agency for which I had what I hoped was a valid internet voucher for a three-day car rental—I was a bit nervous since the price I had found online was less than half what everyone else in the area charged, and I was hoping it wasn't a scam. Turned out it was only a half-scam. First, the car rental agency wasn't open when we arrived, but the hours on the door assured us that it would open later that evening. So we went to a restaurant around the corner and proceeded to order, in succession, everything on the menu only to be told that they didn't have that (You don’t even have empanadas? Or coffee? Or beer? Seriously??) until finally Flavia sarcastically asked what they did have and we both ended up with water and salads. Two hours later, we returned to the car rental agency, which was unaware of our booking but had a vehicle available and was willing to honor the price on my printout, with one exception: they wouldn't throw in the GPS unit and the extra driver that was supposed to be included in the price. I tried arguing for a discount, but to no avail. At least we had a car.

Our car (the silver one) picked up in Salta

It was my first time behind a wheel since I drove up to Portland from Los Angeles way back in August the year prior to drop my car off at my parents’ house before flying to Santiago for the start of this whole adventure. It felt good. Great. It felt great. God I love driving. Especially in places like Los Angeles and Argentina where driving laws are generally viewed as suggestions vs. rules, which turns getting from Point A to Point B is like a contest to see who has the biggest balls / can be the fastest, most cunning maniac. My favorite game. We tanked up on the way out of town (Argentina is like Oregon, where there are station attendants who fill your tank for you) and made a beeline south for Lago Embalse Cabra Corral, where Fernando’s Ricardo had said we could find road cuts with extensive lacustrine carbonate deposits, including stromatolites.

About an hour later, we found them. We had just turned a corner and exited a tunnel of trees when I saw a gleaming bank of a roadcut to my left. The color screamed carbonate, so I slowed, and sure enough I spotted resistant benches that called to me. Flavia protested that we weren't there yet, this couldn't be them, but I pulled over anyways to check it out. And it was a stromatolite goldmine. Several benches of big, beautiful, brainy stromatolites. Big concretions.  Little stromatoliltes. Stromatolites everywhere. We stayed and played for a while before deciding, since the sun was setting, to keep driving up the road and see if we could find any more.

Stromatolite!

Flavia inspecting the stratigraphy

The cool thing about this particular site is that the formation (Yacoraite) is tipped such that the road cuts across its many layers, which means that you get to drive back in time in a giant lake system (also argued to be shallow marine) as you follow the road. The stromatolites we started with were toward the top of the formation, representing the most recent deposits, formed around 68 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous (elsewhere in the formation, there are dinosaur bones and tracks, but who cares about dinosaurs when there are stromatolites?). As we took our magic drive back in time, we saw alternations between shale and carbonates, reminiscent of the Green River Formation in Wyoming where I did part of my PhD thesis work, saw some bright red paleosols, big deltaic deposits, and plenty of things that I didn't know the meaning of but was too busy driving to look in the field guide. We stopped a few more times and found more stromatolitic deposits, but the best ones were the first ones, so we eventually decided to turn around and go back. Since taking fossils and artifacts out of Argentina is highly illegal and I didn't want to risk getting arrested this time (I had to meet my aunt in Peru in a week, otherwise I might have tried it. Getting arrested in a foreign country is an item on my bucket list and getting arrested over a stromatolite would make a great story) I didn't take any samples, but my field assistant may have…

The sun went down and we set off in search of food, stopping at a cavernous but empty (bad sign? We were too hungry to care) restaurant in a tiny village on the side of the road. They had tamales. I loooooove tamales. They also had beer, although it only came in a giant 1.5L bottle and, since Flavia neither drinks nor drives, that left me with a lot of responsibility. I had a few swigs, intending to cap it and save the rest for once we had camped for the night, but was chased down on my way out of the restaurant. Apparently you can’t take an open container of alcohol from a restaurant in Argentina. This had never come up before, so I was unaware, but the waitress literally chasing us down the street made for a pretty memorable scene (it was really good beer!).

Tamales!

Dinner: tamales & beer

I wanted to camp off in the hills somewhere, but Flavia preferred a campground, deeming it safer. Not wanting to drag her out somewhere where she’d be too freaked out to sleep, I went along with the “find a campground” plan, although personally I always consider “no people” to be safer (and quieter and better for a good night’s rest) than “with people”. In the end we decided to head to the municipal campground back in Salta, which was mentioned in Lonely Planet as one of the best campgrounds in the country, spent an hour driving through what seemed like sketchy back-streets in Salta trying to find the damned place, and finally found an urban campground surrounded by the Salta ghetto behind tall barbed-wire fencing. Inside were strange toothless men and party music blaring and I wanted to sleep anywhere but there, but it was late, and we didn't really have other options, so... I drove—despite the campground manager’s wishes that we camp next to him (heeeeellll no, creeper)—to the far end of the campground which was darker (i.e., not directly under a spotlight) and semi-quiet despite the neighbors up until the wee hours of the morning drinking and chatting, set up my tent on the lawn, locked Flavia (with the car keys) into the car, shoved in my earplugs, took a sleeping pill, crawled into my sleeping bag, and tried to sleep. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than driving all night. We woke up with the sun next to what turned out to be an immense, dry swimming pool, which may have explained why the campground got such a glowing Lonely Planet report in other years or seasons. We got the hell out, stopping only for gas station pastries and coffee for breakfast on the way out of dodge.

The giant swimming pool at the urban campground in Salta

First, we went for a romantic drive through the jungle on a windy narrow mountain road. After months of Patagonia, jungle was pretty novel. So green! So lush! Then we passed the city of Jujuy and headed for the mountains—the real ones, the Andes. Our goal: lunch in Purmamarca, home of the Cerro de las Siete Colores (Hill of the Seven Colors).  We were there by one. Flavia desperately needed a restroom, so we booked it into the first café we found, but got a familiar line: the only thing they had available for eating were cheese sandwiches. Screw that, I said, so we offered to pay a dollar to use the restroom and went somewhere else to get our food. Good thing, because we found a great restaurant that served, get this, Llama steaks. They were delicious.

Llama for lunch

Colorful wares for sale in Purmamarca

After lunch, we put the 4WD capabilities of our non-4WD vehicle to the test and explored around the area trying to get a better view of this so-called seven-colored hill. It was really impressive. I wished I had a geologist with me to explain everything, but we had left the range of the field guide (which was also in Portugese, making it a rather difficult read), and pulling out my laptop to consult the papers on regional geology I had downloaded seemed like a good way to make my navigator puke and/or break my laptop.

Exploring around the Cerro de las Siete Colores

We continued on toward the heart of the Andes up a steep half-dirt-half-paved road that switched back and forth through the desert up into the mountains. We could both feel the altitude, the air tasted different, noticeably thinner. We crossed rows of mountains, spotting snow in the distance, until dropping onto the Antiplano, the massive high-altitude plateau (the largest outside Tibet, and the visual similarities are striking) that characterizes much of northern Argentina and Chile as well as most of Bolivia and southern Peru. We drove on toward the Chilean border where we reached our next objective of the day: Salinas Grandes, a huge salt flat (the third largest in the world) that is twice as big as Utah’s famous Bonneville Salt Flat. We parked the car and walked out onto the salt flat, Flavia quickly getting an altitude headache at the nearly 3500m elevation while I felt my body responding to the low oxygen levels (“Breathe faster! Faster!”). We poked around, hoping to see endoliths, but although we did see faint colors in some of the hypersaline pools, there was no life visible in any of the crusts we saw, although we didn't have rock hammers with us to break away fresh chunks. It was beautiful, salt flats always are.

Vicuña standing guard over the Andean Antiplano

Salinas Grandes

Salt sculptor working in Salinas Grandes

I wanted to camp there, in the mountains, so we drove off on a side road until I felt like we were far enough from where anyone could see us, then turned the car 90 degrees and drove straight out into the sand rim of the salt flats, avoiding deep sand as best I could (because wouldn't that be exciting: getting my rental car stuck in a sand drift in the middle of the Andes). The little 2WD rental handled like a champ on the uneven, soft terrain. I drove toward cross-country toward the salt flat until the car was no longer easily visible from the side road. I was hoping to get closer to the rim of the salt flat, but decided not to take any more getting-stuck risks. It was a nice spot, with 360 degree views of mountains and a nice view of the salt. We were just in time for sunset. I quickly set up my tent, unpacked our dinner and a bottle of wine I had bought myself, and we sat and watched the mountains turn pink, and then purple, and then dark as we ate and drank wine straight out of the bottle (even Flavia, who doesn't drink, had a few sips). Flavia retreated back to the car, but I laid with my head out of the tent for a long time.

Our campsite in the Antiplano

Our campsite, as reflected in the bottle of wine we shared that night

The stars were out.

Not just out. The altitude, the long distance from any towns and sources of light, the dryness of the air, and the temporary absence of the moon conspired to make probably the darkest night I had ever witnessed, and the stars were like a glittering ocean overhead. The milky way was bright, and other dull celestial clouds were visible. It was hard to sleep, I was so awestruck by the show over my head. Eventually the moon came up like a spotlight, and I had to bury my head inside my sleeping bag to sleep.

I was awake just before dawn, and sat in the sand and watched the sunrise paint the mountains and salt flats with a range of pastel colors. I felt peace again, something I had been missing in the previous month of nonstop activity and travel. It’s like John Muir’s quote (John Muir has all the best quotes):

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”

Llama tracks in the desert at our campsite

The mountains have always been my cathedral, the place where I’m reminded of my soul and my place in the world. If I go too long without spending quiet time in them, I get antsy, agitated, nervous, stressed. I need them.

Eventually Flavia woke up and we ate breakfast, packed up camp (although I had intentionally parked it on top of a set of bushes, I was a bit worried that the car might have settled into the sand during the night and would be difficult to get out…it was fine), and made our way through a thick fog back down the Andes. We made a detour to stop for lunch in the scenic pueblo of Humahuaca before continuing back down to drop the car off in Salta.

The drive that morning looked like this.

Flavia demonstrating the fierceness innate in Northern Argentinians

Humahuaca

The colorful, scalloped hills of the Quebrada de Humahuaca

We made it to Salta just in time for Flavia's bus back to Tucuman, and just in time for me to wait an hour and a half for the car rental people to bother to show up so that I could drop the keys off. I thought several times of just leaving the keys in the glove box and dropping the car there for them to deal with on their own watch, but after making a dozen phone calls was finally able to wake a napping person who promised someone would be “right there”, “right there” meaning 40 minutes later. I almost missed my bus back to Jujuy, but made it to the bus station with a whopping five minutes to spare. And, of course my travel luck being what it is, I happened to be walking through the main park en route to the bus station just as the weekly pan flute circle started up, so I got a free show in on my way.

Thanks Flavia for joining me on the adventure, and Fer and Ricardo for the tips on where to go! More photos from Salta & Jujuy up on the Google+ Album.

Next stop: a 49 hour bus journey across the Antiplano to Peru.

Bus to the end of the world

I took a bus from Bariloche to Ushuaia. It took 36 hours, and covered over 2000 miles of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. For my U.S. friends, that's like taking a bus in a straight shot from the border of Canada to the border of Mexico, with about 80% of the drive through scenery reminiscent of the mojave desert (but a good portion of that was at night). It was pretty rad.

36 hours watching Argentina go by in my La-Z-Boy on Wheels. My seat was the one in the window at the upper right.

What follows is the 36 hours in all of their detail, as narrated by the voice in my head. In case you've ever wanted to spend 36 hours inside my head. Also a lot of pictures of bus food because most of the photos I took of the landscape didn't turn out but the pictures of food did.

Or, for the scenery without the words, here's the video (cut down significantly from 36 hours to 4:20 minutes, you're welcome).

The play-by-play

06:15  My friends at the Green House Hostel had thrown an asado the night before my departure, and so I was full of wine, beer, and Fernet when I went to bed, and still full of it when I woke up 40 minutes before my alarm when the sun rose. I showered, then attempted to pack without waking up the six snoring guys and two not-snoring girls in my hostel dorm room.

08:35  Brian the hostel owner called me a taxi as I scarfed down my breakfast in my normal frantic way. I have Brian a hug, "Voy a te extraño!" The Green House people had been my family for the month, and I really was going to miss them.

08:50  I arrived at the bus station, dropped my backpacking backpack in the luggage bay, and boarded with my remaining two bags: my backpacking backpack, my little school backpack full of Spanish homework and my computer, and a third bag full of food for the 36 hour journey: bananas, water, chopped up bell peppers, mandarins, crackers, cookies, and a half kilo of good dark chocolate from Bariloche's legendary Mamuschka. I settled into my VIP seats (the advantage of booking early--you get to pick your seats) on the top deck of the double-decker Marga bus in the front, my glass bubble for the next 24 hours. The bus was empty so I "nested" by spreading my mountain of stuff all across the front row. Anyone who has ever been on a road trip with me can guess what this looked like.

And for those of you who have never been on a road trip with me, "the nest" looked something like this.

09:05  The bus departed and rolled through Bariloche. The upper deck gave a different vantage point on the city that had been my home for a month. We passed the slum part of town, which I hadn't seen before, small shacks squished up against the huge city garbage dump just north of town, with Cerro Cathedral and Cerro Otto in the background as the bus joined the legendary Ruta 40.

The view as we pulled out of Bariloche

09:20  OMG Road trip!!! I love road trips!! There were lakes and pointy snow-capped peaks streaming past my windows on all sides. My excitement built, I couldn't contain a grin, and might have even let out a squee. As each minute brought new and more spectacular peaks with storm-colored lakes at their feet and hills and meadows full of scotch broom and dandelions accenting the layers of green, purple, red, orange, and magenta of the mountains and the sky with pinkish clouds. I kept thinking "most spectacular effing road trip ever!" (and I've been on some pretty spectacular road trips).


09:45  The bus passed the turnoff to Tronador. I felt a pang of sadness about leaving my splitboard behind. I wondered where my badass guide friend Melitta was in her Patagonian adventures.

10:00  Passed a pair of cyclists. What an incredible trip that would be, I thought. I thought about the shoulder injury I developed during my last big cycling trip (a month through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Eastern Germany), realized it was over 7 years ago, felt sad that I haven't managed to heal my shoulder yet and get back on a bike, and nostalgic about what a great way to travel it had been. I had done that trip and other memorable adventures around Europe with my boyfriend of the time, a long relationship that was difficult and rocky from the start but held together by the glue of our mutual love of outdoor adventures. Although after the breakup both of us had felt bitter about all the time (6 years) we had "wasted", I realized in retrospect I wouldn't trade that time for anything. I did so many cool things with him and I learned so much. He didn't mean to be a confidence-shattering, insufferable asshat. He had done the best he knew how to do, and gave me some very happy memories. At the same time, I felt very glad that relationship was long over and that both of us had moved on in our lives. As I thought about the cyclists with the mountains rolling past my fishbowl windows, I felt layers of scars, having healed, dropping off.

Mountain, viewed from my Fishbowl of Awesome

10:30  When dreaming about this South America trip, I had originally had big plans to drive the whole way, and would often daydream of driving for endless hours in the wild wasteland of Patagonia. Dreamed of the music I would listen to, the things I would see, the freedom I would feel. Here I was on a bus, certainly a different experience but, I thought, far more comfortable and relaxed. I realized that I was sitting there, watching my childhood and adult dreams come true as the mountains continued to roll past. I felt achingly happy.

10:40  Crossed a turquoise-covered river with views of distant mountains covered in snow. There were a few wood lean-tos announcing a small human population, but not much else.

More mountains. Curva peligrosa = dangerous curves.

11:20  I woke up from a short catnap to a caramel-filled dark chocolate on a napkin on my armrest, a gift from the Canadians sitting behind me. The bus arrived in El Bolson, with horses being ridden down the main streets, little hippie shops, lupine lining the road in their pink and purples, and huge mountains looming at the outskirts of town. "Mom would love it here," I thought, as I savored the chocolate.

11:40  The Canadians and I made lunch, combining our food stashes: baguettes smeared with butter and meat pate with some of my sliced bell peppers. It was filling and we felt clever, having brought such a nice picnic with us.

11:45  The bus steward came upstairs with trays to serve us lunch: raviolis, cornbread, little savory pastries, rice with carrots and peas, and juice. This came as a complete surprise to the Canadians and me. Not one to ever waste food, I shoveled it in, and felt utterly and overly stuffed.

Lunch #1

12:00  Uuuuuuhgggghhhhhh why did I eat so much? But I still couldn't keep my hands out of my bag o' chocolate. Someone please take it away!!

12:10  Chubut. The landscape looked like Wyoming with big snow-topped mountains on the right side and rolling steppe to the left. This was the Patagonia of my imagination. Road still paved, despite rumors of this trip being a poorly-maintained dirt road nightmare.

12:20  The driver's assistant curtained off half of my fishbowl windows, reducing my view to half. Tempted to open them back up, but don't want to be That Entitled Jerk who keeps the rest of the bus from napping.

12:40  Now I'm napping, too. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

13:45  Stop in Esquel with a 10 minute bathroom break. It took me 5 just to extracate myself from my seat-nest. No toilet paper in the bathroom. Good thing I had my tissues on me.

14:00  On the road again. There's some movie playing in the background involving the pope...and aliens? There's a stargate or something. And religious opera music. Ooooh, I hear Tom Hanks, I know what this is.

14:20  Flamingos! Hanging out in a salt pond. No photos, blew by them too fast.

15:00  Tubut. There's a big Argentine flag and a road sign: Las Malvinas son Argentinas. This would not be the last of these huge signs I'd see on the trip. I had been warned: never ever ever call them the Falklands in Argentina.

15:30  Now I'm suddenly driving south on Hwy 395 with desert on my left, snowy dry mountains on my right, driving south along the Eastern Sierras. I've been here dozens of times before. Except this time I'm in the magic rolling La-Z-Boy that I always wished I had for the drive. I pulled out my Spanish books, I schlepped four of them with me, hoping to do enough review so that I could abandon them somewhere and stop hauling them around. Over 6 weeks later as I finally write this post, I'm still hauling them around.

Hi, Eastern Sierras. Except in Argentina.

16:00  Stop in Chubut.

17:00  It's now a less-dry version of the Mojave. The road is smaller and older, but the scenery is the same. I flew across the world to road trip through California.

17:30  Pavement ended. Dirt road started.

18:10  Back on pavement in scrub desert.

19:00  The road signs no longer say Ruta 40. Still in the desert, but still pavement. Braved my first on-bus toilet experience since I brilliantly timed this trip for a heavy day of my period. Dealing with the DivaCup on the bus was a surprisingly non-unpleasant experience.

19:20  Lake! Big lake! Looks like the sort of place that would have good microbial mats. Alas, no stop.

20:20  Desert desert desert. Onto Kindle reading now: Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Downloaded this out of curiosity when I saw it mentioned in her list of books after finishing Wild (her bestseller about her time on the Pacific Crest Trail). Admit to crying several times at particularly touching stories and responses. Say what you will about Cheryl Strayed, but we could all learn from her empathy and kind way of viewing humanity.

Oil derrick at sunset in Patagonia

21:00  Now it really looks like California, oil derricks everywhere. They kind of look pretty at sunset.

21:20  Dinner served. The food on this trip has been surprisingly good (if very benadryl-requiring for this allergic-to-milk-products-and-eggs little defective human)

. All that's lacking is a bottle of wine.

Dinner

The final rays of sun reflected in the bus window.

21:30  Wait...is that the ocean? Where are we?

21:45  Now the ocean is on my right. This is all wrong. I am so confused.

21:50  Okay, ocean is back on my left. I think this is acceptable...

22:45  Sleep.

01:20  Stars! Look at those stars!!

05:15  Sunrise over the pampas.

07:20  Breakfast.

That's right, breakfast. Cake, cookies, and candy.

08:30  We were supposed to be in Rio Gallegos by now. We're still in the Pampas. My bus connection to Ushuaia is in 30 mins. Will I make it?

08:45  Still no Rio Gallegos in sight.

08:50  In the outskirts of Rio Gallegos. Asked the bus driver if I'll make my connection or what my options are. Bus driver briefly panicked, then called ahead. My bus will wait for me.

09:00  I am packed and ready to jump off this bus.

09:13  Bus pulled into the bus station at Rio Gallegos. I was quickly ushered off, my bags found and thrown into the bus to Ushuaia, and swept onto the Ushuaia bus. My Canadian friends still sleeping, I didn't get to say goodbye.

09:15  Ushuaia bus departed, the assistant handed out Chilean immigration cards. But...Ushuaia...is in Argentina... Chile? I looked at a map. Oh, duh. I suck at geography. Do I have any food products to declare? Yeah, only a giant grocery bag full. Let the frantic eating fest begin! Also, if they confiscate my chocolate I'm going to throw a screaming crying fit.

This is a photo of the sun starting to go down the day prior, but I ran out of photos for this part of the story.

09:30  Reading Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, which seemed appropriate reading given my destination. I now have an easy answer to that "If you could go back in time and meet any person, who would it be?" question: I would go back and apply for the job of cabin wench on the Beagle and relentlessly follow young Darwin around on his adventures. I love the mix of nerdy observation and absolute joy he takes in the beautify of the natural world. Charles Darwin, I want to look at your slightly phosphorescent self-regenerating jumping pyrophores in your cabin with you.

Prior to being one of history's most recognized names in science, Charles Darwin was a kid who loved being outside, loved collecting beetles and studying geology, and annoyed his father by not being too interested in medicine. One day during summer break he comes home to a letter offering him a spot as a 'gentleman naturalist' (i.e. his dad would have to pay his way) and companion to Captain Fitz Roy aboard the H.M.S. Beagle for a planned 2 year voyage (it ended up being 5) around the world with a focus on developing hydrographic maps of and surveying coastal Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as well as returning a few kidnapped natives of Tierra del Fuego to their native lands.

He was 22 when he left aboard the Beagle. He was still learning: studying books--especially on Geology--given to him during the voyage by Fitz Roy. Reading the Voyage of the Beagle is like watching a movie of Darwin's formation as a scientist. The best part is he was young, and had a passion for adventure, asking Fitz Roy to let him off on land to, say, ride a while across the pampas with gauchos or climb a mountain. While sitting in the bus reading, I developed a serious crush on young Darwin (even if he was only 22...).

Here's one of my favorite endearing passages, about Darwin playing gaucho and trying to use bolas:

"One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured...The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself."

10:00  Border. Saw and chatted with a Korean guy I met in the hostel in Bariloche, random. I got another pair of stamps in my passport, bringing the South America count to six. We will get at least two more today and even more in the days to come. This is starting to look like my previous passport with the pages full of Slovakia/Poland stamps from biking back and forth across the border along the Tatras. So far, I still have my chocolate. The world is safe.

10:45  Still at the border. Made a bathroom stop. This one was less fun with the DivaCup: hovering over a shit-smeared toilet seat in a bathroom with no soap and non-working sinks while trying to wipe out and empty the cup with nothing but kleenex without getting my hands too bloody...ick. It's been nice on the bus trip generally but the changing thing is still a trick I haven't quite gotten used to. Those assholes better let me keep my chocolate or heads are gonna roll.

11:10  Border checks complete. They let me keep my chocolate. Thank God.

11:15  I'm in Chile. Plains, ocean, sheep, and guanacos. This is the other side of Patagonia!

11:45  We arrived at the end of mainland South America. Loaded the bus onto a ferry to cross the Strait of Magellan (another one of those almost mythical places that I am totally geeking out about visiting). We didn't even get out of the bus, bus just drove right onto the ferry, no big deal, ferry crosses the Magellan, as we cross lunch is served. We offload from the ferry into Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego! I made it!!

Lunch. Eaten, of course, in the fully-reclined La-Z-Boy position. Not sure what half of this was, but I'm pretty sure it was egg and cheese. More benadryl.

12:10  Phone battery died. Using my solar charger for the first time on this South America trip. Lunch must have had cheese somewhere I didn't see, loaded myself up with Benadryl. Naptime.

12:50  More flamingos! Still no photos, though.

13:10  Dirt road begins.

13:30  And now...I'm in Scotland? Sheep everywhere. Except there are also guanacos.

14:50  I really, really have to poop. But No Pooping Allowed on the Bus (there are actually signs that say this). Popped a mystery blue pill (not so mystery: immodium to stop me up for a while).

15:00  Border crossing number 2 at San Sebastian, the air is significantly cooler here. They have bathrooms! Hooray! After doing my business (and, yes, washing my hands) I ran into the Mainguys--my French friends from the Green House hostel. Friends! Also heading to Ushuaia on a different bus! I was so busy chatting with them that my bus almost left without me.

16:00  Still in the Land of Many Sheep. Sheep, sheep, nothing but sheep. I am out of water. Do I open up the box of juice? If I open the juice, I'm almost certainly going to make a giant mess of spilled juice everywhere at some point.

16:30  I opened the juice.

The Juice

17:15  Naptime. Sheep sheep sheep sheep sheepzzszzzzzz

17:50  Woke up to a very different view. Is this Darwin's "impenetrable forest"? No more sheep.

18:00  I SEE MOUNTAINS!!!!

18:30  Aaaaand, now I'm in Norway (bus trip: North Cascades to the Eastern Sierra to the Mojave to Patagonia to Scotland to Norway). Oh I love mountains. Love love love mountains. Not just "I think mountains are beautiful and I appreciate them" love mountains but "this bus just turned a corner and there's a  really good-looking mountain and now my heart is beating all crazy and I want to jump out of the bus and run up to it and give it a giant hug" love mountains.

19:30  This place is stunning. Wow. Huge mountains, sparkling lakes and sounds, more huge mountains...wow.

19:45  Ushuaia sign, really? We're...early??

20:00  Arrival, a full hour early. Unheard of! Now, to find a hostel...

Ushuaia! The "end of the world" (= fin del mundo) sign.