Life on the road can be hard
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2005
1
96
124
Trip End
Mar 13, 2006
Santiago,
Chile
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Another View from Plane
Thankfully we were flexible, so opted not to deal with all this so we only changed the time of the ticket we did have to Buenos Aires and got on another plane 1 hour later. Our new motto is if facing roadblocks (which we had faced alot of in the last week).......leave the first country (Bolivia), head to the only one you can get into (Peru), fly through another (Chile) and finally arrive to the forth (Argentina) because it is the only one you can get into!After what seemed like weeks of frustrations on the road with South America, we thought this could be a fun place to share some of our frustrations with this continent and give a overview of what life on the road is not as glamorous as it may seem. Some overviews and comments below on our time here:
* Amy had a dog pee on her bag the other day when we were sitting on a curb trying to find another backpacker to share a taxi with to the airport. When all of your belongings fit into your one backpack, you really donīt want to have a dog pee all over it. Sadly I had to wait for around 6 hours into reaching a bathroom to clean off the bag.
* All shops in South America like to close for around 3 to 4 hours each day between the hours of lunchtime and dinnertime. In other words, most things are closed during the hours that you need to get everything done when you are traveling. Siesta isnīt a great word when you are traveling. Great word when you are working, but not when you need to get something done.
* Breakfast included in your room is really just a cup of tea and a dry roll...nothing much more. And everyone eats dinner at around 10pm or later.
The Andes from the Plane
Not the best when you need to wake up for your early morning 6 am bus departures and you cannot find a restaurant to eat in until very late.* Wearing flip flops in almost every shower you take over a 9 month period gets old
* Moving hostels every two days or so gets tiring when there arenīt that many great ones to choose from. Most include lukewarm water in a shared bathroom where you cannot flush the toilet paper down the toilet (it goes into the nearby open top wastebasket everyone shares). A recent hostel "recommendation" from our Lonely Planet guidebook was "Single rooms are closet tiny and baths suffer from mildew. A bit grimy but spacious. There is not much else good that can be said about it." Okay, that wasnīt the exact wording but a combination of a few hostel options we could choose from.
* I (Amy) have no ability to pick up a new language. Since pretty much no English is spoken in all of South America I am often struggling to communicate. Matt is much better at Spanish and without him I would be lost in this country.
Okay, enough ranting.....traveling has it huge rewards as we were about to experience during our time in Argentina. But it does get tiring. We were ready for a change and Argentina rewarded us greatly.
The pictures that are included are over the amazing Andes that begin at the border of Santiago and go for quite a ways into Argentina before the plains begin.
