Ushuaia & Tierra del Fuego

Ushuaia´s heavily promoted claim to fame is that it is the southernmost city in the world, but this isn`t true as that title belongs to Puerto Williams, across the Beagle Channel in Chile. Ushuaia instead should focus on what it does have to offer, which is easy access to great hiking in a beautiful national park, boat cruises to see penguins and sea lions, great restaurants and the major port of call for ships heading to Antarctica.

We arrived on Tuesday after yet another delayed flight. Fortunately this leg was first class so we were able to while away the time in the VIP lounge in El Calafate´s airport. On Wednesday we hiked more than 21 km in the beautiful Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego.

Peat bog in Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego

I am happy to report that mom did not die and was quite the trooper, up to and including our hitched ride back after we missed the last transport out of the park. Today was much more low key - ALL of the shops along Rua San Martin, both sides and in order, of course, and then a 6 hour boat trip in the Beagle Channel to see sea lions and penguins.

Penguins in the Beagle Channel

Tomorrow we`ll do a little more hiking, and on Saturday we head to Mendoza.

Ushuaia sports an impressive variety of restaurants. On Tuesday my entree was sea bass cooked in lemon and sage; on Wednesday I had about a pound of southern king crab in olive oil and garlic; this evening I had lamb cooked in honey and oranges. All have been accompanied with delicious Argentinian wines and dessert.

This is totally off topic but there is some 13 year old Argentinian staring at me as I type on the hotel`s computer. I wonder if he can read what I`m writing.

El Calafate

The purpose of this stop in Patagonia was to see the Perito Moreno glacier in the Parque Nacional de los Glaciares, and what a fantastic glacier it is. We spent all day yesterday in the park, starting off with 2 hours along the boardwalks for views of the glacier.

Perito Moreno glacier

We saw two big blocks and many smaller ones fall off the glacier and into the milky white Lago Argentino. After a packed lunch, we took a boat across the lake and spent about 2 hours walking on the ice in a safe part of the glacier, the part that is contained by the valley. The ice hiking wasn´t too difficult and I think the best part was being able to see into the superblue holes in the ice.

We arrived the day before in the mid-afternoon and only had time to arrange yesterday´s excursion and to take a short 2 hour horseback ride in the outskirts of El Calafate.

Horsebackride near Lago Argentino

The horseback ride was very enjoyable. My horse, Lucero, was a little bit lazy and liked to hang at the back of the pack. This gave me an excellent view of my mom´s horse, Gringo, who was suffering from a bout of diarrhea. In addition to the beautiful scenery, we saw an big owl and some other birds. One of the stable´s dogs that was along for the ride ate a baby chick of some bird. I saw it get cornered and scooped up into the dog´s mouth. : (

All the trips in El Calafate are for the entire day, so we are spending the day in El Calafate until our mid-afternoon flight leaves for Ushuaia. I have had my fill of tacky souvenir shops and am blogging solo.

Useless OneWorld

First of all, everything is fine. Now that I´ve gotten that out of the way, can I just say how useless the hyped OneWorld Alliance is if one of their passengers is re-routed on a participating company´s flight?

Take for example, my mother. She missed her connecting flight in Miami to Buenos Aires due to American sitting on the runway in Dallas for 30+ minutes and then her having to go to three different terminals in Miami. American re-routed her through Santiago on LanChile to arrive 3 hours later than originally scheduled. Meanwhile, I know none of this since I had already left for the airport. After her no-show, I go to the OneWorld check-in section at the Buenos Aires airport. Only a lady from LanChile was there, and I ask her if she could check to see if my mom was on the flight from Miami. She told me that she worked for LanChile and not for American. I pointed out that both companies were part of the OneWorld Alliance and she said that passenger lists are not shared. That´s helpful, especially when the passenger who was supposed to be on American is REROUTED on your OWN COMPANY. I´d like to add that all of these conversations were in Spanish (and that mine thankfully is awesome today), so it isn´t like I´m the Ugly American speaking in loud, slow English.

Anyway, I then had to go talk to superbitch at American. Because no one was at the counter, I went to the hidden American office behind the check-in counters. I asked superbitch if my mom was on the flight that arrived this morning. She checked the passenger list and said no. Then I asked if she was on the flight that arrived yesterday morning and she said no. Then she curtly said that I would have to talk to my mom. I said "gracias" and took some small comfort in that superbitch had ratty bleached hair and has to stare at a computer screen all day long.

Don´t you think that if you (a) worked for American and (b) had a passenger flying on American that you´d be able to tell someone that the passenger was re-routed on your superspecial OneWorld Alliance? Isn´t everything supposed to be easier with all this codesharing? Apparently not.

Buenos Aires

On Wednesday, we took the Buquebus monopoly ferry from Colonia to Buenos Aires. The one hour ride on the fast ferry cost a pricy 105 pesos, or about US$35.

Buenos Aires is a very big city – about 11 million people live in the city proper and the metropolitan region has almost 16 million. The city feels more congested and compact than São Paulo even though the latter is larger. In the evening we walked around the chic Palermo neighborhood and ate Mexican food (it has been more than three months).

I spent the first full day in Buenos Aires visiting some of the favorite places of my departing travel partner. We went to a very tasty bakery in the Belgrano neighborhood near her university and then ate the pastries in the 3 de Febrero park. Buenos Aires has lots of dog walkers, and I am happy to report that the (rich) residents of Buenos Aires have very good taste in dogs – lots of labs, retrievers, and German shepherds, and few if any yippy small dogs. At night we went to a Morrocan restaurant where I had an appetizer, an entree, dessert, coffee and a bottle of Malbec for less than US$25.

Fountain on Libertador

Uruguay

I spent two days in Uruguay, with one night in the capital Montevideo and the other in Colonia. Montevideo was nice. Parts reminded me of cities in Spain. The center is compact and walkable, and some buildings in the historic city center are being restored. Montevideo receives day tourists from cruise ships, which is good for the Uruguayan economy but annoying for certain other tourists who don’t like day tourists from cruise ships.

Plaza in Montevideo

Eating out in Montevideo was a lot cheaper than in Brazil; I had a great dinner consisting of salad, entrée, good wine, and dessert for US$ 15.

The next day I took a 3 hour bus ride to Colonia, an historic town across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires. Colonia has nice river beaches and an even nicer colonial center.

Last Night in Belém

I’m postdating a couple of blog entries to make it seem like I’ve been better at keeping the peeps at home informed. It has been a little difficult to blog w/out internet access at home, not to mention that I no longer have a home.

Anyway, my last few days in Belém were really busy. After packing up all my crap and shipping half of it back to Texas, I had a sunset drink at Boteca das Onze, which is located in the restored Casa das Onze Janelas.


These loud people sat next to me. The blurry photo conveys their inebriated state, which is also probably why they ended up paying for my drink.

Afterwards I made one last trip into Cidade Velha for some goodbyes. I had to be at the airport before 5 AM for a 6 AM flight to São Paulo. My two nights in São Paulo were fun. I had a fantastic churrasco with the family of a fellow classmate; I ate for 7 hours straight.

Poll

In my pre-departure shopping frenzy, I bought a beautiful wicker basket this evening. It just barely fits into one of the sturdy corrugated cardboard boxes I have to ship things back. There is no room for padding to protect the top or bottom of the basket inside the box, but there is plenty of room on the sides.

a) Will the basket get smashed in the 7,000 mile journey to Texas via the Brazilian and U.S. postal systems?

b) Does it stand a better chance as hand luggage via Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina?

Polls close Thursday morning.

Take me home!

Praça da República

At the southeaster edge of downtown Belém is the Praça da República, home to the Teatro da Paz and a nice urban green space. On Sunday, the praça hosts the Feira Artesanato where you can find a lot of crap for sale but also some decent regional handicrafts and Christmas presents for certain family members. I like to go and stroll around after brunch. Here are some photos I took today:

Craft/crap stalls lining the "tunel das mangueiras." If you happened to receive a very sketchy looking postcard of Belém at night, this is the area in the daytime.

Street performance with an empowered woman whose theme was "use a condom." And there were *children* in the audience! You can bet that it wasn't financed by USAID as the Republican right goes into conniption fits at the mere thought of a pragmatic HIV/AIDS foreign policy. I donated R$1 when the hat was passed. The Teatro da Paz is visible in the background.

You can even get a tatoo. Mine says "I lived in Belém for four months and all I got was this lousy tatoo." The one I got last week says "mother."

Catching Mangoes

Remember my previous post about how mango season was here? The fruit is so plentiful that two guys can shake down a given tree, collect the mangoes, and cart them off for sale without anyone paying attention. I took this picture today while walking to my usual Sunday brunch place:

If you look carefully, you can see the blue rope that mango robber #1 used to climb up the tree to shake out the fruits. And if you look even more carefully, you can see a mango mid-flight, about to be caught by mango robber #2's sack.

Belém Panoramic

On Friday I went to Mangal das Garças, Belém newest high-end redevelopment project built on the Guamá River's edge on an abandoned site. The development has an expensive restaurant, an aviary, a butterfly garden, a pricey artesanat, and a big tower that used to serve as a lighthouse. Fantastic views of the city are available at the top of the tower for R$2. This panoramic shows about 135º:

Museu Emílio Goeldi

Belém is home to the renowned Museu Emílio Goeldi, a research institution dedicated to the study of the Amazon's cultural and natural riches. The museum is better known to the public as the city's zoo, and despite what you might expect for a zoo located in the third world it is not depressing or disgusting. The exhibits are small and focus on Amazon species. Sure, the leopard and birds would rather be roaming free, but it sure beats being hunted or fleeing your burning home from the onslaught of cattle ranchers.

Electric eels

Giant Lilypads

Tortoise.

This species' name in Portuguese is jabuti, which is really funny if you say "get jabuti over here."

Winter is Here

Although located in the southern hemisphere, Belém refers to early December as the start of winter. “Winter” is more accurately described as the really rainy season, where it is supposed to rain twice a day. To date is has been raining a lot more often than this past “summer” (read rainy season), but that isn’t saying much since Belém suffered from a drought along with the rest of the Amazon. It rained two days ago. The afternoons are a little cooler as well, although I am still able to sit in front of my computer in my boxers with the window open and the fan blowing on me as I am doing now.

I heard there is some nasty weather in Texas. Ashia!*


*Expression of sympathy in Pidgin. Really. That’s what it means.

Grocery shopping

A while back I was asked about the cost of groceries here in Belém. I waited to post until I had a long list compiled from several weeks worth of shopping. Prices are listed in US$ and have been converted from the metric.

skim milk, sold in a box 3.02/gal
cashew fruit juice 4.92/gal
6 pack Diet Coke 3.46
water 1.11/gal
750 mL of cachaça 6.18/gal
12 pack of good beer 10.04

limes 0.39/pound
mini bananas 0.33/pound
papaya 0.35/pound
passion fruit 0.37/pound
tomatoes 0.42/pound
bell peppers 0.63/pound
onion 0.23/pound
açaí 8.63/gallon
1 head of lettuce 0.90
huge bunch of basil 0.32
pineapple 0.91

fresh fish 4.15/pound
ground beef 1.54/pound
dozen eggs (one of which was rotten) 1.06
gouda cheese 6.03/pound
salami 6.11/pound

box of 3 granola bars 1.25
Moca cereal (Nestle’s Frosted Flakes) 2.31
loaf of wheat bread 1.15
packet of linguini 2.00
roll of cookies 0.83
can of oatmeal 1.44/pound
white rice 0.35/pound

jar of cupuaçú jelly 1.95
toilet paper (4 rolls) 1.01
ground coffee 1.64/pound
sugar 0.24/pound

I don't have the patience to fix the formatting, so deal.

Ever fry a rotten egg?

I did this morning, and it was nasty. After wolfing down 6 pães de queijo (mini cheese rolls) filled with cupuaçú and bacuri jelly, I wanted to supplement my carb and coffee fest with some protein. So I heated up the skillet and cracked the egg over the skillet, only to spill brown goo everywhere and stink up my kitchen in the process.

I've been spoiled here in Brazil; this was my first rotten egg. Had I been in Cameroon, where one in three eggs were rotten, I would have used the tried and true float test* to identify the stinkers.


*Rotten eggs float. If you put a raw egg in a glass of water and it sinks, it is good to go. If it floats, toss it out.

Sorvetology: VICTORY LAPS

After more than three months of hard work and meticulous sampling, I have tried all 49 flavors currently offered by Cairú, Belém’s gourmet ice cream chain. I recently discovered that not all of the locations offer the same flavors. Sometimes one location would be out of stock of a flavor but the same flavor would be available at the location 5 blocks away. Other times a flavor would be unique to a location. This kept me on my toes and required me to visit the three biggest stores in the city to ensure that no flavor went untasted.

In these last two weeks, I’m doing victory laps and enjoying my favorite flavors. The top 5, in no particular order, are carimbó, paraense, taperebá, papaia, and amendoim.

Sorvetology, part 6

The final installment of Cairú's ice cream taste-a-thon:

Abacaxi: Pineapple. Tasty sherbet with chunks of pineapple.

Graviola: Creamy white Amazon fruit with no English translation. In the amazon fruit photo/post below, graviola is the big spikey green fruit.

Limão: Lemon. Like a sherbet, a little too strong.

Malhado: Chocolate + vanilla. Boring.

Mangaba: Tangy relative of a mango.

Maracujá: Passion fruit.

Ovomaltine: Ovaltine. Chocolate malt.

Papaia: Papaya.

Sensação: Chocolate with some kind of cookie inside. Boring.

These flavors were listed but were never available:

Bacaba: Some fruit.

Maçã: Apple.

Frutas do Bosque: Some combination of fruits.

Leite de Soja: Soy milk.

Universidade Federal do Pará

Classes are just about over, so I thought I’d provide a link to some pictures of the university. To see the official photos, click on the “Galeria de Imagens” on the right hand side of the webpage. You may notice that there aren’t any students in these photos; this is an accurate, although I’m sure unintentional, reflection of the university since the most classes haven’t met since the strike began in late August.

Wheels on the Bus

Believe it or not, I do have class and I do go to class. To get to class, I ride the bus, and in riding the bus I pass through the Guamá neighborhood. Here are some photos I took:




The neighborhood is pretty polluted since it is on the banks of the Guamá river. When the water level is higher or when there is a lot of rain, the trenches in front of the wooden houses fill with water in addition to the regular trash and sewage.