deciding how far to go

so, there are some aspects of travel that people get confused about. one is that it is hard to do. no. all you have to do is save up enough money, buy a plane ticket, get to the airport on time, sit on the plane and get served lunch and dinner, or dinner and breakfast, take a little nap and then poof, youre there! youre a traveler!
then, people think that it is difficult to put up with a lot of the things that traveling serves up. ok, this can be true. but if you are in buenos aires, apart from the weird, darker-than-a-rubber-band genocide that seems to have happpened, life is much like life in new york. even in cuenca - sure there was a slightly higher percentage of ecuadorians there than you may find in areas of queens, but, people still drank water and breathed air. it wasnt too shocking in that sense. even if you go to a place like principal - a tiny little village where people live so extraordinarily different than we do in new york that it is quite amazing, you are still just a bus-ride away, and anybody can ride a bus. so, what is it then about travel that makes it so fun and worth such vast portion of ones savings? i dont know. different people get different things out of it and its very personal.

however

its pretty cool to say youve been to the end of the earth. this is one objective travel goal that needs no justification. the end of the world - where the earth turns to ice and global warming hasnt really done its damage yet. wow.

so, with this not yet in mind, anna and i decided on extending our vacation from bsas to come south from mendoza here to bariloche - the northern portion of patagonia . its hard to gauge where you are in the world while you are traveling. for one, the world is flat in all locations, so even in cuenca you werent thinking, "wow, im so high" because the mountains that surrounded the city didnt look any higher than mountains that start at sea level. you cant really gauge latitude without a birds eye view of the entire world or a digitized map that updates your every movement. so, as the 19 hour bus due south of mendoza sped down the highway during the night, all i could really do was be impressed by the vastness of argentina. argentina is a country slightly smaller than india, but with only 40 million inhabitants. india of course has over a billion! of the 40 million agentinians, 15 million live in buenos aires. so, while traveling throughout the rest of the country, you can really notice how devoid of people it is. we traveled hours through the flatlands with nothing to see but sky and wheat colored grasses. a 19 hour busride is a necesary evil here because its not like there are villages abound for you to get off and break up the trip. 19 hours up the east coast of the u.s. brings you through boston, new york, philly, baltimore, dc, norfolk, etc. plus, there are suburbs the whole way through. even in the most barren parts of the u.s. there are farms here and there. while we were going from mendoza to bariloche, there was nothing nothing except the peopless aspects of the world.

eventually we got out of the flatlands and turned towards the andes. 19 hours south of mendoza, the andes have are mostly snowcapped and hre in teh lake region, they provide people with lots of adventure travel opportunities. but mostly they are beautiful to look at. when we got off the bus, we could also feel immidiately that the 19 hour southward trip had brought us into a new temperate zone. the air here was chilly and the trees were changing colors even though we were only in the beginning of april (beginning of october for you northerners).

our hostel was nice. they celaned the bathroom ever now and again. the people there were cool and nice and interested in doing things. us too. we hiked a few mountains (but took the ski lift down) and saw some nice views of the lakes and mountains and the emptiness of patagonia and we were going ot ride our bikes but hte last couple of days have been rainy so we havent. instead we have done internet adn enjoyed the coldest air weve felt since march 2006 back in new york. bariloche is a nice town to be cold in. it is small enough to not have to walk from one cafe to the next. and, there is an obsession with chocolate here that makes any grey day a little sweeter. although, it is a weirdly swiss obsession with chocolate. all teh houses look swiss or german, they have st. bernards roaming around the main square ready to have their pictures taken for a price, and they like chocolate. the restaurants are kind of expensive, but, the hostel has a kitchen and clean pots and pans so when you cook you dont catch backpacker disease.

but, now that we are here in patagonia, the temptation has gotten even stronger to go down to ushuaia, the last city in the world (currently the only other country - not including chile - that has any parts more south than us is new zealand). there we would see mountains made purely of ice and weird hairy animals. also penguins who are weird too. however, it is a 50 or so hour bus ride from here and an expensive flight. actually when i logged onto the internet today my intention was to look for cheap tickets down there, not to blog. but i had no luck. we met a gril who had just come back from antarctica and did a cruise and since the world is smaller down there actually wound up in africa. its very strange. but, i think we will probably head on to puerto madryn, at equal latitude with bariloche, but on the east coast, to see sea lions and penguins there. we might not make it all the way to the end of the earth, but i guess thats ok...