Ushuaia

To be honest, I am more and more nicely surprised by Ushuaia. May be because I didn't expect a lot from the town itself, but the atmosphere is really special. Just try and imagine a ski resort with buildings in wood, right on the ocean shore, and you might have an idea of how it feels. You can go walking on the icefields, and 10 minutes later start a cruise on the Beagle Channel.





Another good surprise here is the amazing typical pastries that you can find all over the town :))

To change a bit from my "churches days", the theme of the afternoon was the animals, as it was dedicated to a cruise on the Beagle Channel. Perfect sun, it seems that the clouds promised for today have finally decided to stay away. And it is even almost warm (except that with the wind on the boat, it was freezing cold...)

Tomorrow, it will already be time to leave Ushuaia, "the end of the world, the beginning of everything", as local people call the town.

From Salta to Ushuaia

The (very very very) good surprise of yesterday was that the flight to Ushuaia made a short stop in El Calafate. I will fly back there in a couple of days, but yesterday was just the perfect day from a weather point of view. Here is what the icefields look like from above, just A-MA-ZING :





And here is the Beagle Channel, just before we landed in Ushuaia :



Same country, but it looks like we have travelled a lot more than 3700 kilometers away from the northern border until the "end of the world", as they call it here.
The gorgeous beef of Salta (best meat ever eaten if my whole life !) has turned into a very good trout, the 30°C of the dusty desert has turned into a bit above 0°C, in front of the snowy mountains (the weather forecast had planned some snow during the night, but it seems that they are not more accurate than in France ;)....

Here are a few of the inhabitants of the National Park "Tierra del Fuego" :



Just a few more pictures taken during the different walk in the park (no it is not a feeling, it WAS cloudy and cold...)

Quebrada de Humahuaca and Salta

Woken up at 3:40 in the moning, a short ride to the domestic airport and 3 hours of flight later, here is Salta, in the north west part of Argentina.

It really looks completely different from Buenos Aires, definitely closer to the Andes than to the European melting pot of the federal capital (yes, I know, more churches...).

(no pictures of the smurfins, they are not allowed to drink alcohol ;)

When you go further to the north, not very far from the Chilean border, you reach what they call the Quebrada de Humahuaca, an amazing area where the rocks have all colors of the rainbow, and which is one of the richest part of the country, from an archaeological point of view, for instance below the prehispanic fortress in Tilcara.

In the small villages, houses are built with adobe, the markets are full of those wonderful South American colored clothes sold by the natives (in Argentina, it is not politically correct to say 'Indians', they say 'aboriginal but I still find it hard to apply this wording to people outside Australia, so I will stick to 'natives'...).

Montevideo, mon Uruguay, mon Uruguay...

Hi there,

It is been a long time since the last message, but I am back into business :)

After a 1st flight to Madrid, 2 hours wandering in Barajas airport (may be, one day, I will get used to it, but gosh I don't like it....), and 12 more hours of flight (even if, according the screens in the plane, Buenos Aires was only 3 hours 50 minutes away from Spain, that was a bit frightening...), I landed in Argentina yesterday morning at 05:30 (oooch, yes...). After a quick look at the capital, to which I will come back in 10 days, it was already time to leave the country, by boatfirection Uruguay.

Montevideo was initially supposed to be the destination for today, but things turned out to be a bit more complicated than what was planned, so the trip to Uruguay was limited to Colonia del Sacramento. Time seems to have stopped over there, you expect conquistadores on horses at each street corner.

Back in Buenos Aires, nothing really surprising, it looks like home : BNP Paribas offices all around the city (no way I can flee my favorite employer, even on the other side of the world !), and this evening I bought my food at Carrefour...