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You are here: Home / Archives for weather

Flashback: Argentina

January 17, 2012 By Jillian

Our visit to Argentina was a bit like the children’s tale about Goldilocks.  In the North we were a bit too late- the melting had begun and the rivers were swollen and in the South we were alittle too early- the show hadn’t yet melted.  Somewhere in between things were just right.

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We arrived in Argentina just as spring broke across the continent, or the period of time that the guidebooks refer to as “shoulder season”.  For Argentina, that meant that most of the cities and sites we visited were without the summer crowds, but it also meant that in the upper altitudes and to the far south, heavy snow still remained and trails, roads and even sites were still closed.  Patagonia to us, lived up to it’s stereotype- cold, windy and inhospitable.  To the far south, the nights in Ushuaia were frigid and the hiking trails through Tierra del Fuego National Park required waterproof snow boots.

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On the other hand, in the north, the weather was a bit balmy still and the summer’s rains had increased the water level at Iguazu Falls so much that the river had reached historic flood stages and some of the walking paths and overlooks were closed.  We were probably a bit too late on the scene, but thankfully we avoided the summer mosquitoes and crowds.

Iguazu Falls

Too early, and too late and yet ironically at the same time– just right.  The seasonal weather change had a tremendous impact on our month in Argentina, but in true Goldilocks fashion somethings we caught just right.  Like the penguins, who were still nesting on the beaches of Punto Tumbo and Puerto Madryn- the oceans not yet warm enough for their chicks to continue south.

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The boats to Antarctica were just starting to leave Ushuaia, so the hotels and restaurants were open for the season.  And Bariloche still had plenty of chocolate!  The weather was perfect for biking through Argentina’s wine country and we were able to spend time at Perito Moreno without hordes of tour buses.

It’s hard to not have a good time in Argentina.  There’s no short supply of Alfajores, chocolate, good wine, and carne asada.  No matter where you are in the country the people are hospitable and there’s enough to do to keep you occupied for more than a month, no matter the season. So what can I say, it was the definition of shoulder season and for us, and things were just right.  Check out our guide to traveling in Argentina for more details!

Filed Under: Flashback, Headline, Journey Tagged With: memories, weather

Forced to Change Plans

November 1, 2011 By Jillian

I know we’ve sanctimoniously posted about how to find things to do in the rain, but there are just some rain storms you don’t play around with:

That’s right, a hurricane. In Mexico City for a few days before heading to Cancun for a friend’s wedding, we opened our email early Sunday morning to a warning message from Danny’s Dad- Hurricane Rina had been born. As we trolled various weather sites on the Internet we soon realized he wasn’t kidding, this was gearing up to be a direct hit, to exactly where we were heading.

So we did what any traveler would do- we waited. We worried, played the odds, thought of various scenarios, but completely avoided making a decision. We waited until the last possible moment and then it was time. Tuesday morning, just two hours before our scheduled departure to Cancun, we bit the bullet and bought a ticket home. Although it would have made for great pictures, we weren’t willing to stand on a balcony overlooking the ocean watching a the eye of a hurricane approach.

We felt defeated, deflated and above all frustrated on that flight home. We were supposed to spend the week snorkeling, diving and exploring cenotes. We were supposed to be at our friend’s wedding on Saturday, toes in the sand, frozen cocktail in hand.

Ice cold drinks by the beach

And so by early Wednesday morning we were back at work and that defeated feeling- so much more intense than the day before. As the hours ticked by it was clear Rina was becoming less and less of a storm. With each update she was downgraded, until Thursday night when she hit Cancun as a low grade tropical storm and then, with a whimper instead of a bang, it was over.

Don’t worry, the story does have a good ending. That whimper petered out even more so by Friday evening we were back on a plane to Cancun to attend the wedding!

What would you have done? Have you ever changed your plans for severe weather?

Photo Credit: NOAA, Flickr User mac_ivan

Filed Under: Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: change of plans, storms, weather

It’s the end of the world as we know it!

November 17, 2009 By Jillian

You never know where life will take you, if you had asked me three years ago where we’d be spending our third wedding anniversary I’m 100% sure I never would have said the end of the world. And technically we didn’t, we were in Torres del Paine, but given the tent and wind situation, we decided it was better to celebrate it at the end of the world. Funny how things change, for to celebrate our anniversary all I really wanted to do was stay at a nice hotel and have a few days where we’re not “traveling” but rather relaxing like we’re on vacation.

As the main port for Antarctic cruises, Ushuaia was a lot less touristy than we expected. We expected to find Antarctic Disneyworld, but instead we found a very industrial port town with all the graffiti and smells you expect to find in a port city. Of course there was a tourist street with upscale outdoor clothing shops, chocolate shops and travel agencies, but we didn’t have to walk too far to find a cheap hole-in-the-wall empanada place. Yes, everything was more expensive in Ushuaia, but coming from Chile we hardly noticed!

There was nothing we were dying to do in Ushuaia except to go to say we’ve been to the end of the world. Of course there are about 100 different tours and excursions to do from the city, most of which we found to be completely uninteresting. Friends of ours went through Ushuaia last January on their trip around the world, and found an excursion where you go to a penguin colony. That was a little more up our alley than a bus tour of nearby lakes, so we booked the tour thinking we’d be standing on the beach with penguins curiously surrounding us. As our little boat crossed the bay to the penguin’s island, our guide, who was also a biologist gave us a laundry list of rules: don’t touch the penguins, don’t approach the penguins, don’t walk off the marked path, don’t smoke, eat or drink, don’t leave anything behind, well you get the picture. Needless to say I was very excited, thinking that we’d have a chance to sit on the island and allow the penguins to approach us.

This time of year the penguin eggs should be hatching and I definitely expected to see tons of little penguin chicks like in a not-to-be-named recent penguin film, but the weather here has been crazy this year and the penguins are still nesting and finding mates.  As we stepped onto the penguin’s island, it was clear our experience was going to be different. A group of about 50 penguins lay on their eggs about 100 yards away, completely uninterested in us. It was clear they weren’t going to be approaching us, especially since the female penguins were playing just off shore. Our disappointment was palpable, in fact one girl in the group declared that it “sucked”.

Continuing around the island, we came across a dead penguin (just what I wanted to see!) that had been nibbled by seals. Gross. Completely disheartened at this point, thinking we’d wasted a good amount of money to see a dead penguin and penguins further away than at the zoo, I followed the group up the hill to what the biologist was calling the “main avenue” of the penguins. Skeptical to say the least, I was shocked when we got to the top of the hill and saw literally hundreds of penguins nesting. A few males lolled about calling for a mate, while others seemed to be frantically trying to build a nest. Not one so much looked in our direction, each was completely focused on his task.

With males still arriving to find a mate, and eggs not yet hatched, the penguin colony is going through a rough year. The biologist told our group that the eggs laid this late in the season have a small chance of surviving to be hatched if the weather quickly reverts back to normal. For about 30 minutes we walked among the nests, watching the males build their structures and even peaked in on a few sitting on their eggs. The penguins literally could have cared less that we were there, in fact as we walked down the hill a penguin came out of her nest to visit with a friend next door. It wasn’t exactly the penguin experience we were looking for, but it was neat to see them nesting and hear the call of the lonely males. Would we do it again? Not so sure, but we’re not too disappointed. Word on the trail is that the penguins can still be found further north….at our next stop, Puerto Madryn. Stay tuned…:)

Filed Under: Argentina, South America Tagged With: animals, patagonia, tours, weather

And then there was snow…

November 9, 2009 By Jillian

Bariloche is known for its access to great hiking, mountain biking and its delicious local chocolates. Now you know why it was high on our list for Argentina. When we left Pucon to cross the mountains back into Argentina we didn’t expect a miracle with the weather, but we did expect things to be different on the eastern side of the mountains. And they were. I nearly fell out of my bunk the first morning when the Argentinian guy in our room told us it was snowing. Great. We had traded rain for snow.

We had planned to spend a week in Bariloche hiking, mountain biking, and maybe even camping out a few nights. The heavy precipitation of the previous week left the single track (that’s mountain biking) too muddy to ride, and the multi-day hiking treks covered in knee deep snow. Only two of the numerous “refugios” (shelters) in the mountains were even open, so any sort of multi-day trek was out of the picture almost immediately. We turned to the only things that were left, day hiking and chocolate tasting.

Hiking through Parque National Llao Llao on our first day, we thought we were in luck. For nearly five hours we hiked through the park without so much as a flurry or drop of rain. Ironic considering it’s a temperate rainforest and that morning we woke up to snow. With the constant threat of bad weather, and the fact that it is still low season, we had the paths and lakes almost exclusively to ourselves. Overlooking Lake Moreno we had a great view of the surrounding snow capped peaks, and while the weather looked awful up there, we were quiet dry at the lake side.

Emboldened by the fortunate weather from the day before, we decided to make a go of one of the mountains the following day. Dressed for cold, wet weather we headed up Cerro Lopez. A challenging hike up a steep and rocky trail, the other hiker turned around before we made it to the first look out. With the light drizzle quickly turning into a stinging rain, we continued up the mountain determined not to let the weather beat us. As we got above the clouds, the rain stopped and we thought we were in the clear. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but about 100 yards after the hiking path joined the “road” to the “refugio”  we found ourselves in a winter wonderland. Except for a few icy inhabitants, it was clear to us that the “refugio” was still closed. From as close to the top as we could get the views were incredible, and its clear why this region is called the lake district. The five or six lakes spread out before us seemed to fill the valleys between the mountain tops and it except for the threatening rain clouds, it looked like a postcard (although postcard photos are taken on days without bad weather) of the Lake District. Verdant green landscapes with turquoise blue lakes, it is easy to see why the region is so popular. Climbing back down through the snow and then the rain, we continued our circuit of the lake, walking 10K back to Llao Llao on some of the same trails we had done the day before.

After hiking in the rain and snow there was only one thing to do: taste chocolates. With more than a dozen chocolate shops lining the main street, we had to choose carefully. Unlike in the United States, there aren’t a lot of free samples, and after we bought some rather expensive samples at the first shop Danny declared we’d only buy from shops that gave us free samples. Fortunately the next two did just that, and before we left Bariloche we ended up with a ¼ kilo box of delicious chocolates, fudges and treats. Just what we needed for the long bus ride south.

The bad weather aside, we had a great time in Bariloche. This is definitely a place that gets put on the “must come back to” list only next time maybe we’ll come when the weather is a little more pleasant.

Filed Under: Argentina, Hike, South America Tagged With: hiking, patagonia, snow, weather

Rain, rain go away!

November 4, 2009 By Jillian

We woke up to rain at 5:30am the day we were going to summit the volcano. At 6:30am we´d finished our breakfast and it was still raining, no actually pouring. We decided not to even bother walking into town to see if we were on and we went back to sleep. Several hours later, it was still raining. Did I mention the air temperature is just above freezing? We eat lunch, and then dinner, and it is still raining. Tomorrow we´re going to be leaving town. To say we were disappointed us an understatement, but bad weather had to affect us sometime right?

The Volcano we never got to climb 🙁

With the constant downpour we were needless to say depressed. No volcano, and no possibility to do much else. Fortunately, a guy at our hostel had a rental car, and it didn’t take much to convince him to go to the hot springs with us and a young British guy that night.

Two Americans, an Australian and a Brit set off down the dark road, in the rain, in Chile. Did I mention that our driver thought he was a Formula One driver? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this is going. Zipping through the dark country side at almost double the speed limit, all three passengers braced ourselves for whatever was to come. We flew over a blind hill to see a disabled car in the road.

Within seconds we hit a huge pot hole forcing our driver to slow down. It was clear we had a flat, but it took Danny stating to obvious several times before we pulled over. Rolling to a stop 20 feet in front of the first disabled car Danny jumped out to inspect the damage as our driver said nothing. It was flat all right, and there was no hiding the dented wheel rim. Popping open the truck we searched for the spare and the jack as a wet figure came running towards us in the dark.

Turns out he was Argentinian and let’s just say we learned a few new words in Spanish that night. Like jack, wrench, wheel rim, tire lever. They just don’t teach that vocabulary in class. Turns out his wrench was too short to get any torque on his tire nuts and our rental lacked a jack. Great combination.

Not changing a tire in the dark, but here’s the rain!

Lacking a jack and a flash light, Danny (without the help of either the driver or our other passenger) changed our tire using “spanglish” by the light of a lighter. What couldn’t be communicated in Spanish or English was communicated through charades in what must have looked like the most bizarre game to anyone driving by. Our wrench didn’t fit their tires, so after assuring us that they had called for help, we continued on our way to the hot springs.

Unfortunately our driver didn’t learn his lesson even after the paved road ended. Flying down the gravel path, he seemed not to notice the rocks hitting the side of the car or the pot holes. We were sure we had missed the turn off, and said so, several times. As the road grew narrower and narrower, you’d think that even a Formula One driver would slow down, especially on the only spare, but our driver did not. We hit every bump and hole in the road for about 5 or 6 kilometers before it appeared that the road might actually end. Finally the driver agreed to turn around. Not 1000 feet after we rejoined the paved road did we see the sign for the hot springs. Nice.

The night’s torturous ride had ended, and while we couldn’t relax too much at the hot springs knowing we’d have to go back into town with Formula One, we did enjoy soaking in the water.

With rain in the forecast for the next few days, we headed to Argentina the next morning. Sometimes we get lucky and do incredible things. Sometimes we don´t.

Filed Under: Chile, South America Tagged With: driving, hotpsrings, patagonia, weather

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