AdventureCPA

Thursday Friday and Saturday, Jan 7, 8 and 9 We met our tour group Thursday Night.  Twenty Three plus a staff of two.  Mostly 25 to 35 year olds but also one retired couple our age who are from Australia. Saturday we did a 12 hour ride in the truck/bus below.  Couple stops and arrived at Pucon, Chile. Here is the vehicle. Saturday we did a hike in a national park up to a nice lake.    The town is busy. I have likened it to Minacqua in Chile.  Vacation town by a lake that fills up on summer weekends.  This summer weekend it featured a one half Ironman competition.   Ive never seen so many expensive bicycles at one place....must have been more than 500. Also plenty of bars, restaurants and chocolate shops. Monday we return to Argentina and the city of Bariloche.

Reflections It has now been about a week since I was assaulted and robbed of camera and wallet.  Ive emotionally recovered from this but it got me thinking... For about a month I was worried about having my wallet stolen.  Now I don{t have to worry about it anymore.     Maybe I will quit carrying around most of that stuff from now on...no more worry. Car alarms all around the world sound the same.   And all around the world everyone ignores them. Is there a solution to this?

Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile Something we have done before! Took the day bus from Mendoza to Santiago which is about a 5 hour bus ride but interrupted by a one to two hour border crossing with all the line up of getting passport stamped out of Argentina, stamped into Chile, luggage out of bus for scanner inspection and back in bus for rest of way to Santiago. After the border crossing the trip is worthwhile to ride the 20 plus switchbacks that descend down into Chile.   Here is a Google map image.  Each one is seriously down.  https://www.google.cl/maps/@-32.829036,-70.0799275,16z?hl=en Sorry, it was raining so no pictures.  This is one of the great drives/roads in the world. In Santiago we taxied to hostel where we will meet up with our Dragoman tour in a couple days. Here is a link to it...http://www.dragoman.com.  Look for Santiago to Ushuria trip. While a big city Santiago can have the feel of a Chicago or Denver.  Lots of on t...

Out of Tucuman, on to Mendoza After the aforementioned assault, a lengthy and unproductive police report with a young police woman who I could not communicate with I returned to the hotel to find Denyse and learn that the $600 camera went away too. We waited around for awhile then went for a walk  which ended in a good Midwestern (USA) type thunderstorm just as we had to return to the hotel to get our remaining stuff and head for the bus terminal. Plenty of taxis in Tucuman but all busy during a thunderstorm so we made an unexpected loaded walk of about 1 kilometer across ankle deep streets to the bus terminal where electricity was out.  Did I mention this day was an adventure? Finally made it on the bus for a 12 hour ride (roads flooded) so took an additional 2 hours to make it to Mendoza, Argentina and our 5 night hostel. Mendoza is a city centered on the wine industry due to its  dry climate but plenty of water from the Andies just west of town.  Nice ou...