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Aquariums, zoos, and wildlife parks were some of our favorite attractions on the trip and we were privileged to experience them on every continent. It seemed strange then the other day to visit our own Georgia Aquarium, the world’s largest, which is right in our backyard. We had been before after its 2005 opening and after 2 years had saved up enough dough to make a return visit (let’s just say it ain’t cheap). Our incentive was not a sudden desire to see fish or to reconnect with our time on the road, but to share the wonders of the marine world with Tom’s sister Kat, her husband, Jon, and their two little boys, Luke and Harrison, who came for a visit from Utah.

The little guys were enthralled and Kieran and Asher were happy to retrace our steps of a few years back. We saw whale sharks, beluga whales, sea dragons, and puffer fish. We touched skates, rays, shrimp, and sea stars. Our few hours at the aquarium were fun, mainly because of the company, but they highlighted just how spoiled we have become over the past year. We swam with dolphins in the ocean, chased penguins and sea lions on beaches, shared a campground with a warthog, got up close and personal with the Big Five, and witnessed the virtual aquarium that is a Vietnamese street market. We liked encountering animals in the wild best, but our favorite artificial wildlife venues were small, quirky places like the neighborhood zoo in San Antonio de Areco, Argentina, run by a family of four and featuring a feisty armadillo, and the Panda Conservation Center in Chengdu, China where we were subjected to a bizarre educational video and wandered through mazes of lazy bears. With memories like this, it’s hard for a big, glitzy, sterile aquarium to compete.

Harder even than the memories are the awareness that outside our domestic comfort zone, many of the exotic creatures we pay so much to see in captivity are disappearing in the wild. We knew this before we took our trip and heard many times over the pleas of conservationists, but they never rang so true or seemed so immediate as they do now that we’ve visited these vanishing habitats. The issue has become not just saving critters but saving people whose livelihoods depend on the environment.

As if he could read my mind, Abudulla Saheem sent an email last night describing his personal efforts to shake the world out of its environmental slumber. A native of the vanishing coral reef nation of Maldives and current resident of the Indonesian island of Bali (one of our favorites), he has watched in horror over the past decade as 20% of Bali’s coastline has disappeared and miles upon miles of coral reef have been destroyed. Last year he decided he had to do something to stop the madness and embarked on a 480 km snorkel around Bali with his 9 year old son.

Saheem understands the criticism we and other family travelers take from those who think we are endangering our kids; he took similar heat from the media for including his son in his swim. But the truth for parents like Saheem and Tom and I is that the greater danger for our kids is growing up oblivious or insensitive to the world’s problems and their role in them. Our children have met and served beside individuals who refuse to accept the world’s injustices and do their own small part in reversing them: Laurie Mackenzie in China, Ponheary Ly in Cambodia, Becky Douglas and Padma Venkataraman in India, and Simona Stewart in Romania. Now Saheem has invited Dax and McKane to join him on his 4-month, 2500 km swim from Malaysia to Bali, during which he will document the deteriorating condition of the ocean’s reefs, educate locals as to how they can help preserve them, and “let the world know many people are suffering because of the environmental challenges we are facing.” What a truly amazing opportunity that would be for our boys. Maybe we’ll have to get the passports out and dust off our wetsuits.

If you’d like to check out what Saheem is doing, visit his website at www.boilingearth.org. And if like us you’ve been thinking of visiting Maldives, he urges you to hurry. He predicts it will be gone in a decade.

Technorati Tags: conservation, Coral reefs, Environmental Awareness, Family Travel, georgia aquarium, Maldives, Bali, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW

While we were in China we found the only way to escape the smog was go to go above it. We took a 12-hour bus ride into the foothills of the Himalayas and spent a few days at China’s Yellowstone, Jiuzhaigou. This was the highest elevation we had been to prior to arriving in South America. The hotel we stayed at was just shy of 9,000 feet while the park rose to more than 12,000 feet . We took it as a good sign that all of us acclimatized well and the thin air had a minimal effect on us. We knew, however, that crossing the Andes was going to test us even more. Our bus from Salta, Argentina would take us up to 15,000 feet, higher than any mountain in the continental US, before we settled back down to the town of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile at a much more reasonable 8,000 feet. We would only be at maximum altitude for a couple of hours if everything went as planned. In San Pedro we would spend three days preparing our lungs and bodies for the even higher altitudes of 15,000 to 17,000 feet we would encounter on our three-day journey into Bolivia.

The day of our scheduled departure from Salta our bus was canceled. Snowfall had closed the pass to Chile; on the previous day a bus traveling all the way from Peru had become stuck and the police had intervened to save the passengers from freezing to death. Fortunately they opened the pass the following day, but our journey got off to an inauspicious start. As we loaded the bus however there was a slight problem. The postponed bus had caused them to shuffle the seats around leaving us with two single seats next to strangers and two sets of doubles. This had happened to us before on our flight from Paris to Istanbul when we were given six non-adjacent seats due to a paperwork error in South Africa. Kieran was not happy to be sitting next to a stranger, with his closest family member being Anne who was wedged in between two French women in the row directly across from him. He stood in his seat screaming and refused to buckle up for takeoff. The flight attendants tried to get him to sit down and Anne and I pleaded with him, but he would have none of it. Anne asked multiple people to trade seats so she could sit next to her screaming child, but shockingly all initially refused. Finally after many more minutes of 7-year-old ranting, one of the French women agreed to sit next to her friend and let Anne have the aisle so she could reach across and hold Kieran’s hand. I had visions of something similar happening on our trans-Andean bus, so Anne and I took the two single seats. Anne had asked the Paraguayan lady next to her multiple times if she would take one of our single seats so the family could stay together, but she flatly refused. When I boarded I asked her again. This time she asked if instead she could break up Kieran and Dax, effectively splitting our family into four seating groups, so she could sit across from her friends rather than directly in front of them. I looked at her bewildered and of course refused. In retrospect, sitting next to a screaming Kieran would have been justice since she proceeded to babble loudly with her friends for the next two hours interrupting the sleep of absolutely everyone else on the bus.

We spent most of the morning on the long climb up the mountains. Two Argentine women in front of Anne were affected by the combination of motion and altitude and began vomiting into blue plastic bags provided by the conductor. One of the poor women proceed to heave and hurl for the next five hours. Fortunately, McKane slept through most of the regurgitations, as the sound and smell alone would have inspired the same behavior in him.

As the bus climbed into the thinner air, we could feel our chests tighten and our breathing become shallow and rapid. The conductor decided to drive home the effect by playing and replaying an Air Supply tape for the next three hours. We did get one break from the bus and early ’80’s pop when we stopped for lunch at a usual bus cafe. These cafeterias can be found throughout the world and offer the same giant plastic tables, hundreds of waitrons, and bland food to weary bus passengers given no choice in the matter. The lack of oxygen left us with little appetite so we went outside to examine the dry and barren landscape that surrounded us. At this altitude the bright sunlight caused the rock formations and volcanic cones to appear much sharper and brighter than they did from below highlighting how parched and lifeless everything looked. Outside of the Arctic and Antarctica this has to be one of the least hospitable places on earth.

After our lunch we boarded the bus and took off for the pass. As we drove, snow began to cover the rocks. This snow never became the thick blanket I have come to expect from climbing the Rockies and Tetons in the American West. Instead it appeared to be only a light sprinkling here and there. I wondered what had been so bad the day before to cause the closure. I didn’t need to wonder long. As we neared the pass, we had to stop for a traffic jam. I got out with our driver to investigate. The sun had slipped behind some clouds and the heat it had given us at lunchtime was quickly dissipating. In a place where temperature shifts of 50 degrees are common, the little bit of snow on the road had melted in the early afternoon sun only to freeze into a sheet of ice in the shade. A diesel had jackknifed and traffic was backed up both behind and in front of him. It took about an hour to get the semi to one side of the road, thus allowing the accumulation of cars, busses, and trucks to pass on the other side. During this time the temperature continued to fall. I was cold and out of breath when I returned to the bus.

We continued on and encountered at least four more trouble spots during our final climb. On some we were able to make it over the ice, but on others we left the road and clung to the dirt or service roads beside the highway. More than once we wondered if we would end up spending the night in the bus, freezing and waiting for the sun to melt the roadways the following day.

Fortunately we cleared each obstacle though we saw carcasses of busses and trucks that had not been as lucky in former attempts. The many delays left us above 14,000 feet much longer than we had expected and our bodies felt the effects. Drowsy, short of breath, and aching in the head we traversed the Andes not in a single climb but rather with a series of climbs and descents spread out over 100 kilometers.

In contrast our descent into Chile was rapid. During this nearly straight decline the sun began to set. The mountains behind us with their frosting of snow glowed in the light of the setting sun. If I had had any breath left, I would have said the view took it away, but my lungs were still being squeezed by the increased internal pressure and lack of oxygen. The rest of the family found their relief in sleep, all of them exhausted by our daylong encounter with the Andes. With many 14,000+ feet days ahead, it looked like these mountains would be a new kind of challenge for us.

Technorati Tags: andes, Argentina, bus, Bus travel, chile

After two weeks in Buenos Aires and the Pampas and a mere five days in the Littoral of the Northeast, we boarded yet another bus for the 20-hour journey to the Andean Northwest and the provincial capital of Salta. We envisioned the easygoing city of 1,000,000 as a place to relax and regroup before our last big push through the more primitive and much colder countries of Bolivia and Peru. As it turned out, Salta, known to Argentines as Salta La Linda (Salta the Fair) delivered what no other place has for 10 months–five days of thick cloud cover–the perfect excuse to slack off of the sightseeing and simply soak up the flavor of the city.

Salta proved to be our South American Chiang Mai, a friendly town with cheap, delicious food, honest taxis, and a mellow vibe. Tom quickly scouted out all the best restaurants and bakeries as well as a laundromat that picked up and delivered. Fortunately the staff of the Sheraton (aaaahhhhhh) were good sports and understood that the backpacking family staying on frequent guest points couldn’t afford room service or in-house laundry. They just smiled when the Clampetts strode by toting plastic bags filled with dirty clothes and empanadas. The big boys jammed out schoolwork, Kieran and Asher mastered bingo, Tom archived more of his 25,000 photos and I finally got the Hotel Finds section of the site up.

Our one big excursion while in Salta was to the spectacular mountain gorge to the north known as Quebrada de Humahuaca. We opted for a tour, always a risky venture, but Tom wasn’t eager to spend 8 hours driving a rental car for a 1-day circuit through the region. Though we were rushed from place to place, it proved to be a good decision as we slept for the 4-hour ride each way and shared the van with a few particularly fascinating folks.
We left in the early morning darkness and woke as we ascended into the cloudforest, a terrain unique to this part of Argentina and southern Bolivia. Thankfully the clouds that permanently linger over the dense forest cleared as we rose even higher into the Quebrada, allowing the sun to shine through and cast a revealing light on the multicolored mountain scenery. We stopped at a succession of small towns, each offering its own unique spin on the role of remote mountain village. The first, Pumahuaka, offered a charming church and festive town square oozing with cheap souvenirs.

The next, Maimara, offered a funky hillside cemetery, while a few kilometers down the road Tilcara boasted some reconstructed pre-Incan ruins, impressive cacti, and a quirky museum containing a mummy from the Atacama desert in Chile and a ready group of entrants to our scary mannequine collection.

Humahuaca was the feather in the cap of the gorge towns and we spent a few hours here feasting on local fare and wandering the city’s cobbled streets. A grandiose yet artistically questionable statue in honor of Argentine independence loomed large on a hill behind the main square while a graceful 17th century colonial church adorned one its sides. Perhaps the strangest thing about the town was the ubiquitous strains of Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me” wafting through the dusty air. This song, which we could neither escape nor get out of our heads in China, was at least rendered on an Andean pan flute without lyrics in this remote Argentine hamlet.

Unfortunately clouds moved in as we exited Humahuaca and our opportunities to capture the vivid colors of the mountainsides faded with the dwindling sunshine. We weren’t too upset though since we soon got engrossed in a conversation with one of our fellow tourists, a grandfatherly Argentine agronomist who was a historian by hobby and a gentleman by nature. We discussed our impressions of the global economy, the future of world politics, and the soil conditions of the pampas. This South American Thomas Jefferson dazzled us with the breadth of his knowledge and the strength of his character. He complimented us on our endeavors and expressed confidence that our kids will benefit immeasurably from their RTW experience.
As we discussed Samuel Huntington’s Clash of the Civilizations, the rest of the van broke into applause. I assumed they were congratulating the glib guide on a job well done, but the agronomist informed me the kudos were for me. Why? Because I had magically kept four kids relatively quiet for an entire 12 hours. They didn’t credit Tom since he had been sitting in a row toward the front while the kids and I had been crammed in the last two rows. While I appreciated the praise, what they didn’t realize was that an early morning start guarantees good behavior from the Andrus kids, i.e., they sleep. As for the return trip, we bribed them with treats from the gas station and managed to get a few more hours of dozing out of them.

The tour was much like our entire time in Salta, a comfortable, pleasant addition to our worldwide experience. McKane, Kieran, and Asher loved the hillside gondola and dozens of randomly placed statues, Dax and Tom couldn’t get enough of the city’s parrillas, and I particularly dug the beautiful main square and rich architectural variety of the city’s churches. Ah, Salta La Linda, yet another fair place to someday return.

Technorati Tags: Argentina, Family travel, Quebrada de Humahuaca, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Salta

There are certain phrases you avoid when traveling. In most of the Southern Hemisphere, you’d be remiss to refer to the residents as “natives,” a term which smacks of the pejorative. This presents a problem, because of course there are natives, people whose ancestors have inhabited the region for hundreds if not thousands of years, and who are ethnically distinct from later colonial and immigrant populations. In Asia, the common phrase for residents is “the local people.” In New Zealand, Australia, Africa, and now South America, the preferred term is indigenous people.

We were shocked upon arriving to learn that very few of Argentina’s current residents qualify as indigenous. In fact 97% of modern day Argentines claim European ancestry. So what happened to the original inhabitants? They suffered different fates. The people of the South resisted colonial rule and were subsequently exterminated in an 1879 campaign called “Conquista del Desierto.” Immigrant farmers and ranchers quickly claimed their lands. As a result, today you can find Welsh settlements in Patagonia and Ukrainians in the Southern Pampas. The people of the North fared better but faced their own unique challenges. Beginning in 1609, they became the focus of Jesuit priests from Spain, whose efforts to convert and colonize brought mixed results.

In the Northeastern region, the Jesuits established 30 missions around the Parana River, 16 of which are in modern day Argentina. They called the missions reducciones, or reductions, because it was here they sought to gather the nomadic Guarani people and settle them in permanent communities, thereby reducing their presence in the land to fixed locations. The strategy bore fruit, but not necessarily in the way the Jesuits intended.

Under the Jesuits’ direction, the Guarani built beautiful settlements centered around impressive churches. They did not however adopt the God to whom the churches were devoted but instead maintained their animistic beliefs. They lived together in sedentary harmony but became sitting ducks for Brazilian slave traders, who now could pinpoint the location of large numbers of victims rather than having to scour the forests for the occasional hunter. They enjoyed the benefit of food and shelter but often perished at the hand of European settlers to whom the Jesuits contracted them as laborers. They contributed to the growing wealth and power of the Jesuit order by producing yerba mate, the dried leaf that when chopped and mixed with hot water becomes mate, but ultimately it was this wealth and power that led to the banishment of the Jesuits by the Spanish crown and the eventual dissolution of the missions.

We learned all of this fascinating information when we visited San Ignacio Mini, the best preserved of the Parana missions, located an hour outside the city of Posadas. This was another one of my must sees, and the family was skeptical from the start. Once we entered the grounds, however, there was little doubt this was a place worth seeing. We passed through the Visitors’ Center, which opened in April and was one of the most excellent displays we’ve encountered in our 10 months of travel. The guidebooks had promised a bizarre “interpretive center” boasting black lights, flourescent fruit, and half a pirate ship, but apparently it entered the museum graveyard with the initiation of this new facility. In our brief time in the center, we saw artifacts from the site, learned about Guarani history and faith through both text and film, listened to their music both pre- and post-Jesuit, and gained insight into the development and demise of the mission.

None of this mattered when we exited the building, however, because the ruins spoke for themselves. The spirit of the place was overwhelming. Crafted of basalt and red sandstone, the crumbling walls of the living quarters seemed to echo with the voices of Guarani children. Their parents, firm believers that everything in nature possesses its own unique spirit, received permission from the earth to hew the stone blocks that formed their new homes. Line after line of dwellings separated by grassy paths led to the heart of the complex, the Italian-designed, Baroque church, expertly adorned with bas relief sculpture by Guarani craftsmen.

Though neither as detailed nor as extensive, this felt to me a supremely spiritual place, on a par with Angkor in Cambodia, Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, and the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul. This feeling has nothing to do with any particular faith but rather with the energy that created the place and the conviction that sustained it. In the quiet of the morning, with nary another tourist in sight, I could picture the pathways bustling with earnest, hardworking Guarani and the black-robed Jesuits who had gathered them. I could hear the chopping of yerba mate as the breeze rustled the leaves on the trees and the tapping of chisels on stone as our feet met the tile walkways.

I wonder what might have happened here had the Jesuits been allowed to remain. Would the Guarani have stayed? Would they have prospered? Their few descendents that inhabit the region to this day express great pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors but are quick to emphasize their devotion to traditional beliefs. In my mind this place seems too fragile, too mystical to have endured. So now it stands, a hope for a future trapped in the past, a moment in time suspended in sandstone

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Technorati Tags: Argentina, Family travel, Jesuit missions, Guarani, Rockhounding, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, San Ignacio Mini

I have been delinquent in getting up my getting fat posts. I have had two of them sitting on the back burner waiting for us to get to a place where I would have the time to finish them, an unforseen delay while they clear the roads over the Andes has given me that chance. I am slipping them into their proper places in the blog. If you want you can check them out at getting fat in Eastern Europe and barely maintaining my weight in Tunisia.

If I were searching for my food heaven, Argentina would be near the top of my list. San Francisco, New York, and Sydney vie for that title because of their vast and tasty selection of world cuisines. Beijing would show up on a short list because of the many varieties of Chinese food gathered in one city, Paris is fine but a little bit too gourmet. However, my American palate may have met its culinary soulmate in Argentine cuisine. My life of eating beef has prepared me for Argentina.

When I was a kid in the ’70’s, any beef beyond hamburger was seen as a special treat. I grew up with a reverence for beef; it was the expensive food we got only once in a while. A Sunday roast or a steak on the grill were two of my favorites and I harbored a misguided affection for “steak in a bag,” an unfortunate preference I won’t go into, but think of it as shake and bake with a sirloin steak. My love of beef was heightened when my grandparents moved to live near us. My grandfather ended his career as one of the leaders of the LA savings and loan scene (long before the scandal) but in his early years, he had been a butcher and knew his meat. When we went shopping for our beef, he would always go up to the butcher at the local supermarket and explain which piece of meat he wanted and how he wanted it cut. He was likewise a master with the preparation. The thought of his teriyaki steaks still cause my salivary glands to crank into high gear, and he has been gone 10 years now.
For most people this respect for the value of beef and a basic education in all things beef would be enough to prepare one for a lifetime of eating beef, however, I had one more meat sage who would cement the deal. When Anne and I were first married we lived in Connecticut while I finished up school. Anne’s mom and stepdad lived in upstate New York where he ran his own butcher shop. As we were on a tight student budget, we didn’t buy much meat. However, every month Anne’s mom and stepdad would come visit us or we would visit them, and in either case, a large portable cooler filled with meat would be waiting for us. Bill always set us up right. He included the best cuts–filets, ribeyes, some ground beef, chicken breasts, and a few roasts of both pork and beef. Anne and I joke that during our “macaroni years,” as Bill likes to call them, we ate bacon-wrapped filet mignon. I have carried that respect and love for beef into the business world and when given the chance have visited the best steakhouses in America. Some of my favorites are Palm and Smith & Wallensky in New York, The Chop House in Chicago, Harris’ in San Francisco, and Pacific Dining Car in LA. I even understand the healing power of beef(combined with prayer). A few months before this trip I had my hip replaced. The replacement went fine but my body did not respond appropriately during post op. For the first 3 days my hematocrit (the amount of red blood cells in my body) kept going down. Even with two transfusions it slipped lower and lower each day, to the point where we and the doctors were scared. If my body did not start producing its own blood, I would be in danger of organ failure and require a long string of transfusions while they figured out what was wrong. Fed up with the paltry hospital food, I asked Anne to bring me a real steak from McCormick’s in Atlanta. She drove to the steakhouse and brought me back a giant slab of sirloin, crispy on the outside and raw on the inside. I ate the steak and we prayed for help before she returned to the kids. As she left I told her “tomorrow would be better.” The following morning they were ready to give me blood from the bloodbank but I told them to run their tests again. “I am on the mend,” I told them. Sure enough when they re-ran the test I had more red blood cells at 10 am than I had had at 6 am. Not much more, but my blood level was now moving in the right direction. I am sure the prayers were more important, but that big slab of beef sure helped.

I never asked my meat to help me heal in Argentina, but if I were looking for a beef with healing power, this is definitely the place I would find it. In Argentina the beef and its domesticated cousins, the goat and the lamb, are the center of people’s social lives. Families throw big weekend asados (barbeques). Every town has parrillas (grills) where people gather, and the Andrus family has done its best to frequent as many as we can. Dax and I are the two biggest meat eaters and on days when the rest of the family has had their fill of meat, we usually slip away and get ourselves a steak. Last night, for example, Dax and I went to our favorite restaurant in Salta at 11:15 to get a late dinner. You have to love Argentina, and what could contribute more to getting fat than a nice 18-ounce sirloin (bife de chorizo) right before bed time. However, the Argentines are not fat. They consume the most beef per capita of any nation in the world, yet there are few obese people here and most are downright skinny. One of the reasons is their beef is not as bad for you as American beef. How you might ask are cows different? Cows in Argentina are mostly raised on the pampas; they eat grass. Having lost most of their land to make room for grain farms, cattle in the US are raised on giant feedlots and fed corn. Living on a feedlot also means lots of antibiotics and hormone injections. (I bet the Argentines use the hormones as well, but they don’t need the antibiotics.) The different diets create different meat. The taste is different and I would argue a little stronger, which means if you like the taste of beef, Argentine beef is better. If you like it a little blander, then you’ll prefer the US beef version. It also changes the ratios of omega-3 fatty acids. In the US, when we want to increase the amount of omega 3 fatty acids, we eat more fish. Another idea would be to switch to grass-fed beef.

The taste of the meat is different in Argentina and so is the preparation. All of the grills either use a pit with a fire surrounded by animals or parts of animals on sticks, or a simple grill over real wood charcoal. I can’t find a a US equivalent of the wood they burn to create the charcoal, but everyone appears to us the same pampas-grown wood. (If anyone knows please feel free to leave a comment.) The meat is prepared simply. They do not marinate it or cover it with spices. They rub it with salt, a whole lot of salt, and put it on the grill or a stick. The salt helps the meat to crust up on the outside making each bite a little crunchy and very juicy.

The Argentines also try hard not to distract the eater with other fancy foods. There are vegetables at the meal, but they take their proper place on the under-card. There are usually two starches, again a perfect match for my American palate, bread and potatoes. Each meal comes with a nice tasting french bread. It is usually hard and chewy on the outside and soft on the inside, perfect for dipping in steak juices. The potatoes are usually fried or pureed and have not been anything overly special. What is special are the condiments. Usually there is one salsa and one sauce to add to the meat. The sauce is chimichiri, a succulent combination of parsley, garlic, olive oil, and the occasional chopped tomato. Each restaurant has its own spin on the national sauce, but thus far they have all been to my liking.

There is little about eating in Argentina that is not to my liking. I enjoy the food, the atmosphere of the restaurants, and the national attitude towards food. It isn’t just the food though. It is a remembrance of something we once had in America that is gone or disappearing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it stems from a vague recollection of going to old-fashioned steakhouses with their red and white checkered tablecloths. A senior-citizen aged waiter or waitress would greet us and take our order. The food wouldn’t be fancy, but when it arrived it was tasty and abundant. When the bill finally arrived, it was reasonable and everyone goes home full. That vague memory is still part of everyday life in Argentina. Even the cost of the meals hearkens back to 30 years ago. Our big steak meals have been between 4 and 8 dollars per person. Our most extravagant meals with all you can eat asado, drinks, and dessert have been between 5 and 10 dollars per person. It is hard to buy good steaks for that price in the US.

I have to tip my hat to Argentina. It the best place in the world for walking away from a well-cooked, satisfying meal with both your belly and your wallet full. The memories of the rich meat flavors we’ve experienced here will resurface and cause my mouth to water for years to come.

Technorati Tags: Argentina, Asado, Beef, Family travel, food, Parrillas, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW

Waterfalls hold some strange power over humans. Around the world people flock to stare at them, sail beneath them, fly above them, and wonder about those who have fallen over them. (Come on…admit it.) I personally have made my family travel thousands of miles, spend hundreds of dollars, and endure the pain of yellow fever shots to visit them first in Africa and now in South America. Tom thought I was crazy, but I refused to waiver in my pledge. We traversed Botswana and the Zambezi to get to Livingstone, Zambia, site of Victoria Falls, and braved an 18-hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to reach Puerto Iguazu, home of Iguazu Falls.

For this relentless dedication, I have been duly rewarded. Victoria Falls were vast and powerful. Known to locals as Mosi-oa-Tunya, or “the smoke that thunders,” one cannot stand at their edge and fail to grasp the brute force of nature. Likewise, Niagara Falls, which Tom and I viewed on our honeymoon (we had $100 in the bank and Yale football camp 4 days later so Bali was out), dazzled us with its picturesque horseshoe and reminded us that beauty can be found everywhere…even in upstate New York. Nothing, however, prepared us for the splendor that is Iguazu. While some Vic Falls fans will no doubt disagree, I contend the Iguazu Falls, which sit between the sultry subtropical forests of southern Brazil and northern Argentina, are of a higher order–magical, mystical, mythic, miraculous. While neither the tallest (that’s Angel Falls in Venezuela) nor the largest by volume (VIc Falls take that particular prize), they are the widest, with 270 distinct falls and islands spanning some 8900 feet, or almost 1 3/4 miles. But this alone is not the reason for their glory. The waterfall competition in my mind is one not of quantity but quality. Falls are not just so many gallons of water gushing over the edge of the earth, they’re an experience, a tete a tete between man and nature, a suspended encounter with the powers of the universe. And as far as experiences go, Iguazu blew us away.

The time we spent at each falls provides a clue to our fascination. As I recall, Tom and I spent the better part of 2 hours at Niagara in 1990, and all of us spent about 3 hours at Vic Falls in March. We spent 3 days at Iguazu. To be fair to Victoria, there was little to see from the ground since we were there during the rainy season and the chasm was filled with the spray. We declined the pricey helicopter rides and the Zambezi was raging so violently, all boat and river rafting operations had beens suspended. It is high water season at Iguazu as well, but even with mist visible from miles away, the views are abundant and breathtaking. We spent three days wandering the trails around the winding falls and still couldn’t take them all in. Had we crossed to the Brazil side (which we didn’t because doing so required a $100 visa for each of us–ouch), we could have easily spent 5 days in this most captivating of places.

Our experience with Iguazu began when we arrived at the Sheraton. Never has there been a time when we’ve been more grateful to be Starwood Preferred Guests. The only hotel in the national park, the Sheraton affords spectacular views of the Falls. Guidebooks recommend park visitors stop at the hotel just to sit in the cafe and savor the scenery, and here we were with a private 24-hour view from the top floor. Even with this most favorable of settings, my inner pessimist kicked in when I saw the forecast: cloudy skies for the next three days. I knew waterfalls continue to flow come rain or shine, but I’d heard tale that Iguazu was otherworldly in the sunlight–rainbows, butterflies, and magic. As the sun set behind a thick layer of clouds, I prayed for sunshine the next day.

I took my spiritual comeuppance as I woke to clouds the next morning. When a sliver of sunlight sliced through, I darted to the balcony and called for Tom to take my picture.

We vowed to make the most of the gloomy day and boarded the tiny tourist train to Garganta del Diablo, the Devil’s Throat. An intricate system of metal catwalks led us to the infamous Garganta. Along the way signs and debris indicated the spots where previous cement pathways had once stood only to be washed away by raging floodwaters. Sunshine or not, the Devil’s Throat was awe-inspiring. Millions of gallons of water crashing, bubbling, and plummeting over land’s end every few seconds from not one but three directions, hence the throat. We snapped a few pictures but could not bring ourselves to leave. The lure of the Falls was too strong. As we gazed toward the Brazilian side Tom noticed that the skies to the east were clearing. The clouds were not moving, but seemingly dissolving into the atmosphere. My heart skipped a beat as I realized I might get my sunny day after all.
Tom and I pondered the possibility and agreed we should stick around to wait for the impending weather change. Unfortunately, three of the six needed to make a pit stop. We were a good half mile from the restrooms but knew when nature calls, parents must hearken. We walked about halfway back on the temporarily deserted catwalks and those with the proper anatomy created their own momentary waterfalls. A few minutes later we were back on the viewing platform in full sunlight. Sublime.

After a surprisingly tasty and affordable lunch at the park’s Jaguar Cafe, we took the Paseo Inferior or Lower Trail, a 1.4 kilometer pathway that descends through the dense forest and along the base of the falls. The kids entertained themselves by playing with the coatis, a kind of weasel-raccoon mix, and throwing figs and sticks over the various falls.

After about 20 minutes we rounded a bend in the trail and gasped. We were greeted by one of the most magnificent views we’ve ever encountered. From this vantage point we could see almost the entire expanse of the falls as they wound their way through the landscape.

Weak in the knees, we continued along the trail and each time we rounded a corner the vista was more miraculous than the last. At the last overlook we were greeted by the view below. Like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae, a rainbow arced from the island below, over the river, and across to the Brazilian side. The most gifted of artists couldn’t have conceived anything more beautiful. Surely this was paradise.

The kids, not quite as enamored as their parents, were eager to get back to the hotel and cause some mayhem. I made them bust a pyramid at the lighthouse at the top of the trail before turning them loose on the Sheraton grounds. It had been a long day of waterfall savoring and they deserved a break.

We woke the next morning to sunshine. Rather than being content with our viewing from the previous day, we were determined to check out the falls in this new lighting. Would there be more rainbows today? How high would the spray be? Would the platforms be in light or in shade? Would the butterflies be hiding in the trees or magically descending from on high? And this is the story of Iguazu. A single viewing does not sate. It only sparks the addiction. Every view, every angle, every nuance, every inch of bordering forest begs repeat exploration. When the sun sets, you find yourself wondering how the falls look under the cloak of darkness. You can hear them thundering in the distance but must imagine what the park gates and the law prevent you from seeing. When the sun rises, you want to somehow be in every spot at every moment to grasp the enormity of their splendor.
With a tinge of regret, we boarded our bus for San Ignacio after three transcendent days at Iguazu. The Falls catapulted onto our Top 6 Natural Wonders list and earned a permanent place in our hearts. Sigh…

(If you think I’m alone in my obsession, one of Tom’s friends is so smitten with Iguazu he uses the word as his personal email address.)

Technorati Tags: Argentina, Family travel, Iguazu Falls, Victoria Falls, Round the world, Round-the-world, RTW, Waterfalls, Waterfalls

It takes a little courage for me to come out of the closet and say what needs to be said. Before last week, I, Dax Andrus, the fourteen year old veteran world traveler, bungy jumper, and abseiler, did not know how to ride a bike. Sure I had tried before and concerned friends and family had tried to help me. But these experiences (experiences like when Grandma pushed me down the hill on the bike that was far too big, or when I tried to go off a curb and popped a tire on my friend’s bike) only strengthened my resolve to not ride a bike. I had it set in my mind that bikes were evil. Despite this, I knew that some day, some dark day, I would have to throw my leg over the bar, put my feet on the pedals, and ride a bike. I had no idea it would happen on this trip.

It all started when we went to stay at an estancia in San Antonio de Areco, Argentina. San Antonio is a small town with only a few narrow streets and a tiny central park. Here the only way for us to get around was to ride a bike. The beautiful estancia provided us with the necessary materials, now I just had to learn how to ride. When I went to the bike shed, I had no idea what the differences were between any of the various bikes. My dad explained to me that “Boy bikes have a bar, girl bikes don’t.” I questioned this logic since a bar for boys seemed counter intuitive. He explained that its so girls can wear skirts on the bikes without having to worry about them blowing in the air. This bar would be my main fear on the bike for the remainder of the time at the estancia. First I tried out a white bike with gears. After a short ride (more like falling to the ground repeatedly and shaking my fist in the air), I noticed the gears didn’t work and the bike was far too big. I tested out ‘The Spirit of the Beach’, an orange beach bike. I rode this one around and managed to stay on much better than on the other. The biggest hindrance of my ride was when I was headed straight for a line of trees and needed to stop. I attempted to stop the bike with a hand brake. I groped around the area where most hand brakes are located. Nothing happened. I shot a quick glance down and saw that there was no hand brake.

“What?” I thought to myself. “I chose the only bike without brakes, great!” At this point the line of trees was growing ever closer and my heart was racing ever faster. I thought, “Why not turn the bike? Yeah, good idea!” I attempted to turn, but at this point in my biking career I had not yet mastered that art. Instead of skillfully turning in a circle I skidded out and fell on one side. About two minutes later after a lot of thought I decided, “It’s not worth it!” I picked up the bike and walked it back to the shed where my dad was teaching Mac how to ride. “Dad, I chose the only stinkin’ bike without a brake! It must be the high stakes bike or something.” My dad shot a questioning glance at me.

“No brakes? Let me see.” He checked out the bike and started to laugh. “This bike is old school. It has a pedal brake. All you have to do is push back on the pedals to stop.” I tried my luck again and managed to get in a little better ride. After about five minutes of riding without falling I felt like I was the king of the world. I had learned to balance, turn, and even stop properly. (Mac has still not taken to stopping in the conventional manner. He prefers to simply jump off the bike and pick it up off the ground.) We took the bikes into the town for a couple rides and I practiced my newly acquired skills. Apart from a few crashes with Mac I was feeling rather good about my biking situation. How quickly things change…

The next day, I was still riding the high I got from acquiring some bike skills. We decided to ride back out into the town and visit the Gaucho Museum. After the short ride out of the estancia things took a turn for the worse. First I had trouble getting a start on the bike, I continued to injure my legs and the area in between them. When I finally got going, I crashed into a small stone wall and fell on my butt. I looked forward and saw my family far ahead, I grunted, got back up and attempted to catch them. Having managed to accomplish this feat we entered the museum. It was interesting, although it would have been helpful if it had been in English. We took a few pictures and raced out to try and find some coats for our upcoming trip into Bolivia. This is where I found out, I’m not a good bike rider. Round one of Dax’s Day with the Bike From Hell had now begun.

The bike threw a good one my way when I crashed into a curb and went flying onto the ground. On my way down my face slammed into the bike, leaving me with a headache. I got back up, not one to be beaten by a bike with the name ‘Spirit of the Beach.” I continued trying to ride around the town but the bike wouldn’t have it. Next I somehow slipped off the bike and managed to run over my foot on the way down. A few more incidents like this had me pleading to my parents to let me go back. But the Bike From Hell was not finished with me yet. As I was riding down the street a car came my way. I pulled to the right and managed to dodge it. Another quickly followed behind it. I pulled up to the curb and rode very slowly but whoever was driving the car must have had something against me because he swerved the car in towards me. I looked in horror and tried to jump off my bike onto the curb. But the bike had one last punch to throw. As I jumped my foot got caught in a part of the bike and the bike followed me as I fell to the floor. My old friend, the boy bar, came smashing into my inner thigh, leaving me with a terrible pain. I stood up quickly, threw my hands in the air and would have thrown the bike in the street if it was my own. “That’s it! I’m never riding a bike again in my life!” I yelled. This got me some strange looks from the local kids who were walking home from school. I walked the bike to the restaurant we were eating at and sulked in my misery. I had to be the worst bike rider in the history of the world. After lunch I slowly rode back to the estancia, trying to avoid agitating any of my wounds. When we arrived to the shed I put the bike away. “I’m never getting on one of those again…” I said to my family as I walked back to the room. All I can hope is that I never do.

As we have gone around the world, we’ve tried to find local books and authors to read/listen to on the iPod. These have given us a little extra insight into the criminal past of Australia (The True Story of the Kelly Gang), the difficult legacy of colonialism in India (The Magic Seeds), the apartheid past of South Africa (Cry the Beloved Country). In Argentina we are excited to delve into the works of one of the world’s great authors, John Louis Borges. He is Argentina’s foremost author and the founding father of magical realism (think Big Fish). Though I haven’t read much Borges to date, I adore one of his successors, the Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marques. His stories are like glimpses into a dream world where fantasy and reality intersect. When reading his novels and short stories, I always found it hard to understand where the South America portion ended and where the magical realism portion began. Having been on this continent only a few weeks, I am starting to see that looking for a line separating the continent from its magic is fruitless. There isn’t one.

The magic began in Buenos Aires and was reinforced on our day trip to Colonia, Uruguay, a sleepy, misty town where mystery hung heavy in the air. Our next stop was the small town of San Antonio de Areco, which proved the most magical to date. San Antonio was a mere two hours away from the big city but a world apart from its urban hustle. As we stepped off the bus onto the dusty streets, we could have been in any small town in Texas or New Mexico, the only difference here being the ghosts are gauchos not cowboys. The bus station was a 12 block walk from our estancia, a traditional cattle ranch where we would be staying to gain a view into the traditional gaucho lifestyle. When we called the estancia to get directions and ask for lunch recommendations, the voice on the other end informed us only two restaurants were currently open as it was siesta time. To get to the cheaper but equally delicious one, we would need to take a detour from our direct route across town.

As we turned right out of the bus station, a small dog was there to greet us. The kids immediately made friends with this dog whom they named Frankie Muniz (they’re big Malcolm in the Middle fans). He took the point and led us down the street. On our way we passed a number of dogs who approached Frankie, did the dog sniff test and let him and us pass. At one point we came across a German Shepherd and his mutt friend who were standing on their hind legs trying to turn the door handles of a delicatessen, which was closed for siesta. They were making a horrible racket as they banged against the metal door. In the end their lack of opposable thumbs prevented them from breaking in and getting a snack. It certainly was a bizarre scene as we were surrounded by canines with not a human in sight.
We continued making our way toward the river, to our restaurant where heaps of meat awaited us. All the while, Frankie walked ahead of us as if he was our personal guide. Every half block or so, he would turn and look at us as if to say, “Why are you checking your map? I know where I’m going.” Finding it hard to believe this little dog could really know our destination, we checked the map repeatedly. Each time Frankie was right. Within about 15 minutes we ambled up to the restaurant with Frankie in the lead.

Frankie was waiting for us an hour later when we exited La Costa. Now confident in his mystical canine powers, we followed. We had only gone one block when he turned into a small zoo. Zookeepers don’t usually like stray dogs running through their establishments, but the keepers here seemed to welcome Frankie as you would a tour guide. They ignored him and focused on us. Intrigued by the strange little place that occupied the equivalent of a large residential lot, we paid the $.66 entry fee and sprang for the $.33 bag of animal feed as well. Mac and Asher threw some of the food and some of our lunch to Frankie who promptly trotted off.

The zoo was an interesting menagerie of birds and small creatures, most indigineous to Argentina. The kids enjoyed the armadillo, Anne liked the eagles and I found a noisy toucan to be rather entertaining. Soon I forced everyone to load their packs back up and head to the hotel. I wanted to get there before dark. We were surprised as we left that Frankie was nowhere to be seen. I guess he had done his part, collected his payment, and moved on. We had nothing to worry about though as within a block we picked up a new tour guide, a gray unkempt half afghan/ half …. who knows that the kids promptly named “Snoop Dog.” Snoop Dog didn’t lead us as much as play with us. When we arrived at our estancia, La Cinacina I had the family stand in front of the sign for a photo. As they lined up, Snoop Dog noticed what was happening and ran to get into the picture. He stood there until the pictures were done and then trotted ahead of us down the path to the buildings. As we walked with Snoop down the long dirt road, we noticed two big Weimaraners up ahead. They spotted Snoop, barked viciously, and raced toward him. They left us alone but bared their fangs and snapped at Snoop. Snoop stood his ground and was soon saved by the manager, Manuel, who saw the big dogs scaring the new guests from his office. I expected him to give Snoop the boot, either figuratively or literally, but instead of throwing something at the big mongrel, he ran up and gave Snoop a big hug.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I have been looking for this dog for weeks.” He proceeded to tell us that he had taken Snoop in a few weeks earlier. He felt a kinship with the scruffy, freespirited mutt, whom he called Chewy (as in Chewbaca), and whom Anne assured him would wear a beret if he were human. One day Manuel had said something about a bath, and Snoop had hit the road. Manuel was beside himself with joy. He expressed his excitement in rapid English, using words like “great omen” and “kismet.” For him, our arrival was a magical event–a smiling American family delivering his long lost canine soul brother to his doorstep. For us it was an enchanting beginning to a brief but wonderful stay. Manuel proved a consummate host. His gregarious nature and native level fluency in English endeared him to all of us. Even Asher was kicking him within minutes (her way of showing affection).

Manuel showed us to our rooms, which were, he assured us, the best in the estancia. Since the winter weather was cold and gray, the whitewashed walls and wooden furniture were made even cozier by log-filled fireplaces. While the rooms were homey, Manuel assured us the heart of the estancia was the gorgeous, glass enclosed common room, complete with couches, coffee table books, jazz music, a magnificent fireplace, a small kitchen, and all the drinks, cakes and fruit we wanted. (This was shades of Esbelli Evi in Turkey.)

Manuel escorted us to the common room where we sat together and talked about Argentina and the pampas. He taught us about yerba mate, the national herb-based drink, and its importance to Argentines. He demonstrated the ritual for drinking mate in all its intricate detail. We enjoyed the warmth of the common room, deep mugs of steaming hot chocolate, and Manuel’s generous hospitality. He pointed out the bikes that were at our disposal and explained we didn’t need to worry about locking them in San Antonio. Dax and McKane were the first to jump on the bikes, regardless of the fact that neither of them really knew how to ride. We purchased bikes for them when they were little, but neither ever took to riding, preferring skateboards or scooters instead. After all the bike-related accidents I had as a kid, I let them enjoy their preferred wheeled vehicles and didn’t worry about their lack of riding ability.

The boys started riding around on the grass and within a few minutes looked like experienced though slightly tentative riders. One of the adult bikes had a child seat for Asher and there was a small bike with training wheels for Kieran to ride. I pulled out the little bike, and Kieran tried to ride. The training wheels were loose and refused to stay level so he crashed a few times. He started to show some real signs of frustration as the bike was hard to peddle. I encouraged him to sit on the back of my bike. He refused. Asher had a nice seat behind Anne, though it lacked any kid of restraint, but all I had was a rack. Kieran claimed he would just run alongside the rest of us. I looked at his little legs in doubt but said “OK.” For the first 200 yards he did his best. He ran as fast as he could, but it was apparent this wouldn’t be a long term solution as we had a few kilometers to ride in and out of the town. I convinced him to climb up and stand on the rack over my back tire. He clambered up, threw his arms around my neck, and we were off. This ended up being the perfect solution. As we drove around the estancia looking at horses, geese, and the odd sheep, I couldn’t help but think of the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, only I had Kieran and not Katherine Ross on my bike. It felt like a dream as we rode and talked. For the next two days, everywhere we went Kieran stood