I returned from my trip to Argentina and Ecuador last Monday. Unfortunately I have been sick and unable to sort through my many photos until now. It will be a few more days before the official story and photos show up on the travel side but, in the mean time, I can start with my general impressions.
The Argentina trip was a “fam” thus (as you all know by now) a group trip with a pre-set itinerary. The group was a good gang and again I got lucky with my roommate. She was the nicest and funniest person on the tour. She had me laughing to tears many evenings.
Our first lodging in Buenos Aires, after 15 hours of overnight traveling, was in a shabby B&B with only one bathroom for the entire building…and only one tiny cot in our room…We finally got a second bed to be brought in, but it was lilliputian, half the size of the first one. Lucky for us that my roomie is short and has a sense of humor.
The trip was strangely planned. We barely had time to set our luggage down that we were to hop on a bus for a city tour. Needless to say everyone was asleep within five minutes. We all felt bad for our guide. Later that evening we attended a tango show that kept us out until 2 AM…It was a rough start.
The next day we had some free time and our group leader took us to a busy area where we could find plenty of restaurants, bars and galleries. We were to make our own way back. He had made an X on my map to indicate where our B&B was located. It all sounded easy enough. We walked about soaking up the sights and sounds and smells, eventually we found a nice café and had a lovely lunch. It started raining while we were eating…we had not expected that and did not have raincoats or umbrellas with us…but we set out to walk back following the map. We stopped a few times to inquire about the best way to get to where we were going and kept being given contradictory instructions…we walked for a long time, in what seemed to be concentric circles…we eventually got to what was, to me, the X on my map…Unfortunately nothing looked the same, the fruit store was not across the street, the candy store was not next door, and when we got to what should have been the door, a strange hostile man was standing there refusing to let us in….we were totally soaked…the only precise address we had was that of the other B&B where the other half of our group was staying. We decided to hail a cab and get taken there. But we had to walk back to the main street a few blocks away and to get a taxi to stop. To this day I wonder what is the secret to getting one of those drivers to stop. We must have seen a dozen of them drive by, empty, yet totally ignoring our desperate signs. After about 15 minutes of this, one driver took pity on us and took us in. He managed to drop us off about 2 blocks from where we were going but at least we knew where that was and we finally rang their doorbell looking like old shoes fished from the river. Our tour leader walked back with us (we were soaked anyways so what’s a few more blocks?). We looked like two idiots when we realized we had been at the right place before, but neither one of us was secure enough to ignore the nasty man and the changed landscape. As it turns out all the stores pull down some kind of covering when they close so that nothing shows, not even their store sign. I was soaked through my windbreaker, two sweaters and underwear as was the content of my shoulder bag. I was not only hanging clothes to dry, I was drying airline tickets and pesos… After this episode we were awarded the dubious honour of having the worst sense of direction of the entire group!
We left soon after to board a flight to Salta, which is a small town in the Andes, at the northwestern tip of the country. We spent the next week exploring around it. It is a very dry and arid region thus very dusty and not very colorful. It does offer breathtaking mountain views and a wide variety of cacti. Each village that we visited had a little something special, be it a mummy in a museum, an arts and crafts market, a pretty church, a pre Inca site, hot water springs, I will try to illustrate most of these with my trip photos, but as I expected, they are a bit disappointing because of the lack of vibrant colors.
The second part of the trip was totally different. I was traveling alone, visiting my daughter who is presently living in a small village in Ecuador. She took me to see a variety of sites each one more colorful than the first! I must admit it was a bit of a culture shock. No more hotels and private buses. We were living and mingling with the people. The sights, the colors, the noises, the smells were overwhelming at first, but made for a fascinating trip! And much more interesting photos!
In Argentina I photographed landscapes while in Ecuador all I wanted to photograph were the people. I was shy about it and more often than not shot their backs, but that was often as interesting as their faces as the women usually carry either a baby or some big bag on their back, and often their hair is braided and decorated with colorful ribbons.
Just to whet your appetite I will insert one photo…
