Weronika On Aventura

THANK GOD FOOD IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN IN CHILE. I even found good sourdough bread bakery! I've been so much happier since I've had access to decent food. I liked Argentinians. Most people I met were very friendly, more so than in Chile. Meat is of very good quality indeed. I had this reaaaaally good steak sandwich on one of my walks around... it was layers and layers of the stuff and it was SO TASTY. They're obsessed with dulce de leche. Almost every dessert has dulce de leche in it. You go to an ice cream shop and there's six different flavors of dulce de leche ice cream. Buenos Aires is full of dog shit. It's absolutely crazy, it's like a disgusting mine field! In many places you can't pay by card or only VISA is accepted. It was very annoying since I have MasterCard and ATMs have a 4000 pesos limit and charge $10 for every withdrawal...  Often times price paid by card will be 20-30% more than cash price which is crazy. I've been told this is b...

They have some amazingly beautiful places. Torres del Paine - out of this world. Elqui Valley - very nice. Valparaiso - super cool. San Pedro de Atacama - supposedly great but since I visited during the "Bolivian winter" I wouldn't know since it rained the whole time I was there, all the attractions were closed and the tiny town melted into one giant mud puddle. Santiago - meh. Wouldn't come again. It's expensive! Prices a little lower than the US, but more expensive than Poland.  Don't even get me started on the food. I think I literally wouldn't go back to Chile because of how terrible the food was. Eating is normally a pleasurable activity, but there it became a case of merely filling my stomach. I got sad every time I ate. They barely use any spices so everything tastes depressingly bland. I did not see freshly ground black pepper for a whole month of staying there. Most restaurants didn't even have ground pepper available.  I've been to...

La Serena itself was nothing special, but two very nice things happened when I was there. Firstly, I shared a room with really nice people with whom I instantly clicked. The first night we met we went out to eat together, and then the next day I went on a trip with the half-Polish half-Swiss girl. We went to see the chilean "poor man's Galapagos" - Isla Damas & Choros :) It was again my favorite type of a trip, using cheap local transport instead of overpriced packaged tours. Oh the thrill of figuring out where to catch the unmarked bus from, and the self satisfaction when you actually manage to get to the place :-P we saw some dolphins, sea lions, penguins, otters, pelicans and lots of other birds. I don't even remember the name of the girl, but I remember she was pleased she tagged along on this trip and super excited about seeing the dolphins :-P The second nice thing was that I tried surfing!!! I hesitated a lot, and I didn't have anyone to tag along with...

I went to Elqui Valley after Zach went back to the US after our amazing stay in the chilean Patagonia, and a bit less amazing stay in San Pedro de Atacama, and the marvellous mining town of Calama (full of pharmacies and strip clubs). This was my penultimate stop before leaving Chile and heading on to my next South American destination - Buenos Aires in Argentina. Valle de Elqui is famous for two things: having one of the clearest skies in the world, and pisco production. The place is full of astronomical observatories. In fact, I just read that "By 2020, this grape-filled valley (along with the greater Atacama desert) will have an estimated 70% of the world’s astronomy infrastructure, thanks to its high altitudes, low population density and near non-existent cloud cover". Of course, I visited an observatory while there, and if course by now I have forgotten almost everything that I was told there :-P I also visited a pisco distillery with two girls that I met at the hostel ...

What can I say about Patagonia and Torres del Paine? If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would probably be fair to say this: it's probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen. The colors are STRIKING. The mountain shapes are MESMERISING (how crazy are los Cuernos?!). The fauna is plentiful and fun to watch. The waterfalls are majestic and the lakes are like blue mirrors. Drawbacks? It's WINDY AS F*CK. I was sad to leave, but I have to say I was glad to be going to somewhere less windy, which is anywhere else in the world I've been :-D Also, driving around the park was a royal pain as 99% of the roads were horrible horrible gravel roads that made for very loud and very shaky journey. Also I had to be careful not to pop a tire on some evil rock. To arrive in Torres del Paine we rented a car in Punta Arenas. A little Fiat... with a tent on it's roof! The national park is understandably very popular among tourists and accommodation choices are very limited. I ...

There seems to be an endless amount of stray dogs inhabiting the streets of every town and village in Chile. Even though they live in the streets they're well fed and don't seem to be in any kind of distress. They're super friendly and will wag their tail wildly at your sight and ask for all your love, and hopefully the rest of your empanada. They know exactly how to make themselves irresistibly loveable and charmed locals feed them, pet them and play with them.  In San Pedro there was a particularly cute dog that walked around with a rock in his mouth. He dropped it in front of people and waited for strokes/fetch game/food, if they ignored him he would pick it back up and proceed to the next "victim". I'm staying at a hotel in Elqui Valley now and there's a resident stray here, which people seem to have nicknamed Susie. Susie is so friendly and seems so at ease here that all the new guests think that someone from the ...