Enduring a 20-hour bus ride to see some animals; that’s what we did after leaving Buenos Aires. We went to Puerto Madryn, at the northern edge of Patagonia. What’s there? Well, we hoped to see a lot of frolicking exotic animals, but instead we saw a lot of lazy and lethargic animals. There are several nature reserves here where you can see whales, sea lions, elephant seals and (most importantly) penguins in their natural habitat. It is definitely cool, but unfortunately most of the animals were more interested in just lying there, rather than performing fun animal rituals for us, such as hunting, eating, mating, fighting etc etc. Lazy jerks.
We saw whales, which was pretty cool because I had never seen whales before. We were too cheap to spring for the whale-watching boat, but you can watch them from the shore, they are only about 100 meters off shore! I took about a thousand pictures, of which 990 turned out as blurry water pictures, because the whales were too fast for me.
The highlight was definitely the penguins. Near Puerto Madryn, at a place called Punto Tombo, the largest colony of Magellanic penguins outside of Antarctica can be found. It was wild! The penguins were everywhere, thousands of them, and if you didn’t watch where you were walking, you would probably step on one. Most of these guys were also just lazing in the sun, but a few were walking, scratching, swimming and making penguin noises so we were completely satisfied (20 bus-hours well worth it!).
-E
Patagonia - miles and miles of flat, uninteresting land
Sleeping elephant seal
Finally an elepant seal doing something besides laying there
Elephant seal colony
It would be a shame to disturb the wildlife as it lounges around
We flew into Buenos Aires last Sunday and moved into a quaint little studio apartment for the week. The place has a real McGill ghetto-type feel which I guess is kinda comforting to us, although I keep getting flashbacks of studying for exams. Maybe that’s why we’ve been driven to consume copious amounts of $2.00-per-bottle wine (which is of the same quality as $14.00 wine at the LCBO!). At any rate, we feel like real porteños this week, and that feeling was reinforced when we had a life-changing steak dinner last week…
It’s all true what they say about Argentine beef. It’s more tender. It’s more flavourful. It’s juicier. I think the cows are raised on God’s farm. Beef is so ubiquitous here; I read that Argentines eat an average of 68 kg of beef per year. That’s insane! But now I know why they do it. Don’t get me wrong, we ate some memorable meals back in Eastern Europe and those will always be near and dear to my heart. First, there was the homemade Bulgarian moussaka and stuffed peppers back in Macedonia. Then there were the home-grown olives (and oil), tomatoes, cucumbers, figs, grapes etc. with the family in Greece. Finally, Switzerland had our bellies bulging from the cheese and schnapps fondue. But this steak takes the cake (say that five times fast). When Elise took her first bite she actually cried out involuntarily. I’m not kidding. People in the restaurant actually looked over at our table to see what was going on. “Oh, just another gringo orgasming over the steak” they said to themselves. Sure, you can get this steak back home, but it’ll cost you a weeks pay! We got it for the same price as a Swiss Chalet ¼ chicken dinner! We’re gonna be in Argentina for another three weeks sooooo….you can’t OD on beef, can you?
When we were planning this trip, one thing I found was that it was very difficult to create a budget, because there was so little information about how much it would cost to travel in various parts of the world. We struggled a lot with this, and finally came up with a budget that we were not very confident it. But as it turns out we weren’t very far off, at least as far as Eastern Europe is concerned.
Another thing you may or may not know about me is that I am budget-obsessed. I have recorded and categorized every penny I have spent in the last five years. On this trip, it’s no different. I even record loose change given to buskers. That’s not weird, is it???
We are going to open our books and share this info with you – who knows, maybe it will inspire someone else to give up everything and hit the open road!!!
This is what we spent for 94 days in Eastern Europe: Lodging: $1987
We spent 51 nights camping, 25 nights in a hostel or private room, 15 free nights with friends, and 3 nights in transit. Food (including alcohol): $3195
We made all of our breakfasts, and ate lunch/dinner at a restaurant about 40% of the time. So, mostly we cooked for ourselves. Entertainment and/or Activities: $949
Includes entrances into museums, castles, bike rentals, rock-climbing, concerts etc. Necessities (clothing, shampoo, internet, sending packages home etc): $1205
Car: $4497
The car cost us $2464, gas and road tolls and parking cost $1985, and maintenance was $53.
Other transportation (not including overseas flights): $688
This includes public transportation and taxis within the city, as well as our transportation from Bratislava to Madrid after we sold the car.
For a grand total of $12521!!
The car costs were way more than we expected, but luckily we were under budget everywhere else, so it all worked out in the end! If we had known how much that car was going to cost us, we might have through twice about doing it, but it really made our trip what it was, and we wouldn’t have changed it for anything.
And here is a video that might be interesting for some...especially for those planning to see him at the Toronto show next month. This is Josh Ritter performing 'Rumours'.
We sold the car back in Bratislava a week and a half ago but I still have a bitter taste in my mouth from the whole experience. Bear with me while I vent a little. If you read my post “Slovakian Auto Bizarre” back in June, you can gather how stressful the purchase process was. Multiply that by 100 and you get the stress level of the sell back process. After things went flawlessly on the road and behind the wheel for exactly 11,166 km we figured we were due for a mishap. We didn’t think that mishap would be in the form of two Slovak guys holding us hostage (figuratively) for 500€.
When we got back to Bratislava we thought it would be smart to pay a visit to the auto bazaar two days early to do a sort of dress-rehearsal of selling back the car. We needed the car right up until our train was leaving for Switzerland in two days and we didn’t want any surprises at the last minute. According to the Slovaks everything was just dandy with the car. And, as far as we could tell, we had done everything we needed to in order to sell back the car for the pre-arranged price. The stage was set for the big day. We showed up at 8 am and the Slovaks did another inspection of the car. All of a sudden, things weren’t so dandy. Out of nowhere they started claiming that we needed to pay for all sorts of maintenance items. First, they wanted 80€ for 4.5 L of oil to do an oil change and 40€ for the labour. That’s 120€ (=$158 CAD) for an oil change!! Last time I took my Integra to Mr. Lube it cost $50 for semi-synthetic! I wasn’t buying it. Regardless, we had asked specifically about changing the oil when we bought the car and they had specifically said NOT to do it. They went on about an air filter for 50€, a thorough detailing for 80€, a new Johnson rod for a ridiculously unfair price and so forth. They knew we needed to catch a train to Switzerland that morning so they figured they could squeeze a few extra bucks – I mean euros – out of the stupid, rich Canucks. Oh, how naïve they were, how so very naïve. As the clock ticked closer and closer to the train’s departure time I worked frantically on both dictionary.com translator and Google translator as we pored over the terms of the contract. Elise and I had all our ducks in a row with respect to the contract terms and I wasn’t going to budge. These guys had nothing (except for 3500€ of our money in cash!). They were pretty nice guys so I was surprised at this turn of events. By 10:30 I had miraculously bargained them down so that all we had to pay was an extra 100€ for a mysterious scratch, which was fair. Not bad considering the Slovaks could have simply said (in Slovak) “take what we give you and get the hell off our property”. Maybe the misunderstanding was all due to the language barrier. Either way, I guess it was only fitting to have a dramatic end to such an epic road trip. We’ll miss the Space Star. That car was like a home to us. Actually, it WAS our home for three months.
-G
The closet
The kitchen
The living room
The odometer had already rolled over the 10,000 km mark. Pretty sweet.
We have definitely fallen behind with the blog, but it has been long couple of weeks and full of hardship (with some moments of fun).
Since Bulgaria, we breezed through Romania, stopping for a few nights to hike in the mountains and stay in a tiny village that probably hasn’t changed in a hundred years. Then we headed back to Slovakia, where we sold the car (more on that from Gully) and suffered in a tent for four nights in single digits temps and lots and lots of rain. We were too miserable and cold to blog. Then we got on the train (sadly, our new method of transportation) and headed to the last place we dreamed we would end up during this trip – Switzerland!! This was definitely a highlight – and we were too stuffed with good food and booze to blog. Then we got on an overnight train to Barcelona, which turned into a bus due to a train-worker strike, then the following night on another overnight train to Madrid. It sucked.
But more on Switzerland, since it was the only fun part. We stayed with our new friends Christian and Bettina, who we met while we were in Croatia. They live in a smallish town on the eastern border of Switzerland, and for 3 days they toured us around Switzerland and Lichtenstein and Austria, fed us Swiss/Austrian specialties, and took us hiking in the Swiss Alps. Specialties like chocolate, cheese, cheese fondue, sausage and horse meat. I probably gained 5 pounds. We also went to see a football match, which, in true Swiss style, was a friendly game between Australia and Switzerland and ended in a 0-0 draw. Talk about neutrality. We spent about 10 hours in Zurich, waiting for a train, and burned through about half the balance of our bank accounts… we ended up sitting all afternoon in the park because we couldn’t even afford McDonald’s coffee!!
The only ones crazy enough to camp in Slovakia in September. (That's us on the far left!)
The end of our camping days
A Friday night in Switzerland - friendly football and a giant sausage (a St Gallen specialty, we're told)
A nice walk in the garden...
With the mountains in the background
Our future hometown :)
Walensee
Walensee
No trip to Switzerland is complete without fondue!
We stumbled into our first extreme activity on our trip in Bulgaria – rock climbing. We cruised into a campground one night, innocently, where we were received warmly by the ex-pat proprietor, Cliff. We were quite unaware that this very same man would hold our life in his hands, by our own choice, only a couple of days later!
We found out that he was a rock climbing enthusiast, and that he took people out to climb rocks for a nominal fee. So, we said “Why not?” – a question I would have a strong answer for a short time later when I was clinging to a sheer rock face by my fingernails – and away we went.
Gully, of course, was a natural – he bounced from toe-hold to toe-hold as if gravity didn’t exist, all the way to the top. By the third or fourth climb, Cliff had him leading the climbs on some very challenging rocks. Me, well, I got to the top, and I am proud of that! Never mind the fact that everyone present had aged significantly by the time I finished. Slow and steady, that’s what I always say…. when I’m being really slow.
Cliff also had us ‘practise’ falls – which is basically leaping from the rock face and hoping that the person on the ground holding your rope is paying attention. This is something that I found has to be done without thinking, or else you realize just how stupid you are for doing it! You really have to trust your boyfriend to dangle from a rope 100 feet in the air when he is holding on to the other end of the rope. It can really make or break your relationship.
-E
Sunset at Trinity Rocks Farm in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria
Abseiling - this water is FREEZING!
Gully getting ready to jump into the freezing waterfall
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