The day after returning from Easter Island, we rented a car at SCL airport in Santiago and drove 2h15m to the town of Santa Cruz in the Colchagua Valley SSW of Santiago. It’s an easy self-guided side trip from Santiago. I’d chosen an intriguing little hotel located in a family villa tucked behind gates off the main road into Santa Cruz. Behind those unassuming gates, Hotel Boutique Quinta Maria boasts a pretty flower-draped courtyard, covered walks and a swimming pool. The flowers fill the property with their perfume. Breakfast each morning was delivered to our stylishly decorated room on a big tray laden with such treats as eggs from the owner’s chickens, homemade jam from her fruit trees and fresh fruit.
Hotel Boutique Quinta Maria
The whole point of this stay was wine tasting and I’d booked us at four wineries, two a day. Santa Cruz is the perfect location with none of the wineries I wanted to visit more than fifteen minutes by Uber from our hotel. (Although we had a rent car, we did not want to drink and drive. Uber worked like a charm and was cheap and readily available each time we wanted it.) Unfortunately, we had the first bad weather of this trip the weekend we spent in Colchagua and rain canceled a horse-drawn carriage ride through vineyards I’d scheduled at the first winery, Viu Manent. On the bright side, the winery substituted a more expensive wine tasting at no additional charge. Although Viu Manent wines were our least favorite of the trip, we did enjoy lunch at their Rayuela restaurant overlooking an equestrian training field and vineyards.
Viu Manent wineryAt Rayuela restaurant
The highlight of our winery visits was Clos Apalta, a truly spectacular architectural feat offering some exceptional wines. The winery building looks like an deconstructed wine barrel from the outside, with the barrel staves splayed and pointing to the sky. A rock garden with “sundial” indicating the seasons of grape growth and harvest sits atop this structure and overlooks the Colchagua Valley with its vineyards, orchards and mountains beyond. Inside, the structure burrows seven stories into a stone hillside. Each floor is carefully and artistically designed to house the gravity-driven wine-making process. A natural spiral stone staircase descending the full seven stories wraps around a Foucault’s pendulum. Large elevators provide an alternate method of ascent and descent. At the very bottom a large, transparent-topped tasting table in the middle of a barrel-filled room lifts to expose two stories of stairs down to the owners private reserves. The whole thing is truly impressive. Clos Apalta is owned by members of the Marnier family that owned Grand Marnier in France and the heritage shows in their excellent wines.
Clos Apalta
Rain interfered again with a planned picnic on our second day at Viña Montgras outside the nearby town of Palmilla. Plan B turned out to be a delightful fireside indoor picnic. Not bad! Viña Montgras offers picnic baskets filled with hearty steak sandwiches, cheese, cured meats, olives, bottled water, cookies and a bottle of one of their wines. Business was slow on this cloudy, shoulder-season day so we had the winery to ourselves with its pretty courtyard and display of antique wine-making instruments on a lower floor. The staff couldn’t have been nicer and, by the time we finished our picnic, the sun had come out and we could enjoy a bit of their picturesque vineyards.
Viña Montgras
Our final winery was Viña Montes, neighbor to Clos Apalta. Like Clos Apalta, Viña Montes uses gravity to facilitate its wine making. Approached across a reflecting pool, the main building is sleek and modern utilizing feng shui to put its Asian customers at ease. Huge picture windows in a ground-floor conference room look out over top-rated Fuegos de Apalta restaurant, vineyards and green hills on which alpacas graze. The alpacas are brought in to keep grass down among the vines. We enjoyed the Viña Montes wines, focused heavily on local carmenère grapes, although we really liked their pinot noirs as well.
Viña Montes
Practical Info:
Santa Cruz is a small town with a pretty square, a small museum and a casino. The owner of our hotel, Gabriela, recommended several including Rayuela where we ate at Viu Manent. We enjoyed another meal at La Casita de Barreales with its Peruvian cuisine and decor and lovely open courtyard.
Around Santa Cruz
The highways between Santiago and the Colchagua Valley are modern and in good shape with views of the snow-capped Andes to the east. On the way back to Santiago, we detoured through scenic rural roads to lunch at a roadside restaurant near Rapel Lake. Those roads were fine as well although we occasionally shared them with slower moving farm vehicles.
I was thrilled at the prospect of visiting remote Easter Island with its iconic moai statues. (“Rapa Nui” is the native name for both the island and its Polynesian people.) It’s one of those destinations I’d seen all my life on tv and read about, but wasn’t sure I’d ever visit myself. And there we were, settling into a surprisingly luxurious LATAM business class seat ready for the five and half hour flight from Santiago to Hanga Roa, the capital and only real town on Easter Island! [The flight itself really did exceed expectations… and I’ve got a hot tip for knocking a huge chunk off the price of a business class ticket. Details on that below in the “Practical Info” portion of this post.]
The airport at Hanga Roa is tiny, but pretty with its arched wood ceiling and native carved art. We were through baggage claim and security in no time.
Mataveri International Airport (IPC) at Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui/ Easter Island
A driver from our “hostal” (a family-run collection of cottages rather than a youth hostel as found in Europe, etc.) met us when we exited with thick flower lei-style necklaces and we were off in no time for the ten minute drive to our lodging, Kuhane Etno-Hostal. Our hostess, Sofia, spoke virtually no English, but we quickly checked in and settled into our brightly-painted cottage.
Eager to see a little of this fascinating island, we headed out on foot, following Sofia’s suggestion to walk along the nearby coast into town. With one of the island’s many stray dogs trailing along, we walked past a half dozen free-roaming horses to glimpse our first moai at Hanga Kio’e from just steps past the entry to our hostal. In front of the oceanfront statue, a wedding was in full swing with the happy couple and guests dressed in white modern clothing while the officiant sported an elaborate feather headdress and traditional native garb.
Further down the coast, we passed a 3-tiered catholic altar made of lava stone, then headed inland a bit to bypass a narrow rocky inlet. Less than a ten-minute walk from our hostal, we arrived at Tahai, truly one of the prettiest sites on Easter Island, and right by Hanga Roa, free to all and probably most visitors’ first encounter with moais. A single large moai with red stone topknot and eyes whose whites are carved from coral stands closest to the main gate. Nearby are the stone foundations of former boat-shaped houses and chicken coops. Beyond four moais and the remains of a fifth stand with their backs to the ocean on a long raised ahu (platform). We learned the next day that the sun sets into the sea behind these moais making for even more spectacular views.
Our first sunset at Tahai
While exploring a relatively modern (but definitely unique) cemetery, the cloudy skies gave way to a light rain. We took shelter in nearby Topa Ra’a, feeling really lucky when dinner there turned out to be excellent.
Prior to arriving on the island, I’d asked Sofia to reserve a local 4×4 vehicle to be delivered to us for the following morning. I’d also arranged an English-speaking guide. (A local guide is a necessity to visit most of the historical sites on Rapa Nui.) When we returned from our first night dinner, Sofia informed us that our guide had suffered a serious eye injury and been flown to Santiago for surgery. However, she assured me she’d arranged another excellent guide. And, yes, she spoke English.
After breakfast the next morning, we discovered that the plan was to share “our” guide with three Chilean sisters staying in another Kuhane cottage. The guide would ride with them and we would follow behind, an arrangement we didn’t mind since it saved us money and gave us privacy. Unfortunately, our guide spoke only a very little English so I spent the rest of the day doing my best to translate for David. Good practice for my rusty Spanish, but not easy given Chilean pride in the difficulty of their accent and dialect and the uniqueness of the archeological and historical things being explained. Our guide and the sisters did make an effort to speak clearly and, while frustrating, all worked fairly well.
Rano Raraku quarry
To avoid lingering clouds that she thought would burn off later over nearby Orongo birdman village and the Rana Kau volcano crater, our guide decided to start us out to the east at the Rano Raraku quarry. This actually made a lot of sense since it is the “birthplace” of the all the moai. Rano Raraku is a fascinating place with 397 exposed moai in various stages of carving. The statues vary in size and some have been partially buried over time leaving only their heads or heads and shoulders exposed. (Completed moai are statues from head to around hip level.) Experts believe there are more moai fully buried. Generally speaking, the head of a moai is about 1/3 of its full size so some half-buried moai at Rano Raraku are estimated to be 13 meters tall. It took about two years to carve a large moai. Abandoned Moai that broke in the process are scattered about the quarry. The largest moai ever carved wasn’t completed and is still attached to the hillside. It measures 21 meters (69 feet)!
Tongariki
Below Rano Raruku on the coast stands the famous long line of fifteen large moai at Ahu Tongariki. The ahu platform is 220 meters, one of the largest ceremonial structures in Polynesia. With the ocean at their backs, the statues make for an unforgettably dramatic scene. Some distance from the ahu, a solitary moai stands not far from the entrance to Tongariki. This “Traveling Moai” went to Japan in 1982, a trip sponsored by the Japanese who donated two million dollars to restore the site.
The moai on Rapa Nui/ Easter Island all need restoration due not only to the ravages of time and weather, but primarily due to destruction by the native population themselves. While there is much speculation as to the exact history of Rapa Nui and the details of the religious beliefs and ceremonies surrounding the moai, it is undisputed that the local tribes depleted the islands natural resources, fell into war among themselves, and toppled over and/or broke the moai. When I remarked to one site guard that it was sad what was done and how many moai are still face-down or broken, he shrugged and said something along the lines of “Yes, but it is our history and the fallen ones tell that story.”
Driving across the island down deeply rutted and pitted dirt roads lined with red-flowering trees, we arrived at Ahu a Kivi. Seven restored moai stand on a large ahu. The seven seem to face the ocean, unlike all the other moais that faced inward toward the island and its inhabitants. In fact, there was a village between these moais and the water, so the moais were facing their clan. Human finger bones were found here, remnants of the old practice of burning the bodies of the dead behind the ahus.
As promised, the clouds to the west of the island had cleared as we headed back to Rana Kau. The huge volcano crater now filled with water and floating plants makes for yet another impressive scene. The far side of the crater broke away some time in the past exposing the blue ocean beyond.
Rana Kau volcano crater
Nearby are the remains of the “birdman village” of Orongo, site of a unique cult-based annual competition that sprung up late in Rapa Nui history and, presumably, as a way to assign power and make peace among the tribes. People who lived through this part of history still existed at the time the first western historians arrived and recorded their stories. Warriors from the various tribes would assemble at clifftop Orongo each September when Sooty Terns arrived to small islets below to nest. These men would compete in a race whereby scrambled down the cliffs and swam out to the islets to search for the first tern egg. The man who returned first with an egg safely tucked into a pouch strapped to his forehead would win the competition for his chief who then became the “Birdman” leader of all tribes for the year. The competition must have been something to see!
Heading back into Hanga Roa, we had a late seafood empanada lunch with our guide and the sisters before heading back out. At Vinapu, we saw a rare female moai. The ahu there, with its massive carefully carved and placed stones reminiscent of Machu Picchu, lends support to theories that people from Rapa Nui spread to eastward South America.
Hanga Te E Vaihu is a collection of restored traditional grass-covered, boat-shaped homes along with lava stone gardens and stone chicken coops. The big rectangular coops housed tunnels inside where the chickens roosted at night, closed in for their safety with rocks used to block the entrance once the last chicken was inside.
Hanga Te E Vaihu
Across the road from Hanga Te E Vaihu, cowboys drove a large herd of horses along the fence line. The people of Easter Island seem to love their horses, but the population looks to be out of control. Free-roaming horses are everywhere, creating a driving hazard on dark, unlit streets and co-existing in a less-than-friendly manner with the local free-range dogs.
Easter Island horses
We made a final quick stop at Ahu Huri A Urenga, where a solitary moai perched on a small hill beside the road. These unexpected encounters with moai add to the mystic charm of this island.
Dinner that night turned out to be a serendipitous find. We walked in sans reservation at Te Moai Sunset, picked a table beside a big picture window looking out over the white-eyed moai at Tahai with his four-and-a-half moai companions, and settled in to watch the sunset. What a view! [2nd photo of this post] And the food was delicious, too. We were blown away, so much so we came back the following night for an even more spectacular sunset that turned the sky a fiery orange. [Top photo.]
On our own the next day, we set out on some seriously pot-holed roads to visit the few sites that don’t require a guide for entrance. Aside from Tahai, the best of these is Anakena on the rocky island’s best beach. There are three original ahu here in various states. Ahu Nau Nau is the jewel of this site, a large restored platform topped with seven moai, two of which are mere remnants. Scattered bits of moai and their red stone top-knots dot the area. Closer to the beach, a lone, well-weathered moai stands vigil.
Anakena
Instead of moai, the highlight of roadside Papa Vaka are carvings in the large stones embedded in the ground. There are fish, sharks, turtles and other sea life and things related to fishing. The largest petroglyphs on Easter Island are here. We had the place to ourselves and wandered dirt paths laid out like a labyrinth among them.
Papa Vaka carvings
We circled as much of the island as the roads allowed, revisited favorite places from our first day, admired the horses, stopped to take pictures of the dramatic coastline. On our last morning, we followed the familiar coastal path to visit Hanga Kio’e, this time able to get close to the moai and explore the remains of the village now that the wedding was over. We also paid a final visit to Tahai, still so special even without the magic of sunset.
Sofia asked us to spend lunch with her, her partner and another friend. It was Chilean Independence Day and Sofia made homemade empanadas and opened a bottle of excellent Chilean wine to celebrate the occasion. We ate on the deck outside the airy dining area at Kahune, national flags flying near the parking area and at the neighbors, bunting decorating the deck railing.
We had only three nights on Easter Island which gave us two full days and two half days. We packed in a lot at a comfortable pace and were happy with the time we’d allotted.
Practical info:
Before visiting Easter Island, you must complete the Rapa Nui Entry Form online, have a passport with a return flight ticket to Santiago, and have proof of a registered accommodation reservation. You cannot board your flight without these. Find details here. It’s a quick and easy process. You also need a Rapa Nui National Park ticket which can be bought online or at the national park ticket office in Hanga Roa.
Easter Island can be an expensive destination, so it pays to plan ahead. Traveling in shoulder season as we did means less crowds and somewhat better prices. Easter Island is not the always-warm tropical climate of other Polynesian islands. It can be chilly and rainy and very windy. We were lucky with the weather, but we did want jackets most of the time, especially when exposed to that wind.
That LATAM tip: LATAM is the only airline flying in and out of Easter Island. When I first looked up flights, I was directed to https://www.latamairlines.com/us/en. I decided to compare the price there to the price shown on their Chilean site, https://www.latamairlines.com/cl/es. Of course, this site is in Spanish (“es”), but that isn’t a problem for me, and anyone not able to read Spanish could just use the translate function on their browser. The price (in Chilean pesos) for a business class flight to Rapa Nui/ Easter Island from Santiago was just under half (after conversion) of the price shown on the US site. I used to use this old work-around a lot, but nowadays many airlines have disallowed using a different country’s site. Happily, that’s not the case with LATAM. For anyone worried that this might be a problem. It isn’t. A ticket is a ticket at LATAM. I actually had to reschedule dates, called into LATAM on their English line and was helped, without question, to make the change. To make things even better, the LATAM business class hard product was excellent: huge seats, bedding provided, simple amenity kit. The soft product was very nice, too: steak dinners with a nice wine selection, attentive service. I wish our business class seats on American Airlines to and from South America had been as spacious!
Hosts can often reserve rent cars as Sofia did for us. She was able to get a better price than I could find online along with delivery to our hostal. Rapa Nui is a small island and it seems everyone knows everyone so check with hosts before booking a car, guide, etc.
In addition to Te Moai and Topa Ra’a, we particularly liked lunching oceanside at Pea RestoBar, watching surfers and body boarders.
For lots of shops and souvenirs, head to Atamu Tekena street in Hanga Roa and the handicraft market at its end near the national park ticket office.
A really informative and interesting book is A Companion to Easter Island. I wish I’d know about it before we went. I saw a copy at the airport as we were leaving and bought it upon our return on Amazon at a substantial discount.
Looking for daytrip options from Santiago, I quickly settled on Valparaíso. Photos of the colorful coastal city drew me in and I liked the idea of such a contrast to Santiago. After reading great reviews, I contacted Christian Herrera (Vámanos Tours) as our driver/guide. He was quick to reply, offered some additional options, and we settled on a plan for a full-day trip to Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, and wine tasting in the Casablanca Valley on the way back to Santiago.
It’s about an hour and a half drive from Santiago to Valparaíso. Christian picked us up at 8:45am. He pointed out favorite spots as we drove through green hills and down valleys dotted with vineyards. Beyond the Casablanca Valley, the hills were dotted with a mix of pine and palm trees, a combination unfamiliar to us. We stopped briefly mid-way at a big tourist shop with kitchy faux Easter Island moai out front so Christian could grab a coffee and we could browse (or not) and take a bathroom break. It’s a typical guide move to stop at such places where they’re getting a commission. Happily, rather than pushing us to buy anything, Christian warned us about prices there and he really seemed to just want to offer a quick break. We were quickly back on the road.
As we entered Valparaíso, Christian told us he was going to park near the port since he had a friend there who would keep an eye on his van. He said he used to park up in the hills of Valparaíso, but his van had been broken into there. As we got out to view the nearby Plaza Sotomayor, the stately Armada de Chile building and market stalls set up in front, Christian asked us to tell him if we planned to take photos and not to take out our phones until he was ready to keep an eye out for snatch thieves. It was just one more of the many warnings we received about crime in Chile. It’s a shame, but we stayed vigilant and never had a problem.
Armada de Chile
Just around the corner from the Armada de Chile building we rode the El Peral “elevator” (really a funicular and one of many in Valparaíso) up the steep incline to reach the iconic painted buildings that dot the hillsides of Valparaiso. There are 16 historic funiculars in Valparaíso (not all in working order), and there were once as many as 30 of them. The El Peral funicular cost a negligible 100 pesos (about 11¢) collected by an attendant who mans the ornate metal turnstile.
El Peral funicular
The funicular deposited us near a wide terrace with sweeping views. Up here, Christian said we could relax our guard a bit which made this delightful part of the city even more enjoyable. Valparaíso really is a treat for the eyes. Painted murals seemed to cover most of the buildings and the buildings themselves are part of the art that is this unique city. This was what had drawn me to choose Valparaiso for this daytrip and it exceeded expectations!
It was hard not to want to take a photo of every painted wall, every vista. I wanted to just wander, taking it all in. Christian, of course, knew the city well, so we could just trail along with him, wide-eyed at the over-the-topness of this place. We spent most of our time on the hillside just walking the streets, but also browsed an art gallery and peeked in shops. We lunched on seafood on the pretty terrace of La Concepción, a restaurant overlooking the city, port and ocean beyond. I got a kick out of our time in Valparaíso, and I won’t try to explain more. I’ll just let those photos do the talking:
Leaving Valparaíso, Christian drove us to Viña del Mar, an upscale oceanfront town whose border with Valparaiso is hard to pinpoint. We strolled a wide oceanfront promenade, stopping to watch a dance group in native costume, part of the Chilean independence day celebrations that had the country dotted with flags during the whole month of September.
Viña del Mar waterfront
Viña del Mar is also home to an authentic moai statue from Easter Island. (A plaque in front of the statue states it is a gift, something heartily disputed by the Rapa Nui we met later on Easter Island.)
The final stop on our day tour was back in Casablanca Valley at the Bodegas RE winery. Bodegas RE is based on an interesting concept of creating “wines of unique character, based on REcreating, REinventing and REvealing ancestral wines from the biblical stories to the wines produced in the past centuries by the family, in noble and beautiful clay jars…” We enjoyed an interesting tour of the winery. Our guide, who’d lived in NYC as a child and who spoke perfect English, was intrigued that we’d recently visited Georgian wine country with its ancient wine-making heritage and tradition of aging in clay pots. We also chatted about orange wine we’d tried both in Georgia and Slovenia which garnered us a comped extra tasting of Bodegas RE’s own orange wine. Bodegas RE is a relatively new winery (2008), but its founders come from many generations of Chilean vintners. With its intriguing wines, pretty shop and its location in the vineyards of Casablanca Valley, Bodegas RE made for a nice end to a truly enjoyable day.
We arrived in Santiago Chile on a 2h20m Aerolíneas Argentinas flight from Buenos Aires’s regional AEP airport. With the now familiar warnings about taxi scams in mind, I’d arranged for a transfer to Hotel Boutique Le Rêve with Christian, the driver I’d also booked for a daytrip to Valparaiso, Viña del Mar and a little wine tasting. Christian’s friendly father, Antonio, covered for Christian for our airport transfer. Antonio spoke no English, but we got along fine with my rusty Spanish.
I’d read great things about our hotel and was looking forward to staying there for a few days and exploring Santiago and a bit of Chile. In addition to the Chilean capital, I had Valparaiso, Rapa Nui/ Easter Island and the Colchagua Valley wine country in my sights.
In Plaza de Armas
Hotel Boutique Le Rêve met my high expectations. In a charming, vine-covered building with a large back courtyard, it has sofas in a common area that feel more like a living room in a very nice home, a free serve-yourself coffee/tea time each afternoon and an honor bar. Our room was stylish and quietly elegant with big windows overlooking the courtyard both in the bedroom and the spacious bathroom. Le Reve is located in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago on a pretty street near lots of restaurants and in walking distance to the Cerro San Cristóbal cable car and the vast Metropolitan Park of Santiago.
Hotel Boutique Le Rêve
We walked all of about three minutes to dinner our first night at La Bifería, a steak restaurant recommended by the super helpful desk clerk at our hotel. The clerk also handed us a 20%-off coupon before we left which made me wonder if he’d steered us to a tourist trap. Not at all! We had a fantastic meal kicked off by excellent pisco sours. (And, our waiter happily accepted our coupon, informing us it applied to the total bill, including drinks.) When driver Christian recommended La Bifería the next day, he was impressed we’d already discovered one of his favorite spots. [I’ll write up our Valparaiso day with Christian in my next post.]
I’ve tried a few “free” walking tours in different cities (Hakodate, Japan, and a fun food tour in Sofia, Bulgaria, come to mind), and I thought that might be a good way to get a quick overview of Santiago. These guides live off whatever “tips” visitors choose to pay. In Santiago, they recommended $15-20pp. I’d found a highly-rated guide via GuruWalk and signed up for Diego’s group tour some weeks before our trip. Unfortunately, Diego canceled and and I was back to the drawing board the night before my preferred day. I was able to sign up for an English-speaking tour anyway, so we found ourselves at Plaza de Armas at 10am on a Sunday. Our new guide, María-José arrived in an Uber just as we did. She asked us to wait on a park bench to see if more English speakers might arrive. (GuruWalk guides in Santiago wait in the plaza wearing green caps, so it’s possible that people will just show up rather than signing up in advance.) We said we thought we’d go check out the interior of the nearby Cathedral while she waited, but she said she preferred to take us there herself when the tour began and asked us to stay. So began the less-than-auspicious start to our walking tour.
On our walking tour
I’m going to vent here about one of my pet peeves with guides. (So you may want to skip this paragraph.) I want to scream when guides make their customers stand somewhere while they speak at length, wasting tourists’ precious time that could be spent walking while they talk. Or at the very least standing somewhere interesting and keeping it short. (A guide in Petra, Jordan, was the absolute worst, having our small group stand by trash cans near the entrance of the famous canyon thoroughfare while he blathered on and on until we just walked off and left. The only guide we didn’t really enjoy in Uzbekistan did the same thing, walking us outside the walls of Khiva to a parking area where she talked at length while our impatience grew to roam the streets of that gorgeous city.) Nice as she was, María-José violated this should-be-a-rule, keeping us in Plaza de Armas for nearly 40 minutes, moving us and two late arrivals only slightly to various historical markers around the plaza then launching into a detailed dissertation on local history at each spot. She made it worse by promising (as if it was a good thing) to give us a detailed history, followed by a summary. Oh good grief, just give us the summary and let’s walk around this intriguing city! Scanning the plaza, I realized the guide for the larger, Spanish-language group was doing the same thing. Who tells these guides to do this?! It’s a walking tour! To make matters worse, we spent all of about a minute in the back of the Cathedral because a service was going on, something I’d have been happy to stay and watch and could have done prior to the tour if María-José hadn’t asked us not to. Thankfully, it got better as our small group tried to impress on María-José how we’d like to see things go. She did pick up the pace, and she definitely knew a lot about Chilean history. We saw some highlights we might have missed or missed the significance of and that made the tour worthwhile. I’d recently read Isabelle Allende’s The House of the Spirits and I was touched to see not only the monument to President Salvador Allende, but also Morandé 80, the door through which the body of Salvador Allende was removed from the presidential palace after the coup of 1973.
Happily back on our own, we headed to Giratorio, a rotating restaurant, for a celebratory birthday lunch. It was fun to take in the city and the surrounding hills and mountains as they slowly passed by the windows. Lunch was tasty and the waiters very accommodating, cheerfully moving diners from inside tables to tables next to windows upon request as other diners left.
On the telérifico de Cerro San Cristóbal
Cerro San Cristóbal (Saint Christopher Hill) and the teléferico (cable car) to the summit beckoned in the afternoon. The base of the cable car was a fifteen minute walk from our hotel in the huge city park, Parque Metropolitano de Santiago. We bought cheap timed tickets for the cable car in machines at the bottom. There were a fair number of people in the park, but the line for the cable car wasn’t bad and moved quickly so we were soon aboard. (I’d looked at buying tickets in advance online, but the site showed only expensive package tickets, not what we were looking for.) The views from the cable car are stunning with the snow-topped Andes in the distance. Santiago is home to the tallest building in South America, the Gran Torre, and its presence rising above the city adds to the dramatic scene. It’s possible to get on or off at a midway point near a parking area, but we rode to the summit, the highlight of Cerro San Cristóbal.
A large terrace near the cable car station gives way to a wide uphill path past food and souvenir vendors to a final terraced slope atop which sits a 22-meter tall statue of the Virgin Mary (Sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception). A small church sits to the right of the hill, but it’s the statue that draws people to its base to sit and admire the views.
Sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception
Our time in Santiago was laid-back and enjoyable. We didn’t have a lot of must-sees, just a desire to experience the city. We used the cheap and efficient metro system for longer distances. (We loaded a metro card loaned to us by our hotel as needed. A nice lady working in the Pedro de Valdivia metro station helped us calculate how much our planned trips would cost. Prices vary by destination and time of day.)
In the Pedro de Valdivia metro station
Constantly warned by locals about potential theft, mostly of the pick-pocketing variety, we kept an eye on our belongings, but never felt uncomfortable in the nicer areas where we focused our time. We did avoid the Plaza de Armas area at night, again after several warnings about more serious crime there and in other areas of the city. These kind of warnings are not uncommon in South America and merit taking seriously.
Practical Info:
As in Buenos Aires, finding an ATM that didn’t charge exorbitant rates was a challenge. Unfortunately, we needed cash for a few things. The ATMs in the Pedro de Valdivia metro station raised the rip-off factor to new heights: Not only do they charge a high fee, they also charge a poor exchange rate and another separate conversion fee. The total on one withdrawal would be 25%! We found a better alternative at the Santa Isabel grocery store at Av. Providencia 2178. Also, be aware that bank ATMs close on Sundays and after business hours along with the banks themselves.
We woke to sunshine the morning of our visit to the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls. Talk about good luck with timing! Despite a deluge our first night in Puerto Iguazú, a cloudy morning had turned to blue skies for our previous day on the Brazilian side of the falls and now the cloudless skies and warm weather were about as good as we could hope for this day’s adventure.
With the national park entrance only 20-25 minutes from our jungle hotel, we arrived not long after opening and bought tickets on the spot. Moderate crowds were already gathering, but we picked up free timed tickets from a kiosk en route to the Estación Central for the open-air park train and were aboard a short time later. We bypassed the intermediate stop to head straight for the terminus of the train track, wanting to get to the top of the Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) before things got too crowded.
Snaking around groups in guided tours, we walked briskly on the raised metal walkway constructed over water and through small islands thick with vegetation. Beyond a open stretch of shallow moving water and rising above trees of yet another islet, we spotted the telltale column of mist rising into the sky that signaled Devil’s Throat ahead.
Mist rising in the distance signals the approach to Devil’s Throat
Stopping at a bench at a small rest area, we suited up in the rain gear we’d brought before continuing on. The distant roar of the falls grew louder as we approached. Ahead to the right, water streamed into a massive circular space truly looking like some leviathon mouth.
Approaching Devil’s Throat
This was Devil’s Throat from above. And to the left at the end of the walkway, those towering columns of mist from a gorge where massive cascades spilled. Once again, we were drenched as we stood smiling and awe-struck at the top of these mighty waterfalls. It’s an experience I’ll remember the rest of my life.
On the summit of Devil’s Throat
Retracing our steps to the train, we could slow down as we passed the growing tour groups heading out to Devil’s Throat. Turtles sunned on rocks in the shallow moving water that flowed under the raised walkway. What looked to be a large catfish swam past. A sign stated that many of the fish on this upper portion of the Iguazu River are unique and evolved separately from the fish below, where larger predators could be found.
We rode the train back to a midway stop to begin our hike on the Circuito Superior (Upper Circuit) where walkways run along the upper rim of a long string of waterfalls. We’d seen people on the walkways the day before while on the Brazilian side of the Falls and now we could look back down and across to where we had been. Periodic viewing spots widened to allow visitors to stop and take in the spectacular view and roaring water as it spilled over the cliffs at our feet. The sheer power and scope of these waterfalls is mesmerizing!
On the Upper Circuit of Iguazu Falls, Argentina
After hiking the length of the Upper Circuit, we were hungry so stopped to eat outdoors at one of the small restaurants that dot the park. Before we sat down, I noticed several people looking upward and followed their gaze to see a monkey dining from a Styrofoam clamshell he’d stolen from below. We shooed a coati from our table and watched another coati swipe food from a nearby table, running off with its loot while some of his buddies followed on his heels. When they ducked through the fence, a veritable swarm of coatis appeared to follow the thieves further into the thicket.
(A lot of) coatis stealing food.
The Paseo Inferior (Lower Walk) took much less time to hike than the Upper Circuit, as a portion of this circuit was blocked. Still, the views were spectacular.
Back at the mid-point train stop, we watched a large group of monkeys in a tree as we waited for the train. Their eyes searched for visitors with food who ventured out of a wire-enclosed dining area, ready to dart in to steal a prize.
Back near the main entrance, we spent our remaining time in the park in a free exhibit about jaguars. A woman told us she’d become a volunteer after learning about a project to protect the dwindling population of jaguars in the “Green Corridor” area that includes both the Argentine and Brazilian Iguazu National Parks. She invited us to watch a film in an air conditioned tent set up nearby. We readily agreed, intrigued both by the subject and the offer of cool air as the day had gotten progressively warmer. Impressive conservation efforts have seen the population of jaguars rise to over 100 jaguars in the Green Corridor up from a low of just 40 in 2005.
It was a beautiful day in the Parque Nacional Iguazú and an unforgettable experience at what is truly one of the great natural wonders of this beautiful planet. If you get the chance, don’t miss it!
I’d been excited about visiting Iguazu Falls, the enormous collection of spectacular waterfalls that straddle the Argentine/Brazilian border, from the minute I planned this trip. I knew I wanted to see both sides of the falls but wasn’t sure which side of the border to stay on. A little research confirmed that it made the most sense for us to fly from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, rather than neighboring Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. There were good flight options on Aerolíneas Argentinas from the close-to-downtown AEP airport in Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazú. So, I chose a nice-looking lodge in the jungle just outside the town of Puerto Iguazú and arranged for a driver to take us to the falls on each side of the border.
I’d also been eyeing a fun night called The Argentine Experience with locations in Buenos Aires and Puerto Iguazú. The Argentine Experience included wine tasting, cocktail- and empanada-making, a steak dinner and dessert followed by making yerba mate and popular alfajores cookies. Reviews were great for both locations, but I thought it would fit perfectly into our time on the border since the Brazilian side of the falls apparently only took half a day to explore while most sources said the Argentine side took a full day. I decided we’d do the Argentine side of the falls on our first full day, then the Brazilian side on the second day with The Argentine Experience that night. I could foresee ample wine drinking at The Argentine Experience and didn’t want any lingering effects to take away from a following day at the falls. That plan got reversed when The Argentine Experience contacted me to say they needed to move our booking by a night. They offered us a mate cup and bombilla as an apology for the inconvenience, I re-worked things with our driver, crossed my fingers that post-drinks headaches wouldn’t be an issue, and we were set!
A driver from our hotel was waiting when we exited the small Puerto Iguazú airport. Selvaje Lodge Iguazú turned out to be all I’d hoped. It’s a gorgeous lodge in the jungle with a beautiful pool, boardwalks out to the guestrooms, lovely common areas, a good restaurant and friendly staff. Our room was spacious with a balcony looking onto lush jungle greenery. We enjoyed a varied, included breakfast each morning in the airy dining room.
Selvaje Lodge Iguazú
The Lodge arranged a driver to take us into town the first evening (a 10 min. drive). Our first glimpse of Puerto Iguazu convinced us our choice to stay in the jungle was a wise one. The city is not particularly charming and street noise could be a problem depending on where you stay. We asked to be dropped off at a grocery store near our chosen restaurant so we could buy a large bottle of water before dinner. Happily, we made our purchase and walked the two blocks to Restaurante La Rueda just in time to escape a seriously heavy rain. Throughout a delicious dinner in a locally-themed atmosphere, we could hear the rain pounding on the roof, a deluge that kept up throughout the night.
Thankfully, the rain stopped by the time our driver Patricia picked us up the next morning for our trip to Foz do Iguaçu, the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls. Despite the fact we were only going to be in Brazil for the day, we needed to get visas under a new law passed this year. We’d bought those online prior to leaving home and, with visas and passports in hand, crossing the border was a quick affair.
It was still cloudy when we entered the national park on the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls. I’d bought tickets in advance on the park’s website for 9:30am, but we arrived earlier. Happily, there wasn’t much of a line at that time and they let us in early to board a free bus that shuttles visitors to various points in the park. We opted to hop off at a mid-point by the elegant pink colonial Das Cataratas Hotel and begin our hike along the falls there towards the Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) and the end point of the bus route.
Our first glimpse of the falls streaming off the cliffs on the opposite side of the Iguazu River in Argentina was breathtaking and the views just didn’t stop. The heavy overnight rain looked to have contributed to the volume of water in the cascades. Following the path along our side of the riverbank took us up steps and down slopes, constantly looking for the next vista beyond the green jungle sprinkled with flowers. As we approached the end, a wide column of mist rising high in the sky signaled the Devil’s Throat in the distance. A boardwalk extends out to a viewing platform near the roaring waterfall. Amazingly, birds darted through the rushing water to light and nest on the cliffs behind the waterfalls. Without rain gear (which we brought), there’s no way not to get soaked to the skin on the platform, but what an experience!
Onto the viewing platform on the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls at Devil’s Throat basin
Swifts behind and flying through the Falls were easier to see from the side.
After viewing Devil’s Throat, we took an elevator up the cliff and past several scavenging coatis, the local ring-tailed cousin to the American raccoon. These little thieves populate both sides of the falls along with monkeys, stealing food and showing little fear of humans. But they are fun to watch!
Coatis
The terminus of the free park bus route is at this point along with a gift shop, medical post/ambulance, food court and restaurant. We rode the bus back to the Macuco Safari stop. We considered taking a boat there, but the boats pride themselves on going under waterfalls and neither of us felt like getting that wet on a relatively cool day. Instead, we took the nearby Caminho da Bananeiros, a path that led through the jungle, under trees full of monkeys, to a tranquil spot on the Iguazu River. By the time we reached the river, the skies had turned blue. It was so beautiful that we decided to ride the bus back to the Das Cataratas Hotel and retrace our earlier steps to Devil’s Throat in the sunshine. I checked my watch to confirm we had enough time before we really ought to let Patricia know we were ready to be picked up again. Why not?
We made the hike along the path back to Devil’s Throat quicker than the first time, but really glad for the chance to see those spectacular waterfalls again in the sunshine. What a difference a few hours can make!
The crowds had really descended on Devil’s Throat on our second visit.
The drive back across the border to Argentina was uneventful with only a quick stop to stamp our passports. We were back in plenty of time to relax before Patricia was back to take us to The Argentine Experience.
Of course, The Argentine Experience is a total tourist experience. We knew that going in, but it was big fun nonetheless and we learned something about local food and drink. Things kicked off with sampling local appetizers and wine-tasting that focused on identifying aromas and flavors in the nose and taste of wines from the Bodega Catena Zapata family winery. Our companions were an Australian couple, a family from the Netherlands, and a chef from Buenos Aires, everyone quickly in the spirit of things and all of us chatting and enjoying ourselves. Moving from the tasting table to long dinner tables, we were given black aprons and “chef’s toques” before making cocktails from wine and pisco, the grape-based liquor claimed by both Peru and Chile. Next up was empanada-making, an abbreviated but fun exercise that basically had us stuffing pre-made dough with pre-made filling, then working on our crimping styles before handing over our creations to be baked by someone else. The steak dinner that followed (with more wine, of course) was delicious. Then, it was time to learn about brewing yerba mate (mah-tay). I was actually really looking forward to this. I knew this was the national drink of Argentina and had seen it everywhere in Buenos Aires and Puerto Iguazu. The varied and distinctive drinking gourds looked to be filled with dried grass clippings and I’d read that the taste was bitter and unpleasant for the uninitiated. Hmm. I had to try it!
The Argentine Experience in Puerto Iguazú
We were all given mate cups and instructed us to fill the cups 2/3 full, cover the cup with our palm and shake vigorously at an angle to settle the dust in the yerba mate, leaving the yerba mate piled on one side of the cup. Then, we added hot water to the open side opposite the pile of yerba mate and let it sit a few minutes. Next, we levered the silver, pinched-bottom bombilla (straw) under the pile of yerba mate before pouring more hot water in the cup to just below the level of the yerba mate. Finally, we could drink, adding more hot water and sipping just afterwards, continuing the process as we drank. It is a bitter brew, much like unsweetened tea which I like so I was surprised to find I liked the mate more than I’d expected. Or at least I disliked it less than I expected. We accompanied our yerba mate with alfajores, cookies which we filled with dulce de leche and rolled in crushed nuts. Before we left, I was told to choose a complementary mate cup and bombilla from a wall of colorful cups for sale. I happily did so, impressed that they’d remembered the offer. All in all, we had a great time at The Argentine Experience (and felt just fine the next morning for our day on the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls).
In the next post: A day on the Argentine side of Iguazu Falls.
Practical Info:
The regional AEP airport in Buenos Aires is much closer to the city than the larger international EZE airport. This made it a lot cheaper and faster to get to from our Buenos Aires lodging. We used Aerolíneas Argentinas out of AEP both for our round-trip flights to Puerto Iguazu and for our later one-way flight to Santiago, Chile. Aerolíneas Argentinas flew on time and we had positive experiences with them. The only downside of flying international out of AEP is the complete lack of a lounge. This seems odd since there is a Priority Pass lounge on the domestic side of AEP (AMAE Lounge), but that is the current state of things. The flight time from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu is under two hours.
The Argentine Experience offers options of just dinner, just wine tasting or a combination called “the full experience” which we did. The full experience costs $90 per person and lasted over three hours.
The Brazilian eVisa is available online here. It’s good for 90 days and costs $80.90 per person, an annoyingly high fee for a daytrip like ours, but nonetheless a visa is necessary for Americans. The process online was quick and Patricia said that people failing to get their visas in advance faced delays at the border.
I originally booked Javier, Patricia’s husband, as our driver. Javier was sick when we arrived and Patricia filled in and had the necessary credentials to drive professionally and cross the border. The SUV was clean and comfortable and she was a very good driver. She spoke very little English (I think Javier would have been the same), but we managed fine with my Spanish and she was very nice. The cost was 90k Argentine pesos for the Brazilian day, 60k for the Argentine day at the falls, and 15k RT for the drive to The Argentine Experience, cash. Our hotel also could book rides.
Calle de los Suspiros (Street of Sighs) in Colornia
Founded by the Portuguese in 1680, Colonia, Uruguay, with its UNESCO World Heritage historic quarter is an easy ferry ride from Buenos Aires and a picture-perfect way to spend a day away from the bustle of the city. Doing a little research, I chose the Buquebus ferry service over ferries operated by Colonia Express. Buquebus operates out of a large modern terminal in Puerto Madero.
I bought Buquebus tickets online, opting for Business Class as it was only about $10 more per person and allowed first on and first off privileges. I’d read there could be a line at immigration at times and, since I only wanted to do a daytrip and didn’t have time to waste, that was a deciding factor.
Business Class on Buquebus turned out to be a surprisingly posh experience. We breezed through security and customs (exiting Argentina and passing Uruguay passport control a few feet apart in the Buenos Aires terminal) and initially missed the special Business Class lounge behind a door just in front of us before turning left around the open atrium of the terminal, then to the right towards the large Turistica Class waiting area. Realizing our mistake, we returned to the Business Class lounge just in time to board. True to the billing, all Business Class passengers were ushered onboard first and to the second deck Business Class seating overlooking the small ship atrium with its duty-free shop. Crew handed out flutes of sparkling wine at the top of the steps indicating the open seating beyond consisting of large leather chairs clustered around tables, all surrounded by large windows. Very nice!
Aboard the Buquebus ferry: Business Class seats upstairs and duty-free shopping and money exchange below
The trip to Colonia from Buenos Aires takes about 1h15m and we were soon docking. David and I were first off the boat. We stopped by the nearby tourist center (just across the parking lot and to your left as you leave the terminal), grabbed a map of the historic walled city and were off. We walked past the old wooden Colonia train station down a road towards the main gate to the old city a short distance beyond. Crossing over a footbridge and through the gate, we were soon in the large main cobblestoned plaza flanked by colonial buildings. Palm trees, flowering plants and orange trees heavy with fruit adorned the area. Vendors had set up tables offering trinkets and souvenirs. Guitar music played and a scattering of people enjoyed the sunshine in cafes that dotted the left side of the plaza that leads to the iconic lighthouse.
Historic Colonia is small and easy to walk. The “must-sees” really aren’t and you could enjoy the town without climbing the lighthouse, going inside the colonial church or walking down cobbled Calle de los Suspiros (the Street of Sighs). We did visit the church (Iglesia Matriz) and check out Calle de los Suspiros, but we opted to skip the lighthouse other than to view it from outside.
Iglesia Matriz : The current church was built in 1810 on the site of Portuguese churches dating back to 1680. It is one of the oldest churches in Uruguay.
We enjoyed just roaming the streets, enjoying empanadas and cold local craft beers (gluten free by default) in a café, browsing the shops, and admiring the wide tree-line avenues just outside the historic center (Someone planted a lot of trees a long time ago and would be pleased to see how they’ve grown!)
In warmer weather and if the spirit moves you, I understand there are nice beaches nearby. There are also wineries to visit with tours on offer for those who want to spend more time in the area. I’m sure an enjoyable overnight in Colonia can be had, but we preferred to get back to Buenos Aires before dark and were very happy with our afternoon in Uruguay.
Practical info: Obviously passports are necessary to cross the border between Argentina and Uruguay, so don’t forget to bring those.
I bought tickets online just a day or so prior to our daytrip. I’d been checking and saw that the ferries were not full. This could change in the summer. Buquebus offers other destinations from Buenos Aires, including Montevideo.
Buquebus asks that travelers arrive 90 minutes prior to departure of their ferries. We did so, but had plenty of time to spare. We were there in September (roughly equivalent to March in the northern hemisphere), though, and I could imagine crowds being larger in the summer.
Since we were traveling Business Class, we avoided a long line of people waiting to board in Colonia, and were allowed on the ferry as soon as we arrived (about an hour prior to departure). Passport control was quick and efficient (but again, we were traveling in September, not the height of summer).
Most places we visited took credit cards, but otherwise prefer Uruguayan pesos. Most would also take Argentine pesos and US dollars, but exchange rates might not be good. We didn’t change money given our short visit, but there was a currency exchange service on the Buquebus ferry.
We used Uber to get to Puerto Madero from our apartment in Recoleta. It was rush hour when we returned and no Ubers were available. There were taxis around the port, but we opted for a longish (40 min.) ramble back as it was a beautiful evening. Still, just a heads-up for anyone wanting to return during rush hour.
Basílica Nuestra Señora del Pilar and the weekend craft market
We kicked off three weeks in South America (mostly Argentina and Chile) in Buenos Aires. With my Spanish minor and years working with Spanish-speaking clients near the Mexican border decades in the past, my Spanish was beyond rusty. Years of living in France and focusing on French doesn’t help, so David and I spent the weeks before this trip watching Argentinian and Chilean movies and shows to try to revive our Spanish. (He’d studied Spanish some years ago, too.) I love the language and listening and reading was a big help, but wow are those accents different from the Mexican Spanish I learned! Still, it had been awhile since I was in a Spanish-speaking country and I was looking forward to the challenge. And I was really excited about Iguazu Falls and the farthest-flung reaches of this trip, Rapa Nui/ Easter Island(!!).
But back to Buenos Aires, a city I’d wanted to visit for ages: We arrived on a comfortable American Airlines business class flight from JFK at Buenos Aires’ big Ministro Pistarini International Airport (EXE) at 2:30pm. After reading lots of warnings about Buenos Aires taxis, I’d arranged for pick-up with Manuel, a driver recommended by our AirBnB hosts. I figured we’d be tired from the 11-hour flight and it would be nice to not worry about either scams or any potential problems with finding the apartment. (Note: I read too many warnings about Buenos Aires taxis to ignore.) There’s free wifi in the airport, but my T-Mobile international service was good as always and I was able to coordinate with Manuel on WhatsApp without problem. He was reliable and the price was right, so I used him 3 more times for airport transfers.
Settling In I knew I wanted to stay in Buenos Aires’ swank Recoleta neighborhood and jumped to book when I found an AirBnB with a balcony overlooking the famous Recoleta Cemetery across the street. If unfamiliar with Buenos Aires, it may sound odd to want a view of a cemetery, but this cemetery is a top site, really beautiful and located in the center of many of the Recoleta attractions. The one-bedroom apartment turned out to be easy to find, modern, in a nice building, and at a really great location. The only downside was the noise from restaurants/bars downstairs that blared music to the wee hours. Fortunately, I’d read reviews about the noise that all said the music couldn’t be heard in the bedroom. Happily, that was true and we slept well the five nights we spent there. Anyone trying to sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room would have a different experience!
Recoleta Cemetery viewed from our balcony
As soon as we’d gotten the keys from our host and settled in, we headed out to browse the nearby restaurants which lined the street in both directions from our building’s front door. We had lots of options and were charmed by one that perpetually had a couple dancing the tango on the wide sidewalk although we ultimately chose another whose friendly waitress beckoned us in.
With chores taking up our first day (see “Practical Info” below), we didn’t have time for much that afternoon, so I opted for a walk to El Ateneo Grand Splendid an amazing bookstore in a former theater. El Ateneo exceeded expectations and we loved browsing the books and just taking in the spectacular building. There’s a charming café on the old stage and multiple stories of books and music. I couldn’t resist a bilingual book of short stories. Passing a local brewpub on the way back to the apartment, David was intrigued so we stopped in to try our first Patagonia beers.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore
We spent a full day exploring Recoleta starting with the Basilica Nuestra Señora del Pilar then strolling the nearby parks to marvel at the immense ficus trees near the end of Avenue Alvear. The huge trees, some with trunks wider than the average car is long, are a big part of the lasting image I have of Buenos Aires. I posed for David as if holding up a branch larger than most normal tree trunks before coming across the iconic statue doing the same thing.
Beyond the green plaza parks, we crossed the wide painted footbridge to the steps of the classical law school and on to the giant steel flower known as the Floralis Genérica. Normally, the flower opens and closes with the sun, but it was undergoing repairs when we were there. It was actually kind of fascinating to see it open with workmen bustling over it like ants.
Floralis Genérica
The September weather was gorgeous if a bit chilly. After months of Texas heat, we relished the coolness so put off indoor things like museums and decided to reserve the walled-in cemetery for our last full day, too. Instead, we walked the length of Avenue Alvear to the French Embassy admiring the familiar French architecture of the neighborhood.
Buenos Aires is a nice walking city and we definitely kept our Fitbits busy logging steps. A sprawling crafts market opens on the weekends in the parks and plazas around the Basilíca de Nuestra Señora del Pilar next to the Recoleta Cemetery. Art, clothing, jewelry, knives, lots and lots of mate cups and bombillas, and more fills booth after booth. Homemade baked goods and more tempt visitors.
Speaking of mate (mah-tay) cups, we knew going in that yerba mate is the national drink of Argentina and very popular, but that still didn’t prepare us for just how popular it is. We saw people with mate cups and metal bombilla straws everywhere, usually with a thermos of hot water tucked under their arm. The cups themselves can be really beautiful, made of tooled leather, gourds, ceramic and more sometimes with special stands. Looking like a cup full of dried lawn clippings, it’s a bitter drink and definitely an acquired taste.
Knives, mate cups and bombillas, leather goods and more
You could spend hours in the Recoleta Cemetery, admiring the architecture of the elaborate tombs and drawn in by the details of lives lived and gone. I was particularly curious about the large tomb visible from our apartment window. It was a bit of a let-down to realize it was the final resting place of a banker, not some famous personality. The tombs themselves can be fascinating if sometimes macabre with coffins visible through often dirty and cracked glass or the rusting filigree of an old iron door. I’ve always been a fan of historic cemeteries and this one reminded me of those beautiful Paris cemeteries I know so well.
En route to the impressive Teatro Colón opera house in the San Nicolás area, we checked out a small food market drawing lines of locals. The opera house itself was lacking lights when we arrive due to an electrical problem so we continued on the Plaza Lavalle park behind it to admire yet another enormous tree and the beautiful Templo Libertad synagogue. We got our worst meal in Buenos Aires at nearby Le Petit Colón. At least the friendly and apologetic waitress made no excuses for the inedible chicken, comped our lunch and offered espressos on the house. Hopefully, our experience was a fluke because it really is a pretty location.
We spent our last afternoon in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Fine Arts Museum) across from the law school. It’s a lovely building with a nice collection of art and is free on Sundays.
We broke up our first five nights in Buenos Aires with a daytrip to Colonia, Uruguay, which I’ll write about in another post. Walking back from the port gave us a chance to explore the high-rise business side of Buenos Aires around Puerto Madero and then more far-flung reaches of Recoleta.
We also spent three nights in a gorgeous jungle lodge in Puerto Iguazú in order to visit both the Brazilian and Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls. That will be the subject of future post, too. I scheduled a one-night stay when we returned to Buenos Aires from Puerto Iguazú to hedge against any delay causing us to miss our onward flight to Santiago, Chile. Wanting to experience another part of Buenos Aires, I booked us into a boutique hotel in the lively Palermo Hollywood neighborhood. Arriving before lunch, we had an afternoon to wander on foot, try a local craft beer bar and stroll the lush Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays. Rendez-Vous Hotel Buenos Aires turned out to be just what I had in mind. Our corner room with arched windows on two sides felt both quaint and elegant and was quiet despite the road outside. It was an easy ride to Aeroparque Jorge Newbery (AEP), the smaller regional airport, for our flight to Santiago.
Practical Info ATM Hassles: After a tasty “promo” meal of chicken and mushrooms and a craft beer at Bartola on our first afternoon, we spent some frustrating time with the local ATM’s. Our attempts to get several hundred dollars worth of pesos were rejected repeatedly (and not by our bank), with instructions to choose a lower and lower amount. And the fees are outrageous. At one point, a machine wanted to limit our withdrawal to approximately $50 with a $13 banking fee and a poor exchange rate! We soon learned this is common throughout Argentina and Chile. Happily, our bank refunds the ATM fees, but we were stuck with the exchange rate. Credit cards are accepted most places, but we needed cash for some things I’d planned and I’d read not to count on ATM’s in Puerto Iguazú to have cash. Eventually, we made the best deal possible and headed to a grocery store.
Groceries: I’ll give a quick shout-out to the nice Disco grocery store on Ave. Pres. Manuel Quintana. It’s fairly large and very modern with a great selection of wine and a bakery area with a selection of empanadas among the usual grocery store fare. A particularly kind and helpful lady at self-checkout, in particular, had us coming back to this store.
Recoleta Cemeteryis open daily, 8am to 6pm. Free guided tours in Spanish take place at 11am and 2pm Tuesday to Friday, and at 11am and 3pm on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Entrance costs and you can pick up a map to do a self-guided tour. Entrance for foreigners is 16,100 Argentine pesos (about $11.36 USD).
Restaurants:We enjoyed some good restaurants in Buenos Aires, but our favorite was the classically traditional Fervor for steaks and Argentinian wine. With its aproned waiters, black-and-white tiled floor, dark paneling and red leather banquettes, it felt much like being back in Paris. Its two-story, open-at-the-center layout even echoed my old neighborhood favorite Café du Commerce. And those steaks! The food was delicious and perfectly cooked, the service excellent.
Other Buenos Aires restaurants that stick in my mind are José Luis for a seafood break from ubiquitous Argentinian beef and La Querencia for casual, home-style local cuisine.
Safety: All in all, we enjoyed our time in Buenos Aires and felt safe in both neighborhoods we stayed in. I’ve read plenty of warnings about crime and places to avoid in most South American cities, including Buenos Aires. I have no doubt the warnings should be taken seriously, and we did. We also drove past some really wretched slums just minutes away from luxurious hotels and shops. The city is a mixed bag, but we had no concerns while sticking to nicer areas during populated hours.
Despite a few brief showers and dramatic clouds, the weather in early June in Cozumel was mostly fantastic.
It’d been some years since I’d been to Cozumel, but we were in need of a quick, easy getaway from our current caregiver stint in Texas. With non-stop flights from Dallas well under three hours, Cozumel filled the bill. It’s also a world-class dive and snorkel site just “next door” to Texas. Sometimes it’s easy to take for granted what’s right in front of you.
June marks the start of hurricane season as well as being the beginning of rainy season in Cozumel. It’s also a slow time for the Mexican island, well after the winter crush and spring break partiers. Some people shy away from the Caribbean heat in the summer, but I’m used to the heat and prefer to be in the islands when the water is its warmest. So, when I found a cancellable opening for the first week in June at a dream 3-bedroom condo on the beach, I booked it a couple months out and crossed my fingers that the weather would cooperate. I wasn’t too worried about hurricanes that early, but I did wonder about the rain.
As the time for our trip approached, the weather forecast looked more and more grim. Every forecast I looked at predicted seven days of 80% chance of rain with two simply labeled “Thunderstorms.” On the other hand, rain predictions in the tropics often just mean a passing shower (or even storm) or two. (I reminded myself that a brief shower = 100% rain for that day.) When my son said he could make the trip with us, I was all in. Then I remembered the sargassum we’d seen at the end of a month-long stay in the Dominican Republic in May 2022. Yet another potential snag for this vacation! An online check showed a record year for the noxious floating seaweed. The good news was that sargassum tracking maps showed that the west coast of Cozumel where we’d be staying was clear although the east coast and the mainland of Mexico were suffering a devastating influx of the smelly seaweed. Still, I kept a wary eye on the sargassum tracking maps as our trip approached.
Despite all my concerns, it was a nearly perfect time on Cozumel: The weather was beautiful with only some occasional dramatic clouds (See top pic above.), two minor overnight rains and a 10-15 minute shower one day. There was no sargassum on “our” beach, we had the condo pool to ourselves every day, and the water was delightfully warm and clear. Everything we could have hoped for!
We dove with Pepe Scuba based out of El Cozumeleño Hotel. They picked us up in front of our condo at no extra cost to take us the short distance to the marina and we had a couple of great dives. A large ray and a big reef shark in the first 3 minutes of our first dive started things off on a high note. (Sadly, the clasp on my GoPro case cracked and I didn’t want to risk my camera, so no underwater pics this time.) Currents can be strong around Cozumel and we enjoyed the drift diving, “flying” over gorgeous coral reefs with almost no effort.
View from our balcony
We snorkeled every day off the pretty beach in front of our condo. Steps into the clear water, we saw plenty of fish along with lots of small yellow stingrays and a fair number of lobster/langosta. Two hundred yards north, the “bank” in front of a condo building under construction consisted of a coral-covered wall teeming with colorful tropical fish. Needlefish swam just below the surface in deeper water, and a big barracuda hovered in a sandy patch. Walking south, we could take advantage of a strong current to drift back towards our condo over more underwater scenery.
There’s not a lot of must-sees in Cozumel and this was a laid-back vacation anyway, so we spent our occasional times in the island’s only town of San Miguel eating in casual little taquerias off the main drag or just wandering the seawall, main square and streets full of restaurants, bars and shops. A crafts market opens off the main square on Saturday. It’s all pretty touristy and we weren’t tempted to buy much although David did get a really nice locally-made linen-look cotton shirt at 4Splash at 101 Ave. Melgar (the main waterfront street). Cruise ships come in every day, but the town was very sleepy and uncrowded when the cruisers left.
Practical info:
We didn’t rent a car so used taxis when we wanted to go to town at a fixed rate of 150 pesos or about $7.75 at the time. Paying in dollars cost $10.
Taxis from the airport are a regulated racket and there’s really not much to be done about it (if you don’t want to rent a car) unless you want to walk about 200 yards out of the airport and hope to flag down a taxi on the road. We didn’t see many there on our way out or in, and never considered doing that ourselves given the heat. The only options for taxis leaving the airport are private ones for $49 or shared vans at $15pp.
Change money at the airport ATMs. There are ATMs at banks in town, but not in every hotel and definitely not in condos. You can usually (but not always) pay for things in dollars, but the exchange rate isn’t good.
If you use credit/debit cards, ask to pay in pesos and let your bank do the conversion.
Of course, David had to look for craft beer and we enjoyed little Kusam Restaurant and Craft Brewery for its house-brewed beers and tasty tacos.
Las Tapatías de Cozumel was crazy cheap with interesting fried, double-tortilla tacos and the Tijuana specialty of birria and quesabirria tacos to dip in broth. Margaritas were made to order; no lime green pre-frozen foolishness here. This brightly painted little place is cash only.
Pepe Scuba offers a 5% discount for payment in cash or via Zelle. They were super quick to respond to emails and readily accommodated a one-day date change. Although they usually have a 4-person minimum, they promised pre-trip they’d take our 3-person group and they did. Their boat was no-frills, but nice and they provided water and packaged snacks. Our divemaster was excellent.
We lunched a couple of times at Tequila Beach Club next door to our condo. The food was fine and the beer cold, but prices were higher than at off-the-beach places. It’s also a popular day-pass spot with cruisers, offering beach chairs and umbrellas, a couple small tourist shops, and a shallow pool where guests liked to sit and drink. It closes by 6pm (1pm on Sundays) given its cruising clientele and was a quiet, convenient neighbor.
We stayed in Las Brisas condominiums and our 4th floor condo was one of the best rentals I’ve ever had: 2100+ft², 3-bedrooms (two “master” bedrooms facing the beach and one twin bedroom, all en suite), 3 ½ baths, huge balcony, stocked kitchen and bar, beautifully decorated, secure building, excellent staff.
Priority Pass got us into the Caral VIP Lounge in the Cozumel airport (just across from Gate 6). It’s a small, basic lounge, but offers comfy couches, charging outlets, basic snacks, complementary wine and beer (Ask for a beer glass and they come nice and frosty.), friendly staff and clean bathrooms. The airport itself is modern and air conditioned, but with typical high airport prices so the lounge offerings were welcome.
Tip if you’re flying out of DFW: Even though we weren’t flying out of Terminal D, we had time to hop the inter-terminal Skylink train to the Capital One Lounge in D. Unlike other lounges, not only does the Capital One Lounge not prohibit or frown on taking food, they provide excellent packaged sandwiches and packaging for buffet items, water in cartons, and offer bags at the front desk to pack an airplane-ready meal. The food and drink in the Capital One Lounge is pretty exceptional, too. The current ability to take two guests for free into Capital One Lounges will end next February 2026, so it was good to take advantage of this benefit while I could. Capital One Lounges can get crowded, so Capital One cardholders should use their app to check crowd level and get on a waiting list if necessary. The lounge was not crowded the day we went.
With our time in our charming trullo in Alberobello at an end, it was time to drive to Bari for a final night before catching a flight back to Paris. We planned to make the most of the day, setting out in the morning to make some highlight stops along the coast en route. I was especially looking forward to Polignano a Mare whose picturesque beach at Lama Monachile features in many enticing photos of Puglia. I’d also read great things about Monopoli, just south of Polignano a Mare, so decided to stop there first.
It’s an easy 30-minute drive from Alberobello to Monopoli, some of it through beautiful olive groves. We stopped to admire a stand of old olive trees bordered by a bank of purple flowers too pretty to pass up.
Olive trees and flowers en route from Alberobello to Monopoli
Reaching Monopoli, we easily found free street parking, harborside, on Via Cala Fontanella near a footpath to Largo Fontanella. (These streets and the Largo Fontanella park are searchable on Google Maps.) As with other daytrips in Puglia, the joy is in just wandering and admiring the beauty of achingly picturesque towns. In Monopoli, this included small, boat-filled harbors as well as paved plazas and pretty narrow streets.
Monopoli
A short 15-minute drive up the coast we arrived at our next stop, Polignano a Mare. We found plenty of open spaces in a public parking lot (free on the day we arrived) and were soon off to explore again. A short walk away brought us to Lama Monachile, a gorgeous small bay and the most photographed spot in Puglia. [Lead photo] We first viewed the iconic beach and bay from atop a Roman era bridge than spans a narrow gorge leading to the bay. Descending to the beach, we found it to be rough and pebbly and full of bathers. We had no intention of swimming and I was glad. As beautiful as it is, Lama Monachile beach isn’t particularly comfortable… and, with the weather in the 70F’s, the water was chilly!
We lunched al fresco on pizza and local beer at Al Buco Preferito Tranquillage just beside the Roman bridge before heading out to explore. In Polignano a Mare, in addition to picturesque streets, churches, shops and cafés, a number of small, dead-end terraces offered clifftop views of the Adriatic. Caves dot the cliffs on which the town’s pale stone buildings perch. Below tour boats and pleasure craft glided through the blue sea. Lovely!
With the afternoon slipping away, we were back on the road for the 30+-minute drive further up the coast to Bari, the capital of Puglia. We had just enough time to drop off our luggage at our hotel then drive the short distance to Bari Centrale train station to drop off our Locauto rent car. From there, we strolled past the fountain in Piazza Aldo Moro, through the Giardini di Piazza Umberto I, and down wide, mostly pedestrian, Via Sparano da Bari back to our hotel. We took our time, joining the bustle of people to peer into high-end shops and eateries along the way.
“Room 56” isn’t really a conventional hotel, but it was pretty perfect for our needs. Located on the seventh floor of a building just off Via Sparano da Bari (800 meters from the train station), this lodging has four modern, immaculately clean en suite rooms with balconies and a communal kitchen where a simple breakfast is provided. All rooms can house three persons and two of them can accommodate four people.
Room 56
On a friend’s recommendation, I’d booked dinner prior to our trip at Urban l’assassineria urbana, a restaurant written up in the New York Times and specializing in the unique Bari dish known as spaghetti assassina or “killer spaghetti.” In an unusual twist, the dried pasta is charred in a skillet with sauce, skipping the usual boiling in water. It ends up in a twisted dark pile on the plate, part chewy part crispy and with an almost barbecued flavor.
Spaghetti assassina
We really enjoyed our spaghetti assassina, but the restaurant itself offered little else that appealed to us (absolutely no fresh veggies or greens, lots fried, an industrial style decor) so we finished our meal more quickly than expected. After an unsuccessful hunt for a dining spot where we could cap off our meal with some veggies, we opted to buy a bag of salad from a grocery store and retire to our balcony for a little post-dinner wine (a gift from our Alberobello host) and salad. Not exactly elegant or what we’d imagined when we set out for dinner, but pleasant nonetheless. [If I had to do it over, I’d probably try more upscale Osteria al Sorso Preferito, the originator of spaghetti assassina, rather than Urban.]
“Room 56″ is a five minute walk to old town (Bari Vecchia) and, with an 8:15pm flight to Paris Orly, we had a full day to spend exploring Bari. Our host agreed to store our luggage for the day and arrange a taxi for an early evening ride to the airport so we were free until early evening. We set off first thing after breakfast for Strada delle Orecchiette, Bari’s famous street named for the ear-shaped pasta that is the specialty of Puglia. Women sat at tables along the cobbled street making orecchiette by hand with practiced movements. They sold bags of the small pasta as well as larger orecchione, both ear-shaped and many brightly colored with natural vegetable dyes. We admired the pasta-making techniques of the women before choosing bags of orecchiette and orecchione to take home.
Castello Svevo di Bari sits just across a small paved plaza from Strada delle Orecchiette. The castle was originally built by a Norman king in the 1100’s, but was destroyed and rebuilt in 1233 by a king of Sicily. It now houses exhibits, but the one on show didn’t interest us and we’ve seen plenty of castles so we opted to continue on to explore more of Bari’s old town. Our first stop was the Church of the Holy Trinity, formerly a church used by cloistered Benedictine nuns. In its current form, it dates to the 14th century but was remodeled in a baroque style in 18th century. Heavy grillwork on dark upper balconies are testaments to the cloistered life of the nuns.
Beyond the church, shops of all kinds occupying pastel buildings lined the streets paved with ancient stone: bakery goods, ice creams, artisan wares, local foods, clothing, artfully arranged fresh produce and more. At a far end of the old town, we came across the picturesque ruins of a church, Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio.
Old Town Bari: top left is Church of the Holy Trinity, right is Castello Svevo di Bari, bottom right is the ruins of Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio
The Basilica of St. Nicolas is a highlight of Bari. Built to house the relics of St. Nicolas, it is a pilgrimage site for many, especially Catholics and Orthodox Christians. The relics of St. Nicolas were taken from the saint’s original shrine in Myra (in present-day Turkey) in 1087 and the crypt now holding them was consecrated two years later in the presence of the pope. On the day we visited, a ceremony was being held in the church, led by a male officiant supported by the singing of scarved women.
We were told the crypt was closed until after the service so we decided to leave for a bit and come back when we could visit the crypt. The basilica sits next to a gate in the old town walls giving onto the waterfront. We walked to the water where we enjoyed watching a distance swimmer training just inside a jetty as his coach walked along the waterfront spurring the swimmer on via a headset.
Back at the basilica, we were among the first into the crypt where the relics of St. Nicolas are kept so got a moment to enjoy the place in relative peace. The group from the service above were finishing up and descended into the crypt as well. Soon it was a mad rush of tourists taking photos and worshippers dropping on all fours to kiss the tomb of the saint.
Basilica of St. Nicolas and crypt
A peculiar aspect of St. Nicolas’ relics is that his bones are said to extrude a holy liquid known as Manna. This liquid is said to have appeared for hundreds of years and to have curative and miraculous powers. The small amount of manna is collected each May 9th at the Bari basilica, mixed with holy water and sold in small glass vials in the adjacent shop. The liquid forming from the bones dates back to the 11th century in Myra when it was thought to be a sweet-smelling oil. In 1925, scientists at the University of Bari determined it to be pure water. Other relics of St. Nicolas, including in Venice do not exude manna. Some say it is simply the result of condensate on on a stone tomb stored underground in a port city, but it’s not for me to jump into that debate.
After lunch outside but sheltered under pretty Arco del Carmine at Osteria le Arpie, we finally left old town. We strolled an elegant palm-lined Piazza IV Novembre to the Teatro Margherita. Beyond the nearby bay filled with small boats and a sporting club, the long waterfront promenade beside Lungomare Nazario Sauro appealed to walkers of all ages. We claimed a seaside bench to people-watch and admire the view before heading away from the water and back towards the center of the city not far from our hotel.
Bari beyond old town
We spent the rest of the afternoon browsing shops and stalls and stopping for “coffee” where I got to try caffè d’orzo for the first time, a caffeine-free coffee substitute made from roasted barley. It’s OK, but I’ll take real coffee any day!
Practical info:
The Locauto drop-off is really just anywhere you can find in front of the station on the Piazza Aldo Moro side, toward the left as you’re facing the station. David stayed in the car while I went to fetch a Locauto rep who took over from there. Drop-off was quick and easy. I’ve written about Locauto in previous posts. We were happy with their cars, service and pricing.
I booked Room 56 on booking.com via topcashback.com, a combo that gave me the best deal of the several sites where I found Room 56 listed. (I’m giving the direct link to the hotel, but I would still compare their prices to booking.com via topcashback.) The hotel location is great, the price right, the room is quiet (save for some loud plumbing noises when the toilet is flushed), the host is responsive and I’d stay there again, especially for a one-night stopover like ours. Google Maps did direct us to the wrong location, a half block down and on the wrong side of the road. A better option is to use “Nasti” at (Via Abate Giacinto Gimma, 56) as your destination on Google Maps. Nasti is a boutique next door to the entrance to the hotel.
It took us under 30 minutes for the ride from Hotel 56 to the Bari Airport. There are two Priority Pass lounges in the Bari airport now. Priority Pass app lists only The Executive Lounge and “Work Area,” but the Work Area is now a lounge but it has no on-site toilets so beware lines at the nearby public restrooms. The Executive Lounge was filled the evening we were there and directed us to the Work Area which is nice, but basic. It was nearly empty of guests, but did offer a spiffy machine offering many kinds of coffee (including caffè d’orzo), wine, beer and light food.
