Patagonia Trip Planning: T-Minus 5 Weeks

In five weeks we will be in Patagonia! Time is ticking though - most of our weekends until then are filled with holidays and outdoorsy adventures and in four weeks we leave for Montana to visit my sister and brother-in-law (a stop on the way to South America). We have buckled down and penciled out a rough itinerary for our trip. With an entire month, there is plenty of space to fill.

For the most part we will travel on a shoestring as we usually do, but Patagonia is a vast place (and I say that as someone from Alaska!) and it appears to be well-worth it to arrange some inter-continental flights ahead of time to avoid multiple 20+ hour bus rides. I've been watching prices for months and they only seem to be climbing.

I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet, as far as both price and having dates we have to stick to in our otherwise fluid plans. Our flight routes are Buenos Aires to El Calafate, then El Calafate to Ushuaia, and then Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt. By far the most expensive leg of this trip would be Buenos Aires to El Calafate (especially because our flights to and from South America were on miles). Whenever I find a brilliant deal on travel arrangements, I have a little ping of regret that I didn't follow a career as a travel agent. But then again when your hobbies become your work, you tend to not enjoy them as much as when you did them for leisure. But whose to say I couldn't be happy as a travel agent doing archaeology as a hobby? Now there's something to think about!

My brilliant idea was to use Delta miles to fly from Buenos Aires to El Calafate. We didn't quite have enough, but even with buying the extra miles we saved about $150. And then I had a thought to search for a multi city ticket for the next two legs, and for some reason that can only be explained by the crazy inner workings of the interwebz, it was $90 cheaper per person to do it as multi city ticket rather than two separate one way tickets.

I also learned two important things about travel search engines during this extensive flights search: Kayak is the best, do not waste your time with Google Flights or Sky Scanner.

Hotel Reviews in Europe

Our trip to London and Italy was one of the few times we have ever reserved accommodations ahead of time on our travels. Usually we fly by the seat of our pants and rely pretty heavily on guide books, but there is so much information out there on the internet it seemed like a shame not to use it. As everyone knows, you do have to read online reviews with a grain of salt. We certainly stay on the budget side of things, so you do sometimes have to be careful not to end up in a place that has pay by the hour rates or is just plain old crappy. For many of the budget hotels we looked at in Italy, some of the negative reviews really cracked me up. There were three recurring complaints, which based on the language, were mostly written by Europeans:

1. The room was small. I can't believe this is something budget travelers complain about.
2. Did not have a lift (or lift was broken). Buildings in Europe are OLD (to Americans). This should not surprise anyone.
3. Breakfast did not have: eggs, ham, fresh fruit, yogurt, you name it, European budget travelers are apparently quite picky about their complimentary breakfast. My FAVORITE breakfast complaint review was "The breakfast was not very good, although not as bad as American hotel."

The reviews just cracked me up because I wanted to say to every single one of them "WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FOR $37/NIGHT??" Obviously, none of these things bother us. We travel with backpacks, it hardly matters if the room is larger than a double bed or that we have to carry our bags up a few flights of stairs. Breakfast? Total bonus. Also, breakfast is a cheap meal if you do have to eat out.

The things that I do take note of in reviews are things like: the toilet/window/lock was broken and the hotel staff couldn't/wouldn't fix it or things about terrible customer service. Those are deal breakers for me.

The hotel we stayed at in London had worn out carpet and furnishings, but you know what? It was completely perfect for the price we paid, given that it was two blocks away from the South Kensington Tube Station (it didn't hurt that they upgraded us to a nicer room for free - it gets 5 stars for customer service from me).

In Venice I found a heck of a deal on Kayak.com. I ended up on some booking website that I was only 50% convinced was legit. But, turned out it was and we got a pretty nice room, a Jacuzzi tub, and breakfast (eggs, ham, yogurt, and fresh fruit included!) for what we paid for okay places in other cities.

I'm not sure if we'll book ahead again in the future or go back to flying by the seat of our pants, but it turned out well for Italy (some places we only booked a day or two ahead).

Italy in Photos

The Amalfi Coast

This was our first big trip on which we did not take a dedicated camera; we only took our iPhones. With technology merging so much recently, it seemed silly to carry around our point-and-shoot camera when we both have fairly decent cameras on our phones, especially my iPhone 6. And, without a laptop or tablet, the only way we could upload photos to the blog or facebook was from our phones anyway. And what good is a vacation without a barrage of facebook photos??? Just kidding. Sort of.

I definitely do not like to take our DSLR camera (and all the lenses) on vacations unless photography is one of the main focuses of the trip. Besides being heavy and bulky, I don't like to have to worry about it being stolen.

I was surprised at how many tourists we did see in Italy using DSLR cameras. Most people were using their phones, but I actually saw a few with point-and-shoot cameras as well. That's what surprised me the most!

There are some things the iPhone camera is not great for, like distant scenery. On the other hand, I use the panorama feature frequently and love that it can give you a quasi-wide angle shot. The iPhone also does quite well in low-light settings (for a point-and-shoot type camera) and it takes nice silhouettes. These are my favorite [mostly] non-people photos from our trip:

I know I messed the Panorama up a bit, but I like the dramatic lighting of the Colloseum on this gloomy morning right before it hailed

Palatine Hill with a storm rolling in

A window into the past in Verona

Sunny Florence

Florence

Venitian Glass Chandelier

Matera - I know it's not in focus, but the photo still captures the feel

Pompeii

Pomepeii

The Amalfi Coast

And, just for fun:

St. George, Alaska

I have been overdue to write a few words about working in St. George.  With the winds gusting up to 50 mph today and the rain coming down sideways I hardly have a reason to leave the hotel and thus will say a little about my new home away from home.  After three weeks here on St. George in the Pribilof Islands I am starting to feel like a local.  I probably have met half the town by now and I know at least 15 or 20 people by their first names.  Last names are harder, mostly because they are Russian and difficult for me to pronounce, although on the upside there are only a handful of last names in the whole village.

As I expected the Island of St. George has remarkable natural beauty, it is the of beauty that you find in the Aleutians.  A rugged, treeless, untamed natural landscape teaming with wildlife and beckoning to be explored.  St. George is an oasis for birds and sea mammals alike.  We are fortunate to be here while the fur seal pups are on the beaches and around the harbor.   I’m not much of a birder, but I certainly have enjoyed watching the fur seals.  The pups are very cute and I find myself smiling and laughing when I stop to watch.  There are literally hundreds if not thousands of seals in and around the harbor.  Some days we watch them surfing in the waves and other days they are hauled out high on the rocks. 

The village of St. George is as you might expect.  A bit battered from the harsh marine climate but otherwise pleasant with a nice old hotel and a classic Russian Orthodox Church.  The hotel has 10 rooms and was originally built for government employees.  It is quite a bit nicer than I expected and really and excellent place to stay.  We share a very large kitchen with the other guest, it’s a social place where guests spend time chatting with one another in the kitchen and the nicely appointed library.  Most rooms have a good view and there is plenty of space to dry our wet rain gear.

At this point we have only a few days of work remaining although the final duration will depend largely on the weather.  We have successfully mapped the harbor bathymetry and deployed acoustic devices on the seafloor that will measure the currents and waves over the next few months.  At some point in couple months from now I will return to St. George to recover our equipment.

Puffins (photo courtesy of Karl Woods)

Fur Seals (photo courtesy of Karl Woods)

View from the hotel including Russian Orthodox Church

Village of St. George

Collecting Sediment Samples

Waves breaking into the harbor

Looking for survey monuments

Fur Seals

Library in the hotel

Rafting on the Rio Congrejal

River Swim

Class III section

Our Honduras adventure is over but we’re still going through the pictures! We made it back to Florida in time to spend Christmas with Ryan’s grandmother. Our last big adventure before we left Honduras was whitewater rafting on the Rio Congrejal along the border of Pico Bonito National Park.

We signed up for a guided rafting trip with Jungle River Lodge based on some great recommendations from other travelers we had met. They hire all local guides and they take safety very seriously and have new equipment. The trip started off with a swim in the river and some cliff jumping. Some of the guides took videos of us jumping. I’ll upload the videos when we get back to Seattle and have faster internet. The highest cliff we jumped off of was 7 meters (23 ft) – by far the highest thing I’ve ever jumped off of!

The water is pretty low this time of year but there were still some solid class III sections including some serious little drops. It was a fun river to raft because it is full of huge boulders, so even where there aren’t rapids, you have to navigate around all the rocks. The river was pretty different from anything either of us has rafted before. We’ve pretty much just been on wide rivers with sections of rapids. The boulders in this river made it interesting even in flat water sections.

All the rafting trips at the Jungle River Lodge include a night in their hostel right on the river. It was a relaxing place to hang out for a day and a half.

Roatan

We’ve spent the last couple of days on Roatan, the largest and most visited of Honduras’ Bay Islands. We’re staying in West End which is where most of the lower budget travelers stay. Scuba diving is extremely popular here and cheap compared to other vacation diving destinations. Lucky for us (since we don’t dive), the snorkeling is also fantastic. It’s a bit of a weird place though. West End is just full of dive shops – all inclusive places where divers on vacation can stay, eat, and dive. There is a small, less than tidy beach right in town with some pretty good snorkeling not far from shore.  Other than that, there isn’t really much to do in the town except for eat and drink.

West Bay is the resort center of this island. It’s only a couple of kilometers away from West End and has a much nicer beach. We went down there yesterday to find out that it is a total zoo. The beach was so packed with people, chairs, and vendors that you could hardly find a place to lay down your towel. There is fantastic snorkeling right off the ends of the beach though. The beach was so crazy that I think it’s safe to say I’ll never visit West Bay again. Amazingly, just around the corner from West Bay we found a restaurant/dive shop that was almost empty and had chairs in the shade. It was so relaxing to get away from all of the chaos on the beach.

Wanting to get away from all the crowds again, today we hired a boat to take us along the coast to some good snorkeling spots. We first stopped at a ship wreck that had amazing corals all around. The water was so much clearer away from the main tourist area at West Bay and West End. At another spot we even saw a couple of lobsters and a sting ray. The boat driver dropped us off for lunch at a resort located on its own beach – also very relaxing as there were only a couple other groups of people/families there. If we were going to be here another day I’d probably rent a car to get out to some more beaches like that. But, tomorrow we’re heading back to the mainland.

Finca El Cisne

Dried coffee beans

Before we left Copan and headed for the coast, Molly and I spent a day and a night on a farm in the mountains called Finca El Cisne (Swan Farm). Our guide, Carlos, and his family own and run the 2,000 acre farm started by his grandfather.  A few decades ago they started growing coffee beans and that is now their primary product.  Despite the rain we toured the coffee plantation and learned about how the coffee is shade grown and handpicked.  Carlos guided us through the processing buildings showing us how the beans are separated from the fruit, dried, and stored.  It was interesting and I was impressed by their use of hydropower to operate most of the machinery.

Carlos took us on a horseback ride through their land.  It was a great ride and my horse Bonito was awesome!  Bonito loved to gallop and was very, very tolerant of the annoying little hound that taunted him.

To top things off we soaked in the nearby hot springs where half a dozen pools had been thoughtfully crafted into the hillside.  Each pool was slightly warmer as you worked your way up the hill towards the actual springs.  It was quite delightful and we could have stayed longer if we had more time.

Macaw Mountain

This morning Molly and I rode in a tuktuk a short distance into the mountains outside of Copan Runis. We visited Macaw Mountain, a bird sanctuary that specializes in reinterducing macaws to the Copan Valley. Besides macaws the sanctuary also houses other parrots, parakeets, hawks and owls from the area.  Some of the birds were in cages but there were also many uncaged in a large interactive area. As proper tourists we welcomed the offer of the bird handler to place macaws on our shoulders and arms.  These macaws had been trained to grasp lightly and also responded when the handler told them to leave Molly's sunglasses alone. Neither Molly or myself are much in the way of birders, but who isn't fascinated with such beautiful and smart birds? Again, we were pleasantly surprised by the lack of tourists. It made the experience all the more relaxing.

This afternoon we returned to the Copan Runias Archeological site. We wanted to see some more areas and take a few more photos. Its a huge site and I know we could spend a many more days exploring, but tomorrow it is on to the next adventure: a coffee plantation.