Well once again this is the furthest south I´ve ever been. I´m in Punta Arenas, a stop on the way to Ushuaia. Tomorrow I take a bus / boat / bus / bus to get to Ushuaia, about 14 hours. Then I´ll fly back to BA and go to Foz de Iguazu after.
So I saw the Perito Moreno glacier two days ago. It was pretty cool, I took a lot of pictures but I don´t think they´ll look as impressive. I went on a tour, and there were actually other backpackers on it! It was a good group, I can´t remember the names, but there was a girl from Ireland (whose spanish was excellent), a girl from Japan (who was seeing the highlights (Machu Pichu, the glacier, Foz de Iguazu, the tepuis in Venezuala) all in 4 weeks! I thought my trip was rushed), a American guy, a local guy from Argentina who was there on business, and an Italian guy (and me). So we had a great day at the glacier, watching for the big chunks of ice to fall. There´s always pieces breaking off, but every now and then a huge piece falls off. Not the day we were there though. Apparently 28 people have been killed by flying pieces of ice as they break off since 1960, but now they don´t let you get as close. It was a perfect day, there wasn´t a cloud in the sky. Our driver said that there´s only 3 days like this every year, but I don´t believe that´s true. Although some other people in town went to see it a couple days ago it was totally cloudy and they didn´t really get a good view. We had lunch there, and then got back for the evening. We all went out for dinner, and then ended up playing pool at some bar. The Argentina guy also explained something, that if you speak in spanish, the locals will try to reply in their best english, because you have made the effort to speak in their language. It´s not like in France. At first I thought it was rude that whenever I was talking to our driver in spanish, he would reply in english, but I guess that´s why. It´s awfully confusing to me, to listen in english and reply in spanish though.
Yesterday I spent on buses (this is a big continent!) getting to here. The Chilean border guy was pretty amused with my passport, he checked out each and every stamp and tried to figure out where it was from (muy lejos (very far) he kept on saying). Meanwhile there was a line up waiting but you don´t rush border officials. At least there´s no visa fee. I got here (Punta Arenas is in Chile) late in the evening, but travelling is very easy now with ATMs and the internet everywhere. Even say 4 years ago, you couldn´t just show up in a new country on a Saturday night, because all the money exchange places would be closed. But now you can just go to an ATM, withdraw the local currency, and Bob´s your uncle. (Back when I was young...)
Checked out the Saturday night in Punta Arenas. It´s like Argentina here, things don´t really start until 1:00 am. Unfortunately, I did not know that I´m now in a different time zone, so I went out at what I thought was midnight (a little early, but I figured not too bad), but in fact it was only 11:00 pm so everything was dead. I thought that everything just wasn´t busy. Only found out about the time change when I was rushing to get up to make it for breakfast (the hostel I´m in serves breakfast until 10:00) and then it turned out I was an hour early.