Here's our favourite pics:
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| 2011 South America - favourites |
Also here's my attempt at being artistic:
 |
| 2011 South America - artistic |
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Toronto, Canada
We arrived back in Toronto earlier this week. All our souvenirs made it back too. I thought winter would be over by the time we got back, but oh well. We were very lucky with the weather over the six weeks, it didn't rain at all (drizzled a couple days, but not enough to get wet).
Here's our favourite pics:
Also here's my attempt at being artistic:
Here's our favourite pics:
Also here's my attempt at being artistic:
Monday, April 11, 2011
Santiago, Chile
We're at the airport in Santiago waiting to fly home after six weeks in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.
We spent the last few days of our trip in Santiago. We flew through here twice on the trip, spending a night each time. I've also flown out of Santiago on previous trips, but never really spent much time seeing the city. This was finally our chance to see Santiago.
We flew to Santiago from La Paz on April 7th. The flight stopped down at Arica and Antofagasta. In Arica we had to deplane, claim our baggage and clear Chilean customs, then reboard the flight. The customs people asked us to open up the extra souvenir bag, which messed up my careful packing job. Fortunately everything made it to Santiago. The stopover in Antofagasta was supposed to be 35 minutes; but then the Chilean air force had some planes take off, which shut down airspace to commercial flights. This delayed our new flight crew coming in, and so we ended up spending three hours in the airport in Antofagasta.
We arrived in La Paz around 7pm. Heather's backpack was the first to arrive on the conveyor belt, before she had time to even think about worrying about it. Our other two bags arrived within the first five as well -- we were loaded up on the cart and out the airport in about two minutes after getting to the conveyor belt. The restaurants in our area of Santiago close around 11pm, so we were cutting it close to get to the hotel, clean up and get to a restaurant. We ended up at Ostras Squella, a seafood restaurant we ate at the 2nd time through Santiago.
The next morning we talked with Dennis, owner of Casa Bonita (our hotel) for sugggestions about what to do with our time in Santiago. We arranged for a wine tour for the day of our flight home, as the flight was at night and it left us the full day in Santiago.
Friday we spent walking around the highlights of downtown Santiago. Santiago is a city of neighbourhoods, each with its own character. We stopped in at the market for lunch, I was expecting a low-key place with mom-and-pop places serving fresh seafood. Instead it was a very popular place for tourists and business folks to have long lunches with wine and dessert. We tried the king crab, one of the specialties at Donde Agusto. It was amazing. It came out freshly steamed to our table. Our waiter then expertly cut and served us the crab, so we didn't get messy trying to eat it. It came with a heated olive oil and garlic dipping sauce. There were also some other sides (fries and a mixed salad if I recall) that we didn't eat, because we were so focused on the yummy crab. Mmm good.
After lunch we wandered through Barrio Bellavista, an artsy area with a lot of university students, mostly drinking cheap draft beer on patio bars. Bought ice cream at Emporio La Rosa, and ate it while strolling through Parque Forestal. Took a trip up the funicular to the top of Cerro San Cristobal for very smoggy views of Santiago.
We walked home down Av O'Higgins, the main street of Santiago, and were amazed at the number of pedestrians. The other visits through Santiago had been on Sundays, and it's much busier on weekdays (as you'd likely expect).
Later that evening, we had dinner at Las Vacas Gordas. We had lunch there our first day on the trip, which was amazing. I had been thinking about eating here again the whole trip. We arrived at 8:30pm, thinking we would be early and beat the crowds. However it was already packed, and we added our names to the waiting list. About 30 minutes later we were seated, which gave us enough time to try to remember the cut of wagyu we had the first time. We both ordered the same meal (one of the few times we've done so), and then feasted on way too much perfectly grilled meat. It was one of the best eating days ever.
Saturday we saw a couple art galleries. Had lunch at Opera Cafe, which shares the kitchen with the acclaimed restaurant of the same name. We had the chef's choice for sandwich, smoked salmon, arugula, avocado and some other toppings on a long thin baguette -- it was really good. We had planned to have dinner at Tales, but it was closed because of work on the water main in the area. So instead we took a taxi to Barrio Lastarria and ate at Patagonia Restaurant. Both our dishes were excellent, which was four straight amazing lunches and dinners over the last couple days. The wineries are also running a promotion at this time of year at many of the restaurants in Santiago. If you order one of the promoted wines, you get a 2nd bottle for free to take home.
Santiago mostly shuts down on Sundays, so we had planned our day around the few places open on Sundays. We stopped in at Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, which was one of the best contemporary art museums we saw on this trip. Next was Palacio Cousino, unfortunately it was closed for renovations. We spent the afternoon browsing through Pueblito Los Dominicos, a small village of craft shops, with really good quality (and somewhat higher prices than La Paz). It reminded me of the Distillery in Toronto, where there's a concentration of higher-end arts and crafts stores, and little bakeries and coffee shops. We bought a few more souvenirs, then headed back to the hotel to pack up. We went back to Barrio Lastarria for dinner, hoping to find other restaurants open, but only Patagonia appealed to us so we ate there again. Unfortunately our streak of amazing meals ended, we shared the cheese and deli platter for two, which sounded good on the menu, but was very disappointing.
Our last day we spent on an organized tour of a couple wineries, Vina Cousino Macul, and Vina Aquitania. Vina Cousino Macul is one of the oldest and larger wineries. The tour of the winery was more museum-like, as a lot of the wine-making equipment was no longer in use, replaced by automation and high-tech containers. It was still cool to see though. They also had a cellar with bottles dating back to the 1930's -- again, just for display as the corks weren't designed to last that long, so all the wine would have soured.
Vina Aquitania is a smaller boutique winery, just inside Santiago city limits. It was surrounded by subdivisions -- I guess Santiago is no different from any other city, growing out. The view were nice, though, with the city core in the smoggy distance on one side, and the mountainside on the other. They also had the better ambience for wine-tasting at the end of the tour -- outside, under a walnut tree, with an oak barrel as a table and right beside the vineyards.
We arrived back at the hotel around 3pm, cleaned up and then went to Tales for a late afternoon meal. The setting was great -- overlooking Calle Concha y Toro, a beautiful little cobblestoned street with art deco and beaux arts mansions. The food was also great, a nice way to end the trip. The Lonely Planet says one of the best ways to experience Santiago is through the food and drink, and we gave it our best shot.
We took a taxi for the four blocks from our hotel to the airport bus stop, with the extra bags for souvenirs we were less mobile. We had 10kg more weight in baggage than the start of our trip, according to the airport scales, but still under our limit. After checking in we settled into the wait for our flight, and getting home!
We spent the last few days of our trip in Santiago. We flew through here twice on the trip, spending a night each time. I've also flown out of Santiago on previous trips, but never really spent much time seeing the city. This was finally our chance to see Santiago.
We flew to Santiago from La Paz on April 7th. The flight stopped down at Arica and Antofagasta. In Arica we had to deplane, claim our baggage and clear Chilean customs, then reboard the flight. The customs people asked us to open up the extra souvenir bag, which messed up my careful packing job. Fortunately everything made it to Santiago. The stopover in Antofagasta was supposed to be 35 minutes; but then the Chilean air force had some planes take off, which shut down airspace to commercial flights. This delayed our new flight crew coming in, and so we ended up spending three hours in the airport in Antofagasta.
We arrived in La Paz around 7pm. Heather's backpack was the first to arrive on the conveyor belt, before she had time to even think about worrying about it. Our other two bags arrived within the first five as well -- we were loaded up on the cart and out the airport in about two minutes after getting to the conveyor belt. The restaurants in our area of Santiago close around 11pm, so we were cutting it close to get to the hotel, clean up and get to a restaurant. We ended up at Ostras Squella, a seafood restaurant we ate at the 2nd time through Santiago.
The next morning we talked with Dennis, owner of Casa Bonita (our hotel) for sugggestions about what to do with our time in Santiago. We arranged for a wine tour for the day of our flight home, as the flight was at night and it left us the full day in Santiago.
Friday we spent walking around the highlights of downtown Santiago. Santiago is a city of neighbourhoods, each with its own character. We stopped in at the market for lunch, I was expecting a low-key place with mom-and-pop places serving fresh seafood. Instead it was a very popular place for tourists and business folks to have long lunches with wine and dessert. We tried the king crab, one of the specialties at Donde Agusto. It was amazing. It came out freshly steamed to our table. Our waiter then expertly cut and served us the crab, so we didn't get messy trying to eat it. It came with a heated olive oil and garlic dipping sauce. There were also some other sides (fries and a mixed salad if I recall) that we didn't eat, because we were so focused on the yummy crab. Mmm good.
After lunch we wandered through Barrio Bellavista, an artsy area with a lot of university students, mostly drinking cheap draft beer on patio bars. Bought ice cream at Emporio La Rosa, and ate it while strolling through Parque Forestal. Took a trip up the funicular to the top of Cerro San Cristobal for very smoggy views of Santiago.
We walked home down Av O'Higgins, the main street of Santiago, and were amazed at the number of pedestrians. The other visits through Santiago had been on Sundays, and it's much busier on weekdays (as you'd likely expect).
Later that evening, we had dinner at Las Vacas Gordas. We had lunch there our first day on the trip, which was amazing. I had been thinking about eating here again the whole trip. We arrived at 8:30pm, thinking we would be early and beat the crowds. However it was already packed, and we added our names to the waiting list. About 30 minutes later we were seated, which gave us enough time to try to remember the cut of wagyu we had the first time. We both ordered the same meal (one of the few times we've done so), and then feasted on way too much perfectly grilled meat. It was one of the best eating days ever.
Saturday we saw a couple art galleries. Had lunch at Opera Cafe, which shares the kitchen with the acclaimed restaurant of the same name. We had the chef's choice for sandwich, smoked salmon, arugula, avocado and some other toppings on a long thin baguette -- it was really good. We had planned to have dinner at Tales, but it was closed because of work on the water main in the area. So instead we took a taxi to Barrio Lastarria and ate at Patagonia Restaurant. Both our dishes were excellent, which was four straight amazing lunches and dinners over the last couple days. The wineries are also running a promotion at this time of year at many of the restaurants in Santiago. If you order one of the promoted wines, you get a 2nd bottle for free to take home.
Santiago mostly shuts down on Sundays, so we had planned our day around the few places open on Sundays. We stopped in at Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, which was one of the best contemporary art museums we saw on this trip. Next was Palacio Cousino, unfortunately it was closed for renovations. We spent the afternoon browsing through Pueblito Los Dominicos, a small village of craft shops, with really good quality (and somewhat higher prices than La Paz). It reminded me of the Distillery in Toronto, where there's a concentration of higher-end arts and crafts stores, and little bakeries and coffee shops. We bought a few more souvenirs, then headed back to the hotel to pack up. We went back to Barrio Lastarria for dinner, hoping to find other restaurants open, but only Patagonia appealed to us so we ate there again. Unfortunately our streak of amazing meals ended, we shared the cheese and deli platter for two, which sounded good on the menu, but was very disappointing.
Our last day we spent on an organized tour of a couple wineries, Vina Cousino Macul, and Vina Aquitania. Vina Cousino Macul is one of the oldest and larger wineries. The tour of the winery was more museum-like, as a lot of the wine-making equipment was no longer in use, replaced by automation and high-tech containers. It was still cool to see though. They also had a cellar with bottles dating back to the 1930's -- again, just for display as the corks weren't designed to last that long, so all the wine would have soured.
Vina Aquitania is a smaller boutique winery, just inside Santiago city limits. It was surrounded by subdivisions -- I guess Santiago is no different from any other city, growing out. The view were nice, though, with the city core in the smoggy distance on one side, and the mountainside on the other. They also had the better ambience for wine-tasting at the end of the tour -- outside, under a walnut tree, with an oak barrel as a table and right beside the vineyards.
We arrived back at the hotel around 3pm, cleaned up and then went to Tales for a late afternoon meal. The setting was great -- overlooking Calle Concha y Toro, a beautiful little cobblestoned street with art deco and beaux arts mansions. The food was also great, a nice way to end the trip. The Lonely Planet says one of the best ways to experience Santiago is through the food and drink, and we gave it our best shot.
We took a taxi for the four blocks from our hotel to the airport bus stop, with the extra bags for souvenirs we were less mobile. We had 10kg more weight in baggage than the start of our trip, according to the airport scales, but still under our limit. After checking in we settled into the wait for our flight, and getting home!
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
La Paz, Bolivia
We've spent three days in La Paz, with the main goal of souvenir shopping. (La Paz is the best city in South America for souvenirs). We just bought a large sports bag in the Mercado Negro to pack them up for out flights. Right now we're sitting in the 3rd floor lounge at our hotel (Hotel Rosario), with a great view of the city and Mt Illimani (6402m).
La Paz is one of the more amazing cities to see. It sits in a crevice in the Altiplano, a city of a million people up and down all around. In the middle, where we are now, all you can see are buildings climbing up the sides at extreme angles near the top, almost like you're in the middle of a sphere with the city wrapped completely around you.
Unfortunately we didn't get a view of La Paz on our flight from Sucre. We could see the road winding through the mountains, and were glad we took a 45 minute flight rather than a 12 hour bus ride.
I had arranged for the hotel to send someone to pick us up at the airport, but there was no one there, so after waiting for 30 minutes we took a taxi. (There was another couple at the airport in the same position, different hotel).
We're staying at Hotel Rosario, close to the main tourist shopping areas. The hotel room is good, the service is amazing. The front desk staff have been great at recommending restaurants, making reservations, etc. When we get taxis, they flag them down and then record the taxi driver's name and taxi number to prevent any problems.
We spent our first two days shopping along Calle Linares and Sagárnaga. Most of the stores sold the same clothing, jewelry and stone carvings. But every here and there was a store with cool stuff, antiques such as walking sticks, wooden stirrups, weights; or unique jewelry; or traditional masks. We bought quite a bit (thus the need for the extra bag to get them home).
There weren't many artists' stalls. We stopped in at the three we saw. We particularly liked one painter, Gustavo Apazo, from whom we bought a oil-on-canvas. Today we visited the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, which has an exhibit on the top floor with local artists' works for sale, and saw some of Gustavo Apazo's paintings! We actually recognized his style, and then saw his signature. The prices in the gallery were much higher than what we paid at his workshop, so we were glad we stumbled across his stall.
We've been having the set menus for lunch, which have been okay. Breakfasts have been great at the hotel -- tasty fresh fruit, amazing bread, eggs to order. For dinner, we've been trying out the fancier restaurants, a taxi ride across town to Sopocachi (a much hipper area than where we're staying). Eating at the best restaurants in La Paz, including a bottle of wine, and tip, comes to about $40 - $60, so we figured why not.
We ate our our hotel the first night, we had just arrived and hadn't yet got a feel for the city. Plus our hotel restaurant is listed as one of the top in La Paz. We weren't too impressed -- Heather's trout (from nearby Lake Titicaca) was overdone and dry; my lasagna was okay.
The second night we ate at El Arriero, an Argentinian steak house, which was excellent. Both our steaks came medium rare as requested (tres-cuatros in spanish), the wine was great, and the service was good. It was one of our favourite meals in Bolivia.
Last night we tried out a french restaurant, La Comédie. Our taxi driver couldn't find the place, I had to show him the LP map on my iPhone (we downloaded the La Paz chapter). The atmosphere was great, but the food was not that good. My lamb shank was so dry I had trouble cutting a bite, and Heather's duck was competing with my lamb for toughness, and salty. They appeared to substitute quantity for quality -- I had three (!) lamb shanks on my plate, Heather had two (!) duck breasts. Maybe we ordered the wrong stuff, but both were listed as chef specialities.
Tonight we're trying out Pronto Dalicatessen, rated #1 in La Paz by tripadvisor (although not so much a foodie site as chowhound).
Today we did some touristing, haivng been shopped-out over the past two days. First went to the Contemporary Art Gallery, as mentioned above. It's in a gorgeous old house on El Prado (the main street that runs down the middle of La Paz). It reminded us of the occasional grand old house on Jarvis or Sherbourne.
Next we walked up to Plaza Murillo, which is surrounded by the main government buildings and the cathedral. We saw the sights just in time before being booted out by the police, who were closing down the plaza in advance of a demonstration (which are almost a daily occurrence here -- this is the 2nd we've seen). Later as we ate lunch, we saw the demonstration by miners carried live on the local TV station. It was odd to hear the bangs of dynamite (we thought it was firecrackers) on tv, then the echo in real life. There was no danger, as we were away from the action.
Yesterday in the market, I almost got peed on by a little boy. We were walking along in the busy street, I was taking in the scene, when Heather blurted at me to look out. The little boy was peeing in the street, I had just enough reaction time to step over and not get hit. The local lady behind us couldn't stop laughing. A couple people behind us who didn't notice walked right through. Too bad for them.
Well we're off to get ready for dinner. Tomorrow we fly to Santiago, our last stop on our little trip.
La Paz is one of the more amazing cities to see. It sits in a crevice in the Altiplano, a city of a million people up and down all around. In the middle, where we are now, all you can see are buildings climbing up the sides at extreme angles near the top, almost like you're in the middle of a sphere with the city wrapped completely around you.
Unfortunately we didn't get a view of La Paz on our flight from Sucre. We could see the road winding through the mountains, and were glad we took a 45 minute flight rather than a 12 hour bus ride.
I had arranged for the hotel to send someone to pick us up at the airport, but there was no one there, so after waiting for 30 minutes we took a taxi. (There was another couple at the airport in the same position, different hotel).
We're staying at Hotel Rosario, close to the main tourist shopping areas. The hotel room is good, the service is amazing. The front desk staff have been great at recommending restaurants, making reservations, etc. When we get taxis, they flag them down and then record the taxi driver's name and taxi number to prevent any problems.
We spent our first two days shopping along Calle Linares and Sagárnaga. Most of the stores sold the same clothing, jewelry and stone carvings. But every here and there was a store with cool stuff, antiques such as walking sticks, wooden stirrups, weights; or unique jewelry; or traditional masks. We bought quite a bit (thus the need for the extra bag to get them home).
There weren't many artists' stalls. We stopped in at the three we saw. We particularly liked one painter, Gustavo Apazo, from whom we bought a oil-on-canvas. Today we visited the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, which has an exhibit on the top floor with local artists' works for sale, and saw some of Gustavo Apazo's paintings! We actually recognized his style, and then saw his signature. The prices in the gallery were much higher than what we paid at his workshop, so we were glad we stumbled across his stall.
We've been having the set menus for lunch, which have been okay. Breakfasts have been great at the hotel -- tasty fresh fruit, amazing bread, eggs to order. For dinner, we've been trying out the fancier restaurants, a taxi ride across town to Sopocachi (a much hipper area than where we're staying). Eating at the best restaurants in La Paz, including a bottle of wine, and tip, comes to about $40 - $60, so we figured why not.
We ate our our hotel the first night, we had just arrived and hadn't yet got a feel for the city. Plus our hotel restaurant is listed as one of the top in La Paz. We weren't too impressed -- Heather's trout (from nearby Lake Titicaca) was overdone and dry; my lasagna was okay.
The second night we ate at El Arriero, an Argentinian steak house, which was excellent. Both our steaks came medium rare as requested (tres-cuatros in spanish), the wine was great, and the service was good. It was one of our favourite meals in Bolivia.
Last night we tried out a french restaurant, La Comédie. Our taxi driver couldn't find the place, I had to show him the LP map on my iPhone (we downloaded the La Paz chapter). The atmosphere was great, but the food was not that good. My lamb shank was so dry I had trouble cutting a bite, and Heather's duck was competing with my lamb for toughness, and salty. They appeared to substitute quantity for quality -- I had three (!) lamb shanks on my plate, Heather had two (!) duck breasts. Maybe we ordered the wrong stuff, but both were listed as chef specialities.
Tonight we're trying out Pronto Dalicatessen, rated #1 in La Paz by tripadvisor (although not so much a foodie site as chowhound).
Today we did some touristing, haivng been shopped-out over the past two days. First went to the Contemporary Art Gallery, as mentioned above. It's in a gorgeous old house on El Prado (the main street that runs down the middle of La Paz). It reminded us of the occasional grand old house on Jarvis or Sherbourne.
Next we walked up to Plaza Murillo, which is surrounded by the main government buildings and the cathedral. We saw the sights just in time before being booted out by the police, who were closing down the plaza in advance of a demonstration (which are almost a daily occurrence here -- this is the 2nd we've seen). Later as we ate lunch, we saw the demonstration by miners carried live on the local TV station. It was odd to hear the bangs of dynamite (we thought it was firecrackers) on tv, then the echo in real life. There was no danger, as we were away from the action.
Yesterday in the market, I almost got peed on by a little boy. We were walking along in the busy street, I was taking in the scene, when Heather blurted at me to look out. The little boy was peeing in the street, I had just enough reaction time to step over and not get hit. The local lady behind us couldn't stop laughing. A couple people behind us who didn't notice walked right through. Too bad for them.
Well we're off to get ready for dinner. Tomorrow we fly to Santiago, our last stop on our little trip.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Sucre, Bolivia
We fly to La Paz this afternoon, so we´re just waiting at our hotel in Sucre (Su Merced) with a couple hours to laze about.
We spent almost three full days in Sucre. We saw most of the highlights, including all the major museums, art galleries and churches. The centre is littered with museums and galleries, half of them not listed in the guide books, of which we stopped into a few. One of the more interesting non-listed museums was the militiary museum. It had lots of antique large cannons and guns, which neither of us had seen in real life before.
The weather in Sucre was very comfortable. theweathernetwork.com had us thinking it was going to rain the whole time, but so far so good and no rain. The temperature has been around 18C with cloudy periods. At night it gets a bit chilly but we just needed our jackets.
Yesterday afternoon we were done with touristing and shopping, and so had a beer at the Plaza Restaurant, on the 2nd floor overlooking Plaza 25 de Mayo, and caught up on our reading. It was a very relaxing place to spend an afternoon.
We found an excellent restaurant for dinner the first night, Tentanciones. They had homemade tagliatelle with mushrooms, one of the best pasta dishes we´ve had. We followed that with a cheese and meat platter. The cheeses all came from Bolivia, I didn´t know they produced such a variety of cheeses. The tagliatelle was so good we returned for lunch a couple days later and I ordered it again.
Aside from the lunch at Tentanciones, for lunches we´ve started having the ´menu´, which is a set menu of soup, main and dessert, usually under $5. The soups are generally excellent, and it´s a good amount of food (nutritious too). The set lunch at La Casona was only 25 Bs, about $3.50 (Heather had the set lunch -- I had a meat craving and so had the asado, which was pretty good for outside of Argentina). We had it with a glass of house red (about $1).
The 2nd night we ate at La Taverne, a french restaurant inside Alliance Francais. The atmosphere was great, but we were disappointed with the food which was a bit bland.
Last night we had dinner at El Huerto, a little out of the centro, so we took a taxi (10 Bs). We were the only ones there at 8pm, and only one other couple showed up at 9pm. We weren´t sure if this was normal, or maybe they were busy at other times of the day of week. They were a tapas restaurant (which took us a bit of asking to figure out). The kitchen was excellent, we particularly enjoyed the chicken brochettes and the panko shrimps.
Our hotel in La Paz offered airport pick-up for about the same price as a taxi, so we´ll have someone greeting us when we arrive after our 45 minute flight. Whenever I´ve done this in the past my name has always been messed up so it will be interesting to see how they spell D´Souza. Hopefully the driver will stop at the top of the altiplano before we descend into La Paz, so that I can take a picture.
We spent almost three full days in Sucre. We saw most of the highlights, including all the major museums, art galleries and churches. The centre is littered with museums and galleries, half of them not listed in the guide books, of which we stopped into a few. One of the more interesting non-listed museums was the militiary museum. It had lots of antique large cannons and guns, which neither of us had seen in real life before.
The weather in Sucre was very comfortable. theweathernetwork.com had us thinking it was going to rain the whole time, but so far so good and no rain. The temperature has been around 18C with cloudy periods. At night it gets a bit chilly but we just needed our jackets.
Yesterday afternoon we were done with touristing and shopping, and so had a beer at the Plaza Restaurant, on the 2nd floor overlooking Plaza 25 de Mayo, and caught up on our reading. It was a very relaxing place to spend an afternoon.
We found an excellent restaurant for dinner the first night, Tentanciones. They had homemade tagliatelle with mushrooms, one of the best pasta dishes we´ve had. We followed that with a cheese and meat platter. The cheeses all came from Bolivia, I didn´t know they produced such a variety of cheeses. The tagliatelle was so good we returned for lunch a couple days later and I ordered it again.
Aside from the lunch at Tentanciones, for lunches we´ve started having the ´menu´, which is a set menu of soup, main and dessert, usually under $5. The soups are generally excellent, and it´s a good amount of food (nutritious too). The set lunch at La Casona was only 25 Bs, about $3.50 (Heather had the set lunch -- I had a meat craving and so had the asado, which was pretty good for outside of Argentina). We had it with a glass of house red (about $1).
The 2nd night we ate at La Taverne, a french restaurant inside Alliance Francais. The atmosphere was great, but we were disappointed with the food which was a bit bland.
Last night we had dinner at El Huerto, a little out of the centro, so we took a taxi (10 Bs). We were the only ones there at 8pm, and only one other couple showed up at 9pm. We weren´t sure if this was normal, or maybe they were busy at other times of the day of week. They were a tapas restaurant (which took us a bit of asking to figure out). The kitchen was excellent, we particularly enjoyed the chicken brochettes and the panko shrimps.
Our hotel in La Paz offered airport pick-up for about the same price as a taxi, so we´ll have someone greeting us when we arrive after our 45 minute flight. Whenever I´ve done this in the past my name has always been messed up so it will be interesting to see how they spell D´Souza. Hopefully the driver will stop at the top of the altiplano before we descend into La Paz, so that I can take a picture.
Sucre, Bolivia
Some more pics. The last trip I had my SD card corrupted when I connected it to a computer, so the only pics I´m uploading are ones taken from the iPhone, cause I can upload those over wifi. I haven´t figured out a way to link to picasa when posting to my blog from the iPhone, so I only post pictures when I have access to a computer.
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| Laguna Verde with Volcan Licancabur, from the Uyuni tour |
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| Inside Cristal Semana (a salt hotel) near Salar de Uyuni |
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| Cathedral in Salta |
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