November 16 – December 4, 2023

On November 16, 2023, my parents and I left for our much-anticipated trip to Argentina, the country where my father grew up. The last time I went, in the summer of 2007, I had just graduated high school. I was long overdue for another trip.

There is so much information to cover that to do the whole thing justice really requires separate posts for each portion of the trip, so for now, I will give you just a summary of each part of the journey.

Buenos Aires – November 16 – 20

Our first stop was Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina and the city where my father was born and raised. Greater Buenos Aires, or the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, is 5,129 square miles, about half the size of the Houston Metropolitan Area where I was born and raised, which is 10,062 square miles. In population, however, Greater Buenos Aires is just over twice the size of Greater Houston, at 15.3 million compared to Greater Houston’s 7.3 million. The temperature in Buenos Aires is about 10 degrees cooler and about 10% less humid than Houston in the summer. Spring is coming to an end there, so it’s getting pretty warm, and the beautiful jacaranda trees are in full bloom, painting the pavement purple with their falling blossoms.

We visited my Abuela, my father’s mother, in the residence where she lives. My father also visited his sister, my Tía, in the hospital a couple of times while my mother and I either continued to explore or returned to the apartment to rest after each long day.

Ushuaia – November 21 – 23

Our first short side trip after the first four days spent in Buenos Aires was Ushuaia, far to the south of Argentina in the Tierra del Fuego region. Ushuaia is so far south, in fact, people often refer to it to as “El Fin del Mundo”, or “The End of The World”. The only place left to go that’s further South is Antarctica – but it’s still more than 600 miles from “El Fin del Mundo” to the closest point of Antarctica, which is the Antarctic Peninsula. There are no flights, however, so most visitors go by cruise ship.

Among other activities in Ushuaia, you can take boat tours of the Beagle Channel where you can see many different birds. Come of the birds I saw include Imperial and Magellanic Cormorants, Kelp and Dolphin Gulls, the Chilean Skua, Black-browed Albatross, Southern Giant Petrels, Chimango Caracara, and Upland and Kelp Geese. Another common sight on the boat tours on some of the small islands in the Beagle Channel are sea lions.

You can also take bus tours to the nearby National Park, called Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, which happens to also be home to the Correo del Fin del Mundo (the Post Office at the End of the World) or to Lago (Lake) Fagnano. You can go hiking in the mountains, and skiing is a popular activity in the winter.

El Calafate – November 24 – 27

Our next stop was El Calafate, a town a bit further to the northwest of Ushuaia. The flight was just under and hour and a half. The town is on the shore of the Lago Argentino, just outside the foothills of the Andes Mountains and close to the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. It is the town closest to the Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the best-known glaciers in the world and the only one that is still advancing.

The Santa Cruz Province, the province where El Calafate is located, is the best region of Argentina to visit in order to see glaciers. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is located here, at the Province’s western edge, at the Southern end of the Andes Mountain range, right on the border between Argentina and Chile.

One of the most popular activities in this area is a glacier walk. You can also join boat tours that take you right to the front of some of the glaciers, so close you can see the many crevasses in various shades of blue in the ice, or that take you among the many icebergs that are byproducts of glacial calving over water.

Among the wildlife one may find in this area are Andean Condors, Chilean Flamingos, Lesser Rhea (a relative of the ostrich), Black-faced Ibis, and guanacos (one of two wild species related to llamas and alpacas – the other is the vicuña).

Iguazú – November 28 – 30

After one too-short night (I had to get up at 2 am!) back in Buenos Aires, I took a flight alone to Puerto Iguazú, the town nearest the magnificent Iguazú Falls. My parents had already been in 2010 with my brothers, on a trip I was unable to go on due to limited time off from my summer job at a daycamp.

Iguazú Falls is the largest waterfall system in the world, with roughly 275 falls of varying sizes. Eighty percent are on the Argentine side of the border with Brazil, and for that reason, though you can get wonderful photos of the falls as you hike along the trails in the Argentine side, everyone says that the Brazil side has the best views. So the Brazil side will just have to go on my bucket list.

The Parana forest around Iguazú Falls is home to hundreds of bird species. Just a few examples of birds that may be found there include toucans, parrots and parakeets, tanagers, vultures, doves, hummingbirds, owls, kingfishers, flycatchers, and herons. One of the best-known birds is the Great Dusky Swift, which nests on the cliff faces behind the waterfalls and is often seen flying literally through the waterfalls themselves.

Other animals include the jaguar, puma, ocelot, tapir, coati, anteater, monkeys, caiman, snakes, capybara, frogs, and a multitude of insects, from gorgeous butterflies to small and virtually invisible bugs that deliver very painful stings that cause large raised welts. The Parque Nacional Iguazú is worth a visit for the wildlife alone, though of course I would never recommend a visit to the region without stopping to see the glorious Falls.

Back to BA – November 30 – December 3

After two full days in Iguazú, it was time for me to return to Buenos Aires for the last 4 days of the trip. My flight back was in the afternoon, leaving me some time to explore the National Park once more for a few hours, and I landed in Buenos Aires around six in the evening.

To list all the possible activities in Buenos Aires would take an entire book. But among some of the better attractions is the Recoleta Cemetery, which contains several thousand mausoleums. There are so many of varying shapes and sizes that the cemetery is almost like a whole city in and of itself. Another is the neighborhood of La Boca, which is an historic neighborhood full of brightly-colored buildings.

Like any city, there are parks, museums, libraries, shopping centers, and theaters. For such a large and urban place, Buenos Aires does green spaces very well, and even the city centers have lots of trees. There are also lots of restaurants and cafes, as well as grocery stores and many small neighborhood markets.

Back Home – December 3-4

Finally, it was time to head home. On December 3, we spent the day making preparations to come home. We shopped for a few last minute things – gifts and treats for coworkers – and spent the day packing. Our overnight flight was scheduled for 10:50pm, so our ride came to pick us up at 8:00.

We did not have a direct flight to Houston – instead we had a 4-hour layover in Panama City. Three nearly-delirious travelers found a cafe in the airport and had breakfast and charged up our phones, and then an hour before boarding was to begin, we trudged back to the gate and went through the shortest security line I’ve ever gone through (because each gate had their own security line instead of one giant security area for all passengers to go through). We boarded the plane, and two hours later we finally arrived back home in Houston.

Conclusion

The trip to Argentina is one that will stay in my memory for a long time. Of course, pretty much the moment I got back home I wanted to go back. There is still so much to do in Argentina – we did not, for example, go to the Mendoza region where wine is produced, or the eastern coast where you can see penguins and go whale watching. And due to our need to spend time with family, we didn’t go to very many of the tourist attractions in Buenos Aires.

Furthermore, while my total bird species count for the trip is a very respectable 80 species, there are a number of my target species – the penguins, any of the toucans, the parrots (though I did see a couple different parakeets), the herons (other than the Great and Snowy Egrets and the Black-crowned night heron, all of which we get at home in Houston), the King Vulture, and the Harpy Eagle – that I didn’t get to see. I also didn’t get to see any monkeys, tapir, or jaguar (although the last is so elusive I wasn’t really expecting to see it).

So, ultimately, I will just have to go back some day, perhaps on another solo trip. After all, according to the legend of the Calafate bush, anyone who eats the berries will not be able to stay away from Patagonia forever, and I did have a calafate-filled alfajor. Until we meet again, Argentina.