Some places are best suited to road trips. They speak: move at your own pace, get lost, stop off in small towns, have the flexibility to enjoy whatever experiences might come your way.
The area around Salta and Jujuy in northwest Argentina is one such chunk of perfect road trip territory. Listen and watch the audio slideshow below to find out why. Continue Reading »
- Road Trip Northwest Argentina: Where Gauchos Go To Party
- Three Vignettes: Beautiful Everyday People of Northwest Argentina
- Audio Slideshow: Northwest Argentina, Road Trip Style
Filed Under: Argentina, Audio Clips, South America, Travel by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
14 Comments | 25 August 2010
I am not a linguist, so when people find out that I am conversant in five foreign languages (French, Estonian, Czech, Russian, and Spanish) – most of which I’ve picked up on the fly instead of through formal study – they often ask me how I do it.
I don’t have a “get rich quick” secret for learning how to speak a new language. It can be challenging, humbling, and frustrating. So why do it?
Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Personal Growth, Travel by: Audrey Scott
33 Comments | 23 August 2010
In a future incarnation, we will run world tours that seek to deliver extraordinary travel experiences through encounters with ordinary people. And when we do, a road trip in Northwest Argentina will be one of our first stops in South America.
After stumbling upon a dazzling gaucho festival on the first day of a week-long road trip, we figured our travel karma would have run out. Instead, our journey across the valleys outside of Salta featured interactions with engaging people open to odd encounters.
Here’s a taste. Continue Reading »
- Road Trip Northwest Argentina: Where Gauchos Go To Party
- Three Vignettes: Beautiful Everyday People of Northwest Argentina
- Audio Slideshow: Northwest Argentina, Road Trip Style
Filed Under: Argentina, South America, Travel by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
14 Comments | 11 August 2010
The key to eating grilled mutton is to chew and swallow it before the fat cools and congeals on the roof of your mouth.
— Our guerrilla eating tip for Central Asia.
“You guys seem to have only good things to say about your experiences, especially the food. Have you ever had a bad meal? Something disappointing, gross, or even repulsive?”
You bet. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Food, Humor, Travel by: Daniel Noll
46 Comments | 4 August 2010
Filed Under: Personal Growth, Travel by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
36 Comments | 2 August 2010
“In your travels, did you ever feel like you were being followed?” a friend recently asked.
We looked up as if to page through our mind-file of creepy experiences: “No. At least we don’t think so.”
Note: Although we use the term “couch surfing” in the title, the experience related below was in no way connected to the
CouchSurfing network but was arranged through a friend. We are satisfied members of the CouchSurfing community and in no way mean to imply that CouchSurfing is unsafe.
Even when we answered, our response struck me as supremely naïve. Although we aren’t terribly important in the geopolitical grand scheme of things, somebody somewhere must have taken more than a casual interest in our movements. After all, we’d been throughout the former Soviet Union – including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan — and to places like China and Burma.
Surely we had a tail somewhere along the way. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Perspectives, Travel by: Audrey Scott
20 Comments | 25 July 2010
As our rental car began to drift atop a layer of windblown sand, I grabbed hold, down-shifted and noticed the hills around me were swirled in a peppermint twist. All those Ruta 40 signs in Argentina finally delivered on an implied promise: you’ll be impressed, and what once captured your imagination will now claim your full attention. But it wasn’t the fabled Route 40 of Patagonia that would provide the exclamation point on our time in Argentina. It was a week-long road trip across the quebradas of Northwest Argentina, where chilies dry in the midday sun, llama comes served with wine pressed just down the road, and gauchos hold harvest festivals in the hills.
Continue Reading »
- Road Trip Northwest Argentina: Where Gauchos Go To Party
- Three Vignettes: Beautiful Everyday People of Northwest Argentina
- Audio Slideshow: Northwest Argentina, Road Trip Style
Filed Under: Argentina, South America, Travel, Videos by: Daniel Noll
15 Comments | 21 July 2010
So we’ve been running all over creation for the last three and half years and living abroad for almost ten. In May, before visiting the United States we told people we were “coming home for a visit.” More recently, we found that Central Europe (Prague, by way of Vienna and Bratislava) still feels like home.
In an email just yesterday, one of our friends in Uruguay asked: “Are you back home finally or at least in the U.S.?”
It was his confusion that tuned us into a more universal query: Where is home?
And more importantly, what is it? Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Travel by: Daniel Noll
51 Comments | 15 July 2010
On the topic of trekking in Patagonia, the two names most bandied about: Chile’s Torres del Paine and Argentina’s El Chalten. Although their hunks of uplifted granite are similar enough, the prevailing style of hikes they offer are quite different.
Whereas the “W” and Circuit treks at Torres del Paine are mainly about the long haul, El Chalten’s strength: its day hikes. On the edge of Argentina’s Glacier National Park (Parque Nacional Los Glaciares), El Chalten also offers the thrill of nature at a lower cost than its Chilean neighbor — with the added feature of a microbrewery on the way home from the hills.
In other words, two Patagonian trekking centers; two rather different experiences. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Argentina, South America, Travel by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
4 Comments | 22 June 2010
Most articles we read about Torres del Paine National Park in Chile focus on Patagonian meadows, turquoise lakes, and rose-tinted granite towers in sunrise.
We’ll allow our photos to do that bit for us.
Instead, we’ll take a different tack and share some of the lessons –- about yourself, your marriage (if you have one), Patagonia, expectations, life, and travel – you might learn from trekking in Torres del Paine. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Chile, South America, Travel by: Audrey Scott
19 Comments | 2 May 2010
