Mendoza Vendimia Parade 2015

Since I can remember I always liked parades, and Mendoza Vendimia is one of my favorite. I took all the photos and the video with my small Panasonic…

Pulp Friction: Argentina, Uruguay and The Hague

Just two days before Earth Day, the International Court of Justice in The Hague settled, presumably, a longstanding dispute between Argentina and Uru…

Massive Earthquake (8.8) Hits Chile

In 1960, the Chilean city of Valdivia, about 800 km south of the capital of Santiago, suffered the greatest magnitude earthquake ever recorded - 9.5 …

Patagonian Energy Alternatives

I've been traveling in Chile and the Falkland Islands, plus a few days in Argentina, for a little more than a month now, as I update Moon Handboo…

Saved from Soccer? My Argentine Nephew Pitches and Hits

Baseball has always been my favorite spectator sport and, as an adult, my main recreational sports passion has been slow-pitch softball, though I’ve…

Rallying for the Atacama

Last January, organizers of the famous Paris-Dakar Rally canceled their 2008 event after the apparently Al-Qaeda linked murder of a French family in…

Condé Nast Condescends? Slumming in Argentine Patagonia

Live from Montreal! South America Talk Radio

Tomorrow July 18th, at 10:30 a.m. EDT, I will appear on CJAD's Tommy Schnurmacher show out of Montreal. The general topic will be southernmos…

Ice Cream Capital of the Americas

Buenos Aires summers are hot, wet and sticky - today, the temperature reached 87° F (about 30° C) with 74 percent humidity, and neither figure has ch…

Lining Up for Cash and Gas

In southernmost Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, it’s been a disorderly summer, what with the natural gas pricing protests shutting down the Chilean c…

Patagonia-Bound: LAN, Lima, Loose Ends & Beyond

It’s only a few days until I fly south – Monday the 18th in fact – and, as usual, that’s a busy time, with lots of loose ends to tie up before I spe…

Tuesday Topics: Peruvian Dining, Fuegian Dollars, & Social Media

Blocked in Bolsón? No Calafate for You!

As the deadline approached to submit the manuscript for the new edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, I spent most of the last week of February enclo…

My Bulging Wallet? Accommodating Argentine Currency

Last May, when Argentina’s informal exchange rate for the “blue dollar” rose above ten pesos for the first time, it quickly acquired the nickname “M…

Book Fair Buenos Aires: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly & the Offbeat

One of my favorite Buenos Aires events has always been the Feria del Libro, the region’s biggest book fair, comprising 45,000 square meters of spa…

The Robin Hood of Corrientes

Yesterday, January 8, more than 100,000 pilgrims swarmed to a sprawling shrine just outside the Corrientes provincial city of Mercedes (population ab…

Buenos Aires Buses, Subways, and Trains

It's always easiest to take unpopular actions at a time when people are distracted by other priorities. Thus public transportation prices in Buen…

Bandidos Rurales: Beyond Butch and Sundance

Like the Wild West of the United States, Patagonia was a frontier region and, as such, it was often a lawless place where might made right - and, as …

The Porteño Pedestrian: Theory & Practice

I’ve written several times about Argentine traffic safety in Buenos Aires and elsewhere, suggesting that the first rule of pedestrian survival is to …

Chile in California

In San Francisco, this past weekend, the tenth annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival took place and, for the second straight year we had a friend…