Considered one of the safest cities of South America, Montevideo is home to most of the Uruguayan population - the capital megacity, in the same way as Paris or Seoul.  It's also my last stop here in South America, and as of writing this sentence, only 2 hours until I have to leave for the airport.

A small town not far from Buenos Aires, back in the colonial days this was used as a port for smuggling goods into Argentina, before many of these goods were legalized.

Despite being one of the three most touristy places in Uruguay, there's little to see here.  There's the lighthouse, and if you trek out of the centro a bit there's an abandoned bullfighting arena (which you can't even enter :[).  The town itself is pretty cute, and if you look hard enough you'll find locally made cheeses (my second night's dinner was in a wine and cheese place, though I skipped the wine for mate).

I met a girl here who came to Uruguay specifically to see an abandoned pie factory in a small town with very little else three hours from here.  No intention of seeing Montevideo or the beaches.  I hope it goes well for her.  I mean, I've been known to seek oddly specific things in obscure locations (izakaya in Utsunomiya with a monkey waiter), so I get it.

In general, the sentiment I've been hearing in the hostel here is people came here simply because of the ferry to Buenos Aires.  I'm no exception.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a bus to Montevideo, my final destination in South America.

Buenos Aires is easily my favorite major city so far in South America, and along with Cusco and San Pedro, one of my favorite locations.  I tend to compare cities to New York, in the sense that in New York you can find something everywhere.  There's few places that feel like you're not in a city (such as the Sunset district of SF).

Buenos Aires, and Argentina in general, has a large Italian population and Italian influence (probably adding to the New York feel).  I can identify older people's Italian accents, despite largely not speaking Spanish.  Incidentally, I've found the most English speakers here compared to the other major cities (though I hear Lima has more than what I experienced), but the surprising part is that they don't have strong accents when speaking English (to me) even if they only speak a little more than I speak Spanish.

Food here is all Italian.  I really struggled to find a place that didn't serve pizza and pasta.  I eventually gave in.

Florida street has all of the cambio places, and as always trading money on the black market is the best way to go.  Some locals are sometimes willing to buy your dollars; I met an Armenian (from Turkey) who was able to trade dollars with locals in an Armenian church for 13 instead of the black market's 12.50 rate.

Buenos Aires is home to the Caminito La Boca area, where houses were painted wildly different colors by the first Italian settlers.  Seeing pictures of this in the video Where the Hell is Matt 2008 (go watch it) was the first inspiration I had to come to South America and specifically Buenos Aires.  It did not disappoint.

I didn't spend much time in the city of Cordoba.  I met a few guys in the hostel and we went to a touristy little village nearby.  Cute town, kind of reminded me of La Serena. Interestingly, some (domesticated?) local dogs took interest in us and followed us around for the entire day.  There was a mountain trail nearby where we hiked up to the top with these dogs.

I did also fall and hit my knee on some rocks while there.  I've been unlucky with trails before, but right now the injury is numb.  I'm hoping this goes away soon...

The first city after coming from Santiago is Mendoza, east of the Andes mountains. I was convinced by someone in Santiago to stay here two nights instead of just one, so I can explore so parts of the Andes. On the second day, I went out for a half day hike and rappel trip.  For those who don't know what rappelling is, think of those action movies where guys are jumping down cliffs jump by jump with a route for support (except they also gave us a harness).  Overall a good experience, bit I'd take the mountains around Quito, Cusco, or San Pedro de Atacama any day.

The to-eat food here is barbecued baby goat... It was expensive and only okay in my opinion.  Empanadas in Argentina are also much smaller than in Chile.  In Chile, one or two is enough, but in Argentina they're about the size of perogis. Culturally and in their cooking, there's a string Italian influence in Argentina; many people here are ethnically Italian. They taste better here too. I can go on about how much better food has been in Argentina so far, but with Chile it doesn't really have any competition.

Argentina is a relatively expensive country, not unlike Chile.  For foreigners, the secret is you need to exchange cash (preferably 50s or 100s) on the black market.  It sounds shady, but it's pretty well known among locals, and the police let it happen.

The black market currency exchange is mutually beneficial for locals and foreigners.  Foreigners traveling through Argentina are best off buying pesos from there black market, because the official exchange rate is a ripoff by design (presumably as a way to bring wealth into the country).  To put this into numbers, the official rate is about 9 pesos to the dollar, while the so-called blue rate is about 12 pesos. That's a HUGE difference.  These change daily, so check dolarblue.net to get the current exchanges.

So why do they buy dollars?  To sell them to locals.  Local Argentines want dollars for two reasons.  The first is when they want to travel, the government only lets them exchange for a certain amount of dollars, and its not enough to travel through the US.  The second is personal investment, as the Argentine peso fluctuates wildly, while the dollar remains relatively constant in value.  Having dollars insures their savings are safe.

Santiago is certainly the biggest, most expensive and most developed city I've been to in South America (though I hear Rio beats it in all categories).  Not much to say here.  Was not the biggest fan of the food; most of it was greasy meats or empanadas.  I honestly mostly ate foreign food in Chile, for the first time in my travels.

The metro is well developed.  Better than Muni by miles, at least.  Five lines that typically cover the city pretty well.  They come pretty frequently (usually every five minutes).

The outdoor markets here... well, for food they're pretty big and extensive, but for everything else I've been pretty spoiled by Asia.

It's one of those places where you need to know people to have a good time.  I had a friend of a friend who I briefly met, but not much more interaction during my time here.

I wake up early tomorrow to make my way into Argentina.

La Serena is a cute town with a downtown area that feels like one of those coffee shop college towns.  Nice little market with the typical alpaca gear and handicrafts.  There's a beach here as well.

The main tourist things to do here are to see the valley where Chilean pisco is made (too expensive) and the observatory nearby (this sounded cool).

On my first night, I went with two others in the hostel to find where the locals were gathering to watch the Chile/Ecuador match... And surprisedly found very little.

On the second night, I went to the aforementioned observatory. Skies in Chile are generally unpolluted, so I was hoping for great things.  The trip there took over an hour by car.

The night sky from the observatory was bright and beautiful. The milky way was easily visible, with two other galaxies dimly visible.  Sadly, the center is more for tourism than research, so the telescopes were far from the world's best.  I did see Jupiter and Saturn pretty clearly on it though, and the guide kept up with my questions.  I don't have any pictures of the sky, my cameras aren't nearly good enough.