Monte (or San Miguel del Monte, as shown in maps) has two interesting points to its favor: it has a nice lagoon, where you can fish and relax, and its situated only 110 kms. away from Buenos Aires. Despite these facts, this location has had much less touristic development than destinations such as Chascomus, which with a bigger lagoon is located almost twice further from the argentinean capital city.

Until now, Monte used to be a weekend-home location, something we can still notice at places like Los Pinos. But currently, and for a while now, the interest in tourism development is increasing and new hostel and lodge accomodations are being built, usually around the lagoon. There’s also a greater interest from the authorities to preserve the fishing environment to attract more tourists. By the way, you need a permit to fish in the lagoon.

Tourism at Monte is almost exclusively targeted to those who arrive by driving their cars from nearby locations. Why? The city, which has a population of 17 thousand people (spanish), doesn’t count with a transportation service -people ride around in bikes or cars. This is not an impediment to visit Monte, but it can be a problem if what you want is to border the lagoon. And there’s a second point: the bus service from Monte to Buenos Aires (Retiro bus terminal) is frankly bad. The companies won’t sell round trip tickets, so you have to sit at the bus station one hour before the bus -which is coming from other locations- arrives and pray for an available seat. I wonder: is it so difficult for companies like La Estrella or Rio Parana to sell round trip tickets? Is the reservations system so complicated that they can’t work it out, in the Internet age? While I understand that their main target at Monte is the car owner tourist, of higher incomes, I’m not so sure that resolving how uncomfortable it is to travel by bus to a place that is only two hours away from Buenos Aires is totally not worth it.

By the way, the company Microomnibus Brandsen also provides a transportation service, but in this case I couldn’t get their schedule. Because of this, I took the info provided at the official website of San Miguel, although in the case of Rio Parana and La Estrella some information differ (the ones I state are from this last week end and were provided by the companies themselves). All the schedules I collected are available at WikiNomade (spanish only).

In the case of not finding bus tickets to Retiro, there are other ways to leave Monte, for example, Rio Parana has bus services that departs Monte to other destinations such as Moron, Ciudadela, Cañuelas and La Plata. In the case of the last two locations, you can take there the Roca train service that goes to Constitucion train station in Buenos Aires.

The line that departs from Constitucion to Bahia Blanca stops at Monte. The service is available 5 days a week.

You must’ve read this many times around: the key issue of blogs is its capability to allow text producers (bloggers) and their readers to collaborate to broaden and improve the contents and articles published. This is accomplished thanks to the integration of tools such as comments and trackbacks. In a way, this is true. But sometimes we can’t help to think: to what extent is this speech no more than a legitimation of blogs as tools, when they’re still growing and many times facing a very unreliable reading from the communications media.

But at Endocitosis de Red (spanish only) an interesting discussion about commercial blogs is taking place. The key: to make a blog good, we need attentive and collaborative readers, but to make the most money out of it, we better get visitors from Google or other search engines. Why? Because “parachutists” visitors are the ones who click on Adsense’s advertisement boxes. Regular visitors don’t pay attention to the ads and don’t click on them.

Rather than considering it an opposition, we should face this as a delicate relation. On one side, without readers who help us, with their collaboration, to improve our blogs, we won’t have better contents. But in the case of blogs with advertisement spaces, without a decent Google ranking and many “parachutist visitors”, the income will be low. Is it possible to encompass neatly this relation? Won’t the focus on the need of income end up ruining good part of the blogs’ collaborative possibilites?

Other possible conversations are arising. Aren’t blogs depending too much on Google? Will we get anything good from obsessing about our Pagerank? Will we write for our readers or to accomplish being found by a search engine? This kind of open discussions are an interesting opportunity to see how critical can the blogosphere be with itself, even at the expense of being, sometimes, too self-referencial.

The World Tourism Organisation issued today a communicate about the european regional conference of Communication about Tourism. The debate topic was how to accomplish to get this area to stop losing tourists to asian destinations. But there was a paragraph of the communicate that grabbed my attention (I’ll cite it textually, without changing any punctuation marks):

Answering questions from delegates who argued that some, mainly western media try to impose unethical methods of promoting their destinations, Richard Baerug, marketing director of the Riga Convention Bureau said that “Companies and destinations should only deal with media that make a clear border line between advertising and journalism

I wonder: what are unethical methods? what to they pretend? that they invite them everywhere and provide them money to publish notes that in fact have only a commercial and not an informative interest? There’s a lot of that, at least in this part of the world, the south side. Anyways, I can’t disagree that it’s necessary, once and for all, to have the informative content of tourism notes clearly separated from advertisement. Otherwise, we’ll still be reading very few interesting articles and many ad-notes.

It’s quite usual for me to receive email o blog comments inquiring about the Inca Trail, the famous two to four days trekking experience to get to Machu Picchu. There are several issues where many questions arise. This entry consists of an arbitrary FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about the topic:

1) Can you do the Inca Trail without hiring a tour? No, you can’t. If you go without a hired guided tour, you won’t be able to get in. The four days trail starts in US$190 during the low season, and can go up to US$600 at high season. The price includes the train fare to the location from where the trekking begins, the service of guides, carriers and food. If you want to do the two days trail, you should consider spending around US$140. Useful tip: some agencies sell the tour for US$145, but it doesn’t include the train fare back to Cuzco from Aguas Calientes, the train station closest to Machu Picchu. Since the cheapest train tickets are sold with three days of anticipation only, you’ll have to buy the more expensive Backpacker fare, which costs US$33. Considering you’ll have to spend the night at Aguas Calientes and spend in food (more expensive at this location), you’ll notice you’ll save almost nothing. You’re better off paying for the complete tour.

2) But wasn’t it cheaper to do the Inca Trail not so long ago? Yes, of course. I did it in 1999 and cost me US$17. At that time, you could enter the place by yourself, without guides or anything. Since 2001, the peruvian government has promoted an environmet preservation policy together with a strategy to position Cuzco as an exclusive destination. On this context, nowadays only 500 people are allowed to do the trail every day, and the cost has rised considerably by demanding people to pay for the complete tour. In this way, they ensure a higher collection and more people are employed. Of course, those who want to do the trail are not quite happy about paying more, but that’s how it is.

3) How much does the train that goes from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes cost? There are two versions. The Backpacker train ticket that departs from Cuzco and costs US$66, round trip. The Cerrojo Backpacker round trip train ticket costs US$40, but you have to go to Ollantaytambo to buy it. The best thing you can do is take the Valle Sagrado tour, and stop at Ollantaytambo to buy the train tickets.

4) Can I walk my way up to Machu Picchu from Aguas Calientes? Yes, you can, but it’s a long way up (steep). The transportation is sort of expensive: a less than 30 minutes bus ride that costs US$12.

5) Are there any interesting archaelogical ruins on the way? Not many. The most interesting thing is the spectacular landscape. Anyways, a few minutes of walking distance from the third day stop -in which many load up in beer- there’s Huayña Wayra, beautiful inca constructions. Below, a picture:

6) Is it too dificult to do the trail? It demands a lot of physical efforts. If you’re not in good shape and want to do the trail, I’d recommend to start walking. But, to be honest, the real dare is the fact that part of the trail consists of trekking steep trails located at over 3000 m. (10000 feet) above sea level altitude. Some parts of the trail consists of climbing upstairs, which turns the trekking, into a torture -it’s much easier to walk on a flat steep surface than going upstairs. The worst thing is to start the next day; after the first 24 hour walk, your legs are crying and screaming. I’d recommend to get used to the height first; if you’re coming from Bolivia, that won’t be a problem; but if you just landed from a plane 12 hours ago, you’ll probably need two or three days to be ready.

7) How much does the entrance to Machu Picchu cost? US$20; peruvians pay half of that. You can hire guides for an extra $10, if my memory doesn’t lie to me.

By the way, as soon as I can, I’ll work on the FAQ’s about Cuzco and Bolivia.