BootsnAll Travel Network
Add this blog to: MyYahoo, Google, Bloglines, RSS


Archive for February, 2008

« Home

We’re out of here!

Friday, February 29th, 2008

Okay, not really out, out…but we’re finally leaving Buenos Aires after staying here over a month. It’s been good but difficult at times.

Spanish classes have been really interesting. We feel more comfortable with the language but it’s still really hard. We’re thinking about taking more Spanish in Mendoza (about a month away), but it will definitely need to be taught differently. Like maybe one-on-one. I had to go to class alone one day when John was on the phone with one of our lovely financial institutions (and no, it hasn’t been resolved in around 2 weeks which is really convenient since we’ll have limited internet access until we get to the end of the world) and it was like night and day. Like I had to actually pay attention to everything for 2 hours. Because the teacher actually expected me to respond to everything. I can see why people do one-on-one…I felt so tired but it was kind of an amazing feeling…

Next, we head down the coast. Our plan is to start in Mar del Plata — which is supposed to be really crowded right now until Easter (they celebrate Easter here for a week — it’s called something that has totally escaped me)–oh and we had totally seen a dumbed down version of Carnival here. I mean dumbed down in terms of not like in Brazil. For a few weeks they’ve had closed down some of the streets on weekend nights and they’ve had little fiestas. And the foam soap comes out which is kind of cool–anyway, then we just keep heading down the coast until we get to a place called Rio Gallegos which is kind of the last point until you get into all those problems with water. Meaning you either have to jump in a plane or cross into Chile and transport across the Magellanic Strait. Not sure how that’s going to work out but eventually we plan to get to Ushuaia (end-of-the-world), loop over to Chile and see those cool spires in the park there (you know, those ones from the advertisements for Patagonia?) and then head north again and back into Argentina until we eventually get to Mendoza where we’ll drink wine.

Did I mention they have really good and cheap wine here!  The most we’ve spent it probably 7 USD (most of the time quite a bit less than that) where we’d probably be spending at least twice that for an equivalent in the US…

Anyway, we’re outta here!

Posted in Argentina, RTW Trip | No Comments »

Buenos Aires…immersing ourselves!

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

Hello All! So I totally forgot to post this and haven’t really done really anything regarding this blog since it would not have been particularly interesting – so it’s February 17th and we’ve been here since end of January.

Let’s see — we rented an apartment in the neighborhood of San Telmo which is kind of an older neighborhood that sits next to another barrio called Puerto Maderno which is like the anithesis of old. I mean, we’re talking about a neighborhood with old crumbling buildings sitting across the avenue from modern, huge apartment buildings and businesses. Both areas are really nice…San Telmo is what you always think of when you think of like old Europe with the cobblestone streets and the antique stores and Puerto Maderno has the new cineplex sitting next to a Burger King. Enough said.

Anyway, since we rented an apartment, we decided cooking/grocery shopping was in order. Which we haven’t done since Africa. Because that would require staying in a hostel with a kitchen which really hasn’t happened since we left Africa (well, I guess they had them in Taiwan but it was way too easy to go buy a ramen or some random street food that was dirt cheap). That has been quite the experience. The grocery stores have been, well, of course smaller than America’s monster grocery stores, and with limited selection. Always tons of wines, meat, and pasta – but it’s kind of a crap shoot after that. So when we’ve been bopping around the city we’ve also been bopping into grocery stores and depending on the area (like of course the ritzier areas have more selection of “ex-pat” stuff – like peanut butter and junk like that) the selection is different.

We’re also taking Spanish. Oh geez, that’s been a struggle. We’ve taken over 2 weeks – what they call semi-intensive (2 hrs/day) vs the more popular intensive (4 hrs/day) which is, in our opinion, the way to go. But we’re making progress and John was able to have a fascinating conversation with a taxi driver about car racing.  Since it’s high season, the Spanish schools kind of fill up too so we started with one teacher named Yael who is from Argentina to another teacher, Nunia who’s from Spain.  John would NOT AGREE, but I actually think it’s kind of good we had to switch teachers because we’re talking like the difference between a prima ballerina and a gogo dancer.  Yael talked slow and was able to understand some English (she’d been studying for like 20 years but wasn’t particularly fluent – scary!) and Nunia talks super fast and understands pretty much no English.  Anyway, we’ve learned a lot about learning Spanish…we learn VERY DIFFERENTLY!  I know, it’s a shock…

Anyway, we’ve done another couple of cool things although Spanish seems to have been taking up like 24 hours a day…we went to a Davis Cup match and we went to a musical.  Davis Cup was awesome.  We took the subte (subway) to the premetro (light rail) into this kind of sketchy part of town to get to Parque Roca – a tennis arena (or whatever you call those type of things).  Then we watched Argentina totally trounce Great Britain.  I have to say, watching doubles is a lot more interesting watching in person than on TV.  I think it goes way too fast on TV but in person it’s actually followable.

Then we went to a musical entitled El Burdel de Paris.  It was essentially a theatre version of the movie, Moulin Rouge…except for the singing (with the exception of the 2 main characters) totally sucked.  But it was interesting and entertaining.  In true Buenos Aires style it started at like 10:15 pm.  Oh, did I mention that whole time thing here?

So they typically drink cafe (coffee) and eat medialunas (croissants with a sweet glaze) in the mornings…then they eat lunch around 1 pm…and then…well, let’s just say we’ve been walking around at night around 10:00 pm ish and there have been people just sitting down to dinner.  Clubs don’t really start getting going until 2 am.  Oh, and what’s for lunch and dinner?  Beef.  Steak, sausage, hamburger…okay, slight exaggeration, but it seriously is the menu of choice.

Mostly, we’ve been looking around the city. We went over to the Recoleta Cemetario which is where Evita (you know, that movie where Madonna sings “Don’t cry for me Argentina…”) is buried. It’s one of those old cemetaries with whole family enclosures – quite impressive. They have awesome parks here. And man, do Argentinians know how to bake the skin. There’s always people laying out in the sun. And people actually exercise here. I think I’ve seen more people running in one day here in Buenos Aires then the whole time we were in Asia. And women have noticeable “assets”. And they flaunt it. But, wow, the shoes are very different than in Asia. The shoes were really cute in Asia…here they are sort of cute in an 80’s kind of way. We’re talking color variety – shoe color to match every outfit. No basic black to cover a variety of outfits – nope, if you’re wearing turquoise, you need some turquoise shoes.

So at the end of the month we’re going travelling again…heading south towards Patagonia…we’re getting itchy feet…

Posted in RTW Trip | No Comments »