Chaska in South America

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten the chance to blog, so I have a lot to share! This is my second to last day in Buenos Aires, and I’ll have to say that I’m really sad to leave. It feels like I’ve just really gotten used to everything and have really started to feel comfortable here, and now I have to leave. I’m sad to leave all my students…they have really become good friends and it’s been hard to say goodbye. I’m a person who really hates routine and feel that I need constant change…but somehow I always manage to get really sad just before leaving somewhere or changing my situation. I guess that’s just natural. I know that this is really just the beginning of an amazing trip, so I’m looking forward to what is coming up and know that it will be awesome! Matt and I leave tomorrow on a bus for the south of Argentina. The bus trip is about 22 hours long, so I’ll have lots of time to reflect on my last few months here! We’ll be in the south for one week and then will take a bus back to Buenos Aires, where we’ll take care of some last payments from our language schools and then leave for Peru on December 9.
Well, besides sad goodbyes and last minute preparations for our upcoming travels, we’ve done quite a bit the past couple weeks. Saturday, Matt and I went to Uruguay for just one day. We went by boat to a tiny little town called Colonia, which was just adorable. The boat ride took about 2 and half hours each way. We actually bought a package that included the roundtrip boat ride, lunch, and a tour of the city. The boat ride was crowded and long…it left an hour late, and I hate organized tours, so I definitely wouldn’t do it that way again. Matt and I were cracking up the whole way about the cheesy tour group we would be in, making jokes about what it was going to be like. We were right, it was super cheesy…the kind of groups we make fun of all the time when passing them here in the city. We ended up ditching the group halfway through and doing our own thing. One positive thing about the group though was that we met a cool guy. A Scottish guy sat at our table at lunch and we started talking with him. His name is Bernie and he left his job in Scotland a couple years ago, and he’s been travelling the world since. He is living in Buenos Aires for a while, trying to learn some Spanish. He mentioned to us that he had a friend who didn’t pay for the tour, but came on the boat to Uruguay with him and was waiting for him in another bar…since Matt and I were ready to ditch the tour anyway, he invited us to go meet his friend. His friend is an Irish guy that has been living in the States for the past 25 years, and I almost died when I found out where he’s been living….Camarillo!!!! For those of you that don’t know, Camarillo is my hometown. It was one of those “what a small world” moments. He made the funniest comment that only those of you from Ventura county will get, “Imagine that, we’re meeting here for first time in Colonia…Uruguay that is, not Colonia Oxnard!” Anyway, both Bernie and Alex (the guy from Camarillo) are really cool guys who have done a TON of travelling troughout their lives and it was a lot of fun to talk with them. We met up with them again last night in a bar here in BA. Colonia was one of the cutest little towns I’ve ever seen and I’ve included several photos below. It’s located on the Rio Plata, which is the same river Buenos Aires is located on.

These are our friends Bernie and Alex. Bernie is the one furthest from the camera and Alex is the one closest.

On Sunday, Matt and I were invited to one his student’s house for dinner. Both Matt and I teach English at a company called NCR, and we each have a different group of students. Two of Matt’s students and one of mine along with some of their friends were there Sunday. We had such a great time! It reminded us a lot of the dinner parties we used to have all the time in Madrid. Those of you that were in Madrid or came to visit me while I was there will know what I mean! Here are few photos from Sunday.

Here are some of us from Sunday night’s party. Marcelo, the guy in orange, is Matt’s student and the party was at his house. My student Dario is standing next to him. Barbara is standing next to me, and Veronica is next to Matt. Matt’s other student, Matias, is taking the picture and another who was there had just left. That’s Mancha in Matt’s arms!

Matt, Dario, and Matias

Matias, me, and Dario

A couple weeks ago, Matt and I went just outside of the city to a small suburb called San Isidro. We just wanted to get out the city for a while and San Isidro is only like 10 or 15 minutes away. We rented bikes and rode along the river. It was really nice…hard to believe we were so close to the city. Here are just a couple pictures from that.

There were a ton of wind and kite surfers there in San Isidro.

Matt looking cool on his bike.

Well, I will definitely try to blog while down in the south this next week, and I’m going to try to post some final pictures of Buenos Aires before leaving for good on the 9th. I hope you’re all well, and I would love to hear from all of you!

Matt and I went to Rosario last weekend. We went with my friend Carina, who is originally from there, and we stayed at her mom’s house. Rosario is Argentina’s third largest city, but it only has a population of about a million. That can really tell you how small the rest of the cities in Argentina are! We only went for two days, but that was plenty of time to see all of the city. Rosario is not really much of a tourist destination, so there really isn’t that much to do there, but it was really nice to get out of Buenos Aires for a weekend and see another city. Carina was going because her niece was getting baptized, so Matt and I spent the first day on our own walking around, sigtseeing, and just enjoying being somewhere a lot smaller and more quiet than Buenos Aires. Rosario is located along the Parana River, which is quite large. There are beaches along the river at one point, and we went and spent the day on the beach on Sunday, even though it was a little cloudy and rainy. On Saturday night there was a huge international festival, called El Festival de los Colectividades. It was a festival for all the different nationalities that have immigrated to Argentina…there were a TON of different countries represented from everywhere in the world…Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Croatia, Iran, Lebanon, just to name a few. Matt and I spent the evening there and ate a bunch of good food and watched some shows that each represented country put on.
This weekend I think Matt and I will try to take a trip to Uruguay. It only takes a couple hours by boat to get there and you can easily go there and come back in even just one day. We have a couple different options as far as cities to visit, but I think we’re going to visit a small city called Colonia which is supposed to be really cute. We’ve been thinking about where we’ll go the first week in December, which will be our last week in Argentina, and I think we’ve decided to go south to San Martin de Los Andes and Bariloche. They are located in the mountains and are supposed to be just beautiful…if any of you saw the movie The Motorcycle Diaries, both places are shown in it. Well, here are some pictures from our trip to Rosario. I hope you are all doing well!

This is a huge monument called the Monument of the Flag or something like that. It’s pretty cool and is pretty much the main attraction in Rosario…Matt and I feel really pathetic about how many pictures we took of this stupid thing. I won’t bore you with all of them! There is a park just in front of the monument and that’s where the international festival was held.

These are just a couple other shots of the monument. You can see that the river is just beyond it.

This is a picture of the city of Rosario taken just in front of the river.

This is the Parana River. There are islands across from the city on the other side of the river that you can see. I guess you can take a boat over to them and there are some really nice little beaches, but we didn’t get a chance to do that.

A guy fishing on the shore of the river.

There were these beautiful jacaranda trees all over the city. Matt and I took a nap in this park Saturday afternoon…it was great!

One claim to fame for Rosario is that Che Guevara was born there. This is the door of the apartment building where his family lived when he was born.

These are the two widows that belong to the actual apartment where Che and his family lived. They only lived there for a very short while before moving to another city. The apartment building is still just normal apartments, and as far as I now, there is someone living in Che’s apartment…there wasn’t a plaque or anything, so we just got all this information from the guy working in a little store across the street.

These are some pictures of the little beaches that are located on the Parana River.

Carina and I sitting in front of the beach.

Matt and Carina hanging out on the beach. There were a ton of families having picnics and stuff there that day. It was kind of cool because it really felt like Matt and I were the only tourists.

These guys walked past us, and I just had to take a picture!

Before going to the beach Sunday, we had breakfast at a cafe on the river. This is the most typical Argentinian breakfast…cafe con leche, medialunas, and jugo de naranja.

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