Chaska in South America

It’s been two whole weeks since I’ve posted anything. The past two weeks have been really busy and I haven’t had any time at all to sit in an internet cafe for long enough to blog. I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I’m in Cuzco now and have been for about a week and a half. The last post I wrote was from Arequipa and I think I was about to go to Colca Canyon. Colca Canyon is the second deepest canyon in the world (deeper than the Grand Canyon) …the deepest is also near Arequipa, but I can’t remember the name right now. Matt and I went to the canyon on a two day tour. Aside from both getting really sick just before going, we had a really great time. We both had gotten sick with major stomach problems (not pretty)…we’re not sure exactly from what, but probably something we ate or drank…it’s kind of inevitable here in Peru! Anyway, we got along really well with everyone in our group, and we had a CRAZY guide that kept things interesting. Colca turned out to be absolutely beautiful and we were able to do a lot in the two days. The scenery along the four hour drive was incredible, and we stayed in a town called Chivay for the night where we got to go to some really nice thermal baths, which was great because it was freezing there! The second day we visited several tiny traditional towns and saw about 7 or 8 condors. Since it’s the rainy season in the canyon, the condors don’t always come out…we got really lucky! Here are some pictures from our trip.

These are some little girls that were at a rest stop along the drive to the canyon.

Here’s a woman making sweaters to sell…there were set ups like this one all along the route during the two days because there are so many tourist buses that do the route regularly.

We had stopped at this rest stop to drink mate de coca (tea made from coca leaves), because it’s supposed to help with altitude sickness. I can’t remember the highest altitude we reached, but it was higher than Cuzco. Here Matt’s feeding the left over coca leaves from his tea to an alpaca that was there.

These are vicuñas. They’re related to the llama and alpaca but are much smaller and run fast. Our guide told us that the one in the front of a group is always a male and that the ones behind him are all females.

This woman was the owner of all the alpacas and llamas you see in the background. She let us go down and get close to them.

Along the road, there were TONS of these rock towers. According to Incan tradition, if you stack at least five rocks and make a wish, the wish will come true when the tower falls. We’ll see if my wish comes true!

This is the highest point we reached. That’s the town of Chivay below, where we stayed the night.

Colca Canyon.

Another shot of the canyon.

Here’s most of our group. Signe (Denmark), Christian (Austria), Darius (Germany), Miguel and Leticia (Spain), Cesar (our Peruvian Guide), and of course Matt.

We waited forever for the condors to come out, and many people left because they thought they weren’t coming. We waited, and they finally came out. They were amazing! One flew just beneath us, and we could see his full wingspan and his crest…I didn’t get a picture though. In fact, I didn’t get any good pictures up close. Here’s one from afar soaring in front of the mountain.

The whole time we were driving in the canyon, we kept having to stop abruptly because there was a shepard with sheep, a herd of cattle or llamas, or a person on a donkey, like this one, in our way. It was wonderful!

After returning from Colca, we stayed in Arequipa for a couple more days, and then had plans to leave for Cuzco. We purchased our first class tickets for a day trip and were sure our bus experience would be far better than the bus ride to Arequipa…we were wrong. Upon arriving to the bus station on Tuesday morning, we were informed (after about an hour of confusion) that our bus was broken and we wouldn’t be able to go directly to Cuzco. After about another hour of confusion, we finally figured out that our only option was to go to a town called Puno and then catch a bus to Cuzco from there (they told us it would be no problem getting one there.) We took the six hour ride to Puno, and then when getting there realized that they getting a bus to Cuzco was not as easy as they told us it would be. We would either have to wait till really late that night or till the next morning. We decided that we didn’t want another night bus experience if we didn’t absolutely have to, so we opted to stay in Puno and leave early the next morning. We tried to buy our tickets for the next morning, but were told that we could only make a reservation…and we were assured that we had “two seats in the middle”. Sure enough, they did have our tickets ready for us in the morning and we had seats number 25 and 26….the only thing was that when boarding the bus we soon found out that we weren’t the only ones with seats 25 and 26. We were told that we should just be patient, and we would only have to stand for about 45 minutes till we got to a town called Juliaca…you imagine our faces at this point. Luckily, we ended up finding two seats that happened to be empty…not everyone was so lucky. That 7 hour bus ride from Puno to Cuzco was the WORST bus ride I have ever experienced. I can’t even really fully describe it…I wish I had a video. The bus was full of some of the most “interesting people” I have ever seen. In two seats, there would be two adults and like two kids, along with about 80 million different bags and packages. The bottom of the bus (where our backpacks had to go) was jampacked haphazardly with another 80 million boxes, bags, blankets, tires, you name it. These people just loved to eat and anytime the bus would stop for a few minutes there was a mad rush off the bus to buy some sort of appetizing food to eat on the bus right next to us…for example, a boiled sheep head in a plastic bag. The trash was then always either thrown on the floor of the bus or right out the window into the beautiful Andean scenery…there was once a yelp from some poor person hit in the head below. At the time, Matt and I were so miserable and couldn’t even really laugh because it was so shocking…now we crack up about it and it’s become a good story. I hope I don’t have to experience that again, but I have a feeling that’s just the beginning of our unpleasant bus trips.

Here is a shot of Lake Titicaca from the bus ride from Arequipa to Puno. Puno is right on the Lake and there are tours you can take out to several islands…we hope to return to do that.

We finally made it to Cuzco a day later than planned and for the first few days, the weather was warm and absolutely beautiful. My friend Leeza and her boyfriend Pepe arrived to Cuzco on Friday, Christmas Eve. Leeza and I have been been friends for several years. She and I met when studying abroad in Alicante, Spain and have been really good friends since. She also lived in Madrid with me for four months of my time there, and we’ve travelled all over Spain and Europe together. This was actually our second Christmas abroad together…two years ago we spent Christmas in Venice, Italy. Leeza is now living part time in Monterey, Mexico, and that’s where she met her boyfriend Pepe. The day they arrived, the weather turned bad. It’s been raining and cold ever since. Regardless, we had an awesome week together! We spent Christmas Eve with my Peruvian family at my aunt’s house and then had Christmas Day lunch at my other aunt’s. Matt’s friend Kerstin arrived Monday morning, and Pepe, Leeza, and I went to Machu Picchu Monday and Tuesday. Matt will go with Kerstin later. We stayed in the town near Machu Picchu called Aguas Calientes for a night and went to Machu Picchu on Tuesday. It was my second time visiting Machu Picchu (I visited it when I was 15), and it was still shockingly beautiful. We had SO much luck the day we went and it didn’t rain the whole time we were there. It poured the day before and it poured the day after. Here are some pictures from Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

Matt and my cousin Fernando sitting in the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco. On Christmas Eve the plaza was packed with stands and people. The campesinos (country people) come down for this day to sell their crafts and also to get free chocolate for the kids…there were huge lines of campesinos waiting in line to get this chocolate. They also all slept in the plaza the night before the 24th.

Fernando and I in the Plaza de Armas, in front of one of the churches, called La Compania.

Here’s the other church in the plaza, La Catedral.

The center of the Plaza de Armas.

Do these two look familiar? They are the Spanish couple who were in our tour group to Colca Canyon. Their names are Miguel and Leticia, and they are so wonderful. We randomly ran into them at the bus station in Arequipa and then again at the train station in Cuzco. They’ve become our really good friends. They also happened to be going to Machu Picchu the same day as me, so we went up together. It’s so funny how many people we keep running into from previous places we’ve been.

Leeza and Pepe had just arrived! Pepe felt really sick from the altitude and had to stay in bed for the afternoon while Matt, Leeza, and I walked around.

Leeza and I at the top of Mirador San Blas with Cuzco behind us.

This is in Aguas Calientes, the town next to Machu Picchu. You can see how jungly the area is there…Machu Picchu is at the start of some jungle. This is actually the road up to the thermal baths there. The scenery around was absoulutely beautiful, but these thermal baths were not nearly as nice as the onces in Chivay. In fact, they were really disgusting and dirty and Leeza and I decided to leave…Pepe didn’t seem to mind though and stayed for several hours to get his money’s worth.

Machu Picchu is at the top of a mountain right next to Aguas Calientes. You can take a bus, but we decided to hike to the top. Leeza and Pepe decided to leave a little earlier, and I went with my Spanish friends Miguel and Leticia. This is the the path up to the top…all stairs for about an hour and a half! We were supposed to meet up with Pepe and Leeza once at Machu Picchu but ended up never finding each other.

Once you reach the top of the zillion stairs, you’re rewarded by this.

We planned to hike to the top of Hayna Picchu, which is the small mountain in the photos behind Machu Picchu, but we ended up not having enouy time. Leeza and Pepe did it though and said it was pretty amazing.

Yesterday was Leeza and Pepe’s last day here. Leeza and I decided to do horseback ride to several ruins just outside of Cuzco. Pepe and my cousin Fernando decided to go somewhere else. I absolutely love riding horses, and even though it rained much of the time, I loved every minute of the trip.

Leeza on her horse, Viento. The scenery was so beautiful!

This was our guide, Omar. He’s 11 years old and absolutely adorable…I seriously wanted to take him home with me. When I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he told me he wanted to do karate. He works as a horse guide during his vacations to save up money for karate classes.

We rode through tiny little pueblos that were just so picturesque.

A baby llama along the ride.

Leeza and I with some of the ruins fromTambomachay behind us. I have a lot more pictures of the ruins we saw yesterday, but my camera’s battery just ran out and I can’t download them, so this is it for now.

One last photo. The other night, a bunch of us went out together and had a really fun night. From the right, Miguel, Leticia, me, Kerstin, Matt, Leeza, Pepe, Fernando, and Fernando’s friend Johan.

The last two weeks have been super busy, and I can’t believe how much I’ve done in such a short period of time. Kerstin, Matt’s friend, will be here till the 8th, so we’ll stay in Cuzco till then. Matt and Kerstin are doing a lot on their own, so I’m going to enjoy just spending some time with my family here and may go to a couple small towns on my own for a couple nights. I’m looking forward to just taking it easy for little while before starting up some major travelling again. I hope all you have a great New Year’s Eve tomorrow night, whatever you do. I look forward to hearing from all of you about how your holidays went.

Matt and I arrived to Lima last Friday. I’ll have to say that even though I’ve been here several times, it was still a shock upon arriving. Argentina is so European that I didn’t really experience any culture shock at all when first arriving…Peru is very different from Argentina!!! We got to Lima Friday morning and luckily one of my mom’s cousins came to collect us from the airport…we were kind of in a daze from only having about 30 minutes of sleep the night before, and things would have been pretty interesting if we had to get a taxi ourselves. My mom’s cousin, Susanna, got a taxi for us and took us to our hostel and was such a huge help! She also took us to a really typical Peruvian restaurant for lunch (which we would have NEVER gone in without her), and we had an awesome lunch for $2 each. Susanna also gave us the lowdown on how to take a “combi”, which is the Peruvian form of public transportation. There aren’t normal buses like in Buenos Aires, just small bus/van things that pick you up and drop you off where ever you want along their route. It’s a bit scary to jump on one if you don’t know what do do and say, so it’s so great that Susanna was able to tell us how to do it…otherwise, again, we would have NEVER done it on our own. Taxi’s are different here in Peru than in Argentina too…there aren’t any meters or anything, so you have to use your bargaining skills to get a price for the journey before you jump in the car. Most foreigners get charged WAY too much because they don’t know how to bargain. Within the 3 days spent in Lima, Matt and I got pretty good to bargaining our taxi rides and taking the combis…we were pretty proud of ourselves, although I’m sure we got ripped off a couple times. One really stupid thing I did while in Lima, right at the start, was I left my organizer on the seat of the taxi that took us to our hostel…I could have killed myself when I realized what I did! I didn’t have anything like money or anything like that in it, but I lost all phone numbers, addresses, email addresses and all contact info I had gotten from people prior to coming to South America. Oh well, hopefully that’s the worst thing I lose along this trip.
Matt and I left Lima Monday afternoon, after spending the whole morning trying to get our yellow fever vaccine that we need in order to get into Brazil from Peru…it was a pain in the butt, but we finally got it done. I swear Brazil better be amazing…you can’t imagine the trouble we’ve gone through to get there!!! We went to a tiny coastal town called Pisco that is just a few hours by bus from Lima and stayed one night there. While in Pisco, we took an excursion out the some islands called Las Islas Ballestas (called the poor man’s Gallapagos in our guide book.) It was really cool…mcuch better than I imagined. We went in small motor boat with a guide and about 20 ohter people. We saw so many animals, it was amazing. We saw dolphins, sea lions, and zillions of birds…including penguins! After Pisco we went to a town called Ica, where we spent one night. We visited a couple local bodegas (wineries) where they make wine and pisco (the most typical Peruvian alcohol), a modern one and one that is super old and traditional…they dance on the grapes to smash out the juice! They do that in March though, so we didn’t get to see them do it. While in Ica, we actually stayed in a tiny town just outside of Ica called Huacachina. It’s right in the middle of enormous sand dunes and we rented a couple sand boards (meaning a piece of wood with velcro straps on it) and went sand boarding…not as cool as I thought it would be since the wooden planks don’t work so well. We left Ica Wednesday night and took an overnight bus to Arequipa, where we are now. Oh my god, that bus ride was one of the craziest experiences. The bus driver seriously was going like 80 miles an hour on tiny moutain roads and even around sharp corners. He also loved passing up huge trucks on the two lane road with traffic coming quickly in our dirrection…I honestly thought we were going to die several times. Not exactly the easiest conditions for falling asleep…Matt and were absolutely bewildered by all the snoring Peruvians surrounding us. Thanks to our maniac bus driver, we made it to Arequipa in record time and arrived two hours early, despite leaving an hour late. Matt and I have decided to only take first class buses from now on…the driving may not be any better, but at least we’ll die in class!
So, anyway now we’re in Arequipa. We’re staying with some relatives of mine whom I just met for the first time yesterday. They are really friendly and are so nice for having us stay with them, but at times we feel a bit “trapped”… they insist on always eating with them, doing things with them, etc. Again though, they are SO nice for accepting two more or less strangers into their home!!! Arequipa is a really nice little town with a really beautiful center and a lot to see and do. We went out with my cousin and his girlfriend last night and had a really fun night…Matt is absolutely LOVING all the female attention he’s getting here in Peru. You should have seen him last night, just surrounded by beautiful girls on that dance floor! As my uncle called them today, “casadores de gringos” (gringo hunters.) Tomorrow, Matt and I are planning to take a two day excursion into Colca Canyon, a nearby canyon where we are going to go see condors. Well, here are some photos from this past week!

This is the Plaza de Armas in Lima. It is SO much nicer and cleaner than I remember it being when I last visited it about 10 years ago. All of Lima is actually really clean. There are people in little orange suits sweeping up constantly. It was especially noticeable to us since we were coming from Buenos Aires, which is definitely not the cleanest city in the world.

The plaza was all decorated for Christmas. It was really pretty.

Here’s a picture of a hill in Lima. You can see the pueblo joven, which is what the shanty towns that surround Lima are called. We really got to see a ton of pueblos jovenes on our way out of Lima by bus…it was pretty incredible to see the living conditions.

The coast in Lima. This day was actually a little bit sunny. It’s rarely sunny in Lima.

This is my mom’s cousin Susanna who helped us out so much. Our hostel was just across from this park, yes that is a statue of Kennedy…the park is called Parque Kennedy.

Matt enjoying a nice refreshing Incakola…the most popular soda in Peru. It tastes like bubble gum and looks like pee.

We went to my mom’s uncle’s house for lunch one day. These are some of my family…Uncle Cansio, Jose, Vilma, and Susanna. Oh yes, we had Incakola!

My cousin Erin is living in Lima with her husband Tim. They teach in an international school. We met with them one afternoon.

These are what the combis look like. There’s always a guy at the door yelling out the route to people on the sidewalk.

This, on the other hand, is the public transportation in Pisco. They’re fun to ride around in! The church in the back had a big banner with a National Geographic on it. We think maybe it was in National Geographic?

This is the Plaza de Armas (main plaza) in Pisco.

This was on our trip out the Islas Ballestas. All the little black things underneath the arc are sealions.

Penguins!!!! They were so cute.
These are Peruvian boobies!

This was on the way out to the islands. They aren’t exactly sure who did it…either the Nazcas or the Incas. We decided not to go to Nazca because we were told that you can’t really see the lines without going up in a plane. It was cool to see this though!

This was our hostel in Ica, or actually Huacachina. It was basically a gringo haven…so many gringos! It looks a lot nicer than it actually was. The bathrooms were absolutely discusting!!

Matt checking out the slopes.

This was our tour guide to the bodegas, Williams. He was actually our taxi driver on the way to the hostel and convinced us to do the tour of the wineries with him. He was a really nice guy! They put all the grapes in that big cement thing and dance on them, then put the big log down to get the rest of the juice.

Me and williams. They keep the wine in those big ceramic things behind us…all just piled up in that room like that.

Here’s a painting of how they dance on the grapes. If you go in March, you can actually jump in and join them!

Yes, we got to taste it! It was all really good, but the pisco was super strong.

This is my uncle (not my uncle, but I’m not sure what to call him) in Arequipa. He showed us all around yesterday.

This is the whole family. Floro, Josefina (my grandfather’s cousin), and Jose.

The cathedral in the Plaza de Armas in Arequipa.

The central market here in Arequipa. It’s huge and really cool.

You can just barely see it behind all the haze, but this the Volcano Misti here in Arequipa.

The river here in Arequipa.

This is my cousin Jose and his girlfriend Brenda.

Here’s Matt last night, just loving all the attention he’s getting from las Peruanas!

Yay!!!! This was in a market in Lima…it was the name of the little shop. Chaska, for those of you who don’t know, means star in Quechua (the Incan language.) Wasi means house.

Wow! Tonight is my last night in Argentina. I have to really hurry with this post because I don’t have much time! The south was absolutely beautiful…breathtaking really. Matt and I spent a week total down there…two full days travelling (22 hours on the bus each way!) and 5 nights in hostels in the south. We started off in San Martin de Los Andes and spent two night there. The weather was awesome and we were able to take full advantage of it and went biking and hiking. The town is adorable and really looks exactly like any mountain town in the States or anywhere else for that matter. Here are a few photos from our time in San Martin.

This a view of the lake in San Martin taken when Matt and I rented bikes one day. The water in the lake was an amazing color of blue…not sure if the photo really does it justice!

Another photo of the lake taken along the bike ride.

We biked over to the other side of the lake to this little beach called Playa Catritre. The water is so high right now though that there isn’t much of a beach. We had packed ourselves a lunch and ate it here…it was so peaceful and beautiful. There are campgrounds here, but they weren’t opened for the season yet.

Later that same day we took a hike up to a lookout point on top of one of the mountains called Mirador Bandurias. Well, here’s a shot of Matt just before we lost each other…we took different paths and never found each other again! I made it to the top but Matt ended up on the edge of huge boulder and had to turn around 🙂 .

Here’s me at the top…it was soooo beautiful. Too bad Matt couldn’t enjoy it 🙂 .

Here’s one of the views from the lookout point. It was actually located on an indian reservation for the Mapuche Inidians…the Native Americans from this region. You can see some of the houses and stuff from the reservation in the distance. I walked through their little village and even stopped to talk to a couple Mapuche women. They were incredibly friendly and reminded me so much of North Amercan Native Americans…the same love and respect for nature.

After San Martin de Los Andes, we took what is called the route of the 7 lakes with a small tour group. The weather was freezing and rainy this day, but it was still a really beautiful trip and the guide had a ton of interesting things to say. We ended the tour in a town called Villa la Angostura, where Matt and I left the group and stayed in a hostel for a night. It is a really cute little town with a lot of hiking and stuff to do around it, but the weather was really bad, so we barely left the hostel!

A waterfall along the route of the seven lakes. The scenery in this region is really amazing! It was a really great time of year to visit too since there was so much water and the flowers were in bloom.

One of the sevel lakes.

Another one of lakes…ok that’s all the lake shots I’ll show, I have like a zillion and they all look the same more or less!

Matt and I in Villa la Angostura.

Our hostel in Villa la Angostura was so nice…and only $6 an night!

After Villa la Angostura we went on to Bariloche, which is the biggest of the towns we vistied. It’s a really popular town for skiing in the winter. The weather was even worse there! It was FREEZING, rainy, and even snowy. It didn’t snow in the town, but we tried to take a hike down from a small mountain one day and it was snowing, windy, and completely covered in fog at the top so we couldn’t. Bariloche is really nice though, and we had a lot of fun in our hostel, where we met a lot of really cool people.

The middle of town in Bariloche.

Some snowy mountains in Bariloche.

Matt and I took a cable car up to the top of the little mountain we were going to hike down. You can see in the photo that we’re going straight into fog.

A view of the lake in Bariloche…I know it looks like all the other lakes!

Here are some of the friends we met in our hostel in Bariloche. We stayed a really cool place called Perico’s with a really good atmosphere. The guy in the back is Austin from Colorado. The guy in the front is Victor from Spain.

Here are some other friends at breakfast our last morning. The one in the glasses is Caroline, from France. The other is Katie, from England.

This is our friend Grace, an Argentinian woman we first met at our hostel in San Martin. She happened to be on the same tour with us to Villa la Angostura, at the same hostel as us there, on the same bus ride to Bariloche, and then we happened to run into her again at the bus station as we were leaving Bariloche!

Well, that was our trip to Patagonia! We got back to Buenos Aires yesterday afternoon and had a super busy day getting some important things done before we leave. Today is a holiday here, so we had to do everything yesterday. We’re staying with my friend Carina and she surprised us today with a going away lunch and invited a bunch of friends. We went to a really typical Argentinian restaurant and had a great time. I’m going to miss Argentina!!! I have really come to love it here. It’s funny, my first impressions weren’t the greatest, but now I can honestly say that I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this country (sorry for sounding cheesy.)

Here we all are at our good-bye lunch today…Maiko, Carina, Matt, me, Gustavo, Anita, Cynthia, and Jose Luis is taking the picture.

We went for ice cream after (Argentina has awesome ice cream!) Cynthia, Matt, Estefania, and Carina.

Me, Jose Luis, Maiko, and of course Gustavo 🙂 .

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.

So, the asado was excellent last Saturday! They ended up being very nice and didn’t order anything too strange. The Argentines eat just about every single part of the cow and there are special cuts and names for every part…honestly, they sell posters with diagrams of a cow with all the different cuts labeled as souveniers. Matt went to have asado with an Argentine friend last week and tasted all kinds of interesting and different cow parts, but my experience wasn’t so bad. I understand why they eat so much beef here…it really is incredible how much better it tastes than any other beef I’ve eaten. I’m not much of a meat eater back in the States, but I really like it here. You don’t even need to put any sauces or anything on it because it tastes so good on it’s own. Anyway, the asado was great and the company was excellent too. As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Carina took me for the asado, along with three of her friends. I was the only non-Argentine in the group for the evening so I spoke a lot of Spanish, which was great for me since I really speak way too much English on a daily basis. Carina’s friends are super funny and cracked me up all night. I really had one of the nicest times since I’ve been in Buenos Aires!
Sunday was a really great day too. I went to a nearby town called Tigre with Carina and another one of her friends. Tigre is a town located on a delta of a river and there are tons of little islands located in the delta with houses, campgrounds, and other resort style places all throughout the delta channels. It takes less than an hour to get to Tigre, so it’s a common daytrip to take from Buenos Aires. It was my first time leaving the city in the past two months that I’ve been here, and I’ll have to say it was great to have a break from the bussiness and noise. It’s amazing how completely different things are even just 10 minutes by train away from the city. We took the train to a town called San Isidro, which is a really wealthy suburb of BA, and we were planning to get on a train called El Tren de la Costa (Train of the Coast), which goes along the coast of the river to Tigre, but the train workers were on strike and the train wasn’t running. Strikes are super common here and all different aspects of daily life are affected by them all the time! We ended up taking a bus to Tigre instead. It was actually really cool to take the bus since I was able to see all the towns in between… it was the first time that I’ve seen houses since I’ve been here since all the homes in the center of Buenos Aires are apartments. Everything seemed so quiet in comparison to the craziness of the city that I’ve become so used to in the past couple months! Tigre is super touristy, especially on the weekends, so it was pretty crowded there, but it was really nice and I really enjoyed it. I included some photos from the trip at the end of this post. One other thing that really made an impact on me from my trip that day was that I was really able to see the gap between rich and poor that is so evident here in Agrgentina if you pay attention. Along the train and bus rides that day, just five minutes or less away from each other, I saw enormous mansions and the typical “villas” (shantytowns). I had heard lots from my students about the villas, which is where thousands of poor Argentines live, but this was the first time I had actually seen them…huge areas of homes made from slabs of wood, cardboard, or any other material that you can think of. It was pretty incredible to see that and then just a few minutes later see some of the biggest, most extravegant houses I’ve ever seen.
This past week was pretty eventful for me, because aside from the asado and Tigre trip last weekend, I also went to a Manu Chau concert this week. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Manu Chau, it’s a Spanish/French band that sings in a lot of different languages. The guys who took me to the asado had an extra ticket and invited me to go with them. My friend Carina went too. I saw Manu Chau in Madrid, so this was my second time seeing him and his band. It was a great concert and I had a lot of fun! This weekend Matt and I are going to Rosario, a city that is located in the Province of Santa Fe and is about three hours from Buenos Aires. My friend Carina is originally from there and has invited us to go home with her for the weekend. We’re both really looking forward to it since we haven’t seen any other part of Argentina yet. I’ll let you know how it was in my next post. I hope you’re all doing well and thanks to all of you who actually read everything I write! I know I write a lot and it takes time to read. I swear I try to make it brief each week, but somehow I always end up writing more than I planned.

Here’s the group that took me for the asado last Saturday night. Carina is the one to my left. The two guys are two of her students and are named Gustavo and Jose Luis. They are the ones who we went to the concert with too. The across from Carina is her friend Mercedes.

Carina and I on a street corner in the town of Tigre. There are tons of shops that sell super cheap wood furniture on this street…I kept wishing I had a house to furnish because it was all so nice and cheap!

Here are Carina, Estefania, and I in front of the “Puerto de Frutos”, which is a little port on the river in Tigre where they have lots more little shops with cheap home furnishings.

Another picture of the Puerto de Frutos.

Here are some cute little boats that were docked at the little port.
Here is a view of the river in Tigre.

We took a boat down the river to see all the homes and stuff that are on the little islands. Here are Carina and Estefania in the boat.

These were all photos taken from the boat. It was really interesting to see all the houses located on the islands and to see the people who lived in them riding their boats around to get from one place to another. This last photo is a floating gas station for the people to fill up their boats!

Some of you may have been watching the news and be aware of some things going on here in Argentina at the moment. For those of you who aren’t, Bush is here right now. Needless to say, Bush is not very popular here AT ALL… then again, is there anywhere in the world where he’s very popular? The reason for his visit is a big summit called La Cumbre de los Americas, which is a meeting of 24 presidents from throughout North, Central, and South America. One of the biggest things to be discussed is a free trade agreement for all of America, from Alaska to Patagonia. Bush is largely in favor of this agreement, but many countries are not, saying that this will only help the U.S. become richer but will do nothing favorable for the poorer countries. The main country that is against this agreement, and who has been the loudest to protest it is Venezuela. Their president, Hugo Chavez, was the first to stand up against the idea of this trade agreement. The summit is in a city called Mar de Plata, which is several hours from Buenos Aires, but life here has been affected by it as well. Over the last few weeks, there have been TONS of posters and flyers with anti-Bush slogans just about everywhere you look. There have been protests and manifestations, and it’s pretty clear that Bush is not welcome here in Argentina at all. One of the main people against Bush’s visit is Diego Maradona (the soccer star) , and he organized many anti-Bush events, including the main one that met in Mar de Plata yesterday, just before the meetings began. Hugo Chavez gave a speech that lasted over 2 hours at this event, and I watched the whole thing on TV…it was really interesting. Although this demonstration was very peaceful, there were several violent situations that happened yesterday, both in Mar de Plata and here in Buenos Aires. One thing that I have to say though, is that CNN and other American news stations are not accurate when commenting on these situations. Matt and I get CNN at home, and we were shocked at how exagerated the events of yesterday were described. The violence that occured was primarily by young delinquents who had no real political motive behind their actions, they just saw an opportunity to loot and cause trouble (sound familiar?) I hope that most of you already know this, and that you don’t take what you see and read in American media as solid facts. Anyway, sorry for going on about this whole thing so much…it’s just been something pretty big here recently, and I feel like it’s pretty important stuff.
Despite all the drama related to Bush recently, life here in Buenos Aires has been good. I can’t believe that I only have about a month left here. Originally I really couldn’t wait for December to get here, so all the fun travelling would begin. Now I really think I will be sad to leave here when the time comes. I’m still super excited about all the travelling coming up and can’t wait for it, but I’ve really started to get the hang of things here and am enjoying my life here. I really feel like I’m learning so much everyday…it’s amazing how much I’ve learned about all aspects of Argentina. My students honestly teach me so much, it feels like they teach me a lot more than I teach them! We have such great conversations about politics, poverty, the healthcare and education systems, and all kinds of other interesting topics…I really can’t tell you how much I love learning about this stuff in other countries…talk about having your mind opened and horizons expanded. I felt like this while I was in Spain and was learning all about their culture and issues as well. It’s soooo different to actually live somewhere, as opposed to just visiting for a short while! Just a couple things that some of you might be interested in knowing about life here in Argentina: A police officer and teacher start off making about 300 to 400 pesos a month ($100 to $135)… I really couldn’t believe this when I first found this out. The poverty line is 700 pesos a month, which means that a lot of the population is living under the poverty line. In fact, over 50% of children in Argentina live in homes under the poverty line. This is something that would come as really shocking to tourists who visit Argentina…the image you get when you visit is a very stylish, modern, European feeling country. Most of this extreme poverty came as a result of the crisis of 2001, and it will take a very long time and a lot of work to fix it. I’ve mentioned this before, but Matt and I started off complaining about our low wages here…the truth is, we’re really lucky to be making what we are.
Well, I’ve become really good friends with one of the Argentinian English teachers who works for the same school as me and have been hanging out with her a lot recently. Today, she and a couple of her students are going to take me out to a typical Argentinian “asado” (barbeque) . I’m sure I’ll be eating lots of interesting animal parts…I’m going to try my hardest to be brave and not be rude and eat everything they give me! I’ll tell you how it goes.

Yesterday marked 6 weeks in Buenos Aires for Matt and I. Time has gone by really quickly, but at the same time it feels like we’ve been here forever. Like I said last time, I truly feel like I’m living here now and have gotten into somewhat of a routine with work and life in general. At first the Argentinian Spanish was really difficult for me to understand, but I’m really feeling like I’m starting to understand it a lot better and am even starting to speak more like an Argentine. They honestly don’t understand me if I don’t pronounce my y’s like j’s, so I’ve had to conform!
Aside from yesterday being our 6 week mark here, it also happened to be my 26th birthday. As my friend Leeza pointed out to me, this is the third birthday I’ve spent out of the U.S.(I turned both 22 and 24 in Spain.) I had a really nice birthday yesterday. Although it was definitely one of the most random birthday celebrations I’ve had, it was a lot of fun and a great day. Just by chance, all my classes were cancelled yesterday, so I ended up having the whole day free. As I’ve told some of you, the shopping here in Argentina is awesome…the cutest clothes and shoes and at really great prices because of the exchange rate. Kristy or Nanette, if you read this, tell Maria Nodarse she was right about the shoes! Since I’ve been here I haven’t allowed myself to buy any clothes at all because I really need to save every penny for my future travelling and because I don’t have room to bring anything back anyway. Yesterday I let myself buy a few things, and it was great. Afterwards I went to dinner with a really random group of people…several of whom I met for the first time last night! It’s a long story, but there were 8 of us total and we had a really great time at an Italian restaraunt called El Arte del Mafia, which has an Italian Mafia theme. There were more Argentines than Americans, so we spoke Spanish the whole night…I’m so glad to finally be making Argentinian friends!
Aside from the friends from last night, Matt and I, very randomly again, met two really cool s last week–one American (from Burbank, CA) and one Canadian. We met up with them for the first time last Sunday and went out for a drink in San Telmo and then invited them over for dinner the next night. Matt made his “famous fajitas” (Madrid posse, I’m sure you remember these!) in our less than professional kitchen and we had a great time having our first dinner guests over. The s have both been travelling for the last couple months and left for Rio and Peru the day after our dinner party. The American, Maiko, will be back in Buenos Aires in a couple weeks and will stay through December. She’s really cool and we’re looking forward to meeting up with her when she returns.

Here are some photos. I hope you enjoy them!

Here’s the birthday dinner at El Arte del Mafia. The on my right is my friend Carina who is Argentian and teaches English for one of the schools I teach for. The guy across from me is Roy, one of my students. The across from Matt is an Argentinian English teacher who works with Matt (one of the people I just met last night!) The guy on the left side of the table at the end is Joseph. Joseph is from Kansas and teaches for the same school as Carina and I…the thing is, I didn’t meet him through the school. We met randomly met in the street last week! The next to him is his Argentinian fiance, and the guy across from him is one of his students (both new friends as of last night!)

This was an early birthday present on Wednesday. Matt surprised me with this delicious treat we learned about from the American and Canadian s we met last week. You all HAVE to try this. You cut up a strawberry and put it in between an oreo cookie. They’re called strawboreos and they’re amazing!!!

Here we are enjoying Matt’s famous fajitas. Maiko is the American and she’s the one in black. Kirsten is the Canadian and is sitting next to me.

Here’s Matt working his magic in our HUGE kitchen. The whole kitchen fits in a space that is smaller than my closet at home!

I wanted to update everyone on how things are going here since I didn’t really have the chance on my last post. I also have a few more pictures that I wanted to post. Well, it’s now been over a month since Matt and I got here. It’s pretty unbelievable. I definitely feel like I’m really getting to know Buenos Aires and I really feel like I live here now, instead of just visiting which is what it felt like at first. I just started subbing a couple new classes for a that will be gone for a month, so I’m now working 23 hours a week instead of 18 which I started out with. My students are all really cool people and I’m really learning a lot about Argentina from them…I feel like they’re teaching me a lot more than I’m teaching them sometimes! I just got a lesson on exactly what happened with the economy here in 2001 and why people are still out picketing on a regular basis (like every Tuesday and Thursdy right in front of our house with huge drums and megaphones!) I had an idea of what happened, but my student really explained it to me in simple terms and now I feel like I fully understand the situation, which is good so I don’t feel like an idiot every time the topic comes up! I’ll have to say that the generalizations about Argentines being stuck up or full of themselves that many of the travel books and people that I’ve talked with told me is definitely not true. For the most part the people here are so incredibly friendly and are really wonderful people. They love to talk and will talk your ear off if you let them, but that’s much better than the opposite. A couple of you wanted to know what the local people look like here in Buenos Aires. They look as different from each other as Americans do. Argentina is a country where people from many different cultures, primarily European, settled so the way the people look is really diverse. There are a lot of light skinned, light haired people as well as lots of people with dark features. The way people dress is really European, I felt like I was in Spain looking around at how people were dressed when I first arrived. The mullet is HUGE here! Just about every young guy has one and some have what Matt and I have started calling the “super mullet”, a really long, stylish one. Even young business guys have what we now call the “executive mullet.” It’s pretty funny.
Matt and I went to a travel agency the other day to change some dates on our tickets. As I’ve said before, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay down here for a full year like I had originally planned due to money. As of now, we’re staying in Argentina till December 9. We only have our apartment till the end of november, so we’re going to stop working then as well and spend the last week here travelling. December 9 we fly to Lima and will take a bus from lima to Cuzco, stopping several times in different towns. My good friend Leeza is going to meet us in Cuzco! I’m really excited to see her, and she may come with her boyfriend Pepe, who is from Mexico. We’ll all spend Christmas in Cuzco with my relatives, and then Matt has a friend coming to visit for a couple weeks just after Christmas. Matt and I will then be going to Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and finally Guatemala before coming home in mid April. That’s the plan for now anyway, but I may decide to stay a bit longer and change my ticket again. If I do, I’ll stay without Matt and leave him before going to Venezuela, but I’ll have to see how things go and if I can afford it. I’m really enjoying my time in Buenos Aires, but I definitely am looking forward to travelling and visiting smaller towns. Big city life is fun and exciting, but I can experience big cities anywhere in the world…I really want to experience some of the more traditional South American towns and culture.
Here are some more pictures of Buenos Aires that I didn’t get a chance to post before. I hope you enjoy them!

This is Congreso, the Congress building. It has a cool plaza in front of it, where I’m sitting in the picture.

Here is a really typical street scene in downtown Buenos Aires. There is lots of traffic all the time!

This is the Sunday street market in San Telmo that I told you about in the last post. There is a big outdoor antique market in this plaza and people selling things and performing in the streets all around.

Some street performers in San Telmo.

Tango is huge here in Buenos Aires and is all around. Here are some tango dancers, dancing in the streets of San Telmo near the Sunday market.

Here is the view from our apartment. The bank on the corner is where the super loud picketers set up every Tuesday and Thursday.

Here’s another view from the apartment. This was actually the day of the marathon, and the commotion at the end with all the people is where the finish line was.

Speaking of the marathon, here’s Matt coming in to the finish line. Just kidding, he’s actually running across Avenida 9 de Julio tying to avoid getting hit by busses or cars…I thought it was a pretty funny picture.

This statue is in the city botanical gardens. Matt and I thought it was hilarious. The gardens are actually really beautiful, and I wish I had more pictures. I’ll have to take more.

This is Sunday in a park in Recoleta, which is one of the wealthiest areas in Buenos Aires. They have a weekend outdoor market with a lot of really great jewlry, leather goods, and other stuff.

Antiques are a really big thing here and there are tons of shops and markets specializing in them. Here is an antique seller on wheels in an area of town called Palermo.

Ok, I finally have been taught how to upload pictures…wow, it’s kind of a big ordeal! It’s a lot harder for me to put pictures on my blog than it is for Matt to put on his, so it’s taken me a while to get around to it. I have a ton of pictures, but here are just a few to show you guys a little bit of Buenos Aires.

This is a really famous landmark in Buenos Aires, called El Obelisco. It’s right in the center of town and is located on street called 9 de Julio, which is supposedly the widest street in the world. It’s 16 lanes wide at one point. Our apartment is just a couple blocks away from here.

This is the port in Buenos Aires, Puerto Madero. There are tons of resaraunts and shops along here that are really new and modern. There are also a lot of business buildings, and a couple of my classes are held in buildings here.

This is Plaza de Mayo. There are tons of political protests here all the time, and this is where some of the violence occured in 2001 when they had the economic crash here.

Matt and I sitting in the Plaza de Mayo just a couple days after arriving.

This is the Recoleta Cemetary, where a lot of famous Argenines are burried, including Eva Peron. It’s huge and and pretty amazing.

Eva Peron’s grave. It’s not a very good picture because there were too many people surrounding it to get a really good shot.

This is a street in San Telmo, one of my favorite areas in Buenos Aires. There are tons of really cool antique flea markets here. There are also a lot of really cool cafes and bars in this area.

A group of really cute old men playing cards in Plaza Dorego, in San Telmo. This a really cool little plaza that reminds me a lot of the plazas in Spain.

On Sundays in San Telmo there is a big antique street fair in the center plaza, and all throughout the streets there are people selling things, playing music, and dancing tango. Here is a really big street band and some tango dancers from a couple weeks ago.

This is Plaza San Martin, a really cool plaza in an area called Retiro, a few blocks from our house. Since we live in the center of town, it’s nice to have plaza like this closeby to go sit in and get away from all the noise and traffic right by our house!

A different part of Plaza San Martin.

Mate is a HUGE part of Argentine life. Mate is a really strong herbal tea that you drink out of a thing like the one in the picture. Argentines absolutely love this stuff and drink it all the time. If you go a park or plaza, people all around you are drinking it and talking. They drink it in the street, at the office, at home…they drink it like crazy. I think it tastes pretty gross, but I guess it grows on you.

I have a lot more pictures that I’d like to post, but I’m going kind of crazy here because it’s kind of a huge pain to do here in the internet cafe. I will post some more really soon, but for now hopefully you enjoy these ones! I really do have a lot more that I wanted to post now, but I just dont have the time right now. I will write an update on how things are going very soon too.