Today I was "scolded" for not having posted on my blog for quite some time.
So my resolution to make up for my latent oversight is to write one entry every day this weekend. That, I think, should just about get me back up to speed.
The priority right now is to recount my recent excursions, through Argentina and beyond.
Two weekends ago, the IFSA-Butler program took us on a trip to Colonia, Uruguay. My first thought was naturally: THIS IS AWESOME I GET ANOTHER STAMP IN MY PASSPORT! Obviously, I wasn't quite seeing the whole package of the trip quite yet. Colonia is beautiful. It's just a hop, skip, and Buquebus boat ride (similar in idea to the JFK ferry ride...except cooler) across the Río de la Plata. When we all got to the Buquebus terminal at the butt crack of dawn, aka 9AM, which really is dawn in Argentina time, we found out that we had two options: hang out at the terminal for an hour to take the 1-hour speed ferry to Uruguay, or get on a 3-hour boat right away. Uh hello...obviously we all waited around, had giant breakfasts and muchos cafés con leche courtesy of IFSA, and boarded the Uruguay express.
This brings me to a point about life in South America. They don't quite have all the wrinkles of life ironed out quite yet. For instance, if you can motor to Uruguay in one hour, why even still do it in three? Not only is that a pain, but if they only offer one hour services, they can make more money off of every ticket, instead of still selling marginally less expensive tickets. This is also very similar to how I want to introduce Latin America to great shopping venues, like Party City and Target. Heck, I'd even settle for a Wal Mart or a Staples. Here's the reason why: at the intersection of the street I live on and a street 3 blocks east, there are three stores en la esquina: one that sells ONLY paper goods (plates, napkins, cups, etc.), one that sells ONLY gift wrap and bags and tissue paper, and one that sells ONLY boxes. Welcome to the idea of Fiesta Central: you can sell all of that and more, in bulk, and combine into one store and have to pay less Buenos Aires rent every month. Problem solved. Just like if they upgraded to selling packages of 3, 5, or 24 markers/highlighters/pens instead of having to pay 5-24 pesos A PIECE for stupid pens and pencils. This semester, I'm not lending a pen to anyone, not even for 5 minutes. And then there would be the great venture for Target to make its way down the long road south. Then I wouldn't have to go to one store for shower flip flops, one store for yoga pants, another store for tape, another store for greeting cards, and yet one last stop at ye olde Farmacity, where you can't walk around inside with your bags filled with your things from all the other stores, so you have to leave them in a heap in a locker by the door.
I think I'm going to become a venture capitalist in starting a wholesale business down here. Can you say gold mine?
Anyway, back to Uruguay. So after our speedy jet across the river, we were in a beautiful place. Colonia is essentially and old port city. And hundreds of years after the Spanish invasion, it still looks more or less exactly like it did back then. There are hardly any new facades on buildings, all the streets are still cobblestone, and there's one building that holds el jardín de infantes, colegio, y escuela secondaria. The people were all so nice, which makes since since 100% of their livelyhood depended on me, la tourista.
But before I get caught up in reminiscing about the city, let me tell you about our first stop in Colonia: Mario's estancia. Mario is the program director/head honcho/big shot at IFSA. He's probably one of the greatest people I've ever met. He knew everyone's name on day one...and there's 140 of us. He didn't get a single persons' name wrong. He's also loaded, and often forgets that not everyone has an iPhone, or a Blackberry, or some kind of smartphone in general. And when he talks about Argentine culture he often has a lapse in memory that us broke American college students can't afford swanky opera seats or fancy tango dinner shows. Or we at least can't afford it until Mom and Dad come pay us a visit..
But aside from his minor human flaws, he's a great man. Him and his partner have a townhouse in the city, and then they have their estancia which doubles, apparently, as a bed and breakfast. I told Mario after being there for a millisecond that I would not only be booking my wedding there, but I will also be retiring there so he has to be packed up and moved out by the time I'm really old, like 45 or something ;)
After our walk down a long, windy driveway, we found ourselves in front of a beautiful ivy-covered estate house. The house has an asado grill/fireplace built into the outside of it, so the first thing we smelled was our lunch, which consisted of freshly barbecued every kind of chicken/meat/sausage that you could ever imagine. With our lunch we got homemade Sangria, a million side dishes (literally), salad, fresh veggies, bread, and an assortment of fruit, followed by various tortas for dessert. I think I must've eaten enough to feed the whole SJU hockey team.
After we were sufficiently stuffed, we all disregarded Mom's "wait 30 minutes to swim after you eat" and jumped right into the pool. We combo swam and tanned for about 3 hours. What can I say, us study abroad kids lead a tough life.
Finally, after sunset, Mario kicked us out, but mostly just because we had a tour of the town planned that night. The tour was interesting, I learned a lot. I also learned I'm that girl on tour that I hate giving ours of SJU to...what goes around really does come around. Anyway, it was very informative, but the only bad thing was it wasn't like when you go on a tour of DC at night and it's so cool because all the monuments are lit up and it gives you a whole different perspective. This was more there aren't any lights outside anywhere in the whole town so you can't see anything and your pictures are all of just blackness so you have to come back in daylight.
After the tour, we had a girls night Italian dinner. Then we called it a night so we could make it to the beach early the next day.
The beach wasn't that big, but we were essentially the only people there so it was awesome. The water was interesting because since it's the Río de la Plata, the bottom isn't sand, it's clay. So during the day the water has this murky brown color that makes it look like you shouldn't go anywhere near it. But really it's totally safe and it was really warm, and it's not dirty at all. The clay doesn't even stick to you when you get back out! We spent the whole day getting our tan on, I tried riding my first Vespa, then we watched a beautiful sunset from the docks in the harbor, then went out for a group dinner with IFSA in a restaurant called Drugstore. We were the only people in the restaurant, mostly because we filled the whole place. But they even hired entertainment for us! It was awesome, and I got to have fish for dinner, and yes, yet more Sangria. This time though, the Sangria had kiwi and strawberry and bananas in it. DELISH! Fruit salad with a kick.
After dinner we went to hang out at the hotel that some of the IFSA kids were lucky enough to stay at. Oh, that's another think about Colonia. It's so small there isn't just like one big chain hotel. So we all had to get split up into tiny family owned hotels. Except for a few kids who got to stay at the same place the advisors stayed. AMAZING. So we hung out there, watched the Titanic, and called it a night.
Please don't be jealous of how cool we know we are.
The last day we were there, Monday, we walked around at the local Feria in the morning where I picked up a dreamcatcher and a sweet sweater. Then we hit the beach one last time. While we were there I collected some sea glass, the best free souvenir there is in my opinion. While we were at the beach we met this husband, preggo wife, and 18 month old baby who were from the states but travel the world for his job. I couldn't decide if I'd rather be him (his job sounded kind of stressful) or if I'd rather just be their traveling nanny, but I would love to travel as much as they did. Props to them for doing it with one, soon to be two babies too. We also met these fairly odd boys from Colorado, but fortunately Jimmy was at the beach with us, so they didn't stick around long. Then we caught a nice, slow, 3 hour Buquebus home back to Buenos Aires.
I would definitely consider going back to Uruguay once our Resedencia gets processed!
And finally, onto my second trip.
Last weekend I tackled Patagonia! I literally left my heart there. I'm for sure making it a point to get back there, and go further South than where we were in Bariloche, Río Negro. I want to see the glaciers. I want to climb a real Andes mountain (or maybe do that in Mendoza...but I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO SEE THE GLACIERS or else I will never forgive myself). It was absolutely stunning.
Bariloche is the land of seven lakes, so although the temperature down there (a casual 22 hour bus ride South of Buenos Aires) was a pleasant mid-50's scale, you never would have know it with the wind whipping off the lakes! I actually had a buy ear warmers and gloves. But we did so many things, it's definitely hard to pick a favorite. My only regret is that we didn't have more time.
We stayed at a hostel called 41 Below. I've never met such cool people in my life. I know have friends from Britain, Australia, and Holland. And I've decided I'm marrying a Dutch boy-they're all adorable, bike ride like fiends, and speak 5 languages. Oh, and they can cook, they know their beer, and they're part of 'social clubs' which are like fraternities, only bigger, cooler, and more prestigious and honors-society-esque in college. To me, that has husband material written allllllllllll over it!
The first day we were there, which was really a half day, we just took a walk around town and napped. And had the most delicious hot chocolate on the planet, from the #1 rated chocolate shop in Patagonia: Mamuschka. The second day though, Jess and I took full advantage of the weather and went on a 25K bike ride around all of Bariloche. That might have been one of the most physically challenging things I've ever done...you know, aside from throwing myself into the air and landing on ice time and time again. The views were beautiful though! Every lake view was picture perfect, and we ate lunch at the cutest little mountain inlet. While we were on our ride, we even found a mountain brewery! Too bad we got free samples and couldn't even finish them because they tasted like they had nature and sticks and twigs in them. The stream water we drank tasted a million times better than that narsty, grodie beer. Oh well, can't win 'em all. That night we got some good beer though with literally everyone from our hostel at the bar literally right next door. Yay bonding time!
The second day we went for a walk up to Cerro Otto, where we then took a gondola ride to the top and ate in a spinnng confeteria where we tested out the "best" cake in Bariloche. Boy, they were not kidding when they said it was the best. We downed our giant slice in under 2 minutes. Obviously we haven't acquired the ability to savor things just yet. Jess made fun of me for ordering a tall glass of milk with my cake, but it was once of the best decisions I've make in South America so far! Om nom nom!
Then we hiked around for a bit, found another scenic overlook to eat lunch at, and headed back down to the hostel. Two very interesting things happened on our walk back: First, Jess found 20 pesos on the ground in front of a packie. I made fun of her (mostly because I was jealous...$5 bucks is $5 bucks) saying she found it so now she could end her lame stories with "and then I found 20pesos." It was all fun and games until I looked over and saw, much to my disbelief, another twenty pesos on the ground! EUREKA! I was one happy camper after that. Then, after we became quasi-billionaires, we were almost back to our hostel when we heard music coming from somewhere not so far away. Naturally it was American rap/hip-hop/pop music so went naturally went to go see where it was coming from. Once we rounded the corner, we saw the most run-down, ghetto version of a Fast and Furious style car show! It had everything from the tricked out whips with big shiny rims, to music blasting, to the car owners' "hot" girlfriends soaking up the limelight sitting in the front seats of the cars. It was interesting, especially once we realized the "DJ" was a pimped out tractor-trailer cab. HA.
Only in Bariloche.
That night we came back, introduced our foreign friends to some quality American television...starting with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Then we weren't going to go out, but when my future 5 language speaking Dutch husband asked me to go, I couldn't say no (NOTE: he's actually a stand in for my husband until I find a real one, since Arthur has a girlfriend so he's off the market. But I'm determined to find his twin). It was low-key since it was a Sunday night, and we had fun!
Finally, Monday rolled around. We had just enough time in the morning to pick up some chocolate goodies and snacks for the ride, and then it was time for us to head back to BsAs.
That concludes the stories of two of the best weekend of my life. Or well, two of the best weekends until I go back to see the glaciers, to Iguazu, to Río de Janero, to Salta, to Mendoza, to Chile, or you know, just to Macchu Pichu...
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