Blogueloche, o Argentina Blogarina

Gracias, Difunta Correa!!

2010-05-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

Hola!!! Where were we.... Oh I remember...

Kaia, whom I’ve known since I was 3, decided to come visit!! Fun!!

First, we tooled around Bariloche while we waited for Zig to return. I finally went up the Teleferico at Cerro Otto, a main Barilochense tourist attraction.

On the way up, we saw a poster of Smokey the Tero. Only you can prevent forest fires SQUACK SQUACK. I’m not sure if he’s quite as effective as good old Mr. Bear. Plus the acronym is SPLIF, which is just funny.

Also, we shared our teleferico car with this guy who was from Mexico City and spent the whole ride telling us how he liked Argentina because he didn't have to hire bodyguards to be there.

They had many unexpected things at the top of the mountain....

like replicas of David,

and some more expected ones...

like really bad sandwiches. I fail to be disappointed anymore.

The restaurant at the top of the mountain revolves, so we got lots of good pictures of Lago Nahuel Huapi in all its glory.

Oooooh pretty!! And here we are enjoying our sandwiches...

And there were the usual Swiss-Argentinean St. Bernards. This one seemed to be on break.

When we got back down, I took Kaia to see the square, and we accidentally ran into a parade.

This was not a fun parade however. At first we couldn’t figure out what was going on because there were some signs for Communism, and some for students, and some for the Mapuche, and even some for the Centro Atomico. It seemed like a very strange mix of protestors.

This is the Mapuche flag.

Then Nicolas popped up out of nowhere. I think he has an “Austin is confused and needs an explanation” Spidey Sense. That day was the anniversary of the start of the most recent Argentinean dictatorship, which lasted from 1976-1983. This dictatorship is remembered for its brutality. People were regularly kidnapped and “disappeared.” It is suspected that the Desaparecidos were drugged and dropped out of airplanes into the Rio de la Plata while still alive. Parades were happening all over the country commemorating the people who were murdered by that government.

Nicolas explained that the word button is used for people who informed to the government on “dissidents” who were subsequently disappeared, which is why they had this buttons on sticks. They displayed the names of some of those people.

I was really glad that we accidentally happened across the parade and that Nicolas was there to explain. It seemed that generally, people use that day to exercise their right to free speech, which is why so many different groups were there with so many different messages. Nicolas said that the only people who aren’t invited are the military and the Nazis.

We had a couple of days before Zig came back, so we spent that time doing pretty much nothing. Doing nothing is one of my favorite activities. Its very relaxing.

We did see another parade, which was of crazed La Boca fans celebrating a win. I was glad they won, because if they lost I don't know what would've happened.

We also had an adventure at the post office. Kaia had to mail some stuff home. If you mail everything in packages less than 2 kilos, then you don’t have to talk to customs, even if its like 5 packages. The man at the post office REALLY wanted to help Kaia do that. Then he wanted me to tell her that she stole his heart and was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and that he was deeply in love. I suspected that since he didn’t speak English and she didn’t speak Spanish, it wasn’t going to work out. We got those packages mailed real quick though.

Then Zig came back!! So we went to El Bolson. It was just like its been the last few times. We bought some crafts. We also saw a very large group of Kumbayah Kids wearing earthtone hemp outfits, and Bat Dog. We were sure he’d take flight at any moment.

And then Zig got accosted by a lady who kept saying if he gave her money she would give him something, so when he did, she gave him a piece of wood. It was amusing to watch from a distance. He will cherish that piece of wood forever.

Zig had to stay an extra day to finish up some work, so Kaia and I decided to go on to Mendoza and meet up with him the next day. This turned out to be one of the most eventful bus rides of my time in Argentina.

First, apparently, we were on a First Class bus. I had no idea they had those. If I had, I wouldn’t have been riding with the peons this whole time!! Just kidding. Also apparently, the only difference between a First Class bus and a regular bus is that you play bingo for a bottle of wine before dinner. Some people were really into it. There was a tense moment when the microphone stopped working, so someone in the back of the bus made the man repeat all of the numbers from the entire game. I SO almost won. But I didn’t.

So then after the exciting game of bingo, we had a group trip to the bus bathroom because Kaia didn’t know where it was. While I was in there, I hear some chatting going on outside the door. Then when I came out, Kaia was nowhere to be seen. Where could she have gone, you ask? Well, my confusion was remedied by the bingo man, who pointed to the bus cockpit. I leave for 30 seconds and Kaia manages to get invited into the bus cockpit. I’m sensing a theme.

So I followed. Then the bus driver goes, “You speak Spanish??” in Spanish. “THANK GOODNESS!” Then the second bus driver made me tell Kaia that she was a “gift from the moon” and that he was deeply in love as well. I have no idea what they could possibly have been talking about until I got there. Then they invited us to have mate with them after dinner. Then I told them we had to leave, and after dinner I pretended to be asleep. Kaia has a way with service industry employees.

On to Mendoza!! Many of you Specs patrons may recognize the name, as it is the main producer of Malbec wines.

There was a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary in the bus station.

Our first day, we just sort of wandered around. I introduced Kaia to the medialuna, which is Argentina’s version of a croissant. I would estimate there’s about a cup of sugar in each one. Kaia really enjoyed it. Also, there was a very misleading sugar packet. See if you can figure out why I was so confused. Maybe Argentineans sometimes just feel like skipping the tea part and just going with sugar water, so then the word tea means sugar.

We went to this church too, which has a statue of Virgin Mary (I think its the same one that was in the bus station), which survived an earthquake that knocked down the whole rest of the church it was in.

Also, we had pizza for lunch, which of course was terrible, but we didnt want to throw it away. Then, people begging kept on coming up and asking us for peices, so we got rid of the whole thing! It was a win-win situation.

The next day, Zig showed up. I asked immediately if he got to play bingo, and he pulled out the bottle of wine he won!! He said he and this girl tied, and he was going to split the bottle with her on the bus but the bingo man made them have a play off. Bingo isn’t a game for compromise. He also said that he thought she was Dutch (we really like Dutch people, they’re always nice), so he was sad he couldn’t make friends with her.

First, went to the old town center, which has a museum of the city’s history. We were early, because apparently Wednesday morning is Field Trip Day!! They were having a reenactment of colonialism out front and we accidentally walked through it. Then we had to crouch and hide from the indigenous people or they might cut our heads off. And then a priest yelled at Kaia in English that she was going the wrong way. Close call.

Then this old man (like 90 years old) came up and started telling us about the history of the square and how the daughter of General San Martin (a hero of Argentinean independence). And then about how Mendocinos are so much nicer/better than people from Buenos Aires. Then he said he had to go take his medicine and wandered away.

As the man told us and we learned later in the museum, Mendoza was leveled in 1861 by a really violent earthquake. After that, the city center was moved to its current location and everything was rebuilt to better withstand earthquakes. The museum is located at the site of the old Cabildo, and you can see remnants of the original buildings, like this church.

This monument thingy shows what the square used to look like.

We had to kill some time until noon when Field Trip Day was over, so we wandered around and saw some churches and a pomegranate bush....

Then I noticed that the map had a SNAKE MUSEUM. So we went there.

It was super homemade looking and slightly gerryrigged. Who knows where they got the snakes.

Finally we got to go to the museum without being accosted by angry conquistadors. Here’s some stuff we saw in the museum...

The foundations of the original Cabildo.

and some old pictures, one with a "Naranja Crush" billboard. Who loves orange soda??

Next we wandered around town some more. We saw this giant Menorah. Did you know that Argentina has the largest Jewish community in South America??

These houses were right across the street from our hostel. Zig's taxi driver told him this first one is particularly old (like 1700s old), as are many in the neighborhood. I just liked the pretty color of the second one.

Then Kaia had to visit the "Cash Dispenser." Random time to choose English guys.

Next we went to a restaurant called Winery to do a wine tasting. It was going to take too much time to rent bikes and go out to the wineries, plus it was flipping hot and I don’t like to sweat. We tried 6 different wines. And they were tasty. Apparently there were flavors, like cherries and oak and even cigarette smoke. Thats about all I know about that. PLUS, we had CHEESE. Which is one of my favorite foods.

THEN, we went back to our hostel and they were having a free olive oil tasting, which is the other thing they make in Mendoza. It tasted like olive oil.

THEN ADDITIONALLY, we went to dinner at this other place with lots of wine, and had really tasty tasty food. On the way there, we walked through the town square, which seemed to be the center of Mendocino nightlife. They had a really cool crest of the province (also named Mendoza) made out of Christmas lights. I was thoroughly impressed by their civic pride.

The next day we took the bus to San Juan, which is slightly north of Mendoza. We had to go there because there were no more rental cars left in the City of Mendoza, it being Easter weekend. San Juan was definitely not a tourist town, and pretty much everything was closed for Good Friday. There was a man with a pony and a llama, however.

Then, Zig had an accident. This is how it went from Kaia's perspective: Zig drops his thermos. He picks it up, opens it, and his face turns furious. Austin says, "It broke!!" Kaia thinks, "No kidding. Why is she being sarcastic to Zig?" Zig says, "It DID break!!!" as if this were a revelation to him. Apparently, he was making an angry face because he instead of realizing it broke, he was thinking "Some JERK put glass in my termo!!" Kaia then pointed out how lucky I was to have found a man more out of touch with reality than I am.

This is Mr. Sarmiento, the founder of Argentinean public education. I like how he's protecting the little girl from the pigeons.

Next, we got our car. We had two things to see on our drive: 1) Parque Provincial Iguachilasto and 2) Barreal, the home of carrovalismo, or wind surfing on a little car. Google it. Here's a map with all the places we stopped at.

Because these are in different directions, we had to drive lots. So even though we didn't get our car until 5pm, we started driving north towards the park right away. But we were waylaid by an interesting cultural phenomenon, the Difunta Corea. Because I had read the guide book (something which other people do NOT do), I knew what was going on. We were intrigued, and decided to stop on our way back, so more on that later.

Apparently, Easter weekend is a big weekend for this part of Argentina. Lots of families are visiting the park, and lots are visiting Difunta Correa, so all of the biggest (still small) towns had no room in the inn. Luckily, we speak Spanish. So at Chucuma, the first town after the Difunta Correa in Vallecito, we asked at the kiosco if there would be a hotel somewhere. The lady said, "Go on to Astica, ask for Sr. Fernandez. Tell him Betty sent you." Betty? Really? Thanks Betty!!

So we spent the night in Sr. Fernandez's hotel for 70 pesos. There were farm animals.

The next morning, we were on our way to the park. We saw a herd of horses and donkeys...

And several small churches which were very pretty. Heres one.

We finally made it to the Parque Provincial Ischigualasto around 10. Its a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To get around the park, all the cars caravan. So we lined up.

This park consists of spectacular geologic formations from several periods, specifically the Jurrasic, Triassic, and Mesozoic. This is the site where they have found most of the dinosaur fossils from Argentina (which is alot). Apparently, they were found first by the indigenous people, who thought they were llamas. Second, they were found by the gauchos, who thought they were dead cows. Minds always jump to the most relative thing, don't they. Finally, the geologists came and decided they were neither llamas nor cows. There were lots of pretty colored rocks (copper and iron and something else that I couldn't hear). Also, to make it better, they've named lots of the rock formations.

Behind us is The Worm.

Can you see the leaf fossil prints??? How cool is that??!!

Number 2 thing I hate most: When people touch/break/take things out of/litter in national (or provincial) parks. First, these two ladies kept scraping pieces of rock off The Worm. Nature is for everyone, NOT just for YOU. What if everyone scraped pieces off The Worm??? THEN THERE WOULD BE NO WORM LEFT. Second, we saw someone litter out of the car in front of us, so we made Zig tell the tour guide at the next stop. He proceeded to shame the Argentineans by telling them how embarrassing it is that a FOREIGNER saw them destroying their own national treasures.

PS, Number 1 thing Austin hates: People who talk in libraries. Dante forgot a circle in hell, and its reserved for people who have cell phone conversations in libraries. Think about THAT. Number 3 thing: pigeons.

The tour guide started talking about physics, so Zig got RILL attentive. And Kaia and I got definitively less so.

Then he started to talk about how the different stages of life throughout geologic history could be explained using 5 fingers (no life, bacteria, water life, dinosaurs, and man; or something, it was in Spanish and I got confused). So I took a picture of him waving his arms around.

This stuff is all supposed to remind us of the moon. The last thing is called The Cat. And this next stuff just looks WEIRD. Aliens?? I think so.

The tour guide spent a long time explaining these ball things. At first glance, it looks like they were formed by rolling down a hill, sort of like a snowball. But NO. See how some of them are stuck together?? That wouldn't happen if they were rolled down a hill. They were actually formed like pearls, around an initial small rock or something. How cool is THAT?? He said that some of them are broken because the gauchos that discovered this place played games with them, and that these games mainly consisted of crashing them together and breaking them.

also, the ever present Argentinean flag...

and a really sweet pink cactus!!

and some really awesome Engrish. Do you want to go to the Insomniac Pirates Party? "Nights are long and full of alcohol.... and snacks."

This one is called the submarine. Its on all the postcards of the park. It was pretty cool.

This is a big ridge of red rock, and a formation called the Mushroom. And cows.

So next we headed back to San Juan so we could make our way to Barreal. Remember how I mentioned the Difunta Correa?????.....

So the Difunta Correa is a national hero. She is not a saint recognized by the Catholic Church, but is honored as such by Argentineans. Her story is that her husband was conscripted during a war, and she followed him through the desert with their infant son. She eventually ran out of supplies and died, but her son was found days later still alive because he was miraculously breastfeeding on her body. People come from all over Argentina and Chile to honor her at the site of her death. Also, because her real birthday and deathday are unknown, she is most honored on Easter weekend and Christmas. How fortuitous!!!! It was sort of like a carnival, but religious. This is probably the best thing I’ve seen in Argentina.

Some people came in cars, some on horses...

There were all kinds of stores and restaurants set up just for visitors. The building two pictures up is a Catholic church. Below is the actual shrine. People put plaques up on the outside thanking her for different things, and on the inside they place offerings. Usually people leave her bottles of water and food (because she died of starvation and dehydration), but they also leave other stuff, like tokens of what they are thankful for. Like old casts and license plates and pictures of themselves with their cars. We each left some pesos.

That sign says, "Here rest the remains of the Difunta Correa."

In the corner of the room there was an open closet FULL of stuff in a huge pile. I guess they have to clean up every once in a while.

We browsed the shops, and ate dinner at one of the restaurants. I had a humita, a regional specialty that is like a corn filled tamale, Zig had chivo, also a regional specialty (goat), and Kaia had chicken. Tasty tasty.

They even had go-cart racing for the niños...

Finally, we were on our way. It was really late though, and we still had a ways to go before we got to Barreal. There are two routes you can take from San Juan to get there. One looks longer on the map, and one is actually a lot longer because its on a winding gravel road through a mountain pass. We did not know that, and apparently the main at the tour office who told us to go that way didn't either. Well, I won't go into detail, but it was really scary and it took us like 4 hours to get there when it should have taken 2.

THEN, apparently, Barreal is the Easter Weekend destination of choice for undersupervised youths. We drove all around town looking for a place to stay at 1 am, and couldn't find a single empty bed. Although, we did accidentally find a huge party by a river, but everyone seemed to be about 13 years old, so we couldn't steal their beer.

So we slept in the car. THEN, the next morning, we went to the tour office to ask about carrolvalismo, and they said it wasn't the right season so they weren't doing it now.

So we drove around town and then left. It was a really nice town, I can see the appeal to the youths.

After all that it took to get there, we were pretty dismayed at our lack of success. We decided to go back on the route we came though (even though the ladies in the Barreal tourist fofce were shocked that we had done it the night before), because even though it took longer, it seemed like it had some pretty good scenery from what we could see in the dark. We were so right!! It made the whole trip worth it.

We think this is where they do the carrovilismo, so Zig drove the car out and did some donuts for good measure. The next picture is a roadside shrine. They have them all over Argentina for Difunta Correa, and another pseudo-Saint, Gaucho Gil.

Cows AND llamas.

Now for the part of the drive that was really scary in the middle of the night, but really awesome during the day!! Look at all the pretty colors!!! I now have a red and green rock collection.

Once we got in the mountains, the temperature dropped really rapidly from about 14 celcius to 3!!! It was cold, and I was unprepared.

Look at the swirls!

We made it back to San Juan just in time to drop off our car and catch an overnight bus to our next stop, Cordoba. I thanked Difunta Correa for our safe travels.

To be continued....

So guess what happened...

2010-04-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

TRAGEDY.

One time I saw a magazine that had TRAGEDY on the cover in big letters. Apparently those two crazy kids from Twilight had broken up. I decided that if that was a tragedy, then I could call pretty much anything I wanted a tragedy.

And this is definitely a TRAGEDY.

My computer is re re re super broke. Look at it. I'm pretty sure Helga sat on it in the middle of the night, because one day it was just like this when I woke up. She's really fat. The guy at the chocolate shop even asked about it. He was sorry that it couldn't be fixed since the screen is more expensive than a new computer would be. I said I was sorry too.

Anyway, this is why I've been such a slow blogger. I've been having to steal Zigs computer when he's not using it. Which isn't often.

Also, look what Zig found!!! See down at the bottom right?? Apparently Rice has immortalized my blog forever on its website! Well, they've immortalized Zigfried Hampel-Arias and Austin's blog. Jokers.

So where were we. Oh yes, very shortly after we got back from El Calafate, Zig had to leave to go to Malargüe to do some science stuff. It was a three week shift were he has to press a button to open a telescope with the sun goes down, stay up all night to record if anything goes wrong, and then press the button to turn it off again. He enjoyed it immensely. More on that later. This is what I did.....

...A big fat load of nothing. I read A LOT. I feel so literate. I read every single Jane Austen novel. Check that off my life list. My computer broke about a week into it, so I couldn't watch any movies except for Clueless because I've seen it so many times I easily visualized the bottom three fourths of the screen...

I did actually do some stuff. I hung out a lot with Nicolas and his roommates. The first Saturday we went on a hike to Lago Llhum.

Angie told me a Mapuche legend about the trail. There is a tree that will eat you if you’re caught out in the night, but if you know which tree it is it can’t get you. She pointed it out to me so I would be ok. Here's a picture just in case you need to know. Then, they started talking about it being like Blair Witch Project. And then about how one of the Spanish translations of the name of that movie is Proyecto de Bruja de Blair Witch, which means Project of Witch of Blair Witch.

I’m not exactly sure who was supposed to be leading, but it certainly wasn’t me. The trail eluded us, and then we ended up on what was definitely not the trail, but rather a big pile of tree trunks and rocks. It took around 2 hours. Luckily this time I wasn’t carrying a big backpack.

We finally made it to the first lake and stopped for lunch. Success!! So then I took a nap on the beach. Success!! And then got a really awkward sunburn on the topside of my shins. Fail.

It wouldn't be a real break if there wasn't any mate involved.

We continued onto the next lake, where we would leave Angie, her fiancé Miguel who is from Switzerland, and his friend visiting from Switzerland, Miguel. Dos Migueles. They were going to fish and camp, while Nico and I went home. They all went swimming in the freezing lake, but I was not persuaded. Also, it was the first time I’d heard of Miguel and Angie’s recent engagement, so that was exciting.

Nico and I managed to find the real trail on the way back, so the whole thing took about 30 minutes. That meant we had to wait 2 extra hours for the bus to pick us up. THEN, we missed our bus, and had to wait another hour for the next one. We played "guess the real or fictional person I’m thinking of." I stumped Nicolas with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Here is the backside of my nemesis, Cerro Catedral. Jerk face.

Also, Nicolas and I went to Antares to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. They sure do know how to celebrate in style. They decorated everything and had face painting! At first I was disappointed because I thought there was no green beer, but then it just turned out to be poorly advertised.

So what was Zig doing all this time, you might wonder??

Zig was having the time of his life staying up all night and pressing buttons. Or something. He did do some cool stuff involving muons from outer space and particles and stuff.

So the night before Zig left Malargüe to come back to Bariloche he was watching Animal Planet, and saw this really interesting documentary about a rare animal in Argentina, the Piche, or Dwarf Armadillo. They live in the Pampa, right where Zig was! The narrator was really concerned that he would never see one, because they are so so so rare....

The next morning, Zig went out with a guy, Mauro, to work on the detectors so he would finally get to see them. He asked Mauro about the piches. "Have you every seen one?" says Zig. Mauro says, "Oh well I mean sometimes... THERE'S ONE!"

Then Mauro ran out of the car and stepped on it and made Zig pick it up. The guy in the documentary obviously wasn't with the right people when he came to Argentina.

When Zig got home he told his coworker Xavier about it, and Xavier said, "Did you eat it? They taste really good."

After the piche adventure, Zig got to go work on the detectors.

He was very excited about this because the work he's been doing was to design a computer simulation of these detectors, but he'd never actually seen one. Apparently they look really different than he imagined.

There are 1600 of the detectors spread out over the Pampa with about 1 mile between them. You can see them go off into the distance here.

All in all, I think Zig had a very nice time. At least as nice a time as I did.

COMING UP NEXT..... Kaia joins the party. Zig returns. We go North. Fun-ness ensues.

Big Big Glacier. Big big.

2010-04-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

20 hours and 2 border crossings later, we made it back to El Calafate. We decided to camp because it was cheap and 3 people in a 2 person tent made it warm enough. We also saw a very large bird and some funny Engrish on a menu.

Cuts board safety pin!!!

The next day was our last before going back to Bariloche, and it was reserved to see the Perito Moreno Glacier. This is the world’s only growing glacier. Its rate of growth has slowed over the last years though. Sad.

It was BIG. Really really big. And this glacier was only part of a whole field of glaciers. BIG.

Hey Mr. Hipster, where'd your shoes go??

My pictures don’t do it justice. Zigs fancy camera got some good panoramas though. I, however, got video.

BOOOMMM. “OOOOH LOOK AT THAT.”

Then Zig made friends with a cat.

The next day, we prepared for our afternoon departure. We opted to take the 26 hour paved road bus instead of the 2-day non-paved road bus.

Luckily, Robin the Vegetarian was in the bathroom when this happened, or she might have barfed. The guy just came into the campsite with a lamb thrown over his shoulder. I was thoroughly impressed. He said I could take a picture of him stabbing it. Then he made me take a picture of him, his knife, and his son, the birthday boy. And then, as if his son wasn’t embarrassed enough, he invited me to come to their party. We had to go though.

This dog lived at the campsite. I think it must be a dalmatian-dachshund mix. Actually, there was a whole pack of dogs living there, and they took up howling like wolves one night. We kept recognizing them around town.

Then we saw alfajores that were as big as a hamburger. That spatula in the background is normal sized. GINORMOUS ALFAJORES.

Next thing we knew, we were back in Bariloche. Then, Robin was on her way home!! She took the bus back to Buenos Aires for a night, and then flew home. Sad! Bye Robin!!!

We dropped her off at the bus station, and on the walk home found a new brewery with a much safer happy hour- half priced instead of two for one. AND they had internet. We’ve been back since.

The next weekend, Zig decided we should go hiking up the ski hill, Cerro Catedral. Or as I like to think of it, the Mountain of Bodily Injury and Possible Death. I did not have much success skiing on this mountain, and our hiked proved that it really just isn’t the geographic formation for me. Zig had done it before while I was in Houston, and insisted that I was fully capable. Wishful thinking. In theory, we were going camping, so we carried our big hiking backpacks with our stuff. First mistake. Then, Zig said that it was better if we walked from the very bottom instead of taking the gondola half way up. Second mistake. I’m trying to forget the pain that ensued, so instead of describing the hike I’ll just show the pretty pictures.

Fast forward 8 hours, and we finally freaking made it to the top. THEN, we were in theory supposed to go down the other side of the mountain to the campsite. The off-limits back bowl of the ski hill. See that part behind Zig in the picture, thats the very steep other side. The “trail” wasn’t a trail even in the loosest sense of the term, and the whole slope is covered with rock shards. Slippery rock shards. We walked for 5 minutes and then I decided I was done. I’m too clumsy even when I’m not exhausted, and I don’t intend to die by falling down a mountain wearing a backpack full of cookies and a sleeping bag. So we went home. I fell twice on the way down. Then I decided we were taking the gondola.

To end on a more cheerful note, here are some pictures of Helga being a weirdo.

Also, a sign over an empty sugar self in the grocery store explaining that customers are only allowed to buy 3 kilograms of sugar per person. Thats 6.6 pounds. Holy cow Argentina, way to pack it in. And clearly this was a problem that needed to be addressed, because there were like 10 signs. That just can’t be good for you.

Last but not least, Zig and I received a surprise present from Antares!! They brought out our beers in glasses with our names on them that they had special ordered!!!! OOOOOH!! We were so proud.

OK thats all for now....

To infinity, and beyond!!!

2010-04-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

After our adventures in BsAs were over, Robin and I hopped on the bus to... Bariloche.
Zigfried had had two Rice kids staying at our apartment, and since we overlapped for a couple of hours, we went to the Sesamo, our new very tasty Mediterranean food place. Possibly the only restaurant in Bariloche that uses spices.

Robin was feeling a little under the weather, and then I caught whatever Robin had, so we spent our time in Bariloche visiting chocolate shops and looking at the mountains. Not climbing them.

Next stop on our itinerary, Ushuaia, EL FIN DEL MUNDO.

Getting all the way down to the bottom of the continent was proving to be quite difficult. All the buses take forEVER because the roads aren’t paved. It seemed like it was going to take us 3 or 4 days just to get there, and then the same to get back. We decided to splurge and buy a plane ticket to El Calafate to skip one 30-hour segment of bus travel.

El Calafate was kind of lame. El Calafate is Park City to Bariloche's Breckenridge. Everything was extra expensive, and the crowd was older. Not a teenager in sight. Much more tailored to the lady who shops while her husband goes fly-fishing than the unemployed recent graduate.

We had a lot of time to kill though before our 2 am bus to Ushuaia, so we walked around. We saw gauchos! And other gaucho related stuff.

Zig looks muy gauchesco. I may have made that word up. I tend to do that in Spanish. And English for that matter.

We walked around the main street, and most of the restaurants had this displayed in the window...

And here's Robin running away from the dead animals....

She's the one in the back in white. She's fast!!

Getting to Ushuaia was quite the adventure...

...Literary aside...

I stole my dad’s copy of In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin and read it on the trip down. Here is my summary:
“I’m going to go down to Patagonia because its hard to get there, speak Spanish badly to the point of reporting incorrect information, and only visit people from my home country, England. Giant sloth. Sheep. The end.”

I liked the stories, but was annoyed that he barely spoke to any actual Argentineans or Chileans, and not even one indigenous person, even though when he was there, there were still actual living Yaghans (the people of Tierra del Fuego), where as now all of them have died (according to our tour guide. wikipedia says otherwise). Opportunity MISSED. Also, towards the end it was a struggle to finish. I got bored.

One thing I did get out of the book was a deeper understanding of a whole genre of South American travelers. I’ll call them Bruce Chatwin Hipsters.

To explain, one of my favorite activities is hipster watching. Its a type of people watching, but the people are hipsters.

In Spanish, there’s an expression “tribu urbano,” or urban tribe. Those are all the cliques in high school movies. Hipsters are a current tribu urbano. A very common phenomenon. For those of you who may not know what a hipster is, I’ll draw a parallel to another tribu urbano...

I read this article for my sociology of deviance class at Rice called “Real Punks and Pretenders.” Basically, it outlined how there are two kinds of people in punk culture. The real punks are people who have made a serious commitment to the punk lifestyle. For example, they sport mohawks, very large tattoos, and many metal facial appendages, and spend their time attending Casualties concerts and beating up skin heads. These people cannot easily change their appearance to conform to social norms, and thus have trouble holding down mainstream jobs. Ever seen an accountant with a mohawk? The pretenders, on the other hand, dress like punks on the weekend when they also attend Casualties concerts, but during the week look just like every other doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief. They shop at Hot Topic. They have not made the commitment to forever working at bars and thrift stores that the real punks have. The article goes on to talk about how even though the pretenders annoy the real punks, they need them because they have real jobs and thus real money to borrow and real couches to crash on. But that’s another matter entirely.

Scenesters are the real punks. They work at Deidrichs and Buffalo Exchange. They may also have large tattoos and facial appendages. They go to gigs at Mangos and read Free Press Houston because Houston Press is too mainstream. They vote libertarian. They attend concerts and art shows held by the Bohemians (The third group of people who create the Scene by using their extensive artistic talents. They are admirable because they are willing to suffer for their art. You should always tip them when they play music or buy their paintings so that they can eat. Its good karma. And they are usually talented and deserve it.)

Hipsters are equivalent to the pretenders. They are usually younger, so they may also work at Deidrichs, but won’t do it forever. They do lots of the same things as scenesters, but they’ll eventually go to college and wear suits and ties instead of Converse shoes. They secretly voted for Obama even though they told all their friends they were voting for Ron Paul. They make for super fun people watching because you can see them struggling to maintain their super hip identity while not giving up all chances of ever getting into law school.

My friend Jordan and I made a Hipster Scale to use while hipster watching. Its like Magic Cards or Pokemon. You gain and lose points based on your activities, and once you gain a certain number, say 20, you get to be a scenester. For example, I gain points for having gone to HSPVA and buying my coffee at Deidrichs, but lose both of those points for wearing lots of pink and sparkles without any intentional irony and spending much of my free time at Nordstrom. Working your way up the hipster scale ain’t easy. I think I have negative hipster points right now.

By the by, I made this whole thing up based on people watching in Montrose. Not the hipster part, thats real. See, its on wikipedia (I'm especially a fan of the quote in the "critical analysis" section where the guy says that hipsterism is the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics..." Thanks dude. I can see I'm not the only one who has over thought this.) Anyway, the rest I made up. Thats what happens when you go to art school, get a sociology degree, and have too much free time.

But I digress. Back to the Bruce Chatwin Hipsters. They do things like losing their passport and not being upset about it. They are completely unprepared for end of the world cold weather because they wanted to “pack light.” They like to give the impression that they just up and decided one day to leave their lives to go tramping about South America for an indefinite period. They like to answer the question, “So where are you going next?” with “I haven’t really thought about it,” even as they tightly grasp their well-tabbed Lonely Planet. They refuse to take Spanish lessons because they figure it can’t be too hard to learn it themselves. They usually have some sort of badly tuned musical instrument and play hackysack like its the 90s. They insist on taking the 2-day bus trip to El Calafate on unpaved Ruta 40 even though there’s a perfectly good daylong route on a paved highway and there’s nothing to see on Ruta 40. Or even better, trying to hitch hike it even though NO ONE drives on it if they can avoid it.

I can see the appeal of wanting to be as cool as Bruce Chatwin, but he did it in the 70s. There wasn’t a paved road option for him. Or buses. He was unique; a pioneer in Patagonian travel. He was cool because he did it first. Now it just seems silly to go out of your way to inconvenience yourself like that.

There’s a funny quote in the Lonely Planet: “’It’s their Bible,’ whispers a Welsh teahouse owner, spying a tourist-gripped tattered copy of In Patagonia.” I remember reading somewhere that the places mentioned in the book have become HUGE tourist traps since it was publish. I also read that the Welsh tea people were pretty mad about the book because they thought it was an invasion of their privacy. Well now they get to sell lots of tea to tourists, so they win. They certainly made some money off of us.

We discovered the Bruce Chatwin Hipsters because we met one in Bariloche while I was reading the book. Sean had just landed in Bariloche after two weeks in Buenos Aires. He didn’t speak one word of Spanish but when I suggested my Spanish school he insisted he’d pick it up himself, even though he was going to be in Bariloche a month. I had to explain to him how to say “pollo” and “carne.” Who doesn’t know how to say that? Who doesn’t know how to say that who has already been in the country 3 weeks?? I did not have high hopes for his language picking up skills. He wanted to try to hitchhike Ruta 40. The imminent paving of it worried him. He was of the opinion that this would ruin the experience. I’ve read that paragraph in Lonely Planet that warns of this danger too. Zig asked the people at the lab about this, and they said that its been “almost finished” for 10 years. Its just like Kirby!

Anyway, after meeting this guy, the idea was planted, and we saw mucho mucho things to support it. Here is photographic evidence of the many, many hipsters we saw...

Anyone for hackeysack? These guys were from Canada and were taking a semester off before their senior year of college to travel South America. One guy had a guitar on a string. We boarded first, and I joked to Robin that maybe they would sit with us and play the guitar and we could have a 20-hour sing-along!!! Robin, being the daughter of a music store owner, is extremely sensitive about people playing musical instruments badly and did not find this funny. “Don’t make jokes about these things Austin. This is serious.” Well, they DID sit with us! And then Robin told me that if the guitar was out of tune she was going to break it to put us all out of our misery. Lucky for him he didn’t play it until he got off the bus and was out of earshot or could run away...

The dude in the black shirt on the right of the first picture was from England. Some how I got stuck standing next to him in line. He told me this totally awesome story about how he slept on the street in Chile and some guys came and beat the s*** out of him and he had to go to the hospital. BUT, he convinced them to give him back his passport, which was good, because apparently he's already lost it 3 times on his travels. He seemed to be very proud of himself about the whole thing. Good story, man.

THEN, Zig came up and they started talking about Mexico, where the guy had been previously. He kept trying to convince Zig that Guadalajara (where Zig's family lives) is in a different place then it actually is. Zig just kept saying, "Well, no, thats not true." The guy very much wanted to be right. He was not.

Hmmm, what shall I pack for my cross continental journey when all I can carry is a single backpack?? Toothbrush? Check. Underwear? Check. Tambourine? CHECK.

We decided that these guys were a very confused and lost gringo mariachi band that had grown out of their clothes and lost their instruments. They literally had handkerchiefs on sticks carrying all their belongings. I was amused that instead of carrying them on the bus, they threw them in the under bus storage with all the giant backpacks and suitcases. The baggage people didn’t even bother to give them tickets to collect them at the end. Not worth it.

(OK, so since I started writing this post forever ago, Kaia has joined us on our journeys. She took one look at these pictures and said, "Those guys aren't a mariachi band. They're journeymen." in a tone of voice that said "you guys are idiots." So I guess they aren't hipsters after all. Who knew????)

PS, I’m getting really good at taking pictures of people without their noticing it. Maybe I should add that to my resume.

Anyway, we did meet this one guy, above talking to Zig, on the bus down to Ushuaia who seemed to be the real punk in this situation. Dean was an Australian geologist with one of those extra large passports with twice the number of pages. Even with the extra pages he had almost filled the whole thing. He really did do things like decide one day to pick up and go spend two weeks in Mozambique. He had a genuine interest in Argentinean culture. And, even though he had never taken Spanish, Zig successfully taught him how to say “please put the customs stamp here” to the customs guy. He didn’t want the stamps to take up too much space because he didn’t want to have to get a new $300 extra large passport anytime soon. When I asked him if he had read In Patagonia, he had never heard of it.

Anyway, to get to Ushuaia, we had to cross the Chile-Argentina border TWICE. You’d think they’d have streamlined the system, but no. Chile and Argentina do not seem to have a very amicable relationship. When you go to Uruguay from Buenos Aires, they two customs people sit in the same little booth and stamp your passport all at one time so you can be on your merry way. In comparison, the Chileans and Argentineans have two different buildings RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. You have to stand in two super long lines. Then, Chile is apparently desperately afraid of fruit and wooden objects, so they have to search your whole bus. I would say at least 8 hours of our 20-hour bus ride were spent in customs. We now have 8 new passport stamps apiece, and we didn’t even stay in Chile. I will have to get a new passport when I get home because I still have to get at least 6 more stamps (4 to leave before my 90 days are up, and 2 to get back to the US), and that will use up most of my last two clean pages. Thanks jerks.

We did see some super cool signs on our journey. And we went on a ferry and saw toninas overas, or Commerson’s Dolphins. And also some penguins. On the way back, we went down while we were waiting for the ferry and touched the Straight of Magellan. It was cold.

"To the Province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and the South Atlantic Islands."

Anyway, we FINALLY got to Ushuaia at midnight and made our way to the hostel we called on the bus. The agonizing bus trip was well worth it. When we woke up in the morning, we could see the Beagle Channel!!!

We had three days, so we spent the first day exploring. Ushuaia has about 60,000 people. It seems to be very similar to Bariloche. There is one main area by the water for tourists, and then the rest of the city extends around it, getting poorer the farther out you go. The tourist area is super expensive (even more than Bariloche because everything is imported), and the rest is cheaper, but still expensive. Almost all of the activities are outdoorsy.

On day two, Zig and I went on a hike to the Ushuaia glacier. Robin woke up that morning feeling really, really sick, so decided to stay in to rest. The mountain with the glacier was behind the city (which is how we saw the poorer parts of town. and also found a pastry shop with 10 pastries for 3 pesos. thats a dollar. success!). We walked all the way up, but there was also a gondola that families were taking up. When we got to the top of that, we decided that we didn’t care enough about seeing the glacier to exert ourselves further, and just wanted to stare at the view of the town and the Beagle Channel. My pictures are so, so, but Zig’s fancy camera got some good ones.

Where else would you see the intersections of Magellan and Darwin Streets??

Also, I love the way they pronounce things down here. Magellan (spelled Magallan) is pronounced mah-gah-SHAN. And Beagle is pronounced bee-gleh. It only makes sense.

On the way down, we went off the road on a trail through the woods. It was an adventure.

We were very excited when the trail stopped winding around and we finally got back to the road.

We met up with Robin mid-afternoon to go in search of two very important things.

Numero Uno: We read somewhere that if you go to the tourist office you can get a stamp in your passport that says you’ve been to the end of the world. SO TRUE. Success!!

Numero Dos: Ushuaia has the world’s southernmost microbrew, Beagle Beer. Or, Cerveza Bee-gleh. Lonely Planet points out that it does not have the world’s southernmost bar. That is in Antarctica. Those scientists have to have something to do down there.

We found our pints in an Irish slash Sports bar. It seemed to be a sort of volatile combination of two especially rowdy groups of people. There was a game on between two Buenos Aires teams, and we made a special effort not to appear to prefer either just in case.

We also saw a monument to the Falkland Islands, or Islas Malvinas if you're Argentinean.

And some pretty flowers...

That night we had SEAFOOD. I miss seafood so much. So much much much. Ushuaia is especially proud of its king crab. They were humongous. Zig and I split a stew with king crab and mussels and trout. Robin had vegetarian spaghetti.

The hostel had a Siamese kitty!!! We made friends with it, and it slept in my bed all night.

Ushuaia had a million cats. I didn’t take pictures of them because I thought that would be a little overboard. But they were everywhere!! All of Argentina’s cats have moved south. They know whats up.

On Day Three, Robin was feeling even worse. She decided to rest again, and then go souvenir shopping. Zig and I went on a canoe trip and hike through Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego.

This island is claimed by the guy who lives in this hut near the entrance of the national park. He’s the king, he says. He sells stamps. Nobody actually lives on the island.

Our guide told us about how rabbits and beavers are introduced invasive species that they can’t get rid of. The rabbits have been brought under control, but she told us that if we could figure out a way to capture and kill large numbers of beavers, we should let the government know. They are eating all the trees and clogging up the rivers. I think its the only time I’ve ever been encouraged to kill an animal in a national park.

We asked and she said she’d killed one and ate it but it was really tough and tasted bad. This is apparently the crux of the problem. They can’t get hunters to come kill the beavers (even though the Argentinean government will pay you 10 whole pesos for each one) because it takes a lot of effort (they are smart and only come out at night) and there’s very little reward in it (except the satisfaction of a job well done). She didn’t know how to describe the taste in English. So then I taught her the word gamy.

This park protects an area that was previously inhabited by the aforementioned Yaghans. They lived naked in absurdly cold temperatures, and even swam naked in the absurdly cold Canal Be-AH-gleh. They didn’t get hypothermia for two reasons, 1) they rubbed seal blubber all over their bodies, and 2) they carried fire with them everywhere, even onboard their canoes. Creating your first fire was a right of passage. They were sort of nomadic in that they would move around the area but leave their houses for others to inhabit or to come back to later. These mounds are the remains of dwellings. The guide said that the mounds were made because the Yaghans weren’t very tidy. They would eat lots of mussels and oysters, but then throw the shells around the outside of the house. Like that Hoarders tv show Aunt Suzanne was telling me about. So the mounds are giant piles of oyster shells covered up with grass. Interesting.

The guide then told us that the Yaghans perished not only because of the usual lack of immunity to European diseases, but also because missionaries forced them to wear clothes. When they went swimming in said clothes, they froze to death because clothes are not as insulating as seal blubber. Being naked was the superior option. Go figure.

After the hike we had a nice little lunch in the tour company’s tent. They made us soup and gave us wine and cheese. It was tasty. At lunch we made friends with our tour mates. There was a Dutch guy and a girl from Chicago who both spoke English but no Spanish, so I translated for them what Zig, an engineer from Brazil, and our tour guide were saying about the upcoming Rio Olympics and its civil engineering implications. Or I did as best I could.

Then the guides brought us our canoeing clothes, which consisted of head to toe waterproofing. The girl from Chicago and I were very concerned about what this outfitting foreboded for the canoeing trip. This wasn’t extreme canoeing was it? Our guide said its just because if you get wet you might get hypothermia. Better to avoid it then, I say.

We canoed down a river to the bay, which was particularly eventful due to extremely strong and multi-directional currents and a curious sea lion. The two canoes that didn’t have a guide in them (all the non-South Americans) kept getting hung up, and then the sea lion would poke her head out, clearly wondering what the hell we were doing and why we didn’t just swim like any normal person. She kept splashing us, so I was glad I had on my protective clothing. Then we would get distracted by the sea lion and started watching her instead of trying to right ourselves, so the guide had to come back and tie our canoe to his. We eventually made it, and now I can say I’ve been mocked by a sea lion.

Do you have a flag???? Every tiny, uninhabited Argentinean island had one, to distinguish them from the tiny, uninhabited Chilean islands. This island with the mountain is divided down the middle between Chile and Argentina. You can’t enter the Chilean side of Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego from Argentina. Quite the little sibling rivalry they’ve got going on down there.

The very coolest sign I’ve ever seen is at the end of the park. It marks the very end of the Pan-American Highway. 17848 kilometers to Alaska, it says. That’s a long way.

We made it back, and met up with Robin for a final stroll around town. We saw an old shipwreck and a bunch of shipping crates, some of which must have been going to Antarctica!

I looked into Antarctica trips, but they all cost like 5 grand. Even last minute discount tickets are $3000. Slightly outside my budget. Zig wants to work on Ice Cube, the physics experiment there, so hopefully he will get to go for free!!! Jealous.

Ok thats enough for one post. I may catch up documenting this trip some day. I hope.

Chau!!!!

Austin returns to Argentina

2010-02-25T07:44:00.000-08:00

¡Buen día!

After my parent’s visit, I went to Houston for two and a half weeks!! I think it was my busiest two and a half weeks since I graduated from college.

Why did I go home, you ask? Well, Aunt Suzanne offered her miles, and I was starving. Thanks Aunt Suzanne!!! And Zig had a two-week science camp thing where he spent all day from 8am to 8pm doing experiments. Don’t tell him I called it science camp, he gets a little sensitive about that.

I saw lots and lots of people. I went to San Antonio and Austin. I ate Mexican food and drank margaritas made out of lime. It was glorious.

Disappointingly though, Argentina has ruined my ability to eat. I can’t eat meat anymore without feeling sick. Or cheese. Or spices. One lunch, I could only eat half a hamburger, and at Shivas, my number one all time favorite restaurant, I couldn’t even eat my whole plate of masala and sag paneer. This is a major concern. My summer project is going to be rebound from this unfortunate infirmity.

I brought two full suitcases of stuff home with me. I didn’t want to bring anything back with me to Argentina that would have to be returned to the US, but I had to bring at least one of the suitcases. So I filled it with food.

Things I brought back with me from the US:

1 tub William Sonoma Egg Nog Pancake Mix
1 tub Stonewall Kitchen Blueberry Pancake Mix
1 box Kirbey Lane Gingerbread Pancake Mix
1 box Kirbey Lane Pumpkin Pancake Mix
1 bottle Aunt Jemima maple syrup*
1 jar extra crunchy Jiff Peanut Butter
1 bag Jet Puffed Marshmallows
1 box Barefoot Contessa Red Velvet Cupcake mix
1 box Barefoot Contessa Coconut Cupcake mix
1 tub Valentine’s sprinkles
1 box Stonewall Kitchen Smores Brownie mix
2 boxes Quaker Oatmeal
2 bottles Stubb’s Original Barbecue Sauce
1 tub Tony Cacheres
1 tub Mrs. Dash
1 tub paprika
1 tub chili powder
1 tub curry powder
2 boxes instant cous cous
2 boxes Jiffy cornbread mix
1 box 2 Alarm Chili mix
6 packets powdered cheese mix from Annie’s Mac
2 bags Deidrich’s French Roast coffee (1 for a gift)
1 bottle Sriracha sauce
1 jar Salsa, Texas homemade hot salsa
1 bottle Patron Tequila (purchased duty free at the airport!) to make up for the appalling hegemony of Jose Cuervo in this country

Also, tupperware, ziploc bags, heart shaped cupcake molds, new space bags (because the brave Helga killed our other ones), 40 new movies (purchased at one of my favorite establishments, Half Price Books), several books, 2 cookbooks (for gifts), a bag full of state quarters (also a gift), Don’t Mess with Texas playing cards, and two Texas magnets, “Don’t Mess with Texas” and “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” Both for Nicolas, to balance out all the classy Swiss cow magnets on his fridge. Thanks Davey Crockett+.

*Did you ever notice that Aunt Jemima doesn’t actually say maple syrup on it? Its “original” syrup. I guess it’s like sparkling wine that’s not from Champagne... but made out of corn syrup.

+All Texas paraphernalia purchased at another of my favorite establishments, Bucee’s.

In addition, having been officially accepted to a law school, and on the recommendation of a friend at said law school, I brought several law school books. Specifically, commercial outlines for Torts, Property, and Contracts, and a book called Law School Confidential: A Complete Guide to the Law School Experience. He said, “If you have the time to read them, they will really help you get ahead for your first year.” Oh D.J., I have nothing but time.

My suitcase weighed 60 lbs.

Last, but not least, I brought.......

ROBIN!!!!!

Robin, a BFF of many years, who had never before left the country, came back with me for a whirlwind tour of Argentina!

Much to Robin’s chagrin, I told pretty much everyone we met how it was her first time out of the country. I was very proud of myself for facilitating her first trip abroad. She wasn’t amused.

First, we spent 5 days in Buenos Aires.

I’ll skip all the stuff that I already blogged about. We saw it. It was the same. I saw 3 new things though.

#1: Recoleta Cemetery, where the rich go to spend eternity among tree lined avenues...

Very fancy. Big crypts. Shiny. Eva Peron. The end.

Side note: It was really, really hot in Buenos Aires. But without air conditioning. It was like being in Houston with no air conditioning. We spent a lot of time in malls, and saw several movies so we could avoid the hottest part of the day. We got the only room in our hostel with air conditioning by sheer luck. Two recommendations: 1) Don’t go to Buenos Aires in February, and 2) don’t see Daybreakers or whatever that new Ethan Hawke vampire movie is called. It was disgusting. I think it was trying really hard to be the opposite of Twilight, and I have to say it succeeded. Not only was there blood sucking, but also decapitation and disembowelment. That guy from Jurassic Park got eaten real good.

#2: The Eva Peron Museum, which I didn’t really want to see but then Robin pointed out that it probably contained some samples from her stylish and sizable wardrobe. It did.

I would wear every single one of those dresses. Except the black one with the flowers.

Also, there were several pictures of Evita that looked startlingly like Lady Gaga...

I think it’s the nose that really seals the deal.

I learned several things about Eva Peron...

Evita is controversial in Argentina. Poor people really liked her because of her social programs; Rich people really hated her because of her social programs.

Evita did a lot of her social work with orphans. She ran homes for them. One picture was of her and Juan serving as godparents for orphans so that they could be baptized (you have to have godparents to be baptized in Catholic Church). Apparently she was godmother to hundreds of orphans.

She was also instrumental in the women’s suffrage movement in Argentina. Women were granted suffrage during Juan Peron’s presidency.

After she died, her body was carted around to many places, even being buried under a false name in Europe, to avoid being destroyed by supporters of the dictatorship that succeeded Juan’s presidency. It was finally recovered and sent back to Recoleta Cemetary, where she’s buried in her family’s crypt.

#3: La Bonbonera and the River Plate Stadium. GOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!

Robin apparently really likes soccer, or futbol as we say in this country. There wasn’t a game going on while we were there, but we found this tour that takes you to the stadiums of the two most popular futbol teams, La Boca Juniors and River Plate. I thought I was going to be bored, given my long held opinion that sports are boring, but I SO wasn’t.

First, an explanation of how futbol teams work in Argentina. They are part of neighborhood athletic clubs. Basically, it’s like if all the YMCA’s in the US had professional soccer teams based out of them. People pay dues and have access to all kinds of sports facilities, equipment, swimming pools, and even aerobics classes (which I saw, but thought it rude to take a picture of). They also host stuff like movie nights, summer camps, and dance classes. All of this stuff is located in and around the stadium. River Plate even had an elementary and high school in it. Every dues-paying member is guaranteed a seat to the games, and after say 30 years of membership, you get a lifetime member seat, which are the best seats in the house. Do you know how much members pay per month at River Plate? 70 pesos. Thats $US 18.31

So, La Boca. This stadium is located in the neighborhood La Boca (hence the team name), which is not the safest place in Buenos Aires. But we were with a guide who had a very large Nikon. If one of us was getting robbed that day, it wasn’t going to be me.

La Boca Futbol Club was started by Italian immigrants. They needed to pick team colors, but couldn’t come to an agreement, so, being that La Boca was the port of BsAs at the time, somebody decided that they should use the colors of the first ship to dock the following morning. The ship was Swedish, so the blue and yellow come from the Swedish flag.

First we saw the Museo de la Pasion Boquense, which had lots of cool stuff in it. Lots of stuff about Diego Maradona.

Then we went out to the field. We went to all the different sections.

La Boca is a very small stadium. They tried to expand, but the neighbors wouldn’t sell their houses (I don’t blame them), and engineers said the foundations couldn’t support another tier. At one point, they had fewer seats than they had members of the club, so they had to take some seats away from the visitor’s section, reducing it to only a couple thousand. In retaliation, every team that plays La Boca in their stadium reduces the amount of tickets it will sell La Boca fans to the same number, even if it means they have empty seats. Forget capitalism, this is futbol.

This is the cheapest, standing room only section. And Robin acting like a crazed fan at the instruction of our guide, Gonzalo, pictured here with his large camera.

Gonzalo had to take new pictures for the Tangol Tour Company website, and since we were the only people to actually show up for the tour, we had to do a lot of posing. He told me he’d email me when the pictures are up, so we’ll see how they turn out.

We got to stand on the field...

Gonzalo said this is a reproduction. I can pretend it was the real thing. I don't know what it is, but its real shiny.

Then we went back to the locker room. It was WE-EIRD. Apparently, it was redone in the 70s, and the following season was one of La Boca’s best. So then they decided that that meant they could NEVER EVER renovate the locker room again. Like not changing your underwear or socks for a season. Except its 40 years of pea green tile.

After our group shower, lets all take a turn in the jacuzzi....

Not surprisingly for Latin America, most of the team members are very Catholic, and have set up shrines to the Virgin Mary all around the locker room. This one is over the corner where Maradona used to sit before games.

People in La Boca are very, very dedicated to the neighborhood and the team. Gonzalo told us that some people who live in the neighborhood return address their letters as being from the city La Boca and not Buenos Aires.

Moving on to River Plate. Gonzalo explained that La Boca, being in a poor neighborhood, is thought of as the team of the people. The everyman’s scrappy underdog. Tiny stadium, old facilities, non-fancy trophy room, etc. (except most of that seems to be by choice.) River Plate, on the other hand, is located in the richest neighborhood in BsAs, Recoleta, and has state of the art facilities and a brand new museum. It’s the rich team. It seems to be like the difference between the Mets and the Yankees, and even I know how I’m supposed to feel about the Yankees.

Gonzalo did point out, however, that recently, River Plate has suffered some serious financial difficulties because of all its new stuff, and La Boca has made a killing on merch because of its popularity. The tables are turning, but their reputations remain.

Gonzalo is a fan of River Plate. Robin and I decided it was more proper to be fans of the scrappy underdogs, even though they’re making bank.

The brand new state of the art museum was silly. We went into this room where the floor shook and a scientist on a video told us it was a time machine taking us back to 1900. Then we went to all these rooms that listed every game won by River Plate by decade and smelled of cleaning fluid. Amusingly, it skipped a decade because River Plate didn’t win any games. The one cool thing was that each decade had a small display of pop culture items from that time. And Robin and I danced to some rockin tunes in the 60s room.

Next, we got to see the stadium. Which was round. Weird. It was cool to see.

This is the view from what used to be the club president’s box, but then people started throwing things at the last president because he was hated, so he had to move it elsewhere. An elsewhere farther away from the crowd.

Thats enough of that.

Robin and I also went to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. Zig and I had gone already, so I’ll only put up this picture of a guy on the ferry. He's hooked on phonics.

In addition, we went to the modern art museum to see an Andy Warhol exhibit. It was really, really awesome, but has nothing to do with Argentina so I won’t describe further. I got a cow wallpaper poster though. Sweet.

Robin, as I mentioned previously, is a vegetarian. Argentineans, as I’ve mentioned previously, are the opposite of vegetarians. I’ve learned that Buenos Aires vegetarian means either very, very bad for you (like cheese pizza or pastries), or very, very good for you (like macrobiotic, organic whole wheat bread. ugh.). It does not, however, involve more vegetables than any other Argentinean meal. Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? No.

All right, I’m getting tired of writing. Next, we reunite with Zig and head south. Way, way south.

Chau!!

im back!!

2010-02-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

It’s been two months since my last post, and I have a lot of catching up to do.

Lets take our magical blog time machine back to December....

First, Zig and I had to go to Chile, because one of us doesn’t have a visa and doesn’t want to be deported. My tourist visa has to be renewed every 90 days. I could cross the border and immediately come back and that would be ok. Thats what the guy at the Houston consulate told me anyway.

Chile is very high strung about imports. NO FRUIT. Or tribal masks. Here is a picture with all the things you are not allowed to bring. This is the WRONG way to pack a suitcase if you want to come to Chile.

Shucks, I really wanted to bring half a ham and some daisies. Now what will I do????

They took all our bags of the bus and sent them through an xray machine, plus had dogs come on. Cute yellow labs. Way better drug sniffing dogs than scary German shepherds. I guess they weren’t drug dogs though. Fruit sniffing dogs.

We only had time to spend one night in Chile (due to the imminent arrival of the rents), so we could only get as far as Osorno, the first stop on the other side of the border. It was gross. Very dirty and industrial. So we made the most of it by drinking and eating fish.

Here we are at Lonely Planet’s recommended authentic old guy bar. We were the only people there because it was 3 in the afternoon. They make their own beer.

They had the TV on a Chilean version of MTV. It was a live show with a live audience of screaming 14 year-old girls. The announcer kept telling them, “We MAY have a special guest today, and it MAY be the Jonas Brothers!!!” But then, in a surprise twist, the announcer said, “Just kidding, not only are the Jonas Brothers not coming to the show, but they’re also BREAKING UP!!!”

There was a lot of crying. Apparently Chilean MTV is really sadistic.

For dinner we went to a sushi restaurant. We had Chile’s national alcoholic beverage, the pisco sour. Apparently they fight over it with Peru, which also claims it as its own. Whatever.

Note the South American-friendly safety chopsticks. They had individually prepared them with rubber bands at the restaurant.

Also, Chile still allows smoking in restaurants. A LOT of smoking. No non-smoking section. Check in the plus column for Argentina.

The next day we wiled away the hours at this fine eating establishment. More pisco sours, and Zig had a “completo”, which is a very fancy hot dog. He enjoyed it.

Back on the bus, back through customs (which took significantly less time, because Argentina doesn’t care about fruit), and back to Bariloche.

Shortly there after, our parents came to visit!

Then we took Jenz out for a night on the town!! We went to Antares, our favorite cerveceria. Mom had the sampler. I finally got to taste all the beers!

Here’s what the average Argentinean grocery store looks like on the days leading up to Christmas. This is the row of fruitcakes. Yes, I kid you not, every single one of those packages is a fruitcake. Once Argentina finds something it likes, it sticks with it. Especially if there’s sugar involved.

And here are the lambs. What better way to celebrate the holiday than to throw a whole lamb on the old asado. I mean, its even vegetarian!

Mom and Dad got to Argentina 4 days before Christmas, and then promptly left for their fishing expedition. "Hi Austin, Bye Austin!!!" They came back Christmas Day.

Zig’s parents were here the whole time, so on Christmas Eve Eve we went on a boat tour to see the Parque Nacional de los Arrayanes. Arrayanes are these creepy trees. They were cool looking.

And there was a rainbow.

Christmas Day, with Mom and Dad back in town, we went to the Llao Llao for tea. The Llao Llao is FAN-CY. Too fancy for us, they shunned us to the back room even though we had reservations. Jerks. Here's the aftermath...

The tea was good, as was the all you can eat pastry buffet. I think they must have had to import that antler chandelier. There aren't large deer in Bariloche.

That night, Zig and Jenz swam in the pool at my parent's hotel. A good end to a good Christmas. Videos to follow.

The day after Christmas, we went to El Bolson, handicraft shopping central. I didn't take any pictures because I was too busy carrying all of the stuff mom bought.

Next day we went to El Tronador. THE THUNDERER. Bariloche's very own glacier.

It was really really cool. Then, as we were looking at it, it calved!! BOOOOOMMMM. It was awesome. Then dad and I took a nap on the ground. I come from a family of excellent sleepers.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve. Our parents all left the day or so before. Zig spent the day practicing the use of his Christmas present, the classic Argentinean knife/fork in a belt sheath combo. Got to be prepared for all meat related emergencies.

He's getting to be a quick draw.

We spent New Year's Eve at Nicolas's house with his parents. There was lots of steak. More practice time for Zig!

We tried to go out that night with Nico, but then Zig stepped in a puddle and his feet were cold so we went home. The next day, we went to Nico's again for more asado!!

I made the pecan pie. MMMM. Fun party!!!

Last thing before the new year.... we made bagels!! Home made! I tried to use the Cooks Illustrated recipe, but it called for some weird kind of flour. If I could find weird flour, I could probably find bagels. In which case, why would I be making bagels? These bagels definitely were better than grocery store bagels, but they weren't better than Einsteins. Sometimes you have to rely on the experts.

Great success!! They were really super tasty. Even when we correct for my current low standards for food. Mmm.

Ok thats it for now. I have to go eat. Next installment, Austin goes home to Houston and brings Robyn back to Argentina. Then, Austin overcomes the struggles of feeding a picky vegetarian in a meat filled country. Great success!!

Chau!

Lobos Marinos!!

2010-01-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

So way back a month ago when we went to Puerto Madryn....

We got to swim with sea lions!!! It was super re awesome. One of them bit my leg! Well nibbled it. The guides kept telling us it was like playing with puppies, and it SO was. They just came right up to the boat! They wanted to know what was up.

So side note, I'm extremely afraid of being in water that I can't stand in. Usually when I travel to places with water I bring my own life vest just in case. You never can be too careful. There are really only 4 good pictures because most of the ones they gave us on the picture CD are of me freaking out. Also, when I'm hyperventilating I forget how to speak Spanish. I kept yelling "I can't swim!!" at them, but they didn't understand. They insisted those wet suits make you float. Which they did. I still thought there was a good chance that they would stop floating by some freak accident. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it.

My computer is running out of batteries, so to be continued...

Why did the penguin cross the road?

2009-12-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

Buen día!

Today, in a moment of technological adeptness, I successfully loaded penguin videos onto my youtube account. All by myself!! There they join a video my professor made of a song called "I don't drink beer," which a team at the Rice Digital Media Center help desk had to help me load. The student becomes the master.

These two penguins seem to be having some sort of domestic dispute with their neighbor. I guess they don't like the way he smells up the bush or something.

Who knew penguins sound like wookies? I sure didn't.

Ok moving on.

So we spent the night in Puerto Madryn, and took a bus in the morning to Puerto Pirámides on Península Valdes. Excitingly, our hostel had a drip coffee maker!!! I miss drip coffee.

Apparently the Puerto Pirámides bus station is just the gas station.

We arrived around lunch, so we ate at this restaurant. They had Joy Division, Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendrix posters all over the place and all the waiters had dreadlocks. I guess they were sort of going for a post punk, Andy Warhol, glam rock, hippy theme. Or they just did a lot of drugs. I'm not sure.

We made friends with this dog. She may have just been using us for food.

Unfortunately, the food wasn't all that good. I guess post-punk glam rock hippies don't like salt or spices.

Then we went to the beach. They use tractors to take the boats out!!

They had lots of whale bones all around town. This was the most complete set.

Also, there were sheep.

And a jelly fish, which Zig thought was trash and almost grabbed. Then, once he realized it was a jelly fish he decided to poke it with his finger anyway.

We hung out at the beach for a couple of hours, and then went on our whale watching tour!

The tour guide kept refusing to speak to me in Spanish, so I just refused to speak to her in English. It worked out.

Tractor!!

WHALES!

My camera isn't very fast, so I have a lot of pictures that look like this...

I also have a lot of pictures with this ladies head in them.

All of the whales we saw were mommies with their babies. Our boat was small so we got pretty close to them.

That last picture is a whale that just swam under our boat!!

And then my camera ran out of batteries. Luckily, we had Zigs super fancy camera and got some super sweet shots!! Unluckily, Zigs photos are so big that my computer shuts down anytime he tries to send them to me.

That night we stayed at La Casa de Tía Alicia. We had a melon for a snack and Tía Alicia cut it up for us because apparently we weren't doing it right. See also called and reserved our whale tour for us. There were cats. Her husband was always wandering around carrying tools for no apparent reason. It was awesome. I'm so sad I didn't take pictures.

The next morning we went back to the beach. The tide had come in, and we met another very similar looking dog. We thought it was the same one, but then then two more came around the corner. They must have a small golden retriever factory somewhere in town.

Then we met this guy who said he'd drive us around the Península in his truck and show us animals for 300 pesos. Okey dokey.

Very nice view of the town.

Turns out he was some animal finding jedi. He would drive down the road at about 50 mph and suddenly stop the car and say, "Look, there's an owl! Do you see it?"

No. I don't see it.

Zig found it through his camera lens and got some good pictures. Still working on compressing them.

Then he started driving really slowly, and Zig asked if he saw anything. He said, "Usually there are baby foxes here." And guess what, there were.

I should've been tipped of to his jedi-ness by his hardcore driving goggles and missing finger. He knew what was up.

There were lots of those big jackrabbit bunnies. I even spotted that one lying down first because his ears were sticking up!

Rheas...

and sheep...

Then he said, "run over to that cliff and take some pictures of the sea lions down below. But do it fast because its illegal." Ok.

Then he took us to a legit sea lion/elephant seal viewing spot. I think they may have just all been elephant seals. I'm not really sure how to tell them apart. But also, there were babies!! See the little bitty ones?

Finalmente, more penguins. I didn't take as many pictures though.

We told the guy we were going back to Puerto Madryn that night, and he told us he'd drive us for no extra charge since he was going there anyway. Sweet!! And he gave us candy.

UPDATE: Since I started this post, Zig has managed to compress his pictures to a size that would load on my blog. SUCCESS!!!

First, whale watching. Here I am all ready with my life vest.

There was a lone sea lion. Straight chillin.

Whales breathing...

Thats a mighty big head you've got there...

Then, Zig had to pee so bad that he couldn't take anymore photos. So I got to!

Look, a mommy and a baby whale!

The mommy is checking us out...

The driver said that the seagulls land on the backs of the whales and eat the fat, and that it takes over a year for the cuts to heal. Stupid seagulls. For some reason though, the whales couldn't get rid of them, despite jumping out of the water at them. I feel like in a fight between a whale and a seagull there should be an obvious winner. Stupid whales.

OOOH pretty!

Bye bye Ms. Whale!

Here are the photos from day two:

The owl. Or buo as we say in español.

And the foxes!!

I like how this one looks sot of embarrassed.

Big rabbits AND sheep.

The guide stopped us to look at these birds (there were two adults). Then he said, "oh look do you see the baby??"

No. So we sat there for about 20 minutes trying to see the baby. Then I saw it!! Its the tiny speck in the middle of the photo, vertical with that top clump of grass and horizontal with the big clump. This is Zig's biggest lense at its farthest zoom. It was so tiny! How on earth did that guy see it???

I like how the baby seal is all turned on its back. Silly.

And lastly, a herd of wild guanacos.

Ok thats it for now. One more posts worth of pictures I think.

Chau!

Penüinos!!!

2009-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a parting shot of our hotel from Wednesday morning. Its full of old stuff and old guys smoking. It had a lot of character.

Next, we got in our super sweet Renault Kangoo and headed down to Punta Tombo. To see... PENGUINS.

Be careful, guanacos crossing...

Hey, whats that there hiding in that bush? ITS A PENGUIN!

According to the park ranger, penguins dig those nexts under the bushes or in the ground and return to the same one year after year. I can't even remember where I parked my car at the movie theater.

The park ranger warned that the penguins bite hard. Good to know.

Why did the penguin cross the road? So that I could take a sweet video of it.

This little penguin tried to sneak up on Zig. Luckily, I was on the lookout.

Don't forget, penguins bite hard.

This one penguin was trying to nibble on the other penguin, which kept inching away. NO MEANS NO MR PENGUIN.

Actually they may both be females. We didn't read the sign about how to tell them apart until the end. Oops.

Penguin baby!!!

Penguins going out to the beach for lunch.

Two really big birds eating a yucky mouse. It was gross, but I couldn't turn away.

I hope that picture was worth getting all dusty for. I got this awesome picture standing up!!

Penguins hiding under the bridge...

Can you see the penguin baby being smushed under penguin blubber? It looked warm under there.

Another baby penguin!! This one is sunning itself.

Hello, Mr. Penguin, thats a nice tuxedo you have there.

And, not surprisingly, more babies!!!

I have over 300 pictures of penguins. I'm sparing you, so you'll just have to suffer through these last ones. Penguins on the beach. Penguins in the water.

Bye penguins!! We didn't want to leave, but around noon the tour buses started showing up so it was a little crowded. Luckily we got there super early!!

Next we took a different road and drove to a town called Rawson. On the way, there was a side road that said it went to Isla Escondida. Zig decided we should go.

Best decision ever!! Or at least of the last 20 minutes. Because, there were elephant seals!! Big fat ones. We stayed far away, because I didn't want to be crushed by an elephant seal. I'm not going out like that.

They're pretty fat.

Back on the road, more animals!! Rhea (running into the middle of the street like an idiot), horse, and very large bunny.

And some Patagonian plains with Trelew in the distance.

Rawson was lame, and didn't even have any open seafood restaurants to redeem it. Some provincial capital and port city that was.

So, back to Trelew, get rid of our car, and get on the bus to Puerto Madryn! Where they DO have seafood!!

Ok, so this next picture requires some explanation. That orange dot is the moon. The lights to the left are a building. I was taking a picture straight ahead at around 9 pm. The moon is so low!!! Weird.

Thursday morning we went to Puerto Pirámides, so that will have to be a different blog. Inching along, day by day, animal picture by animal picture.

Chau!!

Long time, no blog... again.

2009-12-03T02:26:00.000-08:00

Today I took 389 pictures. Be excited.

This week, Zig and I are finally going on the trip I wanted to do for my birthday a long, long time ago to the coast across the country from Bariloche. We left yesterday at 6pm on the bus. In the grand tradition of Argentina, there was mate water at the ready and an abundance of white foods.

We are currently in Trelew, confusingly pronounced Treh-leh-oooohh because its Welsh. Apparently, the Welsh settled this area and many of the current residents maintain their Welsh heritage. They even have a Welsh Literature festival. According to the guy at the art museum, the winning poet wins una sillon del bardo, A what?? Oh a bard chair. Oh that explains it...

We arrived at 6am, providing maximum time for picture taking. Here is a dinosaur head in the bus station. Sweet.

This is the park outside the bus station with a monument to Lewis Johnson, original Patagonian railroad pioneer. Or something.

This is the original ferrocarril station. Its got some old stuff parked outside.

All of the tourist markers in town have penguins on them. I like penguins.

Next we went to the art museum, which contained pictures of Trelew and the surrounding area by people from Trelew and the surrounding area. Also, for some reason a room full of masks and poetry. I did not take pictures of that.

Here’s a gaucholito riding a sheep and a penguin reading a sign. Also, Kristina Kirchner, president of Argentina, with a big penguin picture behind her head. I just thought that was funny.

Here is a picture of the street we are staying on in its original state.

I think one of those buildings is our hotel, because it was part of the original town. It looks like it might have been redone since then. Like maybe in the 50s.

After the museum, it was still 9:00am, so we had some time to kill and went into this church. It wasn’t very exciting. Its 100 years old though.

We finally got our rental car, and hit the road to Gaiman, Welsh town number two.

Here is a picture of the original tunnel of the original train connecting Gaiman to Dolavon, Welsh town numero tres. I’m not exactly sure what they were transporting on these trains, but it must have been I'm sure it was something good. Possibly sheep related.

Sheep. Bahh.

We saw a random sign for a Geoparque Paleontologico, so we decided to go there. Best decision of that day so far! First, the view was beautiful. I have about 100 pictures of that. Second, we saw some sweet fossils.

The signage was not all that great. We understood the Spanish, but they didn’t exactly point out all that was to be known about the fossils. Luckily, we drew upon our extensive collective knowledge of geology, gained by taking Earth Science 103, Field Trips for the Earth, 1 credit, second semester senior year. We had 3 classes, went canoeing, and Zig and I got to drink beer with the grad students because we were the only people in the class over 21 (aka, not freshman). It was a good learning experience.

The next section of this post is dedicated to Dr. Droxler, who taught us everything we know about geology, and also let us babysit his teenage son while he was in Morocco. This involved driving him to school, drinking all the Shiner out of the fridge, making dinner, and trying to save a baby possum from the pool. The pest control man said I could pay him $300 to do it, but that he thought I could “handle this one on my own.” It was nice of him to believe in me.

First, we saw some sweet invertebrate tunnels. The sign didn’t say what they looked like, but we knew. We had seen them before. Betcha can't see it!! See, extensive knowledge.

The first layer is called the Sarmiento layer, and it contains fossils of terrestrial mammals. Por ejemplo, there was one of these. We couldn’t figure out what it was. But they were some nice looking bones.

Next, there were a bunch of wasps nests. The little balls are supposed to be the holes in the nests or something.

Then Zig saw some leaf cutter ants, his second favorite creature, so we had to stop for that. They are his second favorite creature because they are the original farmers (they take the leaves in their nests to rot and grow fungus, which they then eat). Zig’s first favorite creatures are turtles. Because they carry their houses on their backs.

There were some stairs, which I didn’t fall down even though there was a sign saying that might happen. Which usually means it will happen to me. I was proud.

Then there was an ant eater fossil, and an armadillo, and a penguin.

The second layer is the Gaiman layer, which was in the ocean. There was a dolphin, which kind of looked like a big pile of rocks except for the spine.

Then there was a whale, which also looked like a big pile of rocks except for the spine. It was a big spine.

Here’s another dolphin, but better.

Then there was a sea lion and a good view.

And oysters. Lots and lots and lots of oysters. Most of them bigger then my fist. The darker band in the first picture is a layer of them. I miss Gulf Coast oyster season. Yummy.

Here are a few things that our extensive knowledge told us were probably fossils, but could not tell us what they were. Or they may not be fossils. Beats me. We will ask all the geologists we know next time we get a chance. I think that’s 4 geologists. Maybe 5, but I don’t know if Kaia’s dad does fossils. We will have to find out.

Next, we drove back to Gaiman, and I actually decided to read the guidebook entry to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Number 2 best decision of the day, because we got to see Parque del Desafío, which means Park of the Achievement, which means this guy made all this art out of trash and its really super cool. I hate to be a traitor to my home, but it puts the Beer Can House to shame.

But first, we parked our car, and saw a kitten.

Then, another kitten and its mommy!!

Then the kittens started to nurse, but Zig distracted the mommy, thus causing her to run over her kittens, much to their dismay.

Then, success!!

Ah, the miracle of life! Then I turned around and saw cat roadkill by our car.

I have not the energy to describe El Desafío, so here are the pictures. I’m getting sleepy. My favorite is the giraffe.

Look, Guernica AND the Cistine Chapel. Very pan-art historical.

Here's the guy who made it.

What, do they have a cat farm in the back of that restaurant?

Next we went to Dolavon, which turned out to be nothing except a lot of rose bushes in front of what Lonely Planet calls Welsh style houses. Here’s one.

Back to Gaiman, because its tea time. And all the guidebooks say you're supposed to have tea. They are way into their Welsh heritage.

One of my favorite pastimes while being touristy is to take pictures of people being more touristy then me. Check out the lady by the door taking a video of the walls of the tea house.

I think putting a sweater on your teapot is like putting a sweater on your dog. Cute, but not really necessary. I guess unless they're old and not functioning properly.

All the guidebooks that recommend tea are trying to kill me. Death by overeating. I think thats in a movie. Eww.

Some more roses and a cat in a box. Very Welsh.

Finally back to Trelew, for the actual best thing of the day. The dinosaur museum.

We thought that first room was super cool. And then we turned the corner... on the Mesozoic Era!!

That’s the world’s largest ammonite. Those other little thingys on the wall are the second largest ammonites I’ve ever seen. Thats pretty cool.

THIS, is the Argentinosaurus. Its extremely large.

Zig kept saying, "It looks like its going to poop on your head!" It sure does.

Trilobite. A big one.

These are sea creatures. There were no signs, but using our powers of deduction, we decided the first bird-looking ones were ducks, and the second bird-looking ones were penguins. See their wings and flippers?

This last cool fossil is a dinosaur egg. COOL!!

We decided that we were glad we went to the Parque Paleontologico first, because it paled in comparison to the super sweet Patagonian dinosaur museum.

I think I read somewhere that this museum is special because they display actual fossils instead of casts. Also, as Lonely Planet says, "Nature sounds and a video accent the informative plaques..." I appreciated the nature sounds.

Finally we wandered back to our hotel, Hotel Touring Club. Its rill old. Also, apparently the owner loves Butch Cassidy related stuff, and has a re-creation of the hotel room Butch Cassidy hid in when he was in Trelew (before heading to Bariloche I guess, because Bariloche says he was there too). He doesn’t show it to everyone. We only got to see it because we talked to him in Spanish and I’m from Texas, where Butch Cassidy came from. We’re special.

Ok, this post has been a million years long, but I have to add Thanksgiving photos before I forget. Note the radioactive looking sweet potatoes (because we could only find colored marshmallows and the potatoes were yellow instead of orange). Also note how fabulous everything else looks! We made turkey (pavita), stuffing, gravy, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, green beans, cornbread for the stuffing (twice because the first time was a failure), sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and three kinds of pie (apple, pecan, and my favorite, pumpkin). They were sort of jank looking, but it worked out. Mom had to mail me pumpkin pie filling, and we searched all over until we found a tiny store that sells pecans. The guy says he gets them from Mississippi. MMM I love pie. We even fried our own onions for the green beans, which worked out surprisingly well. Thanks Food Network. Especially Paula Deen. Without you, our food wouldn’t have nearly as much butter.

The Argentineans kept saying they never ate that much food for one fiesta, but I think thats false. Maybe they never make that many different kinds of food, but they certainly eat at least that at asados. I’ve seen it. And participated.

Our Columbian friend Andres was there, and it was everyone’s first real Thanksgiving!! We were proud to have introduced them to such a fabulous tradition. They liked pretty much all the food, especially the cornbread and pecan pie. The pumpkin pie did not go over so well, but that just means more for me!!!

Finally, does anyone know what this fruit is? We bought it because it looked weird. It tasted like watery fruit loops.

Oh yeah, Lisa's roommate from UT, Maya, came and stayed with us because she is studying abroad in Santiago. Unfortunately, there was a LAN strike and her flight was cancelled, so we didn't get to do much when she finally got here. I think she still had fun though.

Ok thats it. Today we’re going to Punta Tombo, where there are penguins. I’m trying to contain my excitement. I know you are too as you wait for my next blogging about said penguins!!

Chau!!!!

Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, church, weird dogs

2009-11-26T05:34:00.000-08:00

Hello!
This is my pre-Thanksgiving post of random things so that after we celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday I can put up the pictures of my super awesome cooking. Zig came back on Friday night. We haven't done too many exciting things, but that's just because we were resting up for our Thanksgiving extravaganza!

First, sometime last week, I don't remember when, we went into the big Catholic church down by the lake. I finally got some pictures of the inside.

Double click on the picture of the window so you can check it out big sized. Sure is interesting.

Another day that I also don't remember, Zig and I saw this dog. It looks like a cross between a golden retriever and a dachshund. Also interesting, if you misspell daushund in Firefox, the suggested replacement word is Auschwitz. Not even close.

We had many different foods this week. First, we had sushi. Could've been dangerous, except that it had no raw fish in it. Only smoked salmon and canned crab. Disappointing.

Next we had Chinese. Bariloche has one single Asian food restaurant of any kind (the sushi was at a restaurant that has sushi only sometimes). It was actually ok, and the food was spicy! I miss spicy food. I forgot to take pictures of the food, so here's a picture of the restaurant.

Last Sunday night, we went to Nicolas's house because he wanted to know how to make Mexican food. Zig's mom told us how to make tortillas, mole, and Mexican rice. We also made guacamole and margaritas, my favorite. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures again. But here's the fridge with all the leftovers in it and the cleaned up table.

Two Tuesdays ago was my last day volunteering through the Spanish school. I'm going to look for better volunteering opportunities. We already talked to Club Andino, which is a volunteer group that maintains all the hiking trails, and they're going to see if they have anything for us to do starting next week. That will be more fun for me I think then being hit in the head by small children. I'm also going to see if the Methodist church has anything going on. Here are two pictures from where I wait for the bus to leave from volunteering.

According to weather.com, the sun rose at 6:09 am this morning and will set at 8:57 pm tonight. I can say that there's definitely still a little light outside around 9:30. WEIRD. Its not even summer yet.

Lastly, Zig is in desperate need of a tan. His hand is the same color as mine!! HA.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!

Halloween!!

2009-11-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

I finally got the pictures of us forcing the Argentineans to celebrate Halloween.

Angel and Valeria were having an asado for a guy who was leaving the lab, and we made them let us celebrate Halloween at it. We brought over lollipop ghosts, which came in handy later for eating. Angel and Valeria got into it and decorated with bigger ghosts and bats too!! It was fun.

I was a witch and Zig was a pumpkin. If that shirt looks a little tight on him, its because its mine. Aunt Suzanne sent it to me. We decided he was dressed up as me dressed up as a pumpkin.

There aren't any real pumpkins here, so I bought a calabaza ingles. It wasn't the same, but I made do.

Everyone kept asking me why we make jack o lanterns. I have no idea. We just do. Stop pestering me.

Since no one had never seen one before except on tv, they all wanted pictures with it. Also with my witch hat. They were big hits.

We also made jello shots, a true estadounidense college tradition. They were very popular. Here we are teaching everyone how to get them out of the little cups. Well, Zig is doing it wrong. You can't get all the jello out if you just squeeze the cup! There's technique involved.

Zig and I also made an orange red velvet cake. They don't have cake with icing on it here. Or fluffy cake. I am very curious to know if there's a reason. Usually its very compact, dry, and covered in ganache or the ever popular dulce de leche. Even the pictures on the boxes of cake mix are unappealing. I guess they don't have a cake tradition here. They make up for it with alfajores.

Here I am around 3am. Note that I am the only person who seems remotely tired. I guess everyone else had a siesta. I just can't handle it. I need my sleep!

Fail Blog

2009-11-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

I've been a blogging failure. I keep forgetting my camera, and the one time I had it, it was out of batteries. Friends took pictures on Halloween, so when I get those I can post them. The pictures Zig's camera takes are too large for me to open on my computer without it freezing. Maybe I can get him to put them on my blog.

Here's the only picture I took on Halloween. Its an advertisement for Halloween, but the store wasn't selling anything Halloween related inside. We saw this type of thing all over Bariloche. Its like they didn't really want to celebrate but they felt peer pressured into it.

I was a witch and Zig was a pumpkin. No one celebrates it here, not even kids, but Angel and Valeria were already having an asado for a friend, so we decorated their house with ghost lollipops and spider webs. They made bats to tape on the walls! We were the only people who dressed up, and it confused people. To really celebrate like estadounidense 20 year olds, we made orange jello shots. No one had ever had them before. They were very popular.

Here's a picture from Halloween last year. We can pretend its from now so my blogging won't be so pathetic. I was Regina George from Mean Girls in her Halloween costume from the movie, and Helga was a giraffe. I brought her costume with us to Bariloche, but she wasn't in the mood to celebrate this year.

Speaking of Helga, here are some before and after pictures that testify to how well she is fed. First, we have her right when we got her. She's helping me with my homework.

And now, here she is in all her glory, a year later...

She's taken well to the Argentinean diet.

Here's a picture of some weird birds that are all over Bariloche. They sound like ducks and are really, really startlingly loud.

Fernando tells me they're called Teros. I found an excellent youtube video. These ones sound more like seagulls then ducks, but you get the idea. I especially like the late 80's action movie music and airplane sound effects.

Here's a wikipedia article about these other birds called Chimangos that are all over the place. They're too fast for us to take pictures of. They're little hawks. The first time I saw one I thought "WOAH look at that cool bird," but then I discovered they are the pigeons of Bariloche. Actually maybe not that common. So more like the grackles of Bariloche. But prettier.

Other then that, nothing really is going on. Zig is out of town this week in Malargüe, where the detector for his experiment is. Helga and I have been watching a lot of movies. Robyn sent me a package. Whenever she mails me anything, she addresses it with her nickname for me (if you didn't know, I'm pretty clumsy. Self-injuringly clumsy.). I was much amused that they copied it onto the delivery notice.

Since I have a distinct dearth of things to blog about, I took some pictures of Mafalda from my giant Todo Mafalda book. Its been an excellent Argentina souvenir, and an entertaining way to practice my Spanish. I looked into buying an English version to bring home too, but the translations were terrible. Not only were they not funny, but they were sometimes completely incomprehensible. My translation is more the general idea then exactly word for word, so hopefully it makes more sense.

Here are some strips that introduce the main characters. Also, keep in mind that it was written in the 70's. Thats why the rockets are so exciting and they talk about civil war.

I've already mentioned Susanita, the blond girl. Her dream in life is to have a husband and many children. She and Mafalda have conflict.

Susanita: "What's that in the newspaper, Mafalda?"

Mafalda: "A photo of the Atlas rocket."

M: "Isn't it exciting? Its like having the future in your hands!!"

S: "Truly, yes...!"

S: "It really is exciting!! It looks like lipstick!!"

S: "Whats wrong? Aren't you going to use lipstick when you're grown up? Doesn't THAT future excite you?"

M: "Good lord...."

Next we have Felipe. He's older than Mafalda (she's six), so he can write and she can't. Also, Susanita has a crush on Felipe.

I couldn't make this picture turn the right way...

Felipe: "Take it!! And see that you learn to write!!"

M: Thanks, Felipe.

S: "What did Felipe write for you on that paper?"

M: "One of the things that I have to do in my life."

M: "I don't want to forget all the things that I have to do in my life, so when something occurs to me, I ask Felipe to take a note."

S: "And this makes him mad??"

This is Mafalda's father. Mafalda pesters him often with deep and probing questions about morals and the world (since it was the 70's, they mostly involve Communism and dictatorial governments). It gives him headaches. He likes to grow lots of plants in their apartment.

Dad: "Its not flowering!! It has water, light, fertilizer... I don't know what could be missing."

M: "SPRING IS HERE!!!!!"

M: Information.

Last we have Manolito. His father owns a store, so he's extremely capitalist. Everything he does is in some way related to making money. He's had the hiccups for about 3 strips previous to this one, and now Felipe and Mafalda are trying to scare them away. Fail.

M: "Do you think we can scare away Manolitos hiccups?"

F: "Let's try."

REVOLUTION!!! THE TANKS!!!!

CIVIL WAR????

Well thats all for now. Maybe soon I'll have something else to write about. Zig's classes are ending, so we'll probably travel for a couple of weeks. If nothing else, I can take more Mafalda pictures.

Chau!!

Hola!

2009-10-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

Vote for Annise Parker! I did.

I love voting. Our friend Andres came over Thursday night so we could edit his presentation for his English class, and he made fun of me for being so excited about sending in my ballot. Whatever. The other day I had to explain the Electoral College system to our Colombian friends. They said that that is a quilombo, which means "big ole mess." That was depressing.

Also, Friday morning we woke up, and it looked like this.

Its definitely supposed to be Spring now. I'm really tired of snow.

Our friend Dayna came to visit this week. She's living in Rio de Janeiro right now with a grant to work with kids and teenagers in Favellas. It was very interesting to hear about. She also had some good craft ideas for me to use.

She got here on Friday wearing a tank top and sandals. Rio's weather is a little different then Bariloche's.

Saturday, we took the bus to El Bolson. The description from Lonely Planet:

It’s not hard to see why the hippies started flocking to El Bolsón back in the ’70s. It’s a mellow little village for most of the year, nestled in between two mountain ranges. When summer comes, it packs out with Argentine tourists who drop big wads of cash and disappear quietly to whence they came.
In the last 30 years El Bolsón has been declared both a non-nuclear zone and an ‘ecological municipality’ (are you getting the picture yet?). What’s indisputable is that just out of town are some excellent, easily accessible hikes that take in some of the country’s (if not the world’s) most gorgeous landscapes.

Anyway, on Saturdays they have a big hippy fair. But apparently hippies don't really like to come out in the rain, so it was smaller when we went. Still really fun though.

Weird gnome sculptures seemed to be a popular theme. Dayna and I both bough earrings and I got some homemade jam. El Bolson is famed for its ability to grow soft fruits. It has a "microclimate," so its warmer then the surrounding area. I don't really know how that happens, but I'm glad it does.

And, Zig and I finally bought a mate! Nicolas said that if I was ever going to invite Argentinians over to our apartment I had to get one. Now we can really try to fit in. Here's a link.

Nicolas taught Daphne and me how to serve and drink mate as part of class. I wouldn't dare do it for an Argentinean though. My skills are minimal.

I don't know how accurate the wikipedia article is. What I do know is that it seems like the "proper" way to drink mate is very controversial. For example, when we first tried it, Nicolas let us put sugar in it because he said sometimes extranjeros hate bitter mate so much that they never drink it again. He said its better to ease into it. I told Angel that we drank it with sugar, and he got upset. He shook his head with disappointment at me and said, "Mate es AMARGO." After I explained that Nicolas didn't drink it with sugar himself and that it was only for gringos, he seemed more at peace with the situation.

Nicolas said that depending on the region, people drink it hot, cold, with orange juice, or other herbs mixed in. And that people have really strong feelings about which way is the right way. I read somewhere that Argentineans eat more sugary pastries per capita then any other people. Sol told me that Argentineans consume 50,000 alfajores per day. If thats true, maybe its to balance out how bitter the mate is. I know I'm a newby, but I can't drink it without an alfajor-licious accompaniament.

When we talked about Mate in class, Nicolas gave us homework to talk in Spanish about a tradition from our country. Neither of us could think of one like mate. So Daphne told about Sinterklaas, which is a scary Dutch version of Santa who steals children and takes them away to Spain with the help of little boys in blackface. I talked about the Rodeo.

Ok, back to El Bolson. After we had perused the entire fair, we went to the tourist office and asked them what else we could do. They pointed us in the direction of the bird museum and a cerveceria.

The bird museum seemed to be located in someone's house and cost 5 pesos. We didn't want to pay to see stuffed birds. So I took pictures of Dayna and Zig pretending to be birds outside.

The cerveceria was much more successful. I think that makes my 6th brewery tour in the last 2 years. From now on I'm skipping the tour and going straight to the free samples.

Dayna and I were trying to figure out what makes some places have high concentrations of craft breweries. Bariloche has 4 or 5 I think, plus many more in the rest of Patagonia. Colorodo has a bazillion. I suggested that it might depend on the ability to grow hops, and she said that not everywhere that can grow hops does. So we decided its not the ability thats important, but the WILL to produce tasty tasty beverages. Maybe thats why every highway in the Czech Republic is surrounded by huge fields of hops. Why waste that space growing vegetables???

Next we went back to the fair for some pie. Then we saw a bridge.

Dayna recently got her face pierced in Rio. They are very popular in Brazil. BUT, they didn't give her a big enough stud to account for swelling, so we had to go to a piercing place to get it changed out. We thought the El Bolson hippies probably new a thing or two about that. All the pictures of people's peircings gave me the willies. I had a hard enough time getting my ears pierced. Aren't my parents lucky I'm too afraid of pain and cauliflower ear to get peircings?! Zig took this picture.

There was a church, and a store with a giant foam alfajor hanging outside. Then we went home.

Now, Dayna is mostly a vegetarian, which means that she used to be a vegetarian and doesn't cook meat at home but will eat it when people cook for her or for cultural experience purposes. Thus, she wanted to go to a parilla. She looks frightened, doesn't she?

Sunday we hiked up half of Cerro Otto, but were stopped by the slushy melting snow. We got some good views though.

I showed Dayna around the Centro. We got a lady to take a good tourist picture of us with Abuela Goye, original Swiss Bariloche settler and current chocolate shop mascot.

Monday I went to play with the kids in the morning, and after we went to the Llao Llao hotel, which is a luxury resort. We wanted to have tea there, which is a recommended tourist activity, but the doorman wouldn't let us in and said we had to make reservations. Don't they KNOW who we ARE? Just kidding. We were def underdressed too, but it was raining.

That night we went to Angel and Valeria's for dinner because Dayna wanted meet our friends and to know what Argentineans like to cook at home. They made really tasty shish kabobs and mashed potatoes. I forgot my camera.

Tuesday Dayna went hiking a Lago Gutierrez because I had to go play with the niños. That night, she cooked us some Brazillian food she had brought with her. And made caiparinhas, which are kind of like Brazillian margaritas. They were really tasty, and much more like margaritas then what they have at the Mexican food places here. This food is called tapioca flour. She said it's really common in street food in Rio. She uses it to make sort of tacos.

Wednesday Dayna took a bus back to Buenos Aires where she'll be for a couple of days. She's probably still on that bus actually.

Saturday is Halloween and they don't celebrate it here and that makes me really sad. I may just dress up by myself and bake. We'll see.

Chau!

happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.....

2009-10-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

Hola!!!

Friday was my birthday, so I have been a bad blogger.

Thursday night, our friend Pierre (he's from France) invited Zig to play fútbol with this group he found out by the Centro Atomico. After, we went to his house to have dinner. He was here for 5 weeks, so instead of staying in a hostel, he found a guy to stay with. He's the one on the right sitting on that white thing. This guy was ridiculous.

He is from California, and left the US 6 years ago and has never returned. He "hates" the US and wants to get Argentinean citizenship. Except he seemed to be making no efforts to immerse himself in Argentinean culture at all. He spoke only English to all the Argentinean people at his house, and had a portable radio with a screen in it so he could watch movies while he was camping. How very authentically Argentinean of him. NOT.

Anyway, he was amazing dinner entertainment. He seemed to have smoked way too much Californian medicinal herbs. A few paraphrased quotes:

"DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could cross a mango and an avocado??? That would be the BEST SALSA EVER." (As dad pointed out, you can do that in a blender. No genetic modification required.)

"DUDE, we need furniture in our house (see above picture and note lack of furniture). I'm totally going to install a jacuzzi in our living room." "What about your landlord," asks his friend. "He won't notice. I'll pour the concrete on cardboard so its removable! And I can drill a hole through the wall so it drains to the outside. Its going to be awesome!" So then I decided to try to be helpful, "Well you should find the studs in the wall so you don't have trouble drilling." "Oh there aren't any studs. Its a brick wall."

THEN, he said "The only problem is how I'm going to heat the water." THAT'S the only problem with this plan?? Your going to try to drill a hole through a brick wall without damaging it. You own no power tools. Or regular tools for that matter.

We were watching one of his extreme snowboarding videos on his tiny radio screen. "DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could jump out of a plane in one of those squirrel suits with skis and then land and ski down a mountain. Its never been done before, but its totally possible if you had those flexible skis. You could get up to like 250 miles per hour in one of those suits!!!"

Zig pointed out later that his story didn't make any sense because the maximum velocity of a human being falling out of an airplane couldn't be more then 150 miles per hour. I pointed out that actually, his story didn't make any sense because you would definitely DIE if you slammed into a mountain at either 120 or 250 miles per hour. Aren't physicists cute.

"DUDE, wouldn't it be awesome if you could attach jet engines to a bi-plane. Then it would be super powerful, but also INFINITELY slow!!"

What? Ok, moving on....

Anyway, Pierre made some really tasty empanadas filled with French style vegetables. They were like ratatouille empanadas. We have since recreated them in our house. I like them better then the other kind we've been making because they don't only contain cheese. I do love cheese though.

At midnight, Zig wished me a happy birthday. All of California guy's friends heard and they sang to me!! It was really nice. Then they asked me how old I was and called me a nena (which means little baby girl) because apparently they were all 30. I'd rather be a nena then a 30 year old with no furniture in his house.

Friday was my birthday!!! Zig had to go to class in the morning, so I stayed in my pajamas until 3 in the afternoon, as I usually try to do on my birthday. Then when Zig came back, we went to a chocolate shop to have lots of cake and use the internet, courtesy of Neil and Kris Thomas (thanks!). We had three kinds: apple tart, some flaky dulce de leche thing, and chocolate mousse. And two hot chocolates. The waiter practically called us fat when we ordered. I forgot to take a picture until we'd eaten most of it already. Here's the aftermath:

That evening we went to one of the few non-parilla restaurants in town, also on Neil and Kris Thomas (thanks again!!). Its called Tinto Bistro and apparently Queen Maxima's brother works there (she's the Queen of the Netherlands who is from Argentina). We ordered a kind of random assortment of things that we hadn't gotten to eat in a while. Its going to sound weird, but it was really tasty.

Appetizer: Calamari and shrimp with wasabi mayonnaise (can't make it through a meal without that mayonnaise).

Salad: I had carpaccio (mmm tasty raw meat) and Zig had ceviche.

Main course: I had seafood cazuela (like stew) and Zig had chicken curry. Random.

Look at that plating! I miss scallops.

We also had pink champagne, as is my birthday custom. At the end, they brought us dessert with a candle in it! They didn't sing though, for which I was glad.

Another example of some fancy plating.

They also provided crayons for coloring on the paper table cloth. I drew a flower!

Saturday, we went to a party that had nothing to do with my birthday but Zig said we could pretend that it did. It was at a house near Lago Gutierrez, which is very pretty.

The party was a hamburger asado. Look at all those topping options!! Most of the sauces contained mayonnaise of course.

We discovered that you can also buy LARGE bags of mustard and ketchup at the average Bariloche grocery store.

Yes, that bag is in fact the same size as the brita filter behind it.

All of our friends from the Centro Atomico were having this party so they could do "Amigo Invisible" which is like Secret Santa but not at Christmas. We were not involved in the present giving because we weren't here when they drew names. It was really fun though and a good way to practice my Spanish because they had to describe the person they were going to give the gift too and everyone had to guess.

After they gave all the presents, the manly men played fútbol. I was told it was boys only. I'm sure I was heart broken. Zig tried to get me to hold his beer though, so I drank it. I'm nobody's beer girl.

Sunday morning we finally made my birthday cake. Red Velvet, my favorite! Nicholas helped me find where to get red food coloring. It took two tries.

First Attempt: Epic Fail.

Our oven heats from a fire in the bottom and has no temperature gauge. Also, I didn't use enough food coloring and we only have a clear cake pan. We had to scrape off all the sides because they were so badly burnt. Also, we have yet to find buttermilk in the grocery store, but Cooks Illustrated says you can use 3 parts plain yogurt and 1 part milk. We also have yet to find plain yogurt except for Activia, and I didn't want laxative cake. So we used vanilla. That may have contributed to the problem.

Yuck.

Second Attempt: SUCCESS!

Even with poor buttermilk substitution, this cake was a vast improvement! I used ALL the rest of the food coloring, so it came out quite red. Zig and I ate half of it by ourselves and then has some people over to eat the rest. I'm a bad sharer. Once in Prague, I hid an entire cake under my bed so I didn't have to share. It was the famous St. Mark's Methodist Church Mrs. Massey Valentine's Day Banquet Coconut Cake. Aunt Suzanne mailed it to me. They wouldn't have appreciated its significance anyway.

Zig got me candles and sang happy birthday!

Also, we lined the pan with tin foil so it only almost burned on the bottom. I outsmarted the oven.

Here’s a picture of Helga being weird.

Monday, after our major cake baking success, we decided to make banana bread. It didn’t even take two tries! Mmm tasty.

Monday afternoon, I went with Graciela to visit the community center where I will volunteer every Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon while I’m here. My first day was Tuesday, so I brought crepe paper flowers to make. There are four kids ages 9, 11, 13, and 13. We decorated the classroom!!

Apparently, crepe paper flowers do not take long enough to make. When we ran out of activities, the 9-year old girl started giving me a hard time. For example, “Where do babies come from???” Ask your mother. “How old are you?” 23. “Jovencita!!” Your 9 years old!! Ridiculous. Then she started calling the 11-year old girl a nena. She also figured out that if she talked fast enough, I had no idea what she was saying. She’s quite the character.

If anyone knows of any crafts that will entertain 9-year old little girls for a full hour and a half, please let me know.

Last night, Zig and I decided to do some food related research for when my parents come. As food related research can be a little expensive, I charged it. They had salmon which is my favorite food and I haven’t had it in ages and I got spoiled with good food on my birthday and you always want pictures of food and Zig made me do it!! Thanks mom and dad!

We had venison carpaccio, which was... gamey. Venison is a Lake District specialty apparently.

It actually wasn’t fantastic. The salmon was kind of weird. The restaurant wins though for looking like a hobbit hole. I think I have a picture of the outside up on one of my earlier posts. Here’s the inside:

Dessert was pretty awesome though. Mmm chocolate.

Tomorrow our friend Dayna from Rice is coming to stay with us. She’s been living in Rio. We have an excuse to do some touristy things!! We’re going to a hippy market on Saturday and probably hiking some places the rest of the week. We’ll see. I’ll take plenty of pictures.

Chau!

"That is SO not what an omellete is."

2009-10-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to breakfast and ordered omelettes. This is what they gave us.

If you think that looks like a giant pile of french fries covered in greasy ham, you would be correct.

I quote Lisa in my title.

I have discovered that at least in Bariloche, restaurants have a real knack for negating any relatively healthy qualities of a food. A sandwich?? Lets use crustless white bread and cover it in mayonnaise. Better yet, lets put chicken fried steak in it! Orange juice? Whatever, we have Tang. Pasta? If its not drowned bechemel sauce then its not worth having. No vegetables allowed. My arteries are crying. I just don't understand how all these people are so skinny.

Buenos Aires, Part Three: Return to Buenos Aires

2009-10-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

We stayed in Palermo for the last three nights of our trip. The hostel was REALLY weird. Our room was through a hole in the ceiling and was giant. It had a really good view.

That night we had sushi. One of my favorite foods. A food not available in Bariloche. Bariloche has steak. We had sushi three more times. It was really good.

Friday morning we walked around Palermo and saw the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, or the MALBA. It was my favorite thing we saw in Buenos Aires. I snuck pictures of some art. There weren’t any signs that said I couldn’t.

We also encountered a phenomenon Lonely Planet says is common in Palermo, the paseoperros, or professional dog walker. We saw two of them.

That's a lot of dog poop.

Friday afternoon Zig had a meeting with the Fulbright Commission, Argentina branch. I took a nap in the waiting room. Zig said the meeting was really funny because the lady seemed to have no idea how long he has been here, what his project is, or even that they had already sent him money.

Friday night, our Italian friend Davide arrived at the hostel. He had one night in Buenos Aires on his way back to Italy. He was counting down the hours so he could fit in as much partying as possible. Someone invited us to a party. It started at 1am, the usual start time for Argentinean parties. Zig really thought we were going to go until about 11pm when he got tired. I suspected that would happen.

Saturday morning we got on the bus to La Boca. Everyone warned us that it would be super dangerous, and that you can’t leave the tourist street, Caminito. We got all prepared to be instantly mugged when exiting the bus. While it certainly wasn’t safe, the tourist street is REALLY touristy. When we arrived and saw five giant tour buses pulling up, we knew there was nothing to be worried about.

The Caminito was really pretty. Sol (my other Spanish teacher) said the buildings are painted pretty colors because they used the leftovers from boats painted in the adjacent harbor. It used to be a slum for Italian immigrants. Now it’s a prime tourist attraction and place to hawk Argentinean souvenirs.

Traveling trick: Find someone with larger camera than yours to take your picture. Then they won't steal your dinky one.

Caminito was the home of Benito Quinquela Martin, a famous Argentinean artist who painted scenes of La Boca’s port. The museum was closed, but someone had recreated some of his works on the walls of the Caminito.

Look! It’s Evita and Che Guevera at the same time! Amazing.

This type of house is called a Conventillo. At first, they were houses for the original porteños (the word for people from Buenos Aires). Then those people got rich and moved onto bigger and fancier things, leaving the houses to be divided up into as many rooms as possible for immigrants.

Conventillo is a Lunfardo word. Lunfardo is a type of slang in Buenos Aires. From what I gather, Lunfardo is to Spanish as Ebonics is to English in the sense that just because you speak Spanish doesn’t mean you understand Lunfardo, but you might be able to figure it out. Or like whatever it is they speak in Boston.

Mafalda was there....

This is the best picture I could get of La Bonbonera out of the bus window (see the blue and yellow thing in the distance?). It’s where the world famous Boca Juniors play. I tried to get Zig to go to a fútbol game (they have tours where they safely shuffle gringos in and out, keeping them away from the violent soccer hooligans), but he was too scared. He said in Mexico they pee in bottles and throw them at you when they get excited, and he didn’t want to have that happen. Wuss.

For lunch we went to a Hare Krishna restaurant in Palermo. The second one I’ve been too (the first was in Prague), and just as tasty. I loved the koolaid... just kidding.

Next we went to Recoleta. We saw the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which was a really nice museum except that the whole first floor was full of European Art, which was not really what I wanted to see. The second floor was much better and had only Argentinean art.

Behind the museum they have a giant flower... A humongous flower... A gargantuan flower. It’s really flippin big.

Apparently, it opens and shuts with the sun, and rotates to face the sun depending on the season. It was constructed by Lockheed Martin. That’s pretty sweet.

We saw the Escuela de Derecho, or Law school. Also really big. You can see the flower dwarfed behind it. They must do some serious stuff in there.

The thing everyone says you’re supposed to do is see Recoleta Cemetary, but by the time we got there we were really tired and didn’t feel like it. So I took I picture through a gate and another of what we could see over the wall. It looked a lot like Pere Lachaise in Paris. Sorry Argentina. Next time. They aren’t going anywhere.

After that we went back to Palermo. It was 8pm. Too early for dinner, so I decided to get my haircut, since obviously haircutting places stay open until 9pm. They put me in one of those dryer things. I don’t know why. Zig thought it was really funny. It was all going really well until the end when the guy started using a strange downward chopping motion with his scissors on sections of my hair. I decided to go with the flow and see what would happen. Nothing good. Now parts of my hair are a lot shorter than the other parts, and not in a cute, layered way. In a weird, a 5 year old cut my hair while I was asleep kind of way. Or like I tried to cut my own hair. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not good. At least I can count on my trusted stylist Robert to fix it when I return to Houston. And I have 8 months to grow it out. I need to start taking vitamins.

Sunday was our last day. Our bus left at 4:30, so we spent the morning in San Telmo. They have a giant antiques market on Sundays. There was lots of cool stuff, but seeing as I don’t have a house to put it in, I refrained.

Look! Mafalda was here too!!!! She gets around.

San Telmo is the original Buenos Aires, so everything looks real old. It was built for rich people, but they moved out (I think to Recoleta) because the close quarters were causing disease. So then less rich people moved in. It’s supposed to be the birthplace of tango as well.

We got home on Monday night and went to get the wee Helguita from Angel and Valeria’s. They made us pizza. It was good.

Also, I discovered that if you click on the pictures on my blog they get a LOT bigger. Sweet.

The End.

Buenos Aires, Part Deux: Uruguay

2009-10-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

I realize that Uruguay is not in Buenos Aires, but I wanted to be consistent with my titles.

Wednesday, we got up really early, said goodbye to the breakfast buffet of champions, and headed to the ferry. It was a big ferry.

According to Fernando at my Spanish school, the Rio Negro is the widest river in the world. I have not yet googled to confirm. It was really wide though. You can’t see either side from the middle.

Did you know that in Spanish they use Google as a verb too? Googlear. Yo googleo. Me gusta.

First stop, Colonia de Sacramento, my new favorite place on the planet. Sadly, we did not suspect we would like it so much, and thus were only there for a couple of hours. It was beautiful. And there was a tree full of parrots.

See that little green speck?? Its a parrot. Or some brightly colored bird that looks like a parrot. The tree was full of them!

According to Lonely Planet, Colonia was founded by the Portuguese to smuggle stuff to Buenos Aires but then quickly taken over by the Spanish. So there are lots of colonial buildings in varying states of ruin.

This is the old pirate port. We sat there and looked at the water for a long time. And the boats with funny names.

We saw the town square...

...and the church...

...and an old looking street...

...And some nice little plazas with pretty colored buildings...

...and cultural icons. This is Mafalda. She’s from a very famous eponymous Argentinean comic strip. She’s sassy and political. And six years old. I haven’t mentioned Mafalda before because the comics are too small to take adequate pictures of, but she is my new favorite and I bought the giant Todo Mafalda book as my Argentina souvenir. It contains every single Mafalda comic ever written. I tried to buy a smaller book in English to bring home, but I read some of it and there’s a lot lost in translation. Like to the point of the jokes being incomprehensible. This is the biggest Mafalda comic I’ve seen so far, so I had to put it in. It says "Life is beautiful! The bad thing is that many people confuse beautiful with easy." She's a very wise 6 year old.

The other girl is named Susanita. Her dream in life is to get married and have children (the comic was written in the 70s). Mafalda's dream in life is to work for the UN. Conflict ensues.

In my favorite strip, Susanita says, "I want to grow up and own many dresses!" And then Mafalda says, "I want to grow up and have lots of culture!" And then Susanita says, "Why would you want that? If you walk through the street without culture you won't get arrested, but you will if you walk through the street without clothes!" And then Mafalda punches her in the face.

We ate at a restaurant called Drugstore. The seafood was excellent. Well, excellent relative to Bariloche. I think my standards are low right now.

It was a pretty hip little place. That car has seating inside. It looked uncomfortable though.

We made more dog friends. We named this one Sucio. That means Dirty. He lived up to his name.

This dog stared at this hole for, I kid you not, at least 45 minutes. From before we ordered until we left. The level of concentration is remarkable. I really want to know whats in there.

After lunch, we got on a bus to Montevideo. Nap time!

Montevideo was not as awesome as Colonia, but pretty awesome nathless*.

(*Please ask Neil or Kris Thomas about this word. Also, don’t use fake words around your children when they are learning how to speak. They won’t find out they are fake until high school when someone asks them what on earth they are talking about.)

We saw a giant flag...

...and a giant cross. Apparently the Pope came here...

...and another obelisk. Montevideo’s is a lot smaller though...

We didn’t book a hostel in advance, but the first one we went to had room for us, which was lucky because it was super sweet! I think it used to be apartments or something. It had a balcony, and from there we could see the Teatro Solis, Montevideo’s main theater. And it was on the street with all the bars and restaurants in Lonely Planet. This is the view from the balcony.

Montevideo had its own version of Calle Florida. We walked all the way down it to the port.

Then on the way back we went by the Mercado del Puerto, which means “building with a bunch of high-end seafood restaurants.”

Then we walked through some plazas. The big horse guy is in Plaza Independencia, right next to our hostel and Teatro Solis. Lonely Planet says he sits on top of a mausoleum.

After we finished walking around, it was only 8. Which is WAY too early to eat dinner. So we went to a bar to waste some time until we could get away with showing up at a restaurant. The bar we chose happened to be Lord of the Rings themed. SWEET. And it actually seemed like a place cool people hang out. I'm liking Uruguay better and better.

I had rack of lamb for dinner. It was super duper cheap. Everything in Uruguay was super cheap. Yay favorable exchange rate.

So much meat. All the time.

Also interesting, they use horse carts to pick up trash instead of garbage trucks. I didn’t take a picture though because I thought it was kind of rude. And I felt sad for the horses.

In the morning we went to the Museo Torres Garcia, which we liked very much. I couldn’t take pictures though.

Then we walked all the way back to the bus station, which took about an hour and a half, but we didn’t want to take out any Uruguayan pesos just to use the bus. We did it when we first arrived too. It was good for us.

Stay tuned for Buenos Aires, Part Three: Return to Buenos Aires!!!

Chau!

Buenos Aires, Part Uno: City Centro

2009-10-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Hola, We’re back from our trip. IPhoto tells me I took 330 photos. Goodness.

Thus, I will be doing my blogging in installments. First, I have a few pictures from volunteering two weeks ago. It was the first official week of spring, so Graciela asked me if I knew how to make flowers out of tissue paper so the kids could do something extra fun. I’m from Texas. It’s a Tex-Mex after school craft staple. I’ve been making tissue paper flowers since before I could read.

Here are some pictures of the children under my craft tutelage. We got locked out of the community center, so we had to sit on the ground outside. It worked out though.

Zig came too. Here are some pictures of him playing with Jesus and this other kid. I asked the other kid what his name is and he said he didn’t know. He was either really confused or my Spanish accent is so bad he didn’t understand the question. I expect the latter.

Jesus is my favorite little kid, and one of three who’s names I can remember. (Jesus, Lautaro, and.... Brian. I think there’s a Monty Python joke there.) Whenever we do crafts, he makes them for his mom. He also tries to steal just about everything he can fit in his pocket. Gotta keep your eye on those crayons.

Also, I learned something new because Zig was there. In Argentina, the kids call teachers “seño.” According to Zig, in Mexican Spanish, this means dirty old man.

While we were out of town, Helga went on vacation to Angel and Valeria’s house. She LOVED it. I’m not joking. They didn’t torture her like Zig does. That was a major draw. Angel said that after a day, she was following him around the house. Zig needs cat sensitivity training.

Our journey began with a 20-hour bus ride from Bariloche to Buenos Aires. Not as bad as you might think. The bus was double-decker with fully reclining chairs. We also picked the seats in the front on the second story, so we had an excellent view and plenty of legroom.

Drawback: apparently buses only serve white foods. EVERY food item was white. Look at that plate, it has FOUR pieces of white bread on it. Even the meat loaf had white cheese covering it. Can’t I have like a carrot or something?

And now, BUENOS AIRES!!!!

We arrived on Sunday, and for the first three days we stayed in a hotel in the City Center. It wasn’t the greatest hotel to stay in character-wise since it is surrounded by office buildings, but Zig had to take the GRE nearby on Tuesday so it was convenient for that. And WAY more quiet than a hostel. And it was close enough to walk to some interesting stuff. And they had an excellent breakfast buffet.

Our hotel was a block away from Calle Florida, apparently THE place to shop. The mall has fancy murals.

We spent Sunday evening around there because nothing else was really open. We saw Inglorious Basterds (thats how its spelled, I didn’t mess it up), in the original language with subtitles in Spanish. Unfortunately, half the movie is in French and German, thus forcing me to read and comprehend the Spanish subtitles. It went pretty well actually! It was a really good movie.

First thing Monday morning we walked to Puerto Madero to buy our ferry tickets to get to Uruguay. But that’s for a later installment. Puerto Madero is an old port that nobody really uses anymore. According to Lonely Planet, when it was designed it was a state of the art, modern port. Then a couple of months after it was finished, boat sizes increased dramatically, rendering it completely obsolete. I thought maybe they could fit one cruise ship in there. Maybe.

Recently, Puerto Madero is being revived as the new hip and trendy place to be. There was a sushi restaurant.

Next we went to the Plaza de Mayo (I'm getting really fancy, the blue words are clickable!). We saw the Casa Rosada...

...and the Banco Nacional...

...and the Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires...

...and the Cabildo...

...and also the Pirámide de Mayo. The Pirámide is significant partly as a location of protests (we saw several while we were there, all at the same time but for different reasons). Most notable are the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. These are mothers of Desaparecidos from the last military government in Argentina, which ended in 1983. Even though protests were banned during that era, every week they walked (and still do walk) in circles around the Pyramid wearing white headscarves in protest of the arrest and secret murder of the Desaparecidos during the Dirty War. The graffiti around the Pirámide is also for this protest, and lists names of people who were disappeared.

Here's another picture of the whole thing for good measure.

We kept walking and easily found Buenos Aires’ giant obelisk.

We tried to go to Teatro Colon, Argentina’s national theater, and it’s closed until NEXT YEAR. Did they not know I was coming? Here’s what we could see over the construction barriers.

Here’s the obelisk at night. It lights up!

Also, an amusing Burger King billboard. It says “Feel the music in the meat.” Ok thanks Burger King.

Tuesday, Zig had his exam in the afternoon, so we spent a leisurely morning at the breakfast buffet. His exam went really well. I went shopping, but sadly (or happily for my bank account) I still didn’t find anything to buy.

To celebrate the end of the GRE, we went to the famous Cafe Tortoni for cake. Apparently, Carlos Gardel ate there. It was quite tasty. Pretty much everyone there was a tourist, but I saw a door that some old guys kept walking through that must have led to a super secret room for authentic Buenos Aires old guys. Maybe.

I had apple pie, and Zig had chocolate cake.

After that we went to some churches. Here’s the inside of the Plaza de Mayo church. Now I don’t know much about architectural history, but it seemed to be a really bizarre combination of neoclassical and baroque. The outside had columns and a pediment, and then inside was covered with gold and fat angel babies. What does it all mean??

I really liked the floor.

It has the tomb of San Martin. He’s a pretty big deal.

We went to the Manzana de las Luces, which is a block of really old buildings. It has an elite secondary school. Apparently if you go to elite secondary schools, you’re allowed to loiter outside and drink beer.

Our last church was Iglesia San Ignacio next door. It was nice. Some guy came in and asked us for money, so Zig gave him what he had in his pocket, some change. The guy said, “What do you expect me to buy with this? You don’t have anything else?” Angel and Valeria said that when people ask you for money they expect more than 2 pesos. Hmm.

Ok, break time. I need a cafecito. End of Part Uno!

things I forgot...

2009-09-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hola,
I made a list of things that I forgot to write about over the last couple of weeks. They add up to make an almost interesting post.

1. I learned a very useful Dutch word from my friend Daphne. Hangjongeren. It means "hang-youths," and is used to describe large groups of teenagers that hang around on the street doing absolutely nothing. Nothing good anyway. So next time you go to Edwards movie theater, you can try to work this word into a sentence. "Oh look, that group of hangjongeren is getting picked up by their moms in minivans."

2. I keep getting corrected because everyone from North and South America is an American, not just estadounidenses. I keep saying "In America..." and then everyone says, we're in America right now. Its a hard habit to break, as proven by the next paragraph.

3. An Argentinean person asked me why Americans eat so much at funerals. He had seen this on television. "We eat a lot at funerals?" said I. Apparently, we do. In Argentina, you just have a coffee or tea after a funeral, and no one brings you food like in the US. In the United States, once someone dies, the food starts coming and doesn't stop until the wake. "You have a PARTY after someone DIES?" Well yeah, of course we do. What else are you supposed to do with yourself after a funeral?

Since this amazing revelation that not everyone eats excessive amounts of food at funerals, I have asked a French person and an English person what they do. French people do not have wakes. English people do. Hello colonial legacy.

4. Several people have asked me if I eat marshmallows. Yes.....why?? Marshmallows aren't very popular here, but apparently estadounidenses eat marshmallows on television all the time, and thus it is a point of interest for Argentineans my age. I had no idea marshmallow consumption was a common stereotype of Americans. All I have to say about that is that you can't put dulce de leche on a stick.

Happy First Day of Spring!!!

2009-09-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

For those of us on this side of the equator, today is the first day of spring!

Apparently this is a very important holiday for Argentina. A holiday meriting free ice cream. Well, two for one quarter kilos of ice cream. I had white chocolate and strawberry. Mine is all gone. Great success!!!

Sadly, that means ski season is just about OVER. It hasn't snowed in two weeks. This weekend, we went skiing, and half the mountain had no snow on it. The bottom half. Zig asked, "But how do we get down??"

Here we are standing in the lift line. Skis on, no snow. One of the lifts had a conveyor belt to get you on the chair since you couldn't ski to it. I know how to say chair lift in Spanish. Aerosilla. It means air-chair.

Here's a picture from the chairlift. I see the beginnings of snow!!!

Some mountains....

So we aren't still stuck on top of the mountain. They let you ride down the chair lift. It was a little discomfiting. You could also ride down in the tele-cabin. That was better.

Distinct lack of snow in that picture. And Zig isn't smiling. That wasn't even a candid photo, he knew it was coming! He was eating though.

This time skiing was WAY better than last time. First, I could see stuff because it wasn't snowing. Second, we went down blues instead of reds.

I did have one minor problem. When we rented skis, I was having trouble speaking Spanish because I don't know how to say "These boots don't fit." I think, because I didn't speak Spanish, he assumed I didn't know how to ski. He didn't ask what my level was. My bindings were super loose, and every time I hit a bump, my skis popped off, propelling me face first into the snow. Even the tiniest of tiny clumps of snow. If I went on any un-groomed parts of the slope, down to the ground I went. Here's a picture from my perspective:

My body hurts. A lot. I woke up, and my thumb muscle hurt.

We also had major problems with Beginners. Or as Zig and I like to call them, Fallers. As in, "Oh look there's a clump of Fallers, lets wait until they get off the trail or they might collide with us." I saw one Faller slam into another from behind. Her skis went up into the air and came down right on the guy's face. Dangerous.

We did learn a new Argentinean word though. It's "culipatin." It literally means "ass-skate." Its what you do when you slide down the mountain on your behind.

When I came home from Prague, I had about 100 pictures of the Astrological Clock (see Praha Blog-A for proof). When I come home from Bariloche, I will have at least 100 pictures of this giant lake...

In other news, I finished my last week of school on Friday. Here are some pictures of my school:

This last picture is from an Argentinean map. The Islas Malvinas are more commonly known as the Falkland Islands. I really enjoy that Argentina is labelled as the owner of these islands on THIS map, even though they speak English there and use the Pound. Wishful thinking.

Nicholas was not my teacher for the last two days of class. I had a lady named Sol. It wasn't as fun, but she was nice. She took me too a museum exhibit of artisan teapots. Teteras in español.

The elephant has sparkles and rhinestones all over it. My blurry picture doesn't do it justice. No flash allowed! There were also even kitschier ones with painted flowers and macrame butterflies. I liked those first two the best.

Other than that, this week we didn't do much. The school was full of Australian hipsters who didn't want to participate in any of the activities. They just wanted to stand around and smoke cigarrettes.

We did eat a lot though. The original title of this post when I tried to write it on Friday was "I'm Never Eating Again, Ever." Here's why:

Wednesday, we went out with Ayalla and Gilad, the Isreali kids from my school. I had fish. It was pretty fun.

Thursday, Zig and I went to a parilla. And ate ALLLLL of that. All of it, between the two of us. Plus wine and some squash (for the health, you know). I just about died. I also ate some unusual cow body parts. I try not to think about it too hard.

More grocery store observations:

We found Target Argentina. Its called Anonima. Its like a gold mine of electronics and groceries.

I've been noticing that Argentina has a strange obsession with gluten. I've never seen so many labels that say "gluten free" on them. Usually that stuff is hidden in the grocery store. Here it merits prime end-of-shelf space. This is the section of gluten free desserts. Just desserts. They have other gluten free stuff in other sections, featured just as prominently. It strikes me as a weird allergy to pick out above all other allergies. What about nuts? Lots of people are allergic to nuts. I haven't seen any labels that say "nut-free."

Also, we found some tasty Mexican imports. Still no tortillas though.

Finally, Zig found this plate in a display case at his work. I like its jaunty positioning. Argentina cares not if your university seal is displayed sideways!

Next Saturday we leave for Buenos Aires. That means lots of working on applications and studying for the GRE. Which means boring blogging, so don't get your hopes up. Speaking of the GRE, I was quizzing Zig on his vocabulary flashcards. The word was credulous. He didn't know it, so I said it means gullible. "Did you know that the word gullible is written on the ceiling?" He totally looked.

After I stopped laughing hysterically, he said that his first thought when I said it was "Why would the word gullible be written on the ceiling in English?"