Random BA I

So, as it was pointed out to me, I´ve been living here in Buenos Aires for 6 weeks now and yet have neglected to put up any photos of the city itself. I have been snapping quite a few as I wander the city exploring parks, plazas, and various other things but they are anything but organized at this point. Thus, I figured I would just throw them up at random as the opportunity arrises.
In this edition, we have a shot of the very urban view out the kitchen window of my appartment where I lean on the window-cill and look out whistfully while waiting for maté water to boil. Next is a close up of these absolutely gorgeous flower they have here (still haven´t figured out what there called. Appologies to any botanists who might be looking at this). They have been bursting vividly off of trees in every part of the city and are only now (as we have officially enterred autumn) dropping to the ground, leaving an other-wordly pink carpet over the concrete landscape.


Next is a shot of the observatory where I went to hear a public lecture called ¨Borges and math¨ which had a much more interesting title than it actually deserved, I assure you. Next is a slightly more artistic take of the observatory after the sun went down.

The silhouette shot is from the Recoleta cemmetary which is one of THE coolest things in the city. I took a ton of photos from there that I plan to post up in a bit. This is just a taste so that the antici---pation might build a bit.


The green dome is the Congreso Nacional de la República de Argentina and the plaza leading up to it. It´s an interesting contrast to our capital dome in DC which is gleaming white to suggest the purity of our neoclassical democracy. The BA version on the other hand is overly ornate and stained with soot and pigeon droppings, suggesting the less idealistic attitude Argentines tend to have of government and its role in relation to the people. It´s also a great visual metaphor for the acceptance and quasi-celebration within the Argentine psyche of their turbulent and chaotic development (and a darn good land mark when trying to make it home from the club).


The

The towering monstrosity is the Universidad de Buenos Aires Facultad de Ciencias de Medicina. It´s part medical school, part public hospital, and all Argentine. Surrounding the plaza from which I´m taking the picture are severally equally monolithic and decaying towers of various other faculties.

Finally are two shots of the wonderfully-seculded little plaza ¨La Plazoleta Roberto Arlt¨ just a few blocks away from my appartment. Something about the stone and vivid pink trees and its hidden away quality really made it stick out to me and I´ve sort of adopted it as my home away from home (away from home). I go there for reading, yoga, reflection time, and the weekday afternoon reggae band (I think they´re skipping their high school classes to be there, bless their hearts) that sets up there. Speaking of which, I think I´ll head there right now...

concieving Concepción

After Santiago and a failed attempt to hook up with some friends south of there we decided to head off to the college town of Concepción, Chile on a whim to kill a little time before Christine´s bday. There wasn´t a whole lot to do there except go out and drink at night, which we certainly did, although, somehow we kept accedentally choosing the karaoke bars instead of the ones with live music (they had cheaper drinks anyway!). The last night was the best when we stumbled upon an amazing jazz show featuring a trumpet player who played a Chilean version of ´Summertime´with a huge wine glass to muffle the sound. Very cool!

The highlight of the whole town was definitely the museum at the Universidad de Concepción. It featured a huge mural painted in the 60´s by Mexican muralist José Orozco, a contemporary of Diego Rivera. The theme of the mural is ¨América Latina en todo¨ so basically tracking LA culture form México to Chile. It was REALLY COOL. A Latin American Studies student´s fantasy. The whole story of a culture told in a single intricate image (a lot like One Hundred Years of Solitude did in literature).

pictures soon!

El Parque Nacional Puyehue - explosively beautiful!

After Santiago, we headed down south another 17 hours or so to the little town of Entre Lagos. The town is aptly named, finding itself between two gorgeous lakes that were formed by the multiple volacanos lining this stretch of the southern Andes. The raison d´être for this town is the nearby Parque Nacional Puyehue, which hugs the Chilean border with Argentina. We took a nice hike through some seriously dense and beautiful forest (very Fern Gulley-esque) with some of the fatest trees I´ve ever seen. The trip offered great views of two of the major volcanoes in the area (Puyehue and CaboBlanco, guess which one is which). We also got a really cool view of the whole valley from atop a mountain that we spent a good hour climbing up and picnicked on top of (where I took the self-portrait). After all that we hit up the best part of all, the hot springs, which are approximately 135 degrees ferenheit yipes! but it felt soooooo good. That night we happened to be hostelling across the street from a ¨alternative rock¨ exposition, which turned out to be five teenage garage bands who were somehow ¨touring¨ the area south of Santiago. It was a very ¨bless their hearts¨ moment as they put on their best Nirvana covers. We stayed for about a beer´s worth and headed back to the hostel. It´s amazing how US music really dominates the world, even more than Coca-cola, McDonalds, or CO2 emissions I think.

The next day we waited out alongside the ¨highway¨ leading to Argentina which is where I snapped the volcano photos. We had to literally chase down the bus which had had no intention of stopping for more passengers, contrary to what the lady at the office when we bought the tickets in a nearby town had told us, and they let us on. It´s amazing what you can accomplish with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of sweat.