El viaje, La vida nueva

Tierra Santa

2008-07-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

A theme park all about Jesus!? Only in Argentina.

Rosario 80 years later...

2008-07-04T10:36:00.001-07:00

This town which used to be a bigger port that Buenos Aires and is where the monument to the Argentine flag is located is also the birthplace of Che Guevara. Albert and I took a journey out there for the 80th anniversary of his birth and unveiling of the first ever statue of him in Argentina.

Chile

2008-07-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

So, here I am finally getting around to posting pics and stories from the 12 amazing days Christine and I spent in Chile. We made it by bus all the way from the Bolivian border in the north to Entre Lagos about 2/3 of the way down before crossing over the mountains into Argentina. That was some 70 hours in buses! Chile is about the length north to south as the US is from east to west to give you and idea. More to come!

Uruguay: life on the flip side del Río de la Plata

2008-05-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

First of I must mention that, despite popular belief on both sides of it, there is nothing riverish about the Río de la Plata. This is evident

enough at a glance from the shore on either side. Looking out over the sea of Wonka-esque brown waves and the endless horizon, it feels exactly like an ocean, which it isn´t really either. The most enlightning way to experience whatever this massive body of water is is via the 3 hour ferry between Buenos Aires and the small Uruguayan coastal town of Colonia, famous for the colonial Portuguese ruins there and the gorgeous trees (every time I asked what type they were, I got another response...appologies again to any botanists who might be reading this) lining the streets. I took the ferry, enjoyed the charm of Colonia and then headed on by bus to Montevideo, the southernmost capital city in the Western Hemisphere (your daily dose of geography trivia) which was wonderfully tranquilo in comparison to BA. A couple of friends of mine from my exchange progam and I stayed with an American studying there for a year that I found on couchsurfers. He showed us an amazing time, from the Spanish fort atop the only hill as far as the eye can see, to the downtown nightlife, to the outskirts of town where we joined him for an afternoon of volunteer work with some kids from the slums outside the city.

Parque Nacional de Iguazú - yes, water falls!

2008-04-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

So here are some pictures from the fabulous weekend I jsut spent in Iguazú. To sum up, I felt like I was on a moving sidewalk through paradise for two days. This place was very moving and spiritual.

On a more wordly note, you will also notice some decidedly less heavenly photos of the highway which connects the airport to the national park and then to the city of Puerto Iguazú. What happened was that the parents of the public school kids in Puerto Iguazú had been protesting the horrible conditions of the schools there for several months and had decided out of desperation to take their protest into the streets. This took the form of a ¨corte de la ruta¨ or roadblock of the only highway into town. Argentines takes their protesting very seriously and this was a serious picket line. I was unable to reach the city for the first day and spent several hours in the bus from the airport stopping on the highway before we turned around and headed to the waterfalls for the rest of the afternoon. That night some friends I had made on the bus and I managed to get through the corte when they decided to lift it to pedestrians later on that night after we had waited there with all our lugage thinking of where to sleep outside (since ALL the hostels and hotels in the area were on the other sid of the corte) for quite a while taking in the action. The next morning, we tried to cross back through the corte to spend the whole day at Iguazú (since we only had a couple of hours the first day) but they were having non of it. They had decided overnight not to let a single person or car through until the Province´s Minister of Education came out there to negociate. So we waited. Eventually the minister did show up and we managed to sneak in in the mass confusion surrounding his entourage but they wouldn´t let us out the other side so we wound up stuck inside the 40 or so yards where the protesters were camped out on the highway between two long Argentine banners that bloqued al lanes of traffic. As the negotiations were taking place (which consisted of angry protesters taking turns on the microphone bitching at the minister and him smiling and nodding very uncomfortably in the middle of a huge crowd and military guards) a ridiculously strong jungle downpour began to come down. We took shelter under a huge piece of black plastic that the protesters had ready and preceeded to be stuck there for about an hour and a half waiting for the torential rain to let up. It may sound miserable, but it has to be one of the best experiences of my life. There I was, taken in sponteneously to the struggle with the protesters (it was NOT EASY keeping that ¨tarp¨ over our heads in the strong wind) in the middle of the highway in the middle of the jungle in the middle ofa very dysfunctional political system. People were laughing, there were children playing in the mud. The Argentine national anthem and snare drums broke out on more than one occassion, all while the minister and the protest leaders huddled underneath and Ice Cream umbrella in the middle trying to sign an agreement.

Definitely an experience. Anyway, they finally signed off on an agreement and they lifted the corte and all marched back into town. I spent the whole of the next day in the Iguazú National Park which was nothing but paradise, even with the confused British tourists and hectic Chinese tour groups. The next day I spent in the town where I went to the meeting of the Paraná and Iguazú rivers which forms the boundary of Paraguay, Brasil, and Argentina. It was a very moving view and a great end to an amazing trip.

Ciudad de los Muertos - El Cementerio de Recoleta

2008-04-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

These are all photos from the Recoleta Cemetary, which has got to be one of the top 5 coolest things I´ve seen in Buenos Aires. It doesn´t seem that big from the outside, about a city block of high old walls with the occasional cross or stone angel peeking up from over the top, but once you enter it is literally and metaphorically a complete otehr world, and one that doesn´t seem liek it will ever end. I definitely got more lost there than I have in the rest of Buenos Aires, but all for the better. Highlights include the mosuleums of Evita and Domingo Sarmiento.

La Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur

2008-04-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Random BA I

2008-03-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-04T07:05:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-03-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

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.

Bariloche ¡qué barbaro!

2008-02-29T07:38:00.000-08:00

After two fabulous weeks in Chile (posts pending) we FINALLY enterred Argentina by way of el Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi. The national park boundary is actually the official international border although you don´t arrive at the checkpoint for nearly half and hour. The first thing I saw after enterring the park was an enormous and very distinctive mountain peak. ¨Argentina, estoy llegado¨ I said to myself. Note, the bus pictured was something I found at the border crossing station, NOT the bus we took, so no worries. Perhaps someone had their papers seriously out of order... The town of Bariloche itself is amazing, or ¨¡barbaro!¨ as the porteños say. It literally means ¨barbarous¨ as in barbarians, but somehow it´s used to mean cool or excellent. It reminded me quite a bit of San Franscisco (if San Franscisco had a population of 200,000 and were surrounded by ski resorts and ranches). It also had a very Alpine flavor, which is probably due to the massive influx of German imigrants who settled the area in the 1800s. Thanks to them, Bariloche is known as the ¨chocolate capital of Argentina¨ and with good reason! There are chocolate stores lining the main street ranging in size from boutique to chocolate supermarket. We definitely got or groove on with this bit of culture. The best place was called Mamushka and was fittingly adorned with Russian dolls. Note the pic of Christine demonstrating the fine quality of Bariloche chocolates alongside the Lake Nahuel Huapi. To work off all that chocolate, we decided to do something active for Christine´s birthday. In the land of guachos, what could be better than a horseback riding tour of the area. I found a great operation (thank you Lonely Planet) called Carol Jones tours. Carol Jones is a third generation Argentine who´s grandfather emmigrated from Texas in the 1800´s and bought up a huge 10,000+ acre estancia in the Andean foothills of Patagonia. Today the entire estancia is actually within the national park boundaries so we had prime access to some amazing Patagonian views. After about 2.5 hours riding, we were ready for a break and man did we get one! The guides brought us to a little outcropping of trees in the middle of a vast valley and proceeded to cook us a traditional Argentine asado. Needless to say, the beef (which I ate willingly, since it was all from cows that were raised traditionally on the estancia which means no chemicals or antibiotics. You can´t get it more local and free-range than that!) was fantastic and we washed it down with some malbec the guides had brought in nalgene bottles and ice-cold water from the little mountain stream running nearby. Somehow after all the wine and ridiculous amount of meat (sorry, Texas, but everything is WAY bigger in Patagonia), we got back on the horses and enjoyed the spectacular mountain views back to the ranch house where we were treated to cookies and beer (man, they know how to show us a good time). On the ride, we made friends with Cecillia, a 50-something woman from Port Aransas who was travelling by herself and was our only companion on the horseride, or ¨cabalgata¨. She invited us to join her in a car she had rented to tour the surrounding areas the next day, which being Christine´s bday, was perfect! Cecillia is a very nice lady, but couldn´t drive a stickshit for beans so I wound up chauffering for almost the whole day trip. We drove through more of the national park and arrived at a little town/self-described ¨ecological village¨/ex-pat hippie community called El Bolsón. El Bolsón is famous for two things: 1 - the weekly artisan market and 2 - beer. 70% of all the hops in Argentina are grown around this town and they had the produce to prove it. We enjoyed the market and enhanced our experience by trying several of the local varieties. Note the pic of Christine enjoying hers in the town plaza and the pic of my scruptious waffle/cream/strawberry treat! On the way back to Bariloche we stopped at a mountain-fed tuna farm and bought the freshest fish I´ve ever had, which we cooked up into a masterful birthday feast that night at the hostel and downed with further ridiculous amounts of Argentine wine (note the before and after shots).

Isla del Sol and Copacabana

2008-01-29T16:28:00.000-08:00

Last week we took a gorgeous journey to the Isla del Sol in the middle of Lake Titicaca, where the Inca and Aymara people believe the sun god first emerged to bestow man, woman, the stars, and the sun and moon upon the earth. There is a boulder there shaped (though you have to look hard) like a puma's head. This is where the name Titicaca comes from. In Quechua titi = puma and in Aymara khar'ka = rock. Yay educational travelling!

Later on that night in the little lakeside town of Copacabana, we encountered a huge brss band playing loudly in the streets. After a gorgeous sunset over the lake we headed back to the squae where the band played on all night in preparation for Bolivian Carnival which is Feb 2. The most amazing thing was seeing all these little Bolivian women in their traditional skirts and bowler hats getting tipsy of liters of beer and dancing in the streets!

From there we took a bus across the straight of Tiquina where the bus is actually loaded on to a tiny decreped wooden "ferry" and sent across the chopy and rainy waters. That was pretty wild. We were also stopped by some very sketchy "police" on the highway who said they wee loking for drugs and then confiscated a carton of coke bottles some Bolivian women had been transporting. I have no clue what that was about, but I'm glad no money was involved.

At peace in La Paz

2008-01-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

Following a bus journey through the Altiplano, ¨the Tibet of the Americas¨ we've been having a very chill time in La Paz, the semi-capital of Bolivia. There is quite a tense polticial situation here with the resource rich Sant Cruz province wanting to break away and the La Paz government issuing a new constitution that is very much like the one in Venezuela (if that means anyting to anyone). As a compromise negociations are taking place in Sucre which is the judicial capital. Here in La Paz though, Evo Morales and his semi-socialist agenda are extremely popular and I even bought a wrist watch with his face on it to prove it!

Otherwise this city is shockingly beautiful. It's emormous, cosmopolitan (we've been eating at an awesome 100% Natural food restaurant) and full of life. It must be what Mexico City is like. We're staying in this palacial old hotel that rents out as cheap as a hostel because it's falling apart. For us though, it's serious luxury and is right next to the main plaza. We're touring some art museums, such as the Museo Contemporanio Plaza yesterday which is a private gallery in an amazing old decorated house here and had some really amazing pieces, and just getting ready for some serious travelling across Chile. It's 8 hours to the beach in Arica from here and then 28 hours to Santiago and another 18ish to Puerto Montt from there. All that in about 10 days. Yipes! More from Chile... and photos will be up to illustrate all this blabbing very very soon (I hope).

treking the top of the world!

2008-01-24T09:28:00.000-08:00

We explored Machu Picchu yesterday and were totally blown away (almost literally a few times, those stones are slipery and it´s windy!). In addition to the beautiful ruins themselves, we also hiked up the nearby Wyna Picchu which is a couple hundred feet taller than Machu Picchu. It was 2 hours of pretty intense hiking but totally worth it. The peak of the mountain is actually above the clouds, so it´s extremely surreal. Occasionally the clouds would blow away and there was a perfect view of the main ruins on the other mountain. Christine and I had been joking about how you want to reach out and touch the clouds as a kid. It´s unbelievable that there´s a place in the world where you actually can!

We spent about 6 hours there all together, including the hike through gorgeous tropical jungle back down to the little town at the bottom of the mountain, Aguascalientes. The town gets its name from the thermal hotsprings located here. We spent pretty much the whole day there when we arrived. It´s pretty awesome soaking in naturally hot mineral waters surrounded by amazing mountains that scrape the clouds. We met up with a Portuguese lobbyist there who we had met in Cusco at dinner the night before and had a great time with him eating out again here. He introduced us to a really cool Chilean couple who told us to look them up when we get to Santiago. Yay travelling connections!

Otherwise, things are going wonderfully. The Peruvians (Peruanos en Español) are great people. Friendly, chill, and beauftiful in a really servere mountain way and we´ve been enjoying living off the mercados in each town. Today we made some delicious avacado and cheese sandwhices (which cost about 2 dollars for everything) and ate them in the little plaze here next to a big statue of some Inca king. We´re just killing time here until we catch the train back to Cusco and then the bus from there to Bolivia. Execpt for the copious gangs of tourists, it´s pretty much a paradise.

En el ombligo del mundo - Cusco, Peru

2008-01-20T08:53:00.000-08:00

Christine and I arrived here in Cusco, known by the Inca as the "navel of the world" and center of their outrageously huge empire at about 7:30 in the morning yesterday. I had been up for a full 24 hours at that point and was ready for nothing but a bed to crash in. After a couple hours of sleep at our hostel, I woke up and suddenly remembered I was in South America and got up to check out the town. Luckily, I didn't have to go far since there is a terrace on the roof of the hostel with a perfect view of the main plaza and the city.

There are two dominant colors here: the intense green on the mountain slopes and the ubiquitous dull red of the tiles covering every single roof top. The people here are amazing. There are groups of the tiniest old women you'v ever seen all dressed in sarapes and traditional dress at al the plazas surrounded by a totally modern populace. It's a rich contrast.

We've still only been here a short time, and it's taken a while to not just feel like I'm in Mexico again. The tiny cobbled streets leading up the mountain to our hostel, the coca tea, and constant sounds of Andean flute players have helped remind us that we are definitely somewhere else.

Our first night found us on the balcony of a little upstairs bar where we got to know the staff and some wandering Australians and the bottoms of a few glasses. After that we found a really cool restaurant where one entire wall was made up of the ancient Inca stone walls that this entuire city is built on top of. We had Alpaca steak and wine and a great time walking home through the drunken singing and sights of ou first Saturday night south of the equator.