This last week was the start of our last trimester here. It was supposed to start on Monday, but the government just decided to add two new national holidays on Monday and Tuesday, so we had an extra long spring break! :) Our break was actually quite long because at the end of February after our finals we had an ACA trip to Rio de Janeiro for almost a week, and immediately after that started our spring break.
Brazil was awesome! We spent all night driving in the bus to Buenos Aires, where we arrived to torrential rains at about 4 in the morning. After lots of waiting and lines, we made it through security, and found out that because of the rain the flights were all delayed. We spent a few more hours waiting in the airport, but our plane eventually was able to leave.
We arrived to Rio in that afternoon, and were met by our two tour buses that would take us everywhere for the next few days. We were taken to a delicious buffet, then had the rest of the evening to ourselves. Our hotel was directly across the street from Copacabana Beach, and Ipanema Beach was also within walking distance. We had beautiful weather the whole time. We spent several days there, with one whole day as a free day to do whatever we wanted. We got to tour a botanical garden/park, visit the statue of Cristo Nuestro Redentor, take cable cars to the top of Sugar Loaf mountain overlooking the city, and the driving around the city looking at stuff bit. Then in the rest of our free time we could walk around town, shop, swim, eat, hang out at the beach - which is what we ended up doing quite a lot :) The food was amazing, there are lots of tropical fruits. We found a corner store with amazing fruit juices, and also a restaurant right behind our hotel with FANTASTIC pizza! You probably think I'm crazy for being that excited about something as ordinary as pizza, but until you've had to eat UAP pizza (which looks like brains slathered in rubber cheese, topped abundantly with egg and whatever else was for dinner the night before) you have no right to judge! :P
The whole trip was amazing. I know that Rio is definitely just a tiny part of Brazil, but I loved it and would go back in a heartbeat! My visa is good for 10 years now, so I've got time to plan my next trip!
After we got back from Brazil, we spent a few days back at the UAP, trying to plan our spring break trip to Uruguay. We had originally planned on taking a bus there and back, spending a few days in Punta del Este. But the bus schedule just wasn't working out for us and we weren't sure what to do. We decided to do what some other ACA students had done earlier in the year, and hire a taxi to take us there, hang out for a few days, then bring us back. We had trouble getting ahold of the driver we had a number for, but we got a list of taxi drivers from the bus station, and on Friday Rebekah started calling them all until we found one that would take us. So Sunday evening about 8 pm, we set out on our drive to Uruguay. It turned out to be the longest night EVER! It took us 13 hours to reach our hostel in Punta del Este. There were 4 of us girls, myself, Lauren, Krista, and Rebekah, plus our taxi driver, all squished into the little car. Lauren was sick with a bad cold already, so she knocked out after some Nyquil. Our driver turned out to be quite a talker, and poor Rebekah who was sitting in the front seat since she is a fluent Spanish speaker had to listen to him ramble for hours about every town we went through, who lived there, the type of town, the area, who he knew there, etc etc etc. And he would randomly wake her up to tell her any other random information he thought important for her to know. He also felt it necessary to stop at practically every single gas station along the way, whether we needed gas or not. That, coupled with a couple times he needed to stop and sleep, made a veerrry long night. Finally, feeling like every muscle in our bodies was either numb or on fire, we rolled to a stop at our hostel, a few miles outside of Punta del Este. We were too early to check in but the hostel was nice enough to let us keep our stuff in a storage room till we checked in, and we set out to find a bank to change money. Turns out the nearest bank was several miles away, so we walked (since our driver had since disappeared, and was nowhere to be found) several hours there and back in the hot sun and got very sunburned! Our reward however, was a little cupcake shop that was next door to the bank, so of course we took advantage of that!
After we walked back, we spent most of the afternoon on the beach then that night stopped at a little supermarket to pick up some food for dinner. We made ourselves some yummy soup and bread at the hostel, then pretty much went straight to bed!
The next day we decided we were all a bit too burned to want to lay out on the beach again, so we found our driver and got him to drive us into Punta del Este to walk around town. We spent all afternoon walking around town, taking pictures at the La Mano estatua (the hand statue), and looking in shops. That evening we again made ourselves a delicious dinner of pasta, then watched a movie before we went to bed. We were staying in a 6 person female room at the hostel, but it turned out to just be the 4 of us there the whole time, which was nice. There were actually 4 other ACA students that came to Punta del Este and ended up staying in the same hostel!
The next day was our last day, so we took advantage of it and spent all morning on the beach, soaking up our last few rays of Uruguayan sun. We left the hostel about 3 that afternoon to head back to the UAP. We made excellent time at first, and discovered why it had taken us so long to get to Uruguay the first night: because our taxi driver was practically blind at night! While the sun was up he drove like a madman (we made good time though!), but as soon as the sun set he slowed waaay down, and towards the end of the drive we were all frightened for our lives, because of how much he swerved around on the road. And once again we stopped at every single gas station along the way.
Our only major glitch though, was our stop at the border into Argentina where we discovered that the lovely official that had taken care of our documents on our way into Uruguay two nights before had forgotten to stamp my passport, which apparently is a big no-no. We were entering Argentina through a different town than we had left, and apparently there is no national data system on the custom's computers, and no way to use a telephone and call the other customs office, because they told me the only thing we could do was drive an hour out of our way to the other town where we had entered, or pay a $30 dollar fee despite the fact that it was not my fault that the worker had neglected to stamp my passport. It was already like 11 o'clock at night, so I payed the fee and after dealing with a few more not-very-nice customs workers, we were approved for re-entry on our merry way again. We made it back to the school about 1 am, thankful to still be alive and in one piece. And there you have the account of our adventures for spring break! Spring break didn't actually end for nearly a week though. We got back to school Thursday morning, and classes didn't start again until Wednesday. The rest of that next week was full of a lot of movie watching and sleeping :) Especially after Friday when I went to the dentist and got two of my wisdom teeth pulled. I wanted to get all of them pulled at once, but the dentist wanted to do two at a time so I got one side done first. Lauren was kind enough to be willing to go with me, to make sure I survived and made it back to school okay, and took care of me afterwards. I actually felt pretty good, the teeth came out without any problems, and I didn't have any swelling or any real pain. So that was two weeks ago now, and tomorrow I go back in for the other two.
We're in the final trimester of the year! It's so hard to believe that this year is almost over and I'll be headed back to the states in just two more months. This year truly has gone by fast as everyone said it would, and I am very excited to get to go home soon. Now I'm just trying to learn as much as I possibly can in the short amount of time I have left. Regular classes here at the UAP started yesterday, and my roommates have been back since last week. There are sooo many students here now, it's so strange compared to the 50 + we had before. Now it's back to long lines in the cafeteria and for the laundry, and people eeeeeverywhere!
That about concludes any of the random goings-on I can think of lately. There'll be more I'm sure, and I'll try to keep you updated better!
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Christmas Break - the end
Well so much for numerous installments to my blog! As usual I procrastinated, and have been putting off finishing this for nearly a month now.
We made it safely to Calafate about 1 in the morning, and walked about two blocks to our hostel. The next day we slept in, checkout out the town, and just relaxed. Sunday we bought our tickets and boarded the bus to take us to the glacier Perito Moreno. The glacier was incredible to see, and I'm so very glad we got to go. It was massive, even though all we could see was the tail-end of it really...and I took sooo many pictures! We spent most of our time watching intensely to see if we could see chunks fall off and splash into the lake that the glacier juts out over, and we were rewarded a few times to hear the loud crack and see the giant splash as ice hit the water. There are really nice walkways built into the side of the hill across from the glacier. We ate our lunch out there, in site of the glacier. We spent about 6 hours there, until our bus returned to Calafate, and by the time we left, what with the sun and glare and cold wind, we all had very red chapped faces! But all very worth it.
The next afternoon we packed up and headed out on another bus, this time a 27-hour ride to our next stop, Bariloche. Can't say I remember much of that bus ride, mostly sleeping, and staring out the window, but it honestly wasn't as awful as I thought it might be. We spent several days in Bariloche, taking pictures, walking around town, enjoying the lake and the beautiful view and the sites of the town. And of course, eating chocolate! (as Bariloche is the "chocolate capitol" of Argentina). We left Calafate on Tuesday, got into Bariloche on Wednesday. Thursday we went for a hike around a peninsula that had a road around it good for biking or hiking. We hiked, and ended up walking over 10 miles before we gave up and finally reached a point where we could get on a bus back to town. We were all a bit sore and tired the next day so we took it easy, shopped for groceries, and hung out at the hostel. That night we had a little White Elephant gift exchange among the 6 of us, since it was Christmas Eve. Mady and Rebekah walked into town to check out the Christmas Eve mass at a cathedral we had seen earlier, but the rest of us were tired and just relaxed at the hostel. The next day we wanted to do another hike so we ate breakfast early and headed out to the bus stop to wait for bus number 10 which would take us where we wanted to go. Two Israeli guys we had met who were also staying at the hostel asked to join us so we said sure, and they came to wait with us. Well, we ended up waiting for two hours, because apparently buses run on different schedules on Christmas day, just nobody knew exactly what. Finally, we made up our minds to take bus number 20, which would take us to the area we had hiked earlier, and just explore some more there. The Israeli gentlemen had given up and wandered off to do their own thing by this point.We decided that we would take whichever bus came first, 10 or 20, just in case 10 finally showed up. A few minutes later bus 20 came around the corner...and right behind it, bus 10! Well, we had already said we'd take the first one that came, so we got on 20. It took us to the place we told it, which was supposed to be a forest for hiking. Turns out there is a hotel with the same name, and that's where the bus dropped us off. It was in the same general area, but farther than we wanted to walk, so we ended up just walking around on random roads, most of which were probably residential. We found a cool church on the top of a hill, so for our lunch we just laid out in the grass on the side of the hill the church was on, for lack of a better place to eat our sandwiches. So we chilled on the hill side in the sunshine, ate our sandwiches, then Rebekah read the Christmas story from the Bible out loud to us, and we all laid out in the grass and took naps. I'm sure we must have looked like complete bums to anyone that saw us! After our nap we started walking back towards town, and eventually caught a bus the rest of the way. That night we had planned on just ordering a pizza, because we had been told there would be places open that night. Turns out almost nothing was open, so our Christmas dinner was a bit odd. Even the grocery stores were closed so we couldn't make food. We walked around town and eventually found a sort of kiosk that was open, and a gas station. So I had pasta, pringles, and yogurt for dinner! Not at all like Christmas dinner at home, but definitely unique.
The next day we checked out of the hostel in Bariloche and headed to another town called Villa la Angostura for a few days. We'd wanted to rent a car, but it just seemed to be too big of a hassle, since those with licenses didn't have credit cards, those with credit cards weren't old enough, and those old enough couldn't drive stickshift. SO, we just bused, and opted out of visiting San Martin de los Andes, another town a few hours away we had planned on driving to. Which was just as well, because as it turned out we found plenty to do in Villa la Angostura. We stayed in a really cute little hostel. It was definitely different from our hostel in Bariloche, which was mostly filled with younger people and seemed to have a lot of parties going on (though it was Christmas time). This hostel was family owned, a little smaller and quieter. I really liked the town too, it seemed much more friendly, and had lots of cute shops, and we found a store with amazing ice-cream, cheap too! And the people that worked there were very friendly too, they got to know us pretty well, as we went there several times while we were there! Villa la Angostura was definitely my favorite place on the trip.
The first day we were there, we did all in all a kilometer hike out to a part of this forest that had a bunch of Arrayan trees. These trees are kinda special, because they have this bark that is always cold to the touch. Don't ask me why, but it's true. They are a light reddish-orangy color and really do feel cold when you touch them. The trees were way out at the very end of a point of land, so we had to hike all the way to the end to see them and boy was I tired! But luckily there was a ferry you could take, and we opted to take it back, which was a fun ride. The next day we did another fun hike, this time out to a waterfall. It was a pretty intense climb for a bit to get up to it, sometimes it felt like it was straight up hill (I guess parts of it where) but so worth it at the top. We tried putting our feet in the creek water at the top before the waterfall, but it was SO cold, it honestly hurt it was so cold. And we could look out over the top of the waterfall and see the valley down below us. Very cool. There was a very nice lady that lived in a house at the beginning of the trail and when we were first headed up the trail she came running out to meet us, to ask if we wanted to buy anything, because she could make us different kinds of food. We took her up on her offer on our way back down and bought some cortas fritas (kind of like fried bread) which were mighty scrumptious.
The next day we wanted to check out this other waterfall we'd heard about, the Green Waterfall. It was too far to walk so we hired two taxis to take us. We had planned on sending the taxis back to town and then just having them pick us up at a certain time later, but when we told our driver that he told us it would cost more to do that than to have him wait for us, because it was only about a 10 minute walk to the waterfall. So, as soon as the taxis stopped, we jumped out, ran down the hill to the viewpoint, snapped some pictures, and jogged back to the taxis. Probably took us about 15 minutes total. So, that waterfall was a bit of a fail, plus there was nothing green about it! But it was still cool to see. We also walked around a trail that went around this pond, it was really pretty. The next day, Wednesday, we went back to Bariloche, which was only about an hour and a half bus ride. We spent the night there and caught the bus to Buenos Aires the next afternoon.
We got into BsAs the next day, Friday (New Year's Eve) at about noon, got to our hostel, and showered and relaxed, then walked around town for a bit till we found a place to eat. That night Mady and I met up with Lauren and her family, and we all went to the apartment where Krista and her family were staying and had dinner. (Lauren's and Krista's families had flown down to spend Christmas with them in Buenos Aires). After dinner we went back to the hostel and then with the rest of our group walked to the Plaza de Mayo, to wait for midnight and watch for fireworks. There were a lot of people there, but not nearly as many as I had expected. I had thought there would be thousands of people, but apparently most of the people in the cities leave for the beaches on New Years, or at least that's what I heard. The fireworks were fun to watch, but also not as exciting as I had thought they would be. So New Years in Buenos Aires wasn't as thrilling as I had thought it might be, but it was still fun. The businesses in town will shred up old papers from the whole year before, and during the days before New Years toss the shredded bits out their windows like confetti, so the streets are covered in paper. The next day our plan was to visit museums, the zoo, go back to the Rose Garden we had visited on our school trip earlier in the year to BsAs, see the giant Flor de Buenos Aires (a huge metal flower that is supposed to open and close with the sun, and follow the sun across the sky) and maybe visit the planetarium. Well, that plan didn't really work out. Turns out absolutely nothing is open on New Years, despite the museums hours saying they were open on holidays. SO, no museums, no planetarium, no zoo, no rose garden. We walked to most of the places, just to make sure they weren't open. We did get to see the giant Flor and take pictures there. We hung out on some park benches in the shade there for a few hours, talking and playing card games, before we walked on to look for more places that might be open. We had really nothing to do all day, until our bus left at 11 that night. So we walked a lot. It was really really hot that day too. Nothing was really open for lunch either, so we stopped at a gas station adn ate lunch there, and just hung out there for a few more hours because it was air conditioned, and waited out the hottest part of the day. We spent most of that evening looking for a Starbucks which we never found. Finally it was time to catch our bus so we taxi-ed to the bus terminal. We were a bit worried, cuz bus terminals are a bit sketch especially late at night. In fact, we had been nervous all weekend, because a lot of people get robbed in BsAs. Two other ACA students had had things stolen from them at the beginning of Christmas break, one guy had his wallet with all his money and his passport stolen from him, he even saw the person that stole it but they got away, and the other guy had his wallet and passport and another girl's computer he was taking back to the States for her stolen from Starbucks, about an hour before he was supposed to board his plane to go home for Christmas. Sooo, after hearing these stories we were all a bit nervous, but thankfully we were able to get on our bus and had no problems at all. Our bus did apparently have some mechanical problems so we had to sit at the terminal for over an hour before they moved us to another bus, and we were finally on our way back to school, where we arrived a little after 6 that morning.
So, that was Christmas vacation. An amazing three weeks, filled with adventures and incredible sights. I'll admit I was very happy to be done traveling though, and to not live in a suitcase anymore, or have to sleep in strange hostel beds every night! So that's that. Anything more will have to wait for another blog.
We made it safely to Calafate about 1 in the morning, and walked about two blocks to our hostel. The next day we slept in, checkout out the town, and just relaxed. Sunday we bought our tickets and boarded the bus to take us to the glacier Perito Moreno. The glacier was incredible to see, and I'm so very glad we got to go. It was massive, even though all we could see was the tail-end of it really...and I took sooo many pictures! We spent most of our time watching intensely to see if we could see chunks fall off and splash into the lake that the glacier juts out over, and we were rewarded a few times to hear the loud crack and see the giant splash as ice hit the water. There are really nice walkways built into the side of the hill across from the glacier. We ate our lunch out there, in site of the glacier. We spent about 6 hours there, until our bus returned to Calafate, and by the time we left, what with the sun and glare and cold wind, we all had very red chapped faces! But all very worth it.
The next afternoon we packed up and headed out on another bus, this time a 27-hour ride to our next stop, Bariloche. Can't say I remember much of that bus ride, mostly sleeping, and staring out the window, but it honestly wasn't as awful as I thought it might be. We spent several days in Bariloche, taking pictures, walking around town, enjoying the lake and the beautiful view and the sites of the town. And of course, eating chocolate! (as Bariloche is the "chocolate capitol" of Argentina). We left Calafate on Tuesday, got into Bariloche on Wednesday. Thursday we went for a hike around a peninsula that had a road around it good for biking or hiking. We hiked, and ended up walking over 10 miles before we gave up and finally reached a point where we could get on a bus back to town. We were all a bit sore and tired the next day so we took it easy, shopped for groceries, and hung out at the hostel. That night we had a little White Elephant gift exchange among the 6 of us, since it was Christmas Eve. Mady and Rebekah walked into town to check out the Christmas Eve mass at a cathedral we had seen earlier, but the rest of us were tired and just relaxed at the hostel. The next day we wanted to do another hike so we ate breakfast early and headed out to the bus stop to wait for bus number 10 which would take us where we wanted to go. Two Israeli guys we had met who were also staying at the hostel asked to join us so we said sure, and they came to wait with us. Well, we ended up waiting for two hours, because apparently buses run on different schedules on Christmas day, just nobody knew exactly what. Finally, we made up our minds to take bus number 20, which would take us to the area we had hiked earlier, and just explore some more there. The Israeli gentlemen had given up and wandered off to do their own thing by this point.We decided that we would take whichever bus came first, 10 or 20, just in case 10 finally showed up. A few minutes later bus 20 came around the corner...and right behind it, bus 10! Well, we had already said we'd take the first one that came, so we got on 20. It took us to the place we told it, which was supposed to be a forest for hiking. Turns out there is a hotel with the same name, and that's where the bus dropped us off. It was in the same general area, but farther than we wanted to walk, so we ended up just walking around on random roads, most of which were probably residential. We found a cool church on the top of a hill, so for our lunch we just laid out in the grass on the side of the hill the church was on, for lack of a better place to eat our sandwiches. So we chilled on the hill side in the sunshine, ate our sandwiches, then Rebekah read the Christmas story from the Bible out loud to us, and we all laid out in the grass and took naps. I'm sure we must have looked like complete bums to anyone that saw us! After our nap we started walking back towards town, and eventually caught a bus the rest of the way. That night we had planned on just ordering a pizza, because we had been told there would be places open that night. Turns out almost nothing was open, so our Christmas dinner was a bit odd. Even the grocery stores were closed so we couldn't make food. We walked around town and eventually found a sort of kiosk that was open, and a gas station. So I had pasta, pringles, and yogurt for dinner! Not at all like Christmas dinner at home, but definitely unique.
The next day we checked out of the hostel in Bariloche and headed to another town called Villa la Angostura for a few days. We'd wanted to rent a car, but it just seemed to be too big of a hassle, since those with licenses didn't have credit cards, those with credit cards weren't old enough, and those old enough couldn't drive stickshift. SO, we just bused, and opted out of visiting San Martin de los Andes, another town a few hours away we had planned on driving to. Which was just as well, because as it turned out we found plenty to do in Villa la Angostura. We stayed in a really cute little hostel. It was definitely different from our hostel in Bariloche, which was mostly filled with younger people and seemed to have a lot of parties going on (though it was Christmas time). This hostel was family owned, a little smaller and quieter. I really liked the town too, it seemed much more friendly, and had lots of cute shops, and we found a store with amazing ice-cream, cheap too! And the people that worked there were very friendly too, they got to know us pretty well, as we went there several times while we were there! Villa la Angostura was definitely my favorite place on the trip.
The first day we were there, we did all in all a kilometer hike out to a part of this forest that had a bunch of Arrayan trees. These trees are kinda special, because they have this bark that is always cold to the touch. Don't ask me why, but it's true. They are a light reddish-orangy color and really do feel cold when you touch them. The trees were way out at the very end of a point of land, so we had to hike all the way to the end to see them and boy was I tired! But luckily there was a ferry you could take, and we opted to take it back, which was a fun ride. The next day we did another fun hike, this time out to a waterfall. It was a pretty intense climb for a bit to get up to it, sometimes it felt like it was straight up hill (I guess parts of it where) but so worth it at the top. We tried putting our feet in the creek water at the top before the waterfall, but it was SO cold, it honestly hurt it was so cold. And we could look out over the top of the waterfall and see the valley down below us. Very cool. There was a very nice lady that lived in a house at the beginning of the trail and when we were first headed up the trail she came running out to meet us, to ask if we wanted to buy anything, because she could make us different kinds of food. We took her up on her offer on our way back down and bought some cortas fritas (kind of like fried bread) which were mighty scrumptious.
The next day we wanted to check out this other waterfall we'd heard about, the Green Waterfall. It was too far to walk so we hired two taxis to take us. We had planned on sending the taxis back to town and then just having them pick us up at a certain time later, but when we told our driver that he told us it would cost more to do that than to have him wait for us, because it was only about a 10 minute walk to the waterfall. So, as soon as the taxis stopped, we jumped out, ran down the hill to the viewpoint, snapped some pictures, and jogged back to the taxis. Probably took us about 15 minutes total. So, that waterfall was a bit of a fail, plus there was nothing green about it! But it was still cool to see. We also walked around a trail that went around this pond, it was really pretty. The next day, Wednesday, we went back to Bariloche, which was only about an hour and a half bus ride. We spent the night there and caught the bus to Buenos Aires the next afternoon.
We got into BsAs the next day, Friday (New Year's Eve) at about noon, got to our hostel, and showered and relaxed, then walked around town for a bit till we found a place to eat. That night Mady and I met up with Lauren and her family, and we all went to the apartment where Krista and her family were staying and had dinner. (Lauren's and Krista's families had flown down to spend Christmas with them in Buenos Aires). After dinner we went back to the hostel and then with the rest of our group walked to the Plaza de Mayo, to wait for midnight and watch for fireworks. There were a lot of people there, but not nearly as many as I had expected. I had thought there would be thousands of people, but apparently most of the people in the cities leave for the beaches on New Years, or at least that's what I heard. The fireworks were fun to watch, but also not as exciting as I had thought they would be. So New Years in Buenos Aires wasn't as thrilling as I had thought it might be, but it was still fun. The businesses in town will shred up old papers from the whole year before, and during the days before New Years toss the shredded bits out their windows like confetti, so the streets are covered in paper. The next day our plan was to visit museums, the zoo, go back to the Rose Garden we had visited on our school trip earlier in the year to BsAs, see the giant Flor de Buenos Aires (a huge metal flower that is supposed to open and close with the sun, and follow the sun across the sky) and maybe visit the planetarium. Well, that plan didn't really work out. Turns out absolutely nothing is open on New Years, despite the museums hours saying they were open on holidays. SO, no museums, no planetarium, no zoo, no rose garden. We walked to most of the places, just to make sure they weren't open. We did get to see the giant Flor and take pictures there. We hung out on some park benches in the shade there for a few hours, talking and playing card games, before we walked on to look for more places that might be open. We had really nothing to do all day, until our bus left at 11 that night. So we walked a lot. It was really really hot that day too. Nothing was really open for lunch either, so we stopped at a gas station adn ate lunch there, and just hung out there for a few more hours because it was air conditioned, and waited out the hottest part of the day. We spent most of that evening looking for a Starbucks which we never found. Finally it was time to catch our bus so we taxi-ed to the bus terminal. We were a bit worried, cuz bus terminals are a bit sketch especially late at night. In fact, we had been nervous all weekend, because a lot of people get robbed in BsAs. Two other ACA students had had things stolen from them at the beginning of Christmas break, one guy had his wallet with all his money and his passport stolen from him, he even saw the person that stole it but they got away, and the other guy had his wallet and passport and another girl's computer he was taking back to the States for her stolen from Starbucks, about an hour before he was supposed to board his plane to go home for Christmas. Sooo, after hearing these stories we were all a bit nervous, but thankfully we were able to get on our bus and had no problems at all. Our bus did apparently have some mechanical problems so we had to sit at the terminal for over an hour before they moved us to another bus, and we were finally on our way back to school, where we arrived a little after 6 that morning.
So, that was Christmas vacation. An amazing three weeks, filled with adventures and incredible sights. I'll admit I was very happy to be done traveling though, and to not live in a suitcase anymore, or have to sleep in strange hostel beds every night! So that's that. Anything more will have to wait for another blog.
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Christmas Vacation
Currently, as I write this, I am sitting on the floor at the bus terminal in Rio Gallegos Argentina, surrounded by luggage and my 5 companions.
This is the first installment of my blogs about Christmas vacation. I figured writing every few days would be easier and I would remember more than if I wrote all at once at the end.
Day one of our trip was Monday, when we hopped on the 8:55am bus from the villa for Buenos Aires, myself, Rebekah, Mady, Kourtney, Spencer, and Daniel. It’s about a 6 hour bus ride, and once we got there we got taxis and found our hostel we had booked for the night. For the record, I thought I had conditioned myself to taxis in other countries, but the driver we had from the bus station took “crazy –driving” to a whole new level. We were honestly driving in the other lane in oncoming traffic, and at one point were parked there waiting for traffic to move in our lane for us to get back into it. I was on the side of the taxi facing the oncoming traffic as it honked and veered around us, and I sent up some desperate prayers for safety! After getting to the hostel we wondered around town for a few hours, found a bank, bought some groceries, and made ourselves a vegetable soup and bread for dinner at the hostel. The next morning we got up early and left the hostel about 6:15 in taxis for the national airport. Once we got there we found out that a gate had not yet been assigned to our flight. We had about an hour to wait before boarding started so we weren’t worried, but as the hour went by we began to wonder. Finally, 5 minutes before our plane was supposed to board our gate was assigned and we made it through security and boarded with no more worries. I sat next to two Israeli gentlemen who were part of a group that had just finished their time in the Israeli army and were spending 8 months traveling the world. They had been partying all week in Buenos Aires and were very hung-over, and enjoyed pointing out to me all the people on the plane that were high, because they’d been at the same party the night before. It was interesting, but they were very friendly and we chatted for awhile till they fell asleep for most of the 3 hour flight. On our descent into Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, we had a spectacular view of snow-capped rugged mountains like the kinds on postcards. Despite being the middle of summer, Ushuaia is VERY cold right now. I’m not sure I would like to experience what winter feels like. After our taxis took us to our hostel, we dropped off our bags and walked around to explore the city. It’s population in about 55,000 people. It’s built along the water, with mountains all around it. The town is built on the side of the foothills, our hostel was a bit of an uphill walk, but not bad, and it was a really nice little hostel. Our room that had a total of 8 girls in it, had heated floors, they served breakfast for us every morning, and we had a decent sized kitchen to cook our meals in. In fact, we’ve been doing our own cooking the entire trip. We found out that it is much cheaper, and a lot more fun to do it that way. Breakfast in the hostel, a snack of crackers or fruit for lunch, then pick a meal and buy the groceries for it, and make ourselves dinner at the hostel.
The next day, Wednesday we walked down the hill and signed up for the 6 hour boat tour to see the penguins!! It was super fun, and we definitely lucked out weather-wise. It stayed dry and even sunny for most of the day until after we had gotten back to the hostel and were making dinner, when it started raining. One thing I learned about Ushuaia is that weather reports don’t seem to mean a thing. The weather can change from one minute to the next, to the next, from wind and rain to sunshine to snow, and back again without any apparent rhyme or reason. After we ate it had cleared off again and we walked around town some more, got some more pictures. The sun doesn’t set until about 10 or so in the evening, and rises about 4:30 or 5 in the morning right now.
Yesterday we slept in a bit in the morning. After breakfast we walked around and looked at all the touristy shops in town, then caught the city bus to the edge of town where someone had told us about a road we could walk out to some beaches. The weather was clear and sunny (with an occasional snow flurry) and very windy and very cold! We walked out a dirt road along the edge of the shore, and took pictures of the ocean crashing on the gravel beaches. We even found a glass wine bottle with a cork, so we wrote a note in it and threw it back out to sea.
This morning our bus left Ushuaia at 5am, the start of our first long bus trip: 18 hours to Calafate. We’ve completed the first 13 hours now. It would have been a much shorter bus ride, but we had to pass through Chile on our way here so we had 4 border stops, entering and exiting Chile, and entering and exiting Argentina, which took up what felt like hours. But I’m not complaining, I got my passport stamped, proof I’ve been in Chile now! We also got to cross the Straights of Magellan on a ferry which was cool. Luckily the weather has been good today as well, because apparently buses get stuck sometimes when there’s a storm and they can’t cross the straights. THAT is the trip so far. We’ve got about an hour more to wait, and then we’ll finish the rest of our journey to Calafate. The plan is to spend about 3 days there, then bus to Bariloche, spend about a week there, and then bus the rest of the way back to spend New Years in Buenos Aires. We’ll see how it goes!
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Peru!
A week ago today I was groggily rubbing my eyes as my alarm rousted me at 3 am, after a very short two hour nap, and I packed up my bags and headed to the bus terminal to meet the bus at 4 am. We were on our way to Peru! We bused the two hours to the Rosario airport, and flew from there to Lima, Peru. Once in Lima we were loaded up into two buses with our own tour guides and got to see a little bit of the city on our way to our hotel. After we checked in we went to a nearby shopping area, built right on the edges of the cliffs overlooking the beach and the ocean. Very gorgeous! First stop: food. We hit up Chilis for some delicious American food :)
The next day we had a tour of the city of Lima, got to see some cool buildings, checked out a cathedral and I got my first view of some catacombs. Kinda cool actually.We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the cathedral though, sadly.
The next morning we packed up and headed to the airport in Lima and had about an hour long flight to Cuzco. It's elevation is about 11,000 feet so they had us drink a lot of tea made from Coca leaves which is supposed to help lessen symptoms of elevation sickness. Thankfully no one got very sick, and I felt pretty much fine except for being really really tired, and we had to walk slow and take it easy for a bit until we adjusted. We had new tour guides in Cuzco and we were taken to another cathedral, and given a little tour of the city while we were bused around.
The next day we left early on the buses which took us to the train station, which would take us to Machu Picchu. I was very excited because this was my very first time on a train! It was a bit of a bumpy ride, but still fun and we got to see a lot of the Andes on our 4 hour journey. When we finally arrived it was overcast, but the sun came out later and we had only intermittent showers. We were bused from the base of the mountain up a very small, extremely windy road that the bus drivers careened around at full speed, barely missing hitting other buses coming back down the mountain. It sounds like I'm exaggerating but I'm not! We were dropped off at a restaurant and viewing area just below the top of the mountain where we ate lunch, and then our guides handed out our passes and we hiked the rest of the way to the top, to the ruins. I don't really know what to say other than that pictures really don't do it any justice. It's quite an impressive, awesome place to be. Totally worth all the work to get there! We got a full several hour long tour, and when we finally got down the mountain, on the train, then back to Cusco it was 11 that night.
The next day we had some time to wander around the markets before our flight left for Lima. We got back to Lima about 5, and we spent the next couple of hours at a mall before it was time to head to the airport to catch our 1:30 am flight back to Argentina. While at the mall, we made one last (our third) stop at Chilis, and of course! Starbucks :)
I don't remember much of our flight or the two hours bus ride back to school because I was sleeping!
Now it's Sunday, and I'm repacked and ready to head out tomorrow morning for Christmas vacation to Ushuaia, Calafate, Bariloche, and finally back to Buenos Aires. I'm going to be soo tired of traveling after these three weeks, but bring it on! I'll be trying to update this more frequently over break to keep you up to date with all the happenings.
The next day we had a tour of the city of Lima, got to see some cool buildings, checked out a cathedral and I got my first view of some catacombs. Kinda cool actually.We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the cathedral though, sadly.
The next morning we packed up and headed to the airport in Lima and had about an hour long flight to Cuzco. It's elevation is about 11,000 feet so they had us drink a lot of tea made from Coca leaves which is supposed to help lessen symptoms of elevation sickness. Thankfully no one got very sick, and I felt pretty much fine except for being really really tired, and we had to walk slow and take it easy for a bit until we adjusted. We had new tour guides in Cuzco and we were taken to another cathedral, and given a little tour of the city while we were bused around.
The next day we left early on the buses which took us to the train station, which would take us to Machu Picchu. I was very excited because this was my very first time on a train! It was a bit of a bumpy ride, but still fun and we got to see a lot of the Andes on our 4 hour journey. When we finally arrived it was overcast, but the sun came out later and we had only intermittent showers. We were bused from the base of the mountain up a very small, extremely windy road that the bus drivers careened around at full speed, barely missing hitting other buses coming back down the mountain. It sounds like I'm exaggerating but I'm not! We were dropped off at a restaurant and viewing area just below the top of the mountain where we ate lunch, and then our guides handed out our passes and we hiked the rest of the way to the top, to the ruins. I don't really know what to say other than that pictures really don't do it any justice. It's quite an impressive, awesome place to be. Totally worth all the work to get there! We got a full several hour long tour, and when we finally got down the mountain, on the train, then back to Cusco it was 11 that night.
The next day we had some time to wander around the markets before our flight left for Lima. We got back to Lima about 5, and we spent the next couple of hours at a mall before it was time to head to the airport to catch our 1:30 am flight back to Argentina. While at the mall, we made one last (our third) stop at Chilis, and of course! Starbucks :)
I don't remember much of our flight or the two hours bus ride back to school because I was sleeping!
Now it's Sunday, and I'm repacked and ready to head out tomorrow morning for Christmas vacation to Ushuaia, Calafate, Bariloche, and finally back to Buenos Aires. I'm going to be soo tired of traveling after these three weeks, but bring it on! I'll be trying to update this more frequently over break to keep you up to date with all the happenings.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Thanksgiving
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's a bit hard to believe, considering that I'm looking out my window at blue sky and fluttering green leaves, in 80-some degree weather. Doesn't really feel much like Thanksgiving to me. Everyone I talk to is giddy over the amount of snow they have already. Am I jealous? Oh yes. Do I miss snow and winter? Oh yes. However, as I walk to class in my shorts and tee shirt I know I won't be feeling quite so despondent about my situation.
Speaking of hot weather, I'm discovering that the hotter it gets, the more the spiders come out. I discovered to my horror just a few minutes ago a very large very frightful spider on a ledge on the wall above my desk. Yesterday the same thing happened. While I was sitting at my desk I noticed long tentacle-y legs reaching up over the edge of the window track in front of my desk. Another huge (they just can't be small spiders here, oh no, that would never do. Spiders here feed on Miracle Grow and Wheaties every day) grotesque, FAT, nasty, all-most-disgusting-adjectives-I-can-think-of spider was trying to come into our room. I quickly notified my roommates of the situation and Rubi ran down the hall for her friend's insecticide while Karen examined the spider and announced she thought it was one of the bad spiders, which I'm assuming means poisonous. Rubi returned and gave the monstrous spider a mouthful of the insecticide several times and he finally writhed his last. But back to the spider of today: I had hoped to borrow the insecticide for this guy, so I moved everything off my desk so he wouldn't fall down among my books and die in there. Unfortunately the girl with the insecticide was gone, so I had just determined to retreat to my bed with my books and computer when my roommate Karen returned. I pointed out the spider and without hesitation she grabbed a bottle of bug spray and her shoe and climbed up on my desk, doused the spider in bug repellent and smashed him with her shoe as he tried to escape. For the record, Karen is now my hero forever! Be warned spiders! The same fate will be yours if you try to enter our room. However, I'm a bit worried about when Karen and Rubi go home for the summer...that means I'll be dealing with any more intruders on my own....
So much for hot weather. Back to Thanksgiving. They don't have Thanksgiving here in Argentina, obviously, but the cafeteria is apparently going to try to make a Thanksgiving dinner for us, the best that it can be considering half the things we eat for Thanksgiving don't exist here. Also, after classes tomorrow there's going to be a football game. So the true spirit of the day will survive, food and football ;)
Last Monday was a holiday, so we had a long weekend. Lauren and I wanted to go check out the Walmart in Parana, which is about an hour and a half bus ride away. We had heard that Walmart was in a very sketchy part of town so we felt like we should find a guy to go with us. William had wanted to go originally but when we found him, an hour before the bus left, he informed us he didn't want to go anymore. Jamel was nice enough to be convinced to come along as our escort and we headed off for Parana.We found a taxi there to get to Walmart, but we were a little unsure of how to get a taxi back. It was too far (and not safe) to walk back. We asked our taxi driver and she was nice enough to offer to come back and pick us up at a certain time.
I walked into Walmart, and the first thing I saw was Christmas decorations everywhere. I looked at Lauren and said, "I feel like I'm home!" In reality though, Walmart here is not really the same as at home, which I knew it wouldn't be. We did find a straightener though, which was to replace Lauren's old one that my faulty converter blew up, and got to check out the merchandise.
Who knew that Walmart could be an adventure?
This week is all finals, next week we start our new classes for the second trimester, and on December 5th we head out on our trip to Peru. I am veeeery excited about that! That's pretty much a wrap on anything new happening here! Stay tuned for more updates to follow...
Speaking of hot weather, I'm discovering that the hotter it gets, the more the spiders come out. I discovered to my horror just a few minutes ago a very large very frightful spider on a ledge on the wall above my desk. Yesterday the same thing happened. While I was sitting at my desk I noticed long tentacle-y legs reaching up over the edge of the window track in front of my desk. Another huge (they just can't be small spiders here, oh no, that would never do. Spiders here feed on Miracle Grow and Wheaties every day) grotesque, FAT, nasty, all-most-disgusting-adjectives-I-can-think-of spider was trying to come into our room. I quickly notified my roommates of the situation and Rubi ran down the hall for her friend's insecticide while Karen examined the spider and announced she thought it was one of the bad spiders, which I'm assuming means poisonous. Rubi returned and gave the monstrous spider a mouthful of the insecticide several times and he finally writhed his last. But back to the spider of today: I had hoped to borrow the insecticide for this guy, so I moved everything off my desk so he wouldn't fall down among my books and die in there. Unfortunately the girl with the insecticide was gone, so I had just determined to retreat to my bed with my books and computer when my roommate Karen returned. I pointed out the spider and without hesitation she grabbed a bottle of bug spray and her shoe and climbed up on my desk, doused the spider in bug repellent and smashed him with her shoe as he tried to escape. For the record, Karen is now my hero forever! Be warned spiders! The same fate will be yours if you try to enter our room. However, I'm a bit worried about when Karen and Rubi go home for the summer...that means I'll be dealing with any more intruders on my own....
So much for hot weather. Back to Thanksgiving. They don't have Thanksgiving here in Argentina, obviously, but the cafeteria is apparently going to try to make a Thanksgiving dinner for us, the best that it can be considering half the things we eat for Thanksgiving don't exist here. Also, after classes tomorrow there's going to be a football game. So the true spirit of the day will survive, food and football ;)
Last Monday was a holiday, so we had a long weekend. Lauren and I wanted to go check out the Walmart in Parana, which is about an hour and a half bus ride away. We had heard that Walmart was in a very sketchy part of town so we felt like we should find a guy to go with us. William had wanted to go originally but when we found him, an hour before the bus left, he informed us he didn't want to go anymore. Jamel was nice enough to be convinced to come along as our escort and we headed off for Parana.We found a taxi there to get to Walmart, but we were a little unsure of how to get a taxi back. It was too far (and not safe) to walk back. We asked our taxi driver and she was nice enough to offer to come back and pick us up at a certain time.
I walked into Walmart, and the first thing I saw was Christmas decorations everywhere. I looked at Lauren and said, "I feel like I'm home!" In reality though, Walmart here is not really the same as at home, which I knew it wouldn't be. We did find a straightener though, which was to replace Lauren's old one that my faulty converter blew up, and got to check out the merchandise.
Who knew that Walmart could be an adventure?
This week is all finals, next week we start our new classes for the second trimester, and on December 5th we head out on our trip to Peru. I am veeeery excited about that! That's pretty much a wrap on anything new happening here! Stay tuned for more updates to follow...
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Buenos Aires
Well, I have been putting this off for weeks now, just because there was so much to say, and because the longer I put it off the less I felt like writing it. But the time has come!
This is about our trip to Buenos Aires, now several weeks ago. The ACA-ites had to meet up at the painful hour of 5:45 am to catch the bus to BsAs, and so, just as the sun began to lighten the sky, we groggily hauled our luggage to the bus and began the 6 hour bus ride. I can't say I remember much of that morning, I was very busy studying the back of my eyelids. We stopped about an hour out of BsAs at Estancia Santa Susana, which is a big gaucho ranch. We spent the morning there, they had caballo rides, and wagon rides, and a gift shop, and gaucho houses to look at. We took lots of pictures, ate lunch there, had a gaucho show with singing and dancing, and then were on our way. We went straight to the hotel so that we could drop off our things, then had a couple of hours to explore the city. Some friends and I were quick to find one the things we were Most Excited about finding in Buenos Aires: STARBUCKS! One of the guys that worked there asked my friend Ashley where she was from, and we found out that he had lived in Florida only a few hours from where she lives, before he moved to Argentina.
That evening, Haroldo and Sandra, our ACA group leaders, took us to La Pampa Opera. This is a really incredible outdoor show of the history of Argentina, with tons of actors and singers. It was night time so it was dark, and it was in an outdoor arena in front of a giant stage. They had people riding horses around in the arena, and acting out battles and stuff. It was SUPER cool.
After that was over, it was back to the hotel and bed time. We were staying in a really cute nice hotel. They had breakfast for us every morning, and we had about 3 or 4 people per room. I was staying with two other girls.
The next day we headed out after a quick breakfast to explore the city. We spent the morning walking around and seeing cool stuff like La Boca, and Plaza de San Martin, then had lunch at an Adventist restaurant in town (the very same one they took us to after picking us up from the airport) and we had the afternoon to ourselves. That night a big group of us had planned on meeting up to go out to eat, then to a movie. After a long series of complicated events that are just too much of a hassle to recount, we were all together, and headed off to a place that promised burritos, something we had not seen since we left the States. It was called "California Burrito" or something like that, and it did have burritos. They were okay, but I have a feeling my craving for burritos will not be satisfied till I am home, haha. By the time we left it was getting late and those of us that didn't feel like watching a movie anymore headed back to the hotel. I ended up in Lauren's room, and watched part of a football game with her before I headed to bed.
The next day we got to have a tour of a house of Jose de San Martin in Buenos Aires, it was very grand. Can't say I'd have minded living there :)
Next stop was Plaza de Mayo, full of monuments and cool stuff. After this we got to go to a pretty good buffet for lunch. After lunch we went to a cemetery which might sound lame, but it was actually really impressive. Only very important, famous, and/or rich people got buried there. It was all big tombs, like little buildings, and all divided into little sections by alleys. You could have walked for hours and hours in there.
After the cemetery we got to check out a gorgeous park full of flowers and fountains and roses bushes galore. But beware! If you so much as THINK about stepping off the gravel paths onto the grass you will get whistled at very loudly by very grumpy park personnel!
Our day was almost over now, we headed back to the hotel to pack up and move out bags out to the bus. Then we got bused to a mall where we spent about 3 hours before our bus took us back to school. We got food, checked out every store in the mall (malls here are a bit different) and I hit up Starbucks one last time for a very delightful hazelnut mocha :)
Finally at about 11 we left Buenos Aires and started the long bus ride home. After watching a few episodes of Chuck with Lauren, James and Paul, I fell asleep till our bus rolled into the villa about 4am. Thus concludes the BsAs trip. Anything else can wait for another day :)
This is about our trip to Buenos Aires, now several weeks ago. The ACA-ites had to meet up at the painful hour of 5:45 am to catch the bus to BsAs, and so, just as the sun began to lighten the sky, we groggily hauled our luggage to the bus and began the 6 hour bus ride. I can't say I remember much of that morning, I was very busy studying the back of my eyelids. We stopped about an hour out of BsAs at Estancia Santa Susana, which is a big gaucho ranch. We spent the morning there, they had caballo rides, and wagon rides, and a gift shop, and gaucho houses to look at. We took lots of pictures, ate lunch there, had a gaucho show with singing and dancing, and then were on our way. We went straight to the hotel so that we could drop off our things, then had a couple of hours to explore the city. Some friends and I were quick to find one the things we were Most Excited about finding in Buenos Aires: STARBUCKS! One of the guys that worked there asked my friend Ashley where she was from, and we found out that he had lived in Florida only a few hours from where she lives, before he moved to Argentina.
That evening, Haroldo and Sandra, our ACA group leaders, took us to La Pampa Opera. This is a really incredible outdoor show of the history of Argentina, with tons of actors and singers. It was night time so it was dark, and it was in an outdoor arena in front of a giant stage. They had people riding horses around in the arena, and acting out battles and stuff. It was SUPER cool.
After that was over, it was back to the hotel and bed time. We were staying in a really cute nice hotel. They had breakfast for us every morning, and we had about 3 or 4 people per room. I was staying with two other girls.
The next day we headed out after a quick breakfast to explore the city. We spent the morning walking around and seeing cool stuff like La Boca, and Plaza de San Martin, then had lunch at an Adventist restaurant in town (the very same one they took us to after picking us up from the airport) and we had the afternoon to ourselves. That night a big group of us had planned on meeting up to go out to eat, then to a movie. After a long series of complicated events that are just too much of a hassle to recount, we were all together, and headed off to a place that promised burritos, something we had not seen since we left the States. It was called "California Burrito" or something like that, and it did have burritos. They were okay, but I have a feeling my craving for burritos will not be satisfied till I am home, haha. By the time we left it was getting late and those of us that didn't feel like watching a movie anymore headed back to the hotel. I ended up in Lauren's room, and watched part of a football game with her before I headed to bed.
The next day we got to have a tour of a house of Jose de San Martin in Buenos Aires, it was very grand. Can't say I'd have minded living there :)
Next stop was Plaza de Mayo, full of monuments and cool stuff. After this we got to go to a pretty good buffet for lunch. After lunch we went to a cemetery which might sound lame, but it was actually really impressive. Only very important, famous, and/or rich people got buried there. It was all big tombs, like little buildings, and all divided into little sections by alleys. You could have walked for hours and hours in there.
After the cemetery we got to check out a gorgeous park full of flowers and fountains and roses bushes galore. But beware! If you so much as THINK about stepping off the gravel paths onto the grass you will get whistled at very loudly by very grumpy park personnel!
Our day was almost over now, we headed back to the hotel to pack up and move out bags out to the bus. Then we got bused to a mall where we spent about 3 hours before our bus took us back to school. We got food, checked out every store in the mall (malls here are a bit different) and I hit up Starbucks one last time for a very delightful hazelnut mocha :)
Finally at about 11 we left Buenos Aires and started the long bus ride home. After watching a few episodes of Chuck with Lauren, James and Paul, I fell asleep till our bus rolled into the villa about 4am. Thus concludes the BsAs trip. Anything else can wait for another day :)
Monday, 11 October 2010
Weekend in Rosario
What a weekend!
A few weeks ago some friends of mine had decided to go to Rosario (a city about a 3 hour bus ride away) for the weekend, to hang out and explore and to celebrate our friend Chelsea's birthday. Monday (today) is a holiday so we had a long weekend and had plenty of time to do whatever. We planned to leave on Friday.Well, we got all packed up, dragged our bags to the bus terminal around 5 in the afternoon, and tried to buy our tickets only to find out that there were only 5 seats left on the bus, and there were 10 people in our group. There was a bus that left at 5:30 the next morning, and there was room for everyone on that so we decided to leave then. We made it to the bus station at the very painful hour of 5:30 and slept most of the way to Rosario. Once we got to Rosario we found a map, found a place that had a lot of hostels, and got taxis to go there and try to find a hostel to stay in and leave our luggage at while we explored the city. Well that part went fine. However the driver of the taxi that Shain, Sabrina and I were in somehow didn't know where the area we were trying to go was. All we knew was the name of the plaza that the others in the group had told us to tell the driver. He told us it didn't exist. We drove for awhile anyway, the driver pulling over every so often to complain loudly that he couldn't drive if he didn't know where we wanted to go, and a lot of other things that I didn't understand because they were in Spanish (which was probably just as well). Fortunately Shain speaks Spanish and was able to talk to the driver. We didn't know what to do. Everyone else had already left, we knew only the name of the plaza which the driver didn't know, we didn't even have a map with us. Finally I suggested we go back to the terminal and get a map and at least try to find where everyone else had said to go. So we turned around, the driver grumbled, and we went back to the terminal and got a map. And guess what?! There on the map was the plaza just like we had told the driver. We found a NEW taxi driver and he took us to the area. We still had no idea where everyone else, other than that they were in that area somewhere. We walked around for a few minutes, I was praying that we would be able to find them soon, and sure enough, a few minutes later Sabrina saw them across the park waiting for us. I knew God had most definitely answered my prayer!
Now, to find a hostel. We walked from place to place, hauling our luggage along with us, asking for rooms but every single hostel we found was full. Apparently since it was a holiday weekend, everyone and their great uncle was in Rosario for the weekend, and everything was full. After what felt like an eternity, we found a last resort, the only place that had room: a 5-star hotel. Well, it was that or go back, which Jamel decided to do. He opted to go back to the bus station and catch the bus back to school. We had hoped that we could just rent one or two rooms, and then sneak the rest of us in to sleep on the floors, but in a 5-star hotel it's a bit harder to sneak in, and there was no way we could do it. We got the 4 rooms, and since there were now 9 of us, I was in a room by myself. It was nice yeah, but also meant I had to pay the full 130 US dollars for a room that was much nicer than I really needed. It was one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in, though I'm not sure it would be considered a 5-star hotel in the states.
But at least we had a place to stay, and we could leave our luggage while we went out. We hung out in the hotel for a few hours while people showered, and tried to enjoy the hotel as much as possible to get every penny's worth! (I will say, the shower pressure was EXCELLENT! I missed that this morning, when my shower turned cold half way through, and became a small drizzle).
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town, and finding a place to eat dinner, then went back to the hotel and watched tv and hung out most of the night, till it was late enough for the clubs to open. Which was late! We didn't leave the hotel till almost 2. We were all in 3 taxis again, and mine, and one other taxi made it to the club just fine, but the 3rd one (that Shain was in, ironically) was nowhere to be seen. Lauren, Sabrina, Javier, James, Paul and I stood out in the cold for about half an hour, waiting for their taxi to arrive. Finally at 2:30 we got into line to get into the club because the hotel had given us free entrance tickets but they expired at 2:30. Just as we were about to go in Ashlee and Chelsea and Shain showed up. Apparently THIS taxi driver took them to an entirely different club. So we finally all made it in. I was super tired and wanted to leave about 3:30, and Paul had a headache so he said he'd come with me, and Lauren and James both decided to leave with us. Finding a taxi was a lot harder than I thought it would be, it took us almost half an hour just to find one that was "libre" and flag it down. I was so tired when we finally got back to the hotel. I slept sooo good that night.
Room service delivered breakfast to our rooms the next morning, which we found out later is NOT a free service like we thought, but the gentleman at the desk that checked us out was kind enough to not charge us for it, since we hadn't known that it cost extra. That and he probably just wanted to get us pesky students out of his hotel. We had to check out at noon, but we were able to leave our belongings with the hotel, since we had several hours before we needed to be to the bus station, and didn't want to carry everything around with us all afternoon. Rosario has this amazing monument called the National Flag Memorial that we walked to and took pictures of, it was really gorgeous! And we checked out some street vendors as well, before we walked back to the hotel, got cabs, and headed to the bus station. This time ALL the taxis made it, even the one Shain was in! And we were able to get right on our bus, and start the 3 hour trip back to Libertador San Martin. We got back around 7, and were able to grab some dinner. There was a masquerade fiesta last night, and I could hear it going on outside through my window last night. One of my roommates and a friend of hers spent a lot of time trying on shoes, dresses, and they even made their own masks to wear to the masquerade, which I thought was pretty neat. So THAT was our crazy weekend. Nothing went according to plan, but we survived, and had some good times anyway.
Today was a holiday. Again. There are so many holidays here, like every week, and nobody ever knows what holiday it is or even what it's called! I love it :)
I got to sleep in today, then Lauren and I went for a run. After lunch she and Sabrina and I lay out on blankets in the sun and did homework for a couple of hours. It was lovely. The weather is finally starting to warm up and feel more like summer here.
Well, that's about all. It's a bit of a lot to read, sorry about that.
A few weeks ago some friends of mine had decided to go to Rosario (a city about a 3 hour bus ride away) for the weekend, to hang out and explore and to celebrate our friend Chelsea's birthday. Monday (today) is a holiday so we had a long weekend and had plenty of time to do whatever. We planned to leave on Friday.Well, we got all packed up, dragged our bags to the bus terminal around 5 in the afternoon, and tried to buy our tickets only to find out that there were only 5 seats left on the bus, and there were 10 people in our group. There was a bus that left at 5:30 the next morning, and there was room for everyone on that so we decided to leave then. We made it to the bus station at the very painful hour of 5:30 and slept most of the way to Rosario. Once we got to Rosario we found a map, found a place that had a lot of hostels, and got taxis to go there and try to find a hostel to stay in and leave our luggage at while we explored the city. Well that part went fine. However the driver of the taxi that Shain, Sabrina and I were in somehow didn't know where the area we were trying to go was. All we knew was the name of the plaza that the others in the group had told us to tell the driver. He told us it didn't exist. We drove for awhile anyway, the driver pulling over every so often to complain loudly that he couldn't drive if he didn't know where we wanted to go, and a lot of other things that I didn't understand because they were in Spanish (which was probably just as well). Fortunately Shain speaks Spanish and was able to talk to the driver. We didn't know what to do. Everyone else had already left, we knew only the name of the plaza which the driver didn't know, we didn't even have a map with us. Finally I suggested we go back to the terminal and get a map and at least try to find where everyone else had said to go. So we turned around, the driver grumbled, and we went back to the terminal and got a map. And guess what?! There on the map was the plaza just like we had told the driver. We found a NEW taxi driver and he took us to the area. We still had no idea where everyone else, other than that they were in that area somewhere. We walked around for a few minutes, I was praying that we would be able to find them soon, and sure enough, a few minutes later Sabrina saw them across the park waiting for us. I knew God had most definitely answered my prayer!
Now, to find a hostel. We walked from place to place, hauling our luggage along with us, asking for rooms but every single hostel we found was full. Apparently since it was a holiday weekend, everyone and their great uncle was in Rosario for the weekend, and everything was full. After what felt like an eternity, we found a last resort, the only place that had room: a 5-star hotel. Well, it was that or go back, which Jamel decided to do. He opted to go back to the bus station and catch the bus back to school. We had hoped that we could just rent one or two rooms, and then sneak the rest of us in to sleep on the floors, but in a 5-star hotel it's a bit harder to sneak in, and there was no way we could do it. We got the 4 rooms, and since there were now 9 of us, I was in a room by myself. It was nice yeah, but also meant I had to pay the full 130 US dollars for a room that was much nicer than I really needed. It was one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in, though I'm not sure it would be considered a 5-star hotel in the states.
But at least we had a place to stay, and we could leave our luggage while we went out. We hung out in the hotel for a few hours while people showered, and tried to enjoy the hotel as much as possible to get every penny's worth! (I will say, the shower pressure was EXCELLENT! I missed that this morning, when my shower turned cold half way through, and became a small drizzle).
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town, and finding a place to eat dinner, then went back to the hotel and watched tv and hung out most of the night, till it was late enough for the clubs to open. Which was late! We didn't leave the hotel till almost 2. We were all in 3 taxis again, and mine, and one other taxi made it to the club just fine, but the 3rd one (that Shain was in, ironically) was nowhere to be seen. Lauren, Sabrina, Javier, James, Paul and I stood out in the cold for about half an hour, waiting for their taxi to arrive. Finally at 2:30 we got into line to get into the club because the hotel had given us free entrance tickets but they expired at 2:30. Just as we were about to go in Ashlee and Chelsea and Shain showed up. Apparently THIS taxi driver took them to an entirely different club. So we finally all made it in. I was super tired and wanted to leave about 3:30, and Paul had a headache so he said he'd come with me, and Lauren and James both decided to leave with us. Finding a taxi was a lot harder than I thought it would be, it took us almost half an hour just to find one that was "libre" and flag it down. I was so tired when we finally got back to the hotel. I slept sooo good that night.
Room service delivered breakfast to our rooms the next morning, which we found out later is NOT a free service like we thought, but the gentleman at the desk that checked us out was kind enough to not charge us for it, since we hadn't known that it cost extra. That and he probably just wanted to get us pesky students out of his hotel. We had to check out at noon, but we were able to leave our belongings with the hotel, since we had several hours before we needed to be to the bus station, and didn't want to carry everything around with us all afternoon. Rosario has this amazing monument called the National Flag Memorial that we walked to and took pictures of, it was really gorgeous! And we checked out some street vendors as well, before we walked back to the hotel, got cabs, and headed to the bus station. This time ALL the taxis made it, even the one Shain was in! And we were able to get right on our bus, and start the 3 hour trip back to Libertador San Martin. We got back around 7, and were able to grab some dinner. There was a masquerade fiesta last night, and I could hear it going on outside through my window last night. One of my roommates and a friend of hers spent a lot of time trying on shoes, dresses, and they even made their own masks to wear to the masquerade, which I thought was pretty neat. So THAT was our crazy weekend. Nothing went according to plan, but we survived, and had some good times anyway.
Today was a holiday. Again. There are so many holidays here, like every week, and nobody ever knows what holiday it is or even what it's called! I love it :)
I got to sleep in today, then Lauren and I went for a run. After lunch she and Sabrina and I lay out on blankets in the sun and did homework for a couple of hours. It was lovely. The weather is finally starting to warm up and feel more like summer here.
Well, that's about all. It's a bit of a lot to read, sorry about that.
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