call it having an itchy backside

and risk sounding like my mom.

i've decided to switch blog hosts. just to see what it's like. check out the rest of my life at: 1xf00.wordpress.com

in the meantime, if you're thinking of traveling, let me try and talk you into heading south. like singapore or new zealand.

iguazu falls and evita

instead of being lazy bums and sticking around buenos aires for the rest of our time in south america, we finally were motivated enough to get tickets to the falls. it was HOT, let me tell you. iguazu was as spectacular as people had told us. tons of water gushing everywhere, downwards.

at the hostel we stayed in, we shared a room with 2 kids from holland and another from canada whom we quickly became buds with. on our last day at puerto iguazu, she talked us into hopping the border to paraguay to shop for cheap electronics. why not? it turned out to be an exciting day with no mishaps (paraguay is supposedly known to be unsafe for the foreigners). she got what she went there for, an mp3 player, and we got a hammock and katherine got a cute sundress. we were even in brazil for a bizarre minute without getting stamped in or out. success!













we´re back in buenos aires now and are just hanging out till wednesday. doing some last minute shopping and touring. we just visited the recoleta cemetery where evita is buried. lots of other famous people are buried there too. but probably no one as fabulous as evita.

patience and the asian harmony theory

crap, dirtballs. i don´t think i was born with it. and this is why i think so. since arriving in south america, i´ve been stared at, pointed at and also hollered at in kung-fu language. i´m still in the midst of learning kung-fu-ese so i can´t really explain how it sounds like. well, that´s not true. kung-fu-ese, to me, sounds like the noise jackie chan makes sometimes in his movies. or chow yun-fat. or jet li. take your pick. they look the same to me.

anyways, getting hollered at in kung-fu language was bugging me. it´s funny the first time, maybe. and even then, it´s still inappropriate. but after the 20th time (4 times that day we spent in san rafael), i thought this was getting ridiculous. we arrived in puerto madryn a few days ago and on our way to the hostel, we got hollered at again. i guess this time was relatively acceptable. the kids were yelling at us in english. but, i was slightly crabby after an 18 hour bus ride and decided to take some action. so i turned around and flicked them off. i´m not sure if they were familiar with the international sign for ´leave me the hell alone or i will punch you in the face´ or if they didn´t see it but they just continued waving and screaming and walking to wherever it was they were walking. but then it occurred to me - did i really just flick off some 10 year olds? yes, i think i just did.

perito moreno

it took us so long to get there (approx 30 hours), i figured it was good to take at least a few photos...the glacier was pretty amazing once we arrived. a little cold, as one would expect, but it was a sight to behold. we saw some chunks fall off the side of the glacier and the sounds associated with that action was incredible.

living more simply

el bolson has been pretty charming. mountains, fairly good food, chill people and hippies. well, i didn´t see the hippies till we went to the craft market yesterday and that was a treat. we wanted to get tons of stuff because everything was so cool. it was probably the best craft market i´ve been to ever. we ended up buying some hippie pants that looked too comfortable to pass up plus i was in need of some new pants that fit. we also got some delicious peas, raspberries and this strawberry/milk drink that was very tasty.

we´ve been camping in el bolson and last night was by far the coldest. i couldn´t really sleep because i was a little too cold and when my feet don´t stay warm, i have trouble sleeping. anyways, morning finally came. sweet jesus. a little warmth.

katherine exited the tent only to discover that one of the backpacks was missing - mine. awesome. i´ve always wanted to start mornings looking for shit that someone took from me. katherine´s had been ransacked but was more or less there. we spent the next 2 hours looking around inside the camp site. nothing. the two guys who run the place looked outside the property. nothing (one of them thought it was dogs. but very zipper of katherine´s bag had been unzipped and dogs don´t open every zipper). two hours later we file a police report. the police officer didn´t look too hopeful. and by hopeful, i mean he said that he thought it was next to impossible. so now, an hour later, i have a police report that says i´m japanese and that i lost some things. including a black and blue bag that was muy grande.

off to perito moreno.

the elderfoos´ visit and recent activities

the elderfoos came to visit us in south america and we plushed out a bit. we visited a few vineyards in chile and one in argentina and had a bottle to drink with dinner every night. my parents introduced katherine to the asian drink, shandy (half seven-up, half blanca beer of your choice). i think she likes it a bit.

in chile, casa lapostolle and montes were the two bodegas we stopped by. both with splendid, massive buildings. casa lapostolle just won wine spectator's best wine of the year award for their 2005 clos apalta. look out for 2007 wines from that region...

in argentina, we stopped by the smaller albeit very charming la abeja vineyard. all their equipment is from the 19th century and imported from france. they make their champagne using the traditional method and is only sold at the vineyard. we got a bottle of the rose bubbly and shared it on december 14th, for the elderfoos´ 28th wedding anniversary.

we then drove across the country to buenos aires (capital federal). it was a pretty overwhelming city with lots of people, cars and pollution. i felt like i was going to die from inhaling too much second hand smoke or too much vehicle exhaust. however, we also had the best meal there since we arrived in argentina and unexpectedly at an all organic vegetarian joint in the nice, swish neighborhood of palermo. i´d like to spend more time in BA. we didn´t get to explore much of the 40+ neighborhoods it has over the 4 days we were there. one recommendation: avoid the tango bars. we went to one and it sucked.

after the elderfoos left, we headed back to life on the farm in tunuyan. that lasted for about 4 days before we decided that 10/12 hour workdays with no weekends in the heat wasn´t our thing and that traveling should commence! two days and a sixteen hour bus ride later, we´re in el bolson in the south of argentina. it´s a nice little town flanked by mountains. katherine made reservations at the best restaurant in town and we had a fabulous 3 hour long dinner accompanied by lots of wine for christmas eve dinner. in a few days, we leave for the glacier perito moreno and maybe torres del paine.

oh! current plans are to take a bus ALL the way up to mexico. colombia, here we come!

recycling

we ate at a tenedor libre today. a tenedor libre is (i guess) castellano for buffet and the only reason we dined there was because it was recommended by the farm people.

we had been looking forward to it all visit long because it was an opportunity to eat out and decided today would be a good day to go since we were leaving for chile and didn't have a place to prepare meals. at lunch, we walked in and saw that the restaurant was pretty full - usually a good sign. the rule was that you had to get at least a drink that wasn't included in the price of the buffet. fine. i could deal with that. an order of gin & tonic for me please. food was pretty sub-par but you don't go to a buffet for quality food. it's the quantity that people are after. and there was quantity so you couldn't complain.

we noticed that many tables had bread baskets and wondered why we didn't have one. the dude eating at the table next to us had been talking to us about where to visit in argentina and chile and he also had a bread basket. he eventually left once he was done with his food. the waiter man came by to clean up his table then simply shifted the bread basket that once was on that man's table to our table. still full of bread. that's how you got a bread basket.