Monday, July 27, 2009

Iguazú, Buenos Aires

The Iguazú Fallswere absolutely amazing. They´re a series of waterfalls located on the border of Brazil and Argentina that are larger than Niagara Falls. The park itself is also set up like Disneyland, which I actually really appreciated considering the poorly developed parks that we´ve been used to seeing. (By comparing it to Disneyland, I mean that the reserve put a lot of thought into the development and structure of the pathways and the organization of the site. All the paths were paved, with signs and park employees everywhere.) We got pretty wet trying to look at some falls called Devil´s Mouth. There was so much spray from the falls that the view couldn´t be captured in a photo, or at least a photo taken by me.

On a different note, today I heard Sigur Ros played in my hostel and it made me very nostalgic about being at Grinnell and holing myself up either in my room or the library on a Saturday, studying for midterms and finals. I remembered this just now because at the internet cafe I´m at, the song ´Call on Me´ came on, made famous by Titular Head.

We´re in Buenos Aires right now and have been here for a week. BA is such a great city! The ice cream really is amazing. It´s a derivative of gelato, brought over here by the thousands of Italian immigrants that made the city their home. We´ve met up with Shai and Jonathan´s family a few times (they have a whole slew of relatives that live here), and each time we´ve seen them, they´ve taken us out for ice cream. I´ve had it once a day the past three days.
They serve it differently here than in the states - you pick two ice cream flavors, one for inside the cone and another for the top, and then they shape the ice cream tip to a point so, if done correctly, it looks like the hair of a Troll Doll. These places also have about 30 flavors each, which apparently are all delicious. We went to one place in a hip section of town, Palermo, with Shai´s cousin and her husband, after they had us over for dinner. It was 12am and the place was going strong--we had a hard time even finding a table. A few families with their toddlers and young children were ordering ice cream and coffee as we sat. The shop didn´t close until 3am, and Joana, Shai´s cousin, said that the line for ice cream trailed out the door at closing time during the summer. (For the record, it´s winter here right now.)

Shai leaves on Wednesday, and Jonathan on Sunday. As of right now, I leave September 29th. I have no idea what I´m going to do once they leave! There is a pretty fierce rumor that Alex, my younger brother, will come traveling with me for a few weeks, which would be really fun. I´m thinking about working on a dairy farm either in Chile or Mendoza for a month or two. I really want to learn how to make yogurt and cheese. I´m also beginning to miss home (it´s true, Mom & Dad!), which is out of character since normally I get really involved in the places that I visit or live in. I´m looking forward to having down time in Irvine once I get back.

If any of you are heading to South America, let me know! My plans are really flexible at this point.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Now Argentina

I´ve been super bad about updating! This is just a short post to commit myself to posting a real update. We were in the desert of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, for about 4 days after having left Peru. We just left Atacama today on a 12 hour bus ride to Salta, Argentina, where we are right now.

We just got back from at an amazing meat restaurant tonight where we had the first red meat I´ve had in a really long time. It was delicious, and think $8 to split a bunch of ribs between two people. Tomorrow, we´re going to this Lebanese restaurant Shai´s really excited about.

Salta also has non-food related things to do, surprisingly enough. I´m hoping to check out this museum here that has the frozen body of a woman who was supposedly an Incan sacrifice. She´s supposed to be perfectly preserved--hair, clothes, skin and all. I don´t think Shai or Jonathan particularly care, but I´m looking forward to it. Then at 3pm, we embark on a 21 hour bus ride for Iguazu Falls. Apparently they serve one meal on this ride, so we´ll have to get creative about what food we bring with us. I´m imagining eating a bell pepper and a lot of yogurt. (The yogurt here is amazing! I´ve never eaten so much of it in my life.)

Friday, July 3, 2009

Food

There are some things that we eat a lot of, here in our travels. Shai randomly gets cravings for apples and generally buys them in bulk from either a grocery store or the covered and usually crazy food markets. I´m trying to only buy my food from these markets, I love them so much. She also consumes a lot of this watery thing that people sell along the side of streets unrefridgerated. It comes in a plastic goblet with small chocolate balls on top, which you´re supposed to pour into the yogurt.

I´ve been on a quinoa kick and have tried to prepare it in different fashions, although I´ve really only had one success: quinoa with tomatoes, onions and garlic. I tried to cook this when we were in Arequipa, except with the addition of bell pepper. I bought two big, round peppers from the central market. I chopped them all up and mindlessly slipped a piece of pepper in my mouth as I was finishing, only to die from its spiciness. I had no idea that peppers that look decievingly like sweet bell peppers could be so horrifyingly hot. My lips burned for a good 20 minutes after eating it. They had black seeds, but I still don´t know if that was a sign or if all peppers here have them.

I think I forgot to mention our transportation fun, so I´ll mention it now. There have been a bunch of transportation strikes throughout the country due to a few factors, none of which I fully understand but I´ll skim over anyway.
1) Some people (possibly indigenous) are protesting the privatization of water.
2) Local indigenous peoples are protesting oil drilling in the Amazon.
So we got into Arequipa from Ica at around 9am, after being on a bus for 13 hours. We checked into our hostel (Home Sweet Home - it was cute, although a little far from the center), wandered around the town for a good majority of the day, and got back at around 6pm to find out from someone sharing the dorm with us that the road to Cuzco was going to be blocked for a week starting the next day at 6am. We had been planning to hang out in Arequipa for a few days and then meander over to Lake Titicaca, from where we would head on to Cuzco. This was bad news, since it meant we wouldn´t be able to get into Cuzco for at least a week if we didn´t leave before 6am. I had been cooking the quinoa when we found out, so I hurried it up, threw the quinoa in a plastic bag (this wasn´t the first time) to bring with me, and we headed straight for the train station to find out what was going on. We ended up buying bus tickets for Cuzco that night and left at 8:30 pm, to arrive in Cuzco at 6am. So we spent 12 hours in Arequipa, after having traveled a total of 17 hours (Lima to Ica to Arequipa) to get there. And that´s how we got to Cuzco. (For the record, the blocade ended up not even happening. Tuesday was supposedly a nation-wide transport strike, which also didn´t happen. We´ve also heard that there are blocades occuring between here and La Paz, which is our next destination after Macchu Pichu, but who knows what´s actually happening.)

Today we´re meeting up with Josie, another friend from Grinnell who moved to Cuzco to become fluent in Spanish, and then we´re going to Chabad (an Orthodox sect of Judaism who has centers set up in popular travel spots for Jews) for dinner tonight to celebrate Shabbat (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown is special in Judaiasm, celebrated on Fri with prayers and dinner). I´m really curious about who these people are that run the center, who will go, what we´ll eat. It should be an interesting experience.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Cuzco Updates

Shai and I yelled at a woman working at the tourism office yesterday.

Randomly ran into Ami Freeberg, a friend from Grinnell, on the street in Cuzco. We met up yesterday and made lunch, then went to a cultural dance performance last night and today we walked 4.5 miles around some really amazing Incan ruins just up a hill from Cuzco proper. I´ll add links later for info about the sites.

Went to a restaurant today with a menu in Spanish and in Hebrew with Shai and these Israeli guys we met. The other patrons appeared to all be other Israelis too. There are some buildings here that just have signs in Hebrew, targeting the many Israeli travelers that pass through. It´s actually ridiculous how many Israelis we´ve met on our trip.

Today I began a 5-word-a-day program for learning Hebrew. My words: peelpal (pepper), melach (salt), zifra (syphilus and also the name of a food dish), and I forget the rest. I´m pretty confident I´ll be fluent soon.

I´m awful at updating here, so I apologize! I´ll keep posting stuff, but I can´t guarantee a constant rate. Hope you´re all well!