Sunday, May 23, 2010
Gran Quilombo
Today it rained hard, flooded the streets in Buenos Aires, and destroyed massive amounts of merchandise throughout the city. Around 5PM, a bus went off the road a half block from my house, cruised up onto the sidewalk, and crashed straight into a pharmacy. Somehow, nobody died. At around 5:30, a robber walked into the quiosko down the street, broke a bottle when he walked in, and proceeded to cut up the face of the store owner. He stole his money and took off. The owner was taken to the hospital with serious wounds on his face. And on top of this all, the price of a bottle of beer went up a peso in my supermarket. Crazy world.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
CongratulationS
To the 3 kids in the class of 2010 that look at my blog, and probably haven't in a while because I have been super lazy about updating it, I want to say congratulations!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Iguazu
As I mentioned in a previous blog, last weekend I made the long trek up to Iguazu Falls, the gorgeous almost 3 km of waterfalls that border the Argentine and Brazilian borders. Everyone, if they have a computer fast enough (that would exclude you, Olde) should check out the Planet Earth clip of Iguazu, it is pretty amazing. Although the amount of water moving over the falls in this clip is pretty insignificant compared to the amount of water than was moving when we went. Which was, both a blessing and a curse. It was awesome to see really high waters, due to days and days of torrential rains and flooding in Brazil, however, the falls were so big that trails were cut off and the spray produced from the water falling pretty much obscured the majority of our view of the falls.
We hopped on a bus on Thursday night in Retiro, made the 16.5 hour ride up to Iguazu, forced to watch crappy pirated movies with loud volume for about the entire ride. My favorite was From Paris with Love, a real crapper from our favorite Scientologist, John Travolta. He really has gone down hill since Pulp Fiction.
We got to our huge hostel on Friday afternoon, around 1 PM, unpacked, changed, brushed our teeth, and headed to the falls. We blew 50 bucks, US, on a touristy boat ride up under the falls which essentially consisted of a 10 minute ride up 5 kilometers of rapids, some jerky steering and sudden turns that made the tourists scream out in joy and clap, and then 3 or 4 quick insertions into the stinging water of the falls which completely, and I mean completely, soaked us. The tour operators stopped before entering the falls and put on complete wet suits so they wouldn´t get wet while we just sat there and watched in wonder of how soaked we were going to get. We then returned and made our way back to the hostel, soggy and dripping, looking forward to a cheaper day of walks around the falls.
The next day we headed over early, by our standards, around 10. Did the upper and lower circuits of hikes. The first brings you over the falls up top. A collection of ramps and walkways wind along the edge of the falls allowing you to get some pretty amazing views of the falls from up above. The next set of trails winded down below the falls, and got us pretty wet, again, from the spray. After that we headed to the Macuco trail, a nature trail, where we saw tons of golden web spiders, Coatis, white faced monkeys, and toucans. The highlight, though, was getting to the end of the trail where you can hike down to the bottom of a small fall and swim in the pond below. Since I dont have a camera I couldn´t get any shots of us in the falls, but once my friend Sasha posts her pictures, I will be sure to provide a link. It was a very cool experience. The ride back, Adam and I made alone, as the girls took a different bus. The return trip ended up being a little over 20 hours. But, all in all, the traveling and 50 dollar baths were worth the trip. The falls were beautiful. I would love to go back some day when we can see the devil´s throat, the biggest fall, over on the brazilian side.
We hopped on a bus on Thursday night in Retiro, made the 16.5 hour ride up to Iguazu, forced to watch crappy pirated movies with loud volume for about the entire ride. My favorite was From Paris with Love, a real crapper from our favorite Scientologist, John Travolta. He really has gone down hill since Pulp Fiction.
We got to our huge hostel on Friday afternoon, around 1 PM, unpacked, changed, brushed our teeth, and headed to the falls. We blew 50 bucks, US, on a touristy boat ride up under the falls which essentially consisted of a 10 minute ride up 5 kilometers of rapids, some jerky steering and sudden turns that made the tourists scream out in joy and clap, and then 3 or 4 quick insertions into the stinging water of the falls which completely, and I mean completely, soaked us. The tour operators stopped before entering the falls and put on complete wet suits so they wouldn´t get wet while we just sat there and watched in wonder of how soaked we were going to get. We then returned and made our way back to the hostel, soggy and dripping, looking forward to a cheaper day of walks around the falls.
The next day we headed over early, by our standards, around 10. Did the upper and lower circuits of hikes. The first brings you over the falls up top. A collection of ramps and walkways wind along the edge of the falls allowing you to get some pretty amazing views of the falls from up above. The next set of trails winded down below the falls, and got us pretty wet, again, from the spray. After that we headed to the Macuco trail, a nature trail, where we saw tons of golden web spiders, Coatis, white faced monkeys, and toucans. The highlight, though, was getting to the end of the trail where you can hike down to the bottom of a small fall and swim in the pond below. Since I dont have a camera I couldn´t get any shots of us in the falls, but once my friend Sasha posts her pictures, I will be sure to provide a link. It was a very cool experience. The ride back, Adam and I made alone, as the girls took a different bus. The return trip ended up being a little over 20 hours. But, all in all, the traveling and 50 dollar baths were worth the trip. The falls were beautiful. I would love to go back some day when we can see the devil´s throat, the biggest fall, over on the brazilian side.
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