Random Pics

Pictures of Buenos Aires

Che Mural in Buenos

Tango Dancing in the streets of Buenos

A fine drinking establishment

Iguazu Falls

Despite the magnificent things we have seen and done on this trip, only a handful stand out above the rest. These few precious moments are the closest thing we have felt to heaven on earth: being together with the person you love, a glorious chocolate banana crepe, and Iguazu Falls.

Immigration Museum

One of the highlights of our visit to Buenos Aires was visiting the intimate immigration museum and learning about how the mass immigration of Europeans shaped the city. From 1870 to 1920 1.6 million Spaniards and 2.3 million Italians chose to relocate to Buenos Aires and start a new life...amazing when you consider that in 1870 Buenos Aires started with a population of only 700,000. The museum itself was located in an old complex built to accommodate the immigrants as they exited the ships. It was a massive building with kitchens, cafeterias and dorms where new citizens learned Spanish and got acclimated to their new environment. The aged building was especially beautiful at sunset.










- Hansel and Gretel

I´m an Aunt!

On August 18th, my sister, Allie, and her husband, Scott, had Makenzie Ava McNeil, a healthy baby girl weighing 8 pounds 14 ounces. Even thousands of miles away, I am a proud and gushing aunt. I can´t wait to shower my niece with baby sized South American treasures such as llama fetuses and Panama hats. All cuteness in the following pictures can be attributed soley to me:

Buenos Aires

Any suspicions we had about wanting to spend an extended amount of time in Buenos Aires were confirmed upon our arrival. We immediately felt at home in this charming city with it´s colonial architecture, cafe culture, wide streets, and cosmoplitan feel. We spent several days wandering the city streets sitting in plazas and passing time in cafes while watching the world outside go by. We timed our trip to concide with the weekend so that we could ge a taste of the Portenian nightlife.

On Saturday night, we were wandering near one of the main plazas searching for a cafe to chill out in after being out kinda late on Friday night. We decided to peak into an interesting restaurant and stumbled upon a marble, pillared ballroom that immediately transported us to 1950´s Buenos Aires. We arrived just in time to join the beginner´s Tango class. A short, tight jean-wearing Frenchy took teaching us the 4 step slide VERY seriously. We may not have gotten all the steps right, but we thoroughly enjoyed holding each other tight, looking into each other´s eyes and slamming into the other couples. Following the lesson, which ended at 11pm, was an open dance where Argentinians of all ages showed off their short skirts, Tango scarves and sensual moves to the live accordian music that filled the hall. It was nice to witness people taking the time to dress up, close their eyes, lose themselves in music, and relish in the romance of a time long forgotten. By 2 am, the party was in full swing and Argentinains twice our age were still arriving when we decided to call it a night.

We spent Sunday afternoon wandering around the quaint neighborhood of San Telma which transforms itself into a market featuring antique vendors, street performers and pastry dealing spinsters. It was here that Jenny fell in love with the most gorgeous vintage crystal bead necklace on display at a booth run by two fur-coat clad older women (pictured below). For some reason they took a liking to the cute American couple and abandoned the typical sales pitch. Because the necklace was so beautiful and the ladies were so endearing, we bought the necklace for Jenny to wear at a special occasion. Trust us, Tom, it´s worth the blog entry.

- JRo and JBird

And......More Wine Tasting

Mendoza and Wine Tasting

Argentina at its Best

After leaving Cordoba, we headed to Mendoza, the heart of Argentinian wine country. Mendoza was a quaint beautiful town with spacious plazas and cobblestone pedestrian walkways; definitely one of our favorite cities so far. We thought that the best (and cheapest) way to visit the many bodegas (wineries) that stretched along the 5 kilometer tree-lined street was by bicycle which we rented from a local character. These vineyards produced 70% of Argentina´s wine which means that after a day´s tasting, we were functioning at 30% capacity. It started to rain on the way back so we decided to stop and warm up at a little cottage that acted as a chocolate factory. We took a 15 minute tour of the factory which consisted of a young employee, who couldn´t speak English, reading all the labels of their products. The free samples of chocolate liquors, fudge and homemade jams were the highlight.

The next day it snowed in Mendoza for the first time in 20 years. We were content to sit by the fireplace at our hostel eating churros dipped into hot chocolate and snuggling. There are worse ways to spend a winter day in the Andes.

- JRo and JBird

Argentina

Despite our fondness for La Paz, we were ready to leave the drama behind us and make our way to romantic Argentina. To get to Argentina, however, we had to endure a 33 hour bus ride/border crossing, the vast majority of which was spent on bumpy dirt roads. A stop at the peak of the Bolivian Andean passage at about 2am made it all worth while. We couldn´t continue any further because of the ice and snow that blanketed the ground during the night. We got off the bus to stretch our legs and were met with a full moon reflecting on the snow and a clear sky full of stars that seemed to hover just above the Andean peaks that surrounded us. A few hours later, when the sun began to rise and the temperature warmed to the point that the surface ice began to melt, we continued to the Argentinian border.

We arrived in Salta, Argentina at 3am after traveling for a day and a half and were surprised by the frigid, arctic temperatures of South America´s southern most country. It was interesting to traverse opposing seasons within a week, from the warm summer sun of the Peruvian coast to the arctic Argentinian winter. Salta was cold; a day stop-over was enough.

Our first destination in Argentina was the medium sized, college-city of Cordoba. In the spirit of college indulgence, we digressed into graduate school form by sampling the numerous spirits and ales that this lovely city had to offer; the taste and quality of these beverages was blurred by the quantity of consumption. We spent an unusually sunny, warm Sunday wandering around plazas and antique markets watching these Argentinian addicts suck down gourd after gourd of a tea like beverage called `mate´. These people carry around specially carved, hollowed out wooden mugs that throughout the day get filled with a large bag of leaves. They then add several large thermoses of hot water which they store in their `mate suitcases´. It seems as if the national pastime is lounging around, sipping non-stop, getting hopped up and talking about how much they wish they were European.

- JRo and JBird

Comments on Comments

Despite the instinct to suit up in iron clad armour and grab every weapon in the house, be it a sharpened cleaver or sharpened pencil, there is no need to square off against our tormentors (I mean commentors). The anonymous Tom is a good friend (and former co-worker) of Jay and I's from OSU (not the dreaded TF from IN thank goodness) Tom from OSU lives in Michigan now and faithfully reads our blog and leaves what we think are hilarious diatribes that we thoroughly enjoy. There were two comments, one by Tom which we thought was very funny and a response by us in an attempt to be witty which we also thought was very amusing. It's not quite Rhodes humor but it makes us laugh. But THANK YOU for your protection even thousands of miles away. Don't I have the best dad in the world?

Comments

The other day we received a tremondously insightful comment which we feel deserves not only to be recognized, but to be responded to. The comment begins with the following paragraph and our response begins with the paragraph after that.

Can't wait to read the post from Argentina. As I passed through the airport in Boston this weekend... (Boston is a quaint little town and a study in contrasts; filled with history but focused on the future. Home to some of the countries best most intelligent students and yet worst, most impatient drivers) I came across a publication called Vanity Fair that featured a photo spread of models from Argentina. In many of the photos nude, androgenous models were frolicking by the pools and drinking with women in large boots and cocktail dresses. I thought to myself...I hope Jay and Jenny experience this cultural phenomenon as they trek through S. America.T
August 5, 2007 5:45 AM


Argentina´s storied past and turbulent present exhibit a culture steeped in rich interpersonal, political, artistic, and culinary traditions, all of which were completely overshadowed by the stunning models we encountered in the park yesterday. Before stripping down and joining the frolick entravaganza, I was struck not by the androgenaity of these neutral young lads, but by their hairstyles: the strange combination of rat tails and mullets which seem to permeate Argentinan culture. Now you may be asking yourself, ¨When you are carelessly dancing through a public park fountain, surrounded by the queens of the fashion industry, wearing nothing but the fur on your backside, how is it that something as frivolous as a hair style can distract you?¨ But friend, Thomas, if you will, you have no idea how powerfully hideous these pervavise mullet/rat tail combinations can be.
August 9, 2007 10:05 AM

We Estimate Your Compression

Dyed llama wool about to be woven in the small mountain village of Chinchero, Peru.

Dyed llama wool being woven in the small mountain village of Chinchero, Peru.

View from train to Macchu Pichu.

Street scene in Cuzco, Peru.

Jenny in front of one of the fountains in Cuzco.

We estimate your compression* as we update our site with pictures.

*There is a sign in the kitchen of our hostel politely asking patrons to clean up after themselves. It says "Apreciamos tu comprension" which literally means "We Appreciate your Understanding" but when they translate it on the sign into English they wrote, "We estimate your compression." It´s funny.

- Chandler and Monica

Hostel Story

After her travels in Ireland Jenny vowed never again to stay in a hostel and against her better judgement we did anyway. So............ last week we were in La Paz, Bolivia staying at a $5 a night hotel. (Just to give you a visual- although the $5 a night price tag probably already aided in that- each room has two very thin doors, one to the outside hall and one to a very decrept ¨balcony¨ two stories above the street where we decided to hang our clothes to dry. Each door also had four small windows on it and the door on the balcony has wooden shutters on the inside.) About 3 am this screaming starts in the room next to ours which lasts all night. It sounds like this little kid throwing a tempor tantrum with a parent trying to calm him down. We fell back asleep and didn´t think too much of it until we were awakened a few more times by the yelling during the night. At about 630am the screaming began to escalate so Jay pounded on the wall a few times in an attempt to quiet the riffraff down; this had no effect whatsoever. The screaming continued to escalate over the next half hour until finally we heard glass shattering. Then, the next thing we know, someone begins smashing out the windows on OUR BALCONY door and kicking and smashing it in an attempt to get in to our room. Jen, who is a vocalist with a very powerful voice, begins screaming (justifiably) at the top of her lungs because we think some lunatic is trying to get into our room to do to us whatever he was doing to the person in the room next to ours. Jay runs over to the balcony door and opens the shuttters to reveal a deshelved, drunk, hysterical woman bleeding all over the place and screaming at us to let her in. The door was locked, we didn´t know what the hell was going on and this lady was screaming like a lunatic, so Jay starts screaming back, asking her what she wants and tell her to get the hell out of here. Then there is a knock on the door. Jay screams at whoever is on the otherside of the door and a response comes from the ¨hotel¨ employee that checked us in and wants to help. We let him in and our attention is redirected to the balcony. By this time (15 seconds has elapsed) the girl on the balcony realizes that we are not going to let her in and begins climbing from our balcony to the next one. The problem, however, is that the distance from our balcony to the next one is much further than the distance from her balcony to ours (the distance she traversed to reach our balcony). We watch as she gets over the rail and puts one hand on the wall before falling face first into the concrete- a distance of two stories.


We go outside with the hotel employee and check the crazy woman´s room which is now empty, albeit trashed and bloody. Jen and I go downstairs to check on her and realize that she is, obviously, not moving and bleeding severely from the head. Her body was in this really awkward poisition and it didn´t look good. The cops show up and don´t do shit but watch her body get tossed into what looked something like an ambulance. Then, everyone leaves. No one knew how the girl was doing or if she lived. The hotel employee goes to the hospital with her and we are there with the owners of the hotel, who are as confused as we are. We showered up and got the hell out of that place. As we had previously planned, we left La Paz that night, but not before the craziest hotel experience we have ever had. Cause and result of incident: unknown................and, once again, Jenny has vowed never again to stay in a hostel. Oh yeah, we are fine; no worries.


- Bonnie and Clyde

Bolivia

Driving through the desert of Bolivia seeing cactuses, mud huts, dried up river beds and roaming donkeys gives you a sense of how difficult life is for the majority of Bolivians. La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, is complex and diverse in its make up. The city maintains a mystery that is visible in its variety, offering everything from a vibrant street life- with crowded markets on every corner-, serene valley views surrounded by snow capped mountains and cosmopolitan cafes to seedy hostals (story to come later) and indigneous peoples living in abject poverty. For us this odd mix made for excellent exploring. In the markets especially, we found two unique treasures of Bolivian culture, llama fetuses and coca leaves. The llama fetuses (with or without wool) were sold by large, toothless, brightly dressed, coca leaf chewing indigenous women for use in health remedies. (And are also excellent souvenirs for friends and family...) Being the granola eating, soul searching, cultural immersion seeking travelers that we are, we had to munch on some coca leaves to see what the hype was all about. We´re here to report that these strange tasting, small, paper-like leaves do nothing but turn your spit green and make your tongue numb. (Oh and don´t get caught taking them over the Argentinian border...a mildly relevant fact we learned after crossing the border.)

- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid