No lo tocas

Saturday:
Slept in to recover. And walked around recoleta. We saw the recoleta cemetery where evita peron is buried. It was really cool, like a little city but of graves, all beautiful marble, domes, mosaics, and flowers. At evitas grave there was an old Argentinean woman who enlisted nick’s help to hang a paper sign with tape ON the front of the grave. She was going on and on, with a thick argentine accent so I didn’t pick it all up, but it was the anniversary of her resignation from vice president and she wanted to honor her legacy and her history. She was going on and on as a Venezuelan family of four walked up. She asked were they were from and began to praise Venezuela and communism, which upset the family a lot. They started arguing about communism, which was an interesting interaction. After they had stormed off, another older couple came along and starts yelling at the women for defiling the grave. He said that he wasn’t even a perionista but that it was disrespectful. … Anyway crazy stuff to see especially with all the gringo tourists walking by.
We walked around the open market with all kinds of crafts and food. I got a mate gourd and a bobilla, the straw that one drinks it from. We want back to Lucy’s where we got to spend the night, nicest hotel I have ever stayed in (they went out to the country again)
We went out another night with idalia and jill, starting in jill’s apartment and to a quieter bar then to crow bar. Crow bar is a hoppin bariloche which is what they call the bigger dance clubs. We waited in line for a while and finally got to the front where were proceeded to chat with the bouncer trying to get him to let us in with out paying the cover charge. He kept giving us hope, that diego, he was playing with my heart. He finally let us in and we were too happy only to find that he only let us into the area where we then could stand in line to pay the now 50 peso cover charge. killin me. After that it was too steep for all of us so we called it a night. Haha kinda lame after all that but still fun.

Sunday:
Slept in again and set out again into recoleta. We went to the MALBA art museum which was a great little modern art museum. Then walked along the string of parks and saw the huge public art flower that opens during the day and closes and is purple at night. Pretty cool. Then we made our way to the bus station for our 18 hr Via Bariloche bus ride. Wine with dinner, 3 decent movies, late night champagne, and a full bed seat pretty sweet! Before we knew it it was morning again and we were in Puerto iguazu.

Monday:
We got in; found our hostel which was really nice with great clean rooms, a pool, free internet, and very friendly staff.
We went to have lunch, napped by the pool and checked our email.
The evening was a delicious BBQ with new friends from all over the world. Followed by a tango show and lesson! I was pulled out of the audience but nick got away untouched! I missed my opportunity I should have pointed him out at the beginning. My guy said I was very good and was very perfumy smelly.
Tuesday:
We got up early to see the falls: incredible. Not much more one could say, just beautiful.
Went around with two Belgians and New Zealander and an aussie. We kept seeing people we knew from the hostel and bus ride through out the park which is also a cool thing. “Where have you been” “what have you been up to.” “We are on our way there”
We paid for the pasaporte verde (green passport) which included a Jeep safari kinda dorky, a zoomy boat ride up the rapidy river. It was a time where you would like to have a pretty experienced boat river navigator but it was really “just a guy driving a boat”-Nick. We also got a relaxing raft ecological tour where we saw a crocodilo and some more birds
When we were walking through the park we came across a big tour were this old couple were petting a couple coatis. As the tour guide yelled at them NO LO TOCAS! (do not touch) the coati attacked. The man was holding a bag of food which the coati latched itself to, the man flung the bag with the clinging coati and as soon at it hit the floor the pack descended from every direction coatis flocked and devoured the bag and food, all the while the guide screaming no lo tocas no lo tocas. Pretty funny scene and lesson learned los coatis son brutos.
Saw all the falls including the most spectacular la gaganta del Diablo the devil’s throat. It looked like the end of the world I was incredible.
A great dinner with nick and the aussie at Tio’s place in town. Great live flamenco music, with three guitars one switching off to the drums, dad would have loved it

Got up again packed and went to the park for a little hick to another of the falls
Great walk, beautiful subtropical forest. We saw two monkeys cross the branch right in front of us and the rodent rabbit thing… that I will have to look up
Hoped in a taxi and the bus overnight back to BA on Thursday morning.
Thursday:
Another recovering relaxing day. In the late afternoon we met up with idalia and went on the tour of this building designed after Dante’s inferno, pretty cool architecture. Then another highlight, the world tango competition. We walked into this little bar/club, no charge were the world tango competition was happening. Couple after incredible couple were performing their piece, and the place wasn’t even packed… it was crazy. Some very flexible women and seriously, greasy men. Then an ok dinner and bed.

Friday: Train ride to Tigre, a little town/suburb of BA. Not my favorite side adventure. The Scenic coastal train was not that cool and the town itself, Tigre, was kinda dumpy. We took the water taxi out into the delta. It was like third world Venice with little houses on stilts lining the banks. We got off on a little “neighborhood” were you could walk around little stone paths along the outskirts, along the bank. While boats drove by, back to town or from one house to another. A pretty bazaar place but interesting and kinda cute too.

Great steak dinner with lucy and camillo on our last night in Puerto madero, then one last rally out to The Shamrock, a little bar nearby to meet idalia. Again we were there at 130 and didn’t want to wait around for 2 hours for it to “get good” so we called it another early night.

Saturday: another relaxing pancake morning. A little walk around recoleta again. The latino american bellas artes museam. Had a lot of big name, big hitters but I wasn’t feeling it too much. With the exception of some incredible bronze status and I much preferred the contemporary art of the MALBA. We stopped for a lunch/dinner with jill and idalia to say good bye followed by a little dulce de leche ice cream to go.
We stopped back to change, grab our things, thank you and bye to lucy and before we knew it our taxi was there, and we were cruising down the highway to the airports without any apparent speed limit or even lane. Only once we were at the airport did we realize it wasn’t the back window that was open but the entire trunk… the cab driver said it opened with the airport speed bumps but woah that wouldn’t have just been a lost bag it would have been a 30 car pileup on the highway. Anyway yet another disaster avoided.
Flying was pretty standard. Cant beat the personal touch screen with your pick of many movies. The 9 hour lay over in Miami allowed me a side trip to south beach by public bus were I met with a couple of nice Canadian girls to pass the time with. Miami is just as much another country, their motto it everything is fake and wear as little clothes as possible, a ridiculous place. We all cabbed it back to the airport for our flights. At the gate there was a suspiciously large group of college aged students all sitting together. I walked up, SIT? Of course and many others trickled in the same way. Between my ecology program and the quito cultural development program there were probably close to 30 of us all learning our names schools and where we were each from. All pretty nice, luckily the two annoying girls are on the cultural program, yes dodged that bullet but so is the funny guy… but you cant win them all.

Off We Go