BUENOS AIRES Part 4

SATURDAY

Saturday we woke up late and went to the artesania feria in Recoleta, but I only bought a few little things. Afterwards we headed over to Tierra Santa, a hilarious Jesus theme park which I first heard about from PJ’s friend in NYC when we went to a taping of a Conan episode.

Even if I was even remotely religious, I don’t think I could have taken this place seriously. Nevertheless, there were many people there that were lapping up every word on every sign and show. Personally, I thought the mechanized Jesus in “La Ultima Cena” was a bit much. The tour ended in the only way it could, with a 100 foot high Jesus rising out of the ground for his resurrection.

I will add pictures of this when my friends send me them. UPDATE: HERE THEY ARE, POR FIN!
Pic from one of the entrances


Some sort of ancient torture/dentistry


Self-Explanatory


They had those frames you can step into and put your face in - this is Dan doing that


Este nos dio mucha risa!


Being the mature adults we are, we took this theme park very seriously


Finally, the resurrection of the 100-foot Jesus that happens every half hour

Later, I bought the jacket I looked at the other day. That night we went back to Campo del Fiori, but it was much busier, and we got stuck in the corner. In spite of this, I still had one of the best meals I’ve had here (maybe ever?) – Steak, pasta, wine from Mendoza, and never-ending baskets of fresh bread.

Me (rocking my new hat) and Dan

I went to bed at 1 (not long after our fabulous dinner) and got up at 3:30!! to get my early flight, and 8 hours later, I was finally back in Viña.

I ended up buying a Barcelona jersey, a leather jacket and hat, and an Argentina soccer cap, as well as some gifts for my Chilean family and some other people. I don’t think I’ve ever spend that much money in such a short period of time, but everything was so much cheaper in Bs As, that I felt like I needed to take advantage of it (plus it was probably less than the average American girl’s weekend of shopping, and I NEVER buy stuff, so I’m feeling good about it).

Overall, this trip left me a little disillusioned with Argentina (but maybe that was just Buenos Aires). Maybe my trip there in February was too good. This experience definitely made me appreciate Chile more – I actually found that I was missing it a lot by the end of the trip.

BUENOS AIRES Part 3

On Friday we went to La Boca neighborhood of BA. We checked out El Caminito (which is a really touristy area of all painted houses)

Manu's bball court??

Then we went to the soccer museum attached to the Boca Stadium and saw maybe the best museum movie I’ve ever seen. It was a 360 degree movie making it seem as if you were a soccer player trying out for La Boca and scoring in a real game. I thought it was exciting, but the Argentinian guys next to us looked like they were in heaven with God sitting on their left and Argentinian God (Maradona) sitting on their right.

Here are some pics of the museum, and of the stadium.

For lunch that day we went back to the first restaurant I ever went to in South America - I went there in January when I went to BA for 4 hours for a layover there.

That day I tried on a really nice leather jacket that I really liked, but I decided to think it over before I bought it.

In our never-ending quest to take as many modes of transportation as possible, I demanded that we take the subte (subway) home to the hostel. It was actually really fascinating. At first it seemed a bit dirty (or maybe normal on a subway scale of filthiness), but the train itself reminded me of the old New England commuter trains – it had all wood paneling and it looked like it could be crossing a snowy covered-bridge in Vermont instead of traversing the underworld of Buenos Aires. Also, it costs less than a quarter to go anywhere in the city. There's a picture at the end of this link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Buenos_Aires_Subte_Linia_A_-_interior_of_a_Subte_train.jpg

That night we went to a sushi place (which I wasn’t really down for, since I’m not big on sushi). They brought us about 200 pieces of sushi to split between 8 of us (we met some of Elisa’s friends from school there), and after we finished them her friend told me I HAD to try the national drink of Argentina, Fernet and Cola. That was a mistake; it may have been the grossest tasting drink I’ve ever had. I drank about half of it then didn’t want any more. I immediately started feeling sick. We went to a bar across the street and before my friends even ordered drinks I was in the bathroom returning the sushi to the source. There are two things I’m never doing again: eating sushi and drinking fernet.

Of course it was five minutes after this that my friend from Kenyon showed up at the bar. I recovered fairly quickly though and we went to a cool club right on the River Plata called Club Mint. It had two rooms for dancing, and an open air patio in the back that was about 20 yards from the water. On the way home (around 6 AM) we had our second run in with a sketchy situation in BA. We got into a cab and I told the guy where we wanted to go, but I immediately noticed something was wrong. He couldn’t speak clearly, but through hand signals and mumbling I figured out that he was saying that the meter was broken and that he was going to charge us about 8 times what it should have cost. Once I figured this at, I yelled at him using my special Chilean Spanish (adjusted with the Argentinean accent of course) and told him that we were going to get out right there. We took another cab home and it was fine. However, another guy from our hostel was robbed on the way home from the same club. Once again, I’m glad I’m staying in Viña and not in BA.

BUENOS AIRES Part 2

On Thursday we did more touristy things – we saw the Casa Rosada

We saw the congreso

We saw a protest in the main square

We went to Calle Florida, the main shopping street, to look around, and had our first interesting security problem. I’ll just go ahead and say that I’m glad I’m not studying in Buenos Aires.

For lunch, we ate a great parrillada, with pasta as an appetizer, then they brought out a mini-grill with many different things, including steak, sausage, pork, and also kidneys (which were actually not horrible) and cow intestines (which were actually fairly horrible).

I bought a good Barcelona jersey that afternoon. That night we ate at a restaurant called Campo del Fiori, which I highly recommend. If you ever go to Buenos Aires, it’s on 1401 Calle Venezuela near the Congreso. They had fantastic pasta and wine, but more importantly, we had the best service I might have ever had in my life.

That night we went to a hip hop club that the other girls wanted to go to. We went and it was really boring (there were almost no Argentineans there, only gringos), except for a few things. First, there were girls dancing there that clearly had never heard any music other than reggaeton.

Second, a guy came in about an hour after we got there that totally changed my perspective on the night. For this, you have to keep in mind that everyone in this club was between 17 and 27. This guy had to be in his early 40s, slicked back short graying hair, about six foot two. His age wasn’t the biggest thing that stood out though – it was his outfit. He had a polo shirt and nice pants on, but on top of that, he had a full body length tan TRENCHCOAT. The thing was he didn’t even seem like a sketchy guy. Usually when someone is wearing a trenchcoat in a social situation that doesn’t call for that type of attire, you know something is wrong with them. I didn’t get that vibe from this guy – I just loved his boldness at coming to a club in a trenchcoat. Since none of us were really feeling the club, we made the rest of our stay there into a case study of trenchcoat guy. I couldn’t tell if the very attractive woman that came in at the same time as him was with him or not, but they seemed to be looking around for other people to dance with. Eventually he just started feeling the beat of the music and doing a funny dance on the side of the dance floor then eventually disappeared upstairs somewhere. Hilarious dude.

Then, as usually happens when you hang out with too many girls, drama started so we headed back to the hostel.

BUENOS AIRES Part 1

Tuesday

I arrived in Buenos Aires with my friends Dan and Elisa on Tuesday May 1 with little or no sleep. We grabbed lunch at the 24hr deli next to our hostel, and then crashed for a couple hours. We went out for a bit that night, to a bar called Kilkenny’s, but almost everything was closed because of May Day (which, apparently, is a real holiday outside of the U.S. ¿¿who knew??).

On Wednesday we went over to Recoleta, one of the many sub-sections of Bs As. We went to the Museo of Bellas Artes, which was free and had some interesting paintings. These were some of favorites:

PICS FROM MUSEO

This one had to be my favorite of all them. Words cannot explain this

Our friends Erika, Lindsey, and Lacresha arrived in the afternoon. One funny coincidence was that the English guys staying in our hostel in BA were also staying in the same hostel in Santiago that we were when we went in for the concert.

That night we went out to dinner with Elisa’s dad’s business partner, who works for IBM. He was a really down-to-earth guy – he was only 26 - but none of us really liked his flaite girlfriend. We went out for a couple drinks afterward but crashed early again – I was still tired from not sleeping Monday.

Parties and Chilenas

Thursday night, April 26, my friend Evan and I went out to meet some Chileans from his class, 5 girls and a guy, all about our age. We went to a cool bar called “El Gato y La Ventana” where we drank heated wine with sugar and oranges and listened to live music – it was definitely one of the more cultured places in Valpo that I’ve been to. One of the most memorable parts of that night was when one of the musicians stopped playing his drum at one point and was soloing by banging his drumstick on the metal chair in front of him. I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.

On Friday my friend PJ came to Viña. We did a little tour around Viña and then Valpo, then eventually went back home to get ready to go out.

CASTLES IN VINA

I had been invited to a party at the apartment of the Chilean girl I had met in Scratch the weekend before, so we went to my friend’s apartment first, and then headed over there after. It was a fun party, really different from other nights because EVERYTHING was in Spanish, there was no cheating and switching into English (okay, one of the girls knew English so we talked to her for a bit, but other than that it was in Spanish).

As you may be able to tell, I’ve finally ventured out of my comfort zone (hanging out with the big group of gringos) and started going out with only one or two extranjero friends; because of that I’ve been having a lot more success integrating into the culture, and this party was an example of that.

On Saturday we went back to OH, then out to Cafe Journal (the popular university bar in Vina). I went to dance with a 30 something year old Chilena who kept inviting me to her birthday party/bbq (I say this because she told me about it about 8 times in half an hour), and when I got back someone had stolen my favorite North Face jacket. That jacket had been through a lot, I thought I lost it one other time at school but I got it back after 4 months, but the probability of that happening here is not very high.

On Monday night (we had no class Monday or Tuesday) I went out to Valpo with my friend Tim. I wasn’t going to party too late on Monday because I was leaving Tuesday morning for Buenos Aires. However, as usually happens in this situation, this plan ended up going out the window.

We met a group of three girls on the beach and hung out with them for a bit before heading over to Club Duff (on the main street in Valpo). We danced and talked with them and two other girls in the club until it closed, then they drove us back to Viña, and the girl I had been dancing with (who’s 25) told me if I called her when I got back from my trip to Bs As, she would make me a traditional chilean meal (because she works as a chef in Viña). I liked her better than the other girls I’ve met here, so I’m going to send her a message taking her up on that.

Anyway, when they dropped us off in Viña at 5:30 AM, we were looking for something to do since I had decided by this point there was no reason to go to sleep if I had to meet at the bus station at 8:30 and I still had to shower, get organized, and eat breakfast, so we went and talked to two chilenas (who were waiting for the bus to start running in the morning to take them home) about good parties in town. After a little while their bus came and Tim decided to go sleep so I was left alone in the middle of Viña a little after 6 AM.

The price of the shared cabs here, the “colectivos” nearly doubles at 11 PM. I knew it had to go back down to the cheaper price at some point in the early morning, and since I wasn’t planning on sleeping anyway, I used the time I had to train the street dogs to sit and lie down while I waited (what ended up being only 20 minutes) for the price to go down.

If this had been Valpo, I would have been in the next radiotaxi to my house, but since it was already light out and it was a good area of Vina (AND I had my hood with me), I felt safe waiting, and nothing ended up happening anyway. I went home, showered, ate, got ready, and got my stuff and myself to the bus station to take a bus to Santiago to fly to BUENOS AIRES.

Santiago and Shifting Plates

On Thursday April 19, I went to Santiago for the night with my friend Elisa to go to a concert, but we ended up not getting tickets, so instead we went out to dinner, then later to a cool reggae club. Also, we found a very cool hostel for only 5 luca (about ten dollars) a night. We went to the church on the Plaza de Armas and later to the museum of pre-colombian history nearby. I came back to Vina in the afternoon. It's fun to catch a bus into Santiago for a little bit, but I'm glad I'm not living there for a semester.

That night, Friday. I went to Scratch (disco in Vina I talked about before) with some friends and met a very cool, but more importantly, very cute Chilean girl. We exchanged numbers so I'll probably see her again.

On Sunday, April 22, 2007 I woke up in a way that I have never woken up before. My bed was shaking. My whole room was shaking. My TV was shaking. I had no idea what was going on for the first few seconds – I thought the house was falling down – and then I realized, “Oh, so this is what an earthquake feels like." I would have preferred it to be later in the day, not at 6:30 AM, but at least I didn't party the night before so I got enough sleep before that.

Random Pics from TGEN

Rock Jumping in Bahia Inglesa, this was the small one, the one farther out was 15-20 ft high.


Another sunset in Bahia


The water in Bahia




This is Vina, where I live. Glad to be back

TGEN Part 5 - La Serena

We arrived in La Serena on Thursday afternoon and met up with the rest of the group.
I didn't take many pictures of La Serena so I'm going to steal some from my friends' albums.

We did a couple cool things with the group, like going to an observatory and seeing a lot of constellations and SATURN, which we could see with all the rings and everything, and going to a Pisco (chilean liquor) factory,



caption says: In case of party, break glass.


but we also did a couple useless things like going to this solar-powered restaurant:


which was expensive and had undercooked food (who would have thought!), and went to a mind-numbingly boring museum. Also, we took a 3 hour detour on the way home to go to a national park where we took a 20 minute tour that told us nothing new. So COPA gets a B for their activity planning on this trip.

Outside of the scheduled activities, we explored the city a bit and saw the local artesania feria.
Thursday night we went to hang out on the beach and I met a Chilean girl studying English (but she didn't know any yet because she had just started) at the local University. I invited her and a couple friends to the fourth American asado we had on our GEN, and I think they had a lot of fun.

Check out this dog that came up to our asado. He was so tall that he could have eaten the burgers right off the grill if we weren't watching him


On Sunday we went to that national park I talked about before, and finally I got home to Vina after 9 fun but exhausting days of traveling.

The Great Excursion Northward Part 4

The next few days we spent the same way, going to the beach during the day, swimming out to the rocks and jumping into the crystal clear green water, having asados at night, partying, then going to the beach at night.


The rocks in the back are the ones we swam to to jump off.


Here's a good sunset from the second night.


More grill pictures


Our fake asado the final night


And some of the dogs that always hung out with us.


On Thursday we got up early and caught the bus to Caldera, then Copiapo, where we went back to the empanada place, then got another bus to La Serena, where we met our big COPA group for the second part of the vacation to the North.

This is the link to all of the pictures in this trip, in case you were interested.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bellisj/Chile4BahiaInglesaAndLaSerena

The Great Excursion Northward Part 3

The following day we discovered two things that were essential to our vacation in Bahia Inglesa:

A cabana with a grill

And a taka-taka (fooseball) table near the beach.

In the morning we went into Caldera to go to the supermarket to buy the ingredients for our asado.

This is the stocked fridge with the patties I made (I was the pattymaster for the trip)

Other than the first fooseball games, all we did for the rest of the day was go to the beach and huevear (hang out/mess around/be lazy). I think these pictures of the beach we were at can justify that.
This is the mock Sandals ad pic I took.






That night and the next few nights we had asados at night, partied, and hung out on the beach.

The first asado


After the feast

The Great Excursion Northward Part 2

Sunday at noon, we arrived in Bahia Inglesa. It was a somewhat overcast day but the beach was still beautiful. We had read online about a Dome hotel in Bahia and it wasn’t very hard to find once we got there. There are only three streets in Bahia – one going in and out of town, one running parallel with the ocean, and one leading to the tiny general store.

In the middle of the street facing the ocean, there was a big white dome restaurant (of which the only picture I have is at night)

and next to it, three mini domes where the people stay. This is our dome:

We ate at Restaurant Shark, the only restaurant in town that was both open and not ridiculously overpriced.

We went to the ugly side of the beach, since it was cloudy anyway.

This was our little party in our dome that night.