Well, the adventures of Jillian and Dee have continued on to Argentina AND Brazil since I last blogged. When I last left off, we were in the Lakes District on a little road trip. I am so glad that we decided to rent a car and do our own little excursion with complete control of our destinations and activities. On our drive back up to Temuco, a gorgeous rainbow showed up in the sky. It was a nice little goodbye present from Chile to us with love. I still can´t believe we spent nearly an entire month in that country…it just kept pulling us in! It´s a really nice place overall, though it´s very “western” and very expensive.
From Temuco, we had a 12 hour bus ride across the Argentina border to get to Neuquen, Argentina. Crossing the border on a bus was a miserable experience, so we decided we absolutely HAD to fly from Argentina to Brazil and booked a relatively inexpensive ticket. After a night in boring Neuquen, where dinner restaurants don´t open until 9pm, we had a 17 hour bus ride to Buenos Aires- I know it sounds like a lot, but I thought it was going to be 22 hours, so it was a nice surprise when the conductor announced we had arrived 5 hours before expected. Also, they played “Titanic” on the bus (in English!!!) so Dee and I were like little 15 year olds swooning over Leo.
In Buenos Aires (aka BA or Buenos Paris-* it´s the “Paris” of South America), we stayed at my friend Sheli´s apartment in the poshest neighborhood- Recoleta. Sheli and I met along the East Coast of Australia and I am so ridiculously grateful for her generosity. I felt like we were actually LIVING in BA, since we had our own shower with mega-hot water in a private bathroom equipped with a bidet (very handy for washing dirty feet!). Sheli slept at her friend´s apt, leaving us with the run of the house! We hung out a lot with our new Scottish friend Alison, who we met in Cusco and is studying Spanish in BA. She is fantastic and taught me some great new phrases. I think my favorite is a “yup, yup, nupper,” who is someone who keeps saying they will attend something or do something, and then at the last minute, says “nup” and doesn´t show! One night, we went out for steaks at this restaurant in San Telmo called Disnivel, which is supposed to be one of the best, and my steak was delish, but the sauce they put on it was too oily, so didn´t manage to have an INCREDIBLE steak dinner like you´re supposed to while in Argentina. Oh well- I don´t eat a lot of meat anyway, so not the end of the world. The weird part of the meal was that when we got up to leave, our waiter (whom we nicknamed Shrek because he was gigantic) cheek-kissed us goodbye! Never had a waiter kiss me goodbye before! Just looking around, the men seem to be a lot more affectionate in BA than in the rest of South America. In the other countries we visited, the men do THE S.A. HUG, as I came to know it. This is when two men shake hands, pumping their arms up and down 3 times, then hug and pat each other on the back 3 times, then shake hands again, pumping 3 times. In Buenos Aires, however, the men just cheek-kissed hello. Very interesting. Some other interesting fads I noted- fanny packs are VERY much instyle (WTF?!!?!?) and women in their 70´s frequently dress like they´re in their 20´s. Both of these fashions are incredibly disturbing.
One day, I had to go to the international airport to pick up a package that my TWC friends sent me (i love you all!!!) and had QUITE the experience. After first being told that I should probably just LEAVE Argentina since I can´t speak Spanish fluently (ouch!), I made it to the airport. I´ll keep the story short, but basically because I didn´t have my actual passport and only had a copy, I ran into some major problems. My passport was at the India Embassy for my visa to get approved, so had to call them and have them fax me a copy of the page with my Argentina stamp to prove that I legally entered the country. This was a lot harder than it sounds and took over 3 hours. It really gave me a good taste of what people mean when they say that it just takes SO much longer to do the simplest tasks in other countries.
I was ridiculously sad to leave BA, but had to fly to Rio de Janeiro. I was really looking forward to seeing Rio, but it´s been raining here and have spent a lot of my time hiding from the downpour. I am now totally out of my league as far as speaking the local language is concerned because the people here don´t really understand English OR Spanish. After realizing I didn´t even know the Portuguese for “hello” or “thank you” I finally had to just go online to babelfish and look up some necessary words.
Well, tomorrow night we are off to Sao Paulo (another 10 hour bus ride) for one night, then we fly to London for 3 days, and then off to Trivandrum, India! Will be in the ashram from Feb 1-14th, so might be awhile til you hear from me next.
Goodbye South America!!!!!!!!!
*Buenos Aires nickname accredited to Leia.
