Some cool stuff this morning: a prayer of thanks led by Ojibway and Cheyenne people, including a big delegation from Kansas, facing the four directions, then to the sky and to the ground. Strange to watch 6000 people turn around in their seats, facing south, but even the skeptical Dutchmen took part. Claire Brenneman had just launched into telling the story of the Pax Boys who helped build the Trans-Chaco Highway with MCC in the 1950s when the sound system suddenly made an ominous noise and the lights went out! Poor Brenneman continued without a mike for a few minutes, his [View Full Entry]

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A taciturn bunch, these Deutscher-Paraguayans. Jeff is convinced they're just so insular they're not interested in making conversation with an Englischer like him. But I'm convinced they're just not that into talking over breakfast - everyone looks glumly at his plate (of good homemade bread, served with cheese, cold meat, toppings, juice, fruit, yogurt drinks and of course instant coffee) set at a communal table topped with a lace tablecloth, eating silently. The bus was a bit more jovial, with some people apparently longtime friends, but still no one spoke to us. Oh, well. The assembly [View Full Entry]

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Time to get ourselves to Asuncion. Overcoming our confusion about Guaranis (about 5000 to the U.S. dollar -- WHY did we not practise those big numbers in Spanish??), we managed to buy a ticket to Asuncion on NSA (Nuestro Senora de Asuncion), what appeared to be a big bus company. Apparently, directo does not mean in Paraguay what it does to gringos. Direct, yes, with about a hundred stops at teeny bus shacks in the little villages strung along Paraguay's No. 1 highway. The bus, thankfully, was a comfortable happy medium between the worst and best of the previous days, and [View Full Entry]

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The good, the bad and the downright ugly of Latin American buses: Bus 1: Sunday night’s departure from Buenos Aires was easily the most luxurious bus trip ever: “Cama suite” is Argentina’s road-bound equivalent of long-haul first class on the airlines: a private screen, meal service, a glorious view, comfy huge seat, legroom galore and - oh, joy of joys - a Laz-y-Boy style seat that actually unfolds flat into a bed with “walls” front and back so that, provided with blanket and pillow, one can while away a 12-hour trip with actual sound sleep. The bus st [View Full Entry]

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July 12, our final day in Argentina, the sun was warm finally, and we decided to catch up on a bunch of things we'd missed on the first, chilly pass. First, the wonderful Sunday market just outside our door. The quiet square, which was scrubbed and polished early on Thursday morning, had been transformed! Booths filled the square and marched far down the streets in all directions, with antiques and crafts sellers hawking their wares: jewellery, copper objects, wampas for mate', clothing, music, antique china and glass, warm sweaters and scarves, you name it. We strolled around and picked up [View Full Entry]

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Recoleta may just be a perfect reflection of Argentina's proud and sometimes tortured history. Just outside the crenellated brick walls of its famous cemetery lies a Disneyesque neighbourhood of glitzy movie theatres and restaurants catering to a young crowd of late-night diners. It's not quite as odd as it seems, given that Recoleta cemetery is also probably the city's biggest tourist attraction. What a city for the dead! Burial place of the country's rich and famous - general this and company founder that - it's also a grand monument to excess, each opulent family tomb attempting to outdo [View Full Entry]

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A day and a half and so much to remember already ... San Telmo: Cobbled streets, baroque colonial mansions with intricate wrought-iron balconies and ornate doorways, mosaic tiled sidewalks, Plaza Dorrego bustling with craft merchants, shops in 200-year-old houses crammed with the most amazing antiques (ancient telephones and cash registers, milk separators, dusty chandeliers, old doors, gaudy handpainted furniture, snuff bottles, costume jewellery, furs, posters of cattle diagramming the carne de Argentina ...). Our neighbourhood saw its glory days a century ago, when a yellow fever epide [View Full Entry]

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We made it! After seeing Rebecca off at the airport in Toronto - how exciting to see all those kids in their red shirts with the MC logo all packed and ready for their own adventure! - we went to the other terminal for our own flight. Long trip, but fortunately quite uneventful, with stops in New York (great view as we circled around Manhattan into La Guardia) and Washington's Dulles airport (I call it the dullest airport - absolutely nothing worthwhile to eat or do there), and finally the long overnight passing over Bermuda, Bahamas, the Andes and points in [View Full Entry]

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test [View Full Entry]

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