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Published: January 6th 2010
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Well I left Santiago and went directly to Buenos Aires for 12 days. Some time ago I decided I was ready to come home in early December so I booked a flight home from Salvador, Brazil for December 9th. This gave me a little under a month to squeeze in Argentina and Brazil. Buenos Aires is where I lived and studied for five months my junior year of college. I have been eager to return ever since. It was mid November when I arrived and I booked a B&B in my favorite part of the city. This time of year is late spring in South America, so the temperature is nice and it is either sunny or raining. I had a lot of rain while I was there, but also some nice days. My time in Buenos Aires was spent visiting the old places I used to spend time at and eating some incredible food, but the best part was seeing my old friends. Debora was the lady I lived with and is a professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires teaching anthropology. I was the first America student she ever had come live with her. When I came this time
Plaza de Mayo
In front of the Casa Rosada she had another American student in the same program I was in, but this one I think was her fifth student. I also got to see a good friend of my sister's who I have gotten to know over the years. Jessica has been living in BA for the past three years, so we also had some good dinners. This was a pretty wonderful part of my trip, after coming back to BA for the second time it only confirmed the fact that this is the greatest city in the world and if I ever live outside the US again it will only be in this place.
The final two weeks of my trip were spent in Brazil. I could easily spend two or three months in this country and not nearly see all of it, but again I was ready to come home so I narrowed my time between two cities that I have wanted to visit for years. My first stop was Rio de Janeiro. This was a nice city, but I spent most of my time outside of it on an island called Ilha Grande. This was a small mountainous island, very green with a few
San Telmo
During the bg Sunday open market sandy roads. I was able to do my last bit of diving here too. Unfortunately since I left there have been some terrible mudslides there and a number of people have died. Hopefully the community there can recover, it's not a very big one. After spending a couple more days in Rio I flew on to Salvador, the heart and soul of Carnaval. Apparently this is the place to come for that party, it's similar to Mardi Gras and at the same time of year, but has a lot more African influences. Again, instead of spending much time in the city I headed to a smaller place and spent the final days of my trip sitting on a beach in the hot Brazilian sun. The place was called Morro de Sao Paulo. This was very cool. I took a great day trip on a boat to a number of islands and some natural clay formations. I hung out with a nice English couple most of the day and we were helped with the Portuguese translations by one lady on the boat who could speak some English. I returned to Salvador for one final night. By pure luck there was one
Ojo de Bife at La Cabrera
My final night in BA with some friends, but we never got a picture of people that night. of my favorite artists playing that night. Manu Chao is extremely popular throughout Latin America and Europe, and fairly well-known in other places around the world. His songs are in all kinds of languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and some African dialects. I could not have planned a better final night to my trip. To the very end this trip has been surreal. My final night was spent listening to one of the most popular artists in Latin America IN one of the cultural capitals of South America enjoying one of its heros.
I want to say a quick thank you to all of you who have been reading my blog throughout the year. You have no idea how much it meant for me to have friends and family keeping up with my journey and enjoying what I have had to say. I truly cannot thank you enough and I hope to see you all soon.
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Phyllis Martinelli
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Thank You!!
Welcome home. I have so enjoyed your adventures over the past year and looked forward to the next installment every few months. Of course I will never be so lucky as to see these beautiful places, so you sharing has been wonderful. I wish you well and if you have more adventures, please include me in your blog. Best wishes, Phyl