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Published: April 14th 2009
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For easter weekend, we wanted to get out of the city, but were told that it's one of the busiest travel weekends of the year around here. To investigate for ourselves, we (collaborating with a classmate) went down to the major bus terminal which sends busses out to all ends of the country and beyond and, very last minute (i.e. a few hours before the busses left) tried to book a trip out to Iguazu to see the falls for the 3 day weekend. After spending over an hour at the bus station comparing prices, we were able to find cheap tickets to Iguazu and just before booking them decided we should probably book our return tickets as well. Alas, there were NO available seats to come home on Sunday... so no trip to Iguazu for us at this time... but shew! at least we didn't get stuck out there!
So we spent Friday exploring the pretty barrio of Puerto Madero in the city and watched the sunset over the water. Saturday we caught the train (for about $.35 each) for an hour trek out of the city to the town of Tigre. Tigre is right on the Parana river
Galerias Pacificos
cool mall with lots of artwork displayed inside and we took a boat down the river to an island called "Tres Bocas." The boat ride and the island were both awesome and we got to see some really cool sights... it was very green, with many exotic flowers and cute little huts covering the island (I wish I had taken more pictures!). It was really warm on Saturday, so after walking around the island for a while we found a couple of lounge chairs by the river that were close enough to a restaurant so that we were able to order cold beers while laying out in the sun (or shade if you're a Jeff). On the way back to Tigre, however, we encountered a huge line of people waiting for the boats. We made friends with a really sweet English-speaking Argentine woman and her family and after she showed us all the cool loot she had bought at the Tigre market, she proceeded to tell us how worried she was about the boats not taking us home. She said that unlike the US, here, it wouldn't be uncommon for them to just leave us here to fend for ourselves for a night on the island. eh? Luckily,
after waiting for about an hour, we all got picked up.
On Easter Sunday, we took a subway out to visit a church that does services in English, however when we got there there was no church! We looked all around, but it must have been an outdated website that we got our information from. So we got some breakfast and then had an easter candy "egg" hunt in our small apartment. Jeff had bought 2 little chocolate eggs with "surprises" inside (for Easter here, they have chocolate eggs of all sizes, some huge, with surprises inside). Each of ours had a different tiny puzzle inside that we put together, really cute!
This week we are taking our classes in the afternoon, which is nice b/c we can sleep in a little! There were no other students who would be taking my level this week (the 2nd part of level 4), so they bumped me up to level 5, which seems to be going ok so far. We had a tango lesson today after class, which was pretty fun and with all the talk about tango being one of the hardest dances to learn, tango was actually easier
to dance then I thought it would be... maybe I'm just a pro! 😉 I won a free week of tango lessons in a raffle last week, so we, or possibly just me... 😊 may continue with lessons for the rest of the week. We also won a couple of free entrances to a dance club on Tuesday in the raffle as well, another reason why the late classes will be nice!
Also, we booked our plane tickets to Ushuaia today, so we will offically be leaving BsAs this Sunday at 9:30 AM to head down to the southernmost city of the word... brrr, I'm cold just thinking about it! I also got my clinical clerkship schedule for next year (see I AM going back to med school next year, for anyone who doubted it) and we will be spending some time in Soldotna, Alaska next May/June (woot!) and I'll be spending some time in Billings, MT (yay) and Yakima, Wa (hmm...).
Finally, I'll end with a bit of advice for anyone who will be traveling to south america for a bit of time: consider joinging the South American Explorers Club. It's a non-profit organization and for their
$50 fee they have amazing discounts on hostels/food/travel/etc. The discounted money we would have saved from our Spanish school alone, if we had joined before starting classes would have more than made up for the joining fee. They also have maps/travel books and will help you plan any part of your trip. And the best part for us is that they will store all your luggage for free! We have a suitcase each (with BsAs clothes/computers/books) that we can't take backpacking with us after we leave this Sunday, and the cost of storing it would have been about $300 USD anywhere else! OK, there's my plug for ya.
Well "salud" and happy belated Easter!!
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Anj
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what a pleasant surprise!
Hey!! I randomly checked your blog this morning and there was a new post!! And I didn't even get the update email yet. Oh today will be a good day :) I like the idea of the surprises in the chocolate eggs, just be careful not to ingest a puzzle piece, haha! You are not missing anything here, it was 37 degrees this morning...ugh! Pretty funny story about there being no church too, probably some mean Argentinean joke sending those silly English speaking people on a wild goose chase :P Enjoy your last week in the city!