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Hola Amigos!
So, we spent several days in Mendoza and now are back in the big city. Buenos Aires feels like home after all that travel!
In Mendoza, we spent one entire day doing a "wine and bikes" tour, where we rented bikes and rode around checking out various wineries, olive oil factories, a vodka factory, and chocolate and liquor factory. It was a beautiful, sunny day... perfect for relaxing out in the vineyards with some wine (or vodka...). And unlike wine tours in the states, here they give pretty extensive tours of the vineyards and factories, so we learned lots about wine making too.
We also spent a day traveling to Uspallata, a small town a couple hours from Mendoza and from there travelled a couple more hours to the even smaller town of Puente del Inca. An interesting fact is that the movie "Seven Years in Tibet" is actually filmed in Uspallata, because the town looks so much like the mountainous area of Tibet. Puente del Inca was way out in the middle of the Andes and is home to the, you´re never going to guess what, Puente del Inca! (Bridge of the Incas), a naturally
formed bridge, made up of dust, ice and sulfur that was a pretty cool natural wonder to see. After buying a couple of sweet hippie hats at a street fair to warm our ears (this part of the Andes was VERY windy and cold), we wandered through the nearby roads and the Parque Aconcagua, where Aconcagua Mt. is located. Aconcagua is the tallest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas... the tallest mountain in all of North and South America!
And now we´re back in Buenos Aires. We experienced the luxuries of a "cama" (bed) bus to get here... huge leather seats, good food, wine. We decided to stay in a hostel in the neighborhood of Palermo this time. Our apartment was in Microcentro, which is the heart of the city, is full of business people, and is much less touristy than other parts of the city. It was nice while we were in school to feel like we were actually living in Buenos Aires, among porteños. But now that we only have a couple weeks (less really!) left, we have decided to act more like tourists. So, our hostel is in Palermo, in the center of some
Wine Tour
The tours of the vineyards, wineries, etc. were pretty extensive, so we learned all about how to make vino... there was lots of wine tasting too! really great and diverse restaurants, bars and dancing. We had the most amazing Asian and Sushi Buffet for dinner tonight, literally over 30 different dishes of food (all Vegetarian!... in the midst of meat country) plus a huge dessert selection, all for about $7 USD! We saw some good live Spanish rock music at a club the other night just a walk away. And we are located right by the main parks in Buenos Aires, the botanical garden and lakes. This has been nice b/c although it´s technically winter here, the days have been completely sunny and pretty warm (highs up to the low 70s), so we´ve spent some time lounging in the parks and I´ve finally been able to do some regular running down here.
Last night we went to another tango milonga that was recommended to us by our hostel roommates, who are down here soley for a 2 week tango workshop. This milonga had AMAZING dancers, much better than the last milonga we were at (so we didn´t even think about trying to dance this time), and our roommates and their instructors remarked that they think it´s the best tango dancing in Buenos Aires. There´s an
Wine and Bikes
It was a wine and bikes tour, so we rode from winery to winery... look at how straight Jeff is pedaling! interesting code down here about tango dancing: when you go out to a milonga guys scan the room looking for a single girl to dance with and girls who want to dance also look around for a guy. A guy who decides he wants to dance with a girl makes eye contact with her. If she doesn´t want to dance with him she looks down or away to avoid hurting his feelings. And if she wants to dance she nods slightly to him, which is his cue to come over to officially ask her to dance. We had heard about this "code," but watched it happen over and over at the milonga, even with the American´s we went with! I became terrified of doing something wrong and having to dance when a couple guys made eye contact with me, so I quickly stopped looking around after getting there, yikes! There was a show as well at the end of the dance (also amazing). And an instrutor gave Jeff and I a lengthy talk about how she thinks tango was the best thing her and her husband ever did for their marriage and how it can help every couple learn how
to trust each other, learn to let the man lead with the wife on an equal footing, and learn the subtleties of body language and not argue so much... she even said it was like a religion! hmm, Jeff didn´t seem convinced.
Well, we only have a week and two days left. We will be heading up to Iguazu to see the Iguazu falls and the rainforest on Friday (staying up there until next Tuesday). Iguazu is one of the "7 wonders of the world," so we are kinda saving the best for last!
Oh, and thanks to my wonderful little sister who checked out an apartment for us in Seattle, we now have an apartment to move into as soon as we get home! It´s on Cherry Hill and it´s part of a house, with a shared, fenced yard and everything, and they allow all breeds/sizes of dogs, woot! And (supposedly) it´s really cute! I promise another post with some amazing waterfall pictures pretty soon!
Amor y besos!
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Anj
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Love the mtns!
The Andes are really pretty, so different looking than ours! So my question is about schools, do they go through their summer (our winter) or do they get a summer vacation? Enjoy the last week or so, can't wait to hear the stories in person. Feel free to check out puppyfind.com, you can search by breed...its how we got our pup :) If you want, I can email you my password and name for the website so you don't have to pay the small registration fee. That or the King or Pierce county humane societies have pretty good websites too for checking out their current adoptables. Hasta luego!