New Country - Back to the cold after the days of Carnage

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Hi! Well, we´ve had a very interesting past few days. First and foremost, I´m officially SCUBA certified! I went diving to about 20m or 60ft which just for the sheer fact that I was so deep was incredible. But, since then we´ve been moving around a lot. From the beaches of Brazil, where, as you all know, we´ve all been lounging for the past month, we took a 30 hour bus (yes, our 24 hour bus ride convienently became 30), a nice flight, and ended up at the end of the world.... back in the cold, which we were none too pleased about. Our bus trip was quite long, but luckily, or so we imagined, we broke up the boredom with some movie entertainment. That was however, until we realized that the movie playing was Apocalypto by Mel Gibson. Now, for anyone who has seen this movie, I´m sorry, and for anyone who liked it, wow... good for you I guess. I´m not sure what happen to the Mel I used to know and love, from Lethal Weapon and What Women Want and countless other sexy movies, but he´s truly now a disturbed freak. For those who haven´t seen the movie, it is about the Mayans/Aztecs and their way of life before the coming of the (Spanish?) (sorry... i doubled up in math and skipped world history... i regret it all the time). There was more brutality in the movie than any I have seen in quite some time. Keep in mind, they chose to show this movie with small children aboard. We watched numerous people die terrible deaths, saw people scalped, testicles cut off, children raped, birth given by a woman trapped in a well, men speared, blugeoned, hatcheted, etc. It was truly terrifying and disturbing and sick. After the movie, I decided to pick up my book and attempt to erase the blood from my brain, and ended up reading about the terrible killing of a zebra, chimp, fish, people. Needless to say, by the time we reached Buenos Aires, I was ready for a little less carnage. Alas, we went out for dinner and were talked into a fabulous meal for two called Parridilla. Well folks, we received a mini grill at our table piled with carnage. Steak, Pork, Chicken, Sausage, Blood sausage, Intestine, and Kidney. Having only one kidney, I still can´t justify the eating of someone else´s. I haven´t actually wanted to vomit up a piece of food I´ve eaten since I was young and my mother made me eat a pickle, but I did in fact gag on the intestine. We´ve been happily going veggie since. By the time we arrived in Buenos Aires, we only had 10 hours until our flight out at 5am, so we dropped off our bags and went out to celebrate a little St Patty´s. Some beer and a couple of games of pool later, we headed back to the airport and attempted to sleep with little luck. We finally got onto our plane at 5am, and, wouldn´t you know, it was delayed for technical reasons. So, by the time we reached "the end of the world" we both looked like we belonged at the end of the world. We got to our hostel and crashed for hours. But, Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world, is beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. We went out for veggie soup and veggie pizza last night (hold the carnage), and today we climbed up to the Martial Glacier. It was gorgeous. It has been a bit shocking to go from 40 degrees, humid, beaches, portugese (language not people), and suddenly find ourselves in cold, wet, mountainous, spanish speaking argentina. But we´re troopers, so on we trek. Tomorrow we´re going to boat on the Beagle Channel (a little tear will be in this biologist´s eye), and then a little hike in Tierra del Fuego. Talk to everyone soon. Wish you were all here. It´s even more amazing than I could have imagined!

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Comments

[Alberto Azevedo]

Did you hitchhike ur way up this time? :P have fun my beloved girls :)

[Aunty Pat]

Stef missed her calling!
Tash, you are doing well, too, but I don't know you only Stef. I think Stef should consider writing. What a great job, huh! I am so glad that you are able to find a computer to use to keep us all updated on this wonderful adventure.!!xxoo