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Published: August 23rd 2007
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Hola(s),
It took long enough, but I’ve just had my first real “out of Bs.As.” adventure. Ya see, due to a holiday on Monday, August 20, 2007, the university had a long weekend (3day). Because of this, many of the international students decided to go out on various weekend trips to get to know more of the country. During the week, before the weekend, everyone basically hopped from one student planned trip to the next. In the end, I ended up helping out with the “spontaneous camping” that just seemed to be more interesting than the usual “tourist” traveling.
The original plan was that we, the 5-6 of us that planned on going, would leave out the Friday before the break, the majority of us didn’t have class, and the others had originally planed on skipping for the day. However, being planned at the last minute and being planned by a bunch of “spontaneous” guys, the plans of the trip were constantly changing. By the morning of Friday, August 17, 2007, two of the original bunch had decided that they didn’t want to go, one due to the “overly spontaneous” nature of the trip, and the other decided they
Mimicry 2
What can I say, we like statues. wanted to switch trips and head off with another group.
Anyhow, I’ll go ahead and get into the trip. The plan was to leave BsAs, ARG by bus to Colon, ARG (Entre Rios); next, we would bus from Colon to El Parque Nacional: El Palmar; then, we would bus back to Colon to cross the bridge over into Paysandú, Uruguay; after that, we would tour (bus, walk, w/e) into Uruguay through some scenery before heading to Montevideo, Uruguay (Capital Federal of Uruguay); finally, we would take a boat from Montevideo back to BsAs late Monday evening before our mandatory international meeting Tuesday morning. That was the original plan, but the schedule altered itself a bit, more-and-more, as the trip went on. Hey, it’s part of the adventure, right?!
So, the day of the trip the 3 of us that were ready set off after class, only to by called by the 4th while at the bus station. But yeah, since it was their fault they got left, we took the earlier bus and left them to catch up to us later...6 hours later. (Note - I was not about to sit around and wait for them). After getting
A night in Colon
Chillin at ¨JukeBox¨ to Colon and walking around for a while checking out the town and looking for a place to stay, we chilled in a public park. While leaving one of the 3 there to guard all of the stuff, the other 2 of us headed off to do some more hotel-hostel searching (with a lighter load). After about 10min, I got some into on the one hotel, more like motel, in the town that still had space left. After getting set up there, we went back to the station to pick up the fourth, at about 1am or so. Afterwards, we took our stuff to "La Vieja," the hotel-motel, before heading out to the town to check out the night life. Once we had a place to stay and all of us were together, things were a lot less stressful. It was a good night.
The next morning we got up for the sweetest breakfast I have ever had in my life. It was literally comprised of doughnut type things, cakes, brownies, coffee, tea, tang, and the one semi-healthy thing...cheese. Anyhow, after that we went back to the bus station to buy our 1hr ticket to the national park, for
We´re heeeerrrrreeeee
Finally arriving at the national park. camping. The weird thing is that even though it was a really nice double-decker/long distance/full service/NICE bus, it would stop on the side of the road in the most random places to pick up/let off people. That said, it stopped in the middle of the highway to let us out at the national part of Entre Rios, El Palmar. Yeah, being without a car, it was quite a walk throughout the park, about 5 miles of purposeful walking with about 3 miles of touristy sight-seeing. Anyhow, once we got to the camp area, we found out there were no more tents, so we opted for the tiny camper option. Ya know, like those ones that you pull behind cars, but SMALLER and REALLY old. Anyhow, we checked out the Jesuit ruins in the park, the beach, the nature trails, and had some fun/interesting times around the camp fire.
After that, we made our way back to Colon with the plans of taking a bus over the bridge that connects Colon to Paysandu, a city in Uruguay. However, there were no more buses, so we took a taxi. I mean, who would of thought you could take a taxi across
borders. Go figure, right?! Anyhow, after finding a taxi driver able to take us over, they have to be certified to cross both borders, we finally got over to Paysandu. In the Paysandu station, we bought our tickets to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The catch was, the bus left at 2am and we got there at about 8pm. So yeah, we had plenty of time to explore the city, meet the locals, and have one of the most interesting meals of my life (yeah, that´s another story). Once we got to Montevideo, around 8am, we were shocked by the news that ALL tickets to BsAs after 11am were SOLD OUT. By that time, it was about 9am. So, being the explorers we are, we asked around for the most interesting things in the city.
With VERY little time, we caught a taxi or 5 and took a 2hr tour of the city, hopping from one taxi/tourist trap/random local to the next. Yeah, it was a quick, but great run around of the cities. Ya know, one of those things you see in the movies, four college guys running around a city taking pictures, asking ?´s, the works. The
Look Up!
It´s a bird, it´s a plane, no...it´s a palm tree. best part of the run around was that the last place I suggest, since I was nominated the navigator, was a random building with a beautiful tower. To our surprise, it was just the national post office. With not much time, about 20 minutes til our trip back to BsAs, we decided to go in anyhow. Great choice!!! Once inside, we started exploring, without permission, and got in a bit of trouble. However, after we explaining the situation, we were takin up to the top of the tower, one of the tallest places in the city, and were able to get a full view of Montevideo. Now that´s what I call luck, and good timing.
All that we had left was to get back home. So, after the VIP treatment in the post office, we took a taxi back to the train station to catch our boat back to BsAs. That´s right, we took one of the boats back Argentina, and to our luck, all they had left were first class seats (darn), so we got them and had a nice relaxing trip back to BsAs. I must say that this was a great trip with some great guys.
Park´s info center
We got a lot of cool info about the parks history here. I CAN´T wait for the next one!!!
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Tori Keels
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U so CRAZY
Man, it seems like yall had a blast! It looks like the air is soo crisp and fresh out there. And the view in tower thingie was AWESOME! I know that you are having the time of your life. I love and miss ya! -TK ps- That thing with u and the sign was soooo FREAKIN funny! I died laughin while I was at work! People was looking at me like i was crazy!