Nossa! Nossa!

doesn't our bench look comfy?!?

Keeley and I were Uruguay bound on Friday night, slightly sore after a park workout that we did on Thursday to prepare our beach bods for Punta del Este, boarding the Buquebus ferry at midnight.  We were hoping to sleep for the three hour journey, as our prospects for sleeping upon arrival in Uruguay were not so great (more on that later.)  However, unfortunately for us, the ferry turned into a full on symphony of snoring.  No joke, I have never heard so many people snoring at the same time.  Most people know I am the worst sleeper ever, and if someone so much as breathes too loudly I just lie there getting more and more annoyed with said breather.  The man kitty corner to my seat, literally sounded like a fog horn.  Having forgotten my trusty earplugs at home, I whipped out my ipod and attempted to drown out the snoring with some classical music (can't listen to words when i'm trying to sleep-i know, im a nightmare. haha).  So I wind up listening to this wordless music full blast in my ears...not very relaxing.  Only later did I realize that it was slightly ironic that I was listening to the Titanic soundtrack, while on a ferry, crossing frigid waters, in the middle of the night.  Anyways, after my sleepless journey (Keeley could sleep thorugh anything), we arrived in Colonia, Uruguay at around 3am Saturday morning.  Sleeping arraingements were not ideal, all the cheap hostels had been booked, and our broke college student budget did not include an $80 per night room....soooooo we ended up crashing like homeless people on the cold, unforgiving, metal benches in the bus terminal.  Comfy.  Bet you can guess how well I slept on those!!

Beautiful ocean

After a seemingly endless night, we rose with the sun to explore Colonia, a romantic little beach town where Porteños escape too when they need to get out of the city.  It's the oldest town in Uruguay and was designated as a World Heritage Site.  We strolled around the cobblestone streets, checked out the lighthouse, had some breakfast (Keeley wanted beef stroganoff at 8am), and then headed to the beach for a full day of lounging in the sun.  Later that night I discovered that I had managed to a sideburn onto my face, literally burnt a strip from my forehead down to my chin.  How do I always manage to mess up my sunblock? We then boarded a five hour bus ride to Punta del Este, a tourist hot spot in the summer (kind of like Mexico for Americans).  In our hostel we ran into two other guys from our program and we spent the following morning on the beach with them, which included our photo shoot at the famous Monumento al Ahogado (or the Hand) statue, which is a set of concrete fingers rising out of the sand in front of the ocean, meant to represent a hand drowning as the waves are a lot stronger on this side of the point.  We spent most of the day body surfing in the waves, tanning, and reading (managed to read the entire first book in the Hunger Games trilogy before we saw the movie Tuesday night!!).  Later, the boys told us about this place called Casapueblo that they had just found but didn't have time to go see as they were getting on an early bus.  So Keeley and I decided to take advantage of their find and hopped on a bus to Punta Ballena (Whale Point) and walked along a seemingly abandoned road for a while before stumbling upon Casapueblo which is the home of famous Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró who built it as homage to his son who was one of sixteen survivors of a plane crash.  Story goes that Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which was carrying a rugby team and family members,  crashed in the Andes in October of 1972, and out of the 45 people on board, only 29 survived the crash and immediate aftermath.  Eight were later killed by an avalanche that left them buried.  The final 16 that were rescued more than two months later had survived by eating flesh from their dead comrades who had been preserved in the snow,  a decision they didn't take lightly.  The survivors were only found after 72 days when two of the survivors made a 10 day hike across the Andes to a Chilean huaso who alerted authorities.  So Vilaró's Casapueblo was built as a dedication to his son who survived the horrific incident.  We walked up to it and immediately thought we had arrived in Santorini, Greece, with its completely white walls made of adobe rising out of the rocks is strange formations and curves.  The home is now open to the public and a museum has been built into it to exhibit some of the works of the artist.  Very cool.

The next morning we walked to a place where we had heard you could get american style waffles, cannot begin to tell you how excited we were, only to find out that it was closed.  Serious let down so we hopped on the bus to Montevideo, the capitol of Uruguay and spent a cold, rainy afternoon walking around.  To be honest there's not much to do/see there so we ended up convincing a Buquebus travel agent to let us hop on the earlier bus and fast ferry to get home earlier.  For only twenty bucks! Oh, South America, so easy going!

A little history, a little culture.

Our class took a field trip to El Parque Memorial, which is a tribute to the 300,000 people who disappeared during Argentina's Guerra Sucia (dirty war).  In short, between 1976 and 1863 a military government seized control of Argentina, and created a regime which forcibly suppressed dissidents.  These political activists were stolen from their homes and were never heard from again which is why they are referred to as "disappeared" because they cannot be classified as either living or dead.  Many were held in detainment camps while they were tortured and killed for the names of more revolutionaries.  Military planes also flew victims of this awful regime out over the ocean and dropped them out of the sky.  Anyway, the park was created as a memorial to all the disappeared and it includes a black wall with placards for all those who are missing, written next to many of the names is the word "embarazada" or pregnant.  Many of these babies born in the camps were secretly given to military families, and now Argentina and Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo are making an effort to relocate these individuals and reunite them with their biological families.  Their biological parents are still missing.  The youngest placard I read was for a 10 month old girl.  

one of the monuments in the park: pensar es un hecho revolucionario...to think is a revolutionary act

Cannot begin to explain how amazing of a afternoon I had on Friday though.  I convinced my friend Lindsey to take a two hour bus ride with me to this small zoo called Luján outside of Buenos Aires after class.  We found ourselves dropped off at a bus station in the middle of nowhere, so we followed the arrows and found ourselves standing at the gates of this zoo.  Upon walking in, we were literally handed a six week old tiger.  Literally the most adorable thing (sorry Beau!) that I have ever seen and we got to play around with her for a good hour or so.  We finally pried ourselves away and walked through the rest of the park, closely followed by a rather large pack of sheep.  Walking past the puma's enclosure, the zookeeper opened the gate and ushered us both in, handed us a bottle of milk and had us squirt it into our hands so the puma could lick it off.  There was only one moment of nervousness as the puma decided my leg looked tastier and wrapped his mouth around my calf-he didn't bite though!  Apparently, this zoo has found a way to eliminate a lot of the aggression found in big cats and other animals.  When they are born, they make sure each cub has equal access to it's mother's milk so that there is no need to compete for food.  Vocal commands are also used to help the animals distinguish between food and the hand that is holding the food.  All the years this zoo has been open they have never had an incident or injury.  Following the pumas, we took a camel ride, went to see my old friends the elephants, and then went and hung out with Simba for a while. Simba's teeth = massive.  Strangely though I felt no fear as he was licking milk out of my palm.  Maybe that's an indication that there's something wrong with me!  All in all, the best day.

St. Patty's Day.  Apparently Buenos Aires has one of the largest Irish populations outside of Ireland, i guess that's where all the red headed Porteños come from....? Keeley, Alanna, Anabel an I went to the Isenbeck beer festival at 1pm only to discover that the celebrations didn't start until 8pm, so we had no choice but to find the closest Irish pub and to start the festivities on our own! Shortly after our arrival, the place became flooded with Americans and the crazyness began.  I even ran into my roommate from home in the middle of this pub! At 7pm we headed over to the parade, which turned out to be about 5 people with bagpipes (which are scottish, not irish...).  Nothing too crazy, have to be honest I was expecting a little more from all the Irish Argentines! After the five person parade we decided to head back to the beer festival which was awesome! It was held in this open air events area and they had strung up hundreds of lights.  There were tons of different colored rooms with bars in each room and the best- a silent rave.  You walk in and they hand you a pair of headphones which have three to four different DJ stations.  Everyone is jamming out to their own music...the best part is when you take off your own headphones and you are standing in a completely silent room while everyone is dancing to their own rhythms and singing along to American songs that they don't know the words too! Epic.  

keeley and her headphones rocking out

On Sunday, Keeley, Alanna and I went to every single market in Buenos Aires while visiting all the areas we haven't had time to explore in the time we've been here: Recoleta, San Telmo, Boca, Puerto Madero.  Never have I been tempted to buy so many things! I did pick up a ring made with rhodocrosite which is a pinkish stone that is only found in Argentina. Apparently the Incas believed that rhodocrosite is the blood of their former rulers turned to stone, so sometimes its called Inca Rose. Nevertheless, very cool.  Can't believe we only have another week and half in Argentina, then all us multi-country kids head to Peru for the second half of our trip.  Keeley and I are off to Uruguay this weekend though for some sun, sand, and surf!

El Fin del Mundo

Spring Break finally arrived after a long and grueling four weeks of school (how did we all survive right??) and eight of us started our intrepid adventure to the end of the world and back again.  We flew into Ushuaia on saturday morning, which is known to be the southernmost city in the world and the port of departure for Antarctica.  We were however informed that sadly, for geographical drinkers, the southernmost
bar in the world is not in Ushuaia but rather at a Ukrainian base on Antarctica.  Typical.  First day we did some exploring and visited the prisoners museum.  Apparently Argentines
decided to do in Patagonia what the British did in Australia, and sent all their convicts there.  Needless to say it was probably a miserable place to live as we went down there during summer and it was still freezing.  In the hostel that night, all 6 of us girls were in one room and the 2 boys were in the room next door.  They must have missed us as they ended up moving both their mattresses and sleeping on our floor! Slumber party! Never have I seen one room with so many people/bags/bottles of wine. Our second morning there Keeley, Maggie and I went on a sailboat ride out into the Beagle Canal and got the most amazing view of the mountains from the ocean.  Stopped off on Island H (clearly the settlers were creative thinkers-the island is in the shape of an H) and learned about the Yamana people who lived stark naked on the islands and rubbed sea lion fat over them to keep them from freezing to death.  What a life!  After, we went and stalked some sea lions while they were sleeping, so cool!  After our long, wet, windy, cold, yet thoroughly enjoyable cruise we all found our way to the one and only Dublin Irish Bar which conveniently was situated around the corner from our hostel.  upon our return to the hostel, we were admittedly a little loud, and a fellow traveller decided to come out of his room and scream at us in spanish.  He ended by yelling "Idiotas" and storming back down the hallway.  This would have been a slightly terrifying experience, had this athletic young man not been wearing the equivalent of granny panties....they kind of took the edge off and left us in fits of giggles yet still remaining terrified that he might return for round two.

Monday was a pretty uneventful day as the majority of it was spent on a bus which drove us into Chile to Punta Arenas.  The town itself is pretty unexciting as we discovered on our trek to the hostel but from Punta Arenas you can go to see a penguin colony which has more than 100,000 penguins!  We nicknamed our hostel Grandma's House, as it was run out of an elderly woman's home.  Imagine the stereotypical grandparents house....thats where we stayed...that's also where Alana turned 21.  Raging with grandma, woop woop.  We made up for it though when we partied with the penguins, busting out the party hats and all.  Pulled out all the stops.  We even had lunch in a supermarket!  Punta Arenas is also where we got "gringo-ed", aka ripped off by the taxi drivers.  Let the good times roll.

Wednesday morning we took a bus to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Torres del Paine, Chile's (and arguably South America's) finest national park.  We then had a grand total of two and a half hours to buy bus tickets, find somewhere to rent backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, stoves, gas, jackets and pretty much anything else you need for a trek into the mountains.  It was like the Amazing Race, group style.  Everyone running in all different directions, tensions rising...it would have made awesome television.  Mission was accomplished with minutes to spare and we made it to our bus on time.  But only in South America would a bus driver with a bus full of people turn the bus around 20 minutes in because one passenger started crying that she had accidently thrown out her camera at the bus depot.  How you manage to throw out your camera I have no idea, next to my passport it is the one thing I care about most on this trip! But we made it to the park by 5:30 pm and got on a ferry across Lago Pehoe to get to our starting point, having little to no idea that what was in store for us was way more intense than we anticipated.  That ferry trip was absolutely gorgeous.  Blue skies, turquoise waters, very Caribbean looking, except for the fact that the temperature hovered around freezing.  The next 48 hours we spent trekking up and down mountains, pitching tents, eating borderline raw spaghetti and crackers and tearing all the skin off our feet...and none of us showered for three days. Sounds fun right? It was, in actuality, one of the most amazing experiences.  Not only was the landscape picturesque, but the feeling of accomplishment was a natural adrenaline boost!  We also saw the effects of a massive forest fire that had swept the park last November, starting from someone's campfire.  There were times when we walked through areas where everything around us was burnt.  Creepy but cool.  I will admit that Keeley had to bribe me with crackers during the last 30 minutes of our 11 hour hike to keep walking as my legs point blank refused to keep moving uphill.  And yes, I know, typical Olivia, bribing with food always seems to work.  Damn it.   

Our last stop on our whirlwind trip of Patagonia took us back to Argentina to Calafate, which has become a huge tourist draw because of the Perito Moreno glacier which is a 250 km² (97 sq mi) ice formation, and has a length of 30 km (19 mi).  It's one of the only glaciers in the world that is still growing!  All in all an awesome trip to some of the most naturally beautiful places in the world!