Florianopolis

Bom Dia from Florianopolis, Brasil.

We are here in Floripa, as they call it, taking a Portuguese class for a week. We are staying with a family as part of the class, with two other students. The family is great - they are very friendly and extremely patient with our sorry attempts at communicating in their native language. They make breakfast and cook a huge dinner for us every day, which is nice after eating at restaurants for so long. And they have a black and white cat.

Some of the things that we love about Brasil so far - tropical fruits, ubiquitous fruit juice stands, friendly people, and nice beaches. One other thing that we love, and that would make a killing in the US - ice cream buffets. Why didn´t they think of this when we were growing up? You get to pick as many flavors as you want with as many toppings as you want and they charge you by the kilo (not that we have bought a kilo . . . yet).

Sorry we don´t have any pictures to post now - taking the camera to the beach is not the best idea. We hope everyone is doing well!

Tchau!

Torres

Bom Dia from Torres, Brasil.

We have been in this little beach town - little compared to other cities in Brasil, not compared to the last beach town we were in (Punta del Diablo, Uruguay) - for two days now. The tourist season has ended, so the hotels are cheap and the beaches are almost empty, but the weather is nice and sunny, and hot. Tommorow morning we head to Florianopolis to start our language course.

As promised, here are some pictures.

A sculpture-lined pedestrian street in Montivideo, Uruguay:



The waterfront of the Rio Plata in Montivideo - the fisherman was selling his catch on the sidewalk:



The cool place to be on Saturday afternoon in Montivideo is the old market, where you can eat as much grilled meat as you want (sorry, vegetarians). There are a couple of grilled vegetables, and grilled cheese. Yum.



The view from our cabaña in Punta del Diablo:



And the cabaña itself:



A view of the shoreline:



And the fishing fleet:



I mentioned the fruit in the last post, so here is an example - avacadoes that are almost as big as your head:



And, finally, the beach here in Torres - the cliffs in the pícture are part of a series of outcrops, one of which was made into a municipal park that you can hike around on (from which this picture was taken):

Porto Alegre

Aslkjls laksdjfn lkjasld asne gnaen gneosn aytgwqj alknfea alsn vçh0o sjhhnbg anshygenq asztqn alng al? Njeqyh ngloyqp alkjqngalk lkanonon lnm anqun. Aj qulkj qoiknm qneny nthyh qjuidl.

That is how we feel now that we have moved into Portuguese-speaking Brasil. I thought we would at least be able to pick out some of the words, but no, it´s not as easy as we (or at least I) thought it was going to be. It is actually getting a little better now that we are at least somewhat familiar with the way Portuguese sounds, but I am not as optomistic about picking it right up as I was before we came. We will be taking a week of language classes starting next week, so that will help.

Our stay in Punto del Diablo, Uruguay, was nice - it is a small beach town with (as one brochure described it) ecclectic architecture - read: thrown together - and a large fishing community. But the people were friendly, the beaches were great, and we were adopted by two dogs who sensed that we were missing our own at home. And our cabaña had a hammock on the porch from which we could sit and listen to the waves. We will post some pictures from the next place we can download from the camera.

Anyway, we are in Porto Alegre, a large city that is on the southeast coast of Brasil. I compared it to Houston, Texas, in the fact that it is a large, busy city and there is plenty to keep a tourist occupied, but there aren´t too many of them here. Oh, yeah, I think it is prettier than Houston (no offense to Houstonites). We´re headed to a smaller place on the coast, then to Florianopolis at the beginning of next week for our classes.

Montivideo

Hola from Montivideo, Uruguay.

As a lot of people say, Montivideo is a nice place, but not really somewhere that makes you want to stay for a long time. The part of the city by the port, where we stayed for two nights, is the old part of town with once great architecture and is going through a restoration of sorts. This is still in progress, so there are still some dodgy parts. There are plenty of places to eat and hang out, but they don´t have the same lively fell as Buenos Aires.

Last night we wandered around town and saw a bunch of people filing into a building so we decided to follow them. This turned out to be a celebration of Mozart´s 250th anniversary in the Supreme Court building. The building was stunning, but we waited and waited and nothing happened, until we headed outside. There was a strange modern dance routine being done to a Mozart concerto. It was wierd - you don´t really think ´modern dance´ along with Mozart.

I don´t know if we´ve told you about the fascination here (I mean the countries we´ve been to - Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay) with meat, pasta, pizza, and starchy foods in general, but you can´t walk ten feet in this place without running into someone selling or eating french fries or hot dogs. WE NEED VEGETABLES!!! Send some down if you have them.

We are leaving here today for a small beach town called Punto del Diablo on the northeast coast of Uruguay, close to the border with Brasil. Who knows what the internet situation will be like, so don´t worry if we don´t post for a while.

Chau, chicos.

Colonia

After two days in Buenos Aires running errands and getting laundry done, we headed across the Rio Plata to Colonia, Uruguay. The three hour ferry ride is pretty uneventful, but when we got to the city, it was like being in a different world. Coming from the busy city of Buenos Aires where you have to be constantly aware of your surroundings and watching out for things, Colonia was a big change. The cars even stop for you at cross-walks (if you try to cross the street in front of a car anywhere else in South America, you will quickly become a splat on the road).

Colonia was the first city founded by the Portugese in South America and has a long history of being passed back and forth between Portugal and Spain. The old fortress part of the city is a UNESCO world heritage site and is a beautiful old city with cobblestone streets and very old buildings. It was nice to wander around the streets imagining what life was like several hundred years ago.

It wouldn´t be South America without a dog or two around. This one happens to be guarding the city walls:

After wandering around the city, we decided to rent a motor scooter and see what kind of trouble we could get into.

Some of the trouble we got into included seeing the world´s largest collection of keychains and pencils. Who would have known that these reside 6 kilometers outside of Colonia, Uruguay?



After waiting out the rain for an hour (there´s only so long you can look at a collection of keychains . . . ), we headed to the local winery where they were busily processing this season´s harvest. It was the first one we have seen that was actually making wine.

One of the good things about having personal transportation is that you can go to the out of the way places the locals frequent. We had seen a sign for homemade pasta and turned off to go get some for our dinner. We saw an older gentleman swinging a wedding ring tied to a piece of a pregnant woman´s hair. Strange, we thought. I asked him what he was doing as we left, and this started a conversation that lasted several hours. (He said he could tell the sex of the baby by the way the ring moved.) The gentleman turned out to be an Italian - a pasta shop, remember - who had emmigrated to the U.S. and then to Uruguay before World War II. After showing us his house and introducing us to his family and showing us pictures of the rest of his family, he gave us sauce for our pasta and bread to go along with it and bid us good travels. Here´s a picture of him and Melanie on his deck overlooking the river:


Now we are in Montivideo, Uruguay, and it is still raining. Stay tuned for more pictures - we will post some from Buenos Aires that we never got around to. Happy St. Patrick´s Day!

El Chalten

As of our last post, we were in El Calafate, Argentina, about to head for the small town of El Chalten. I mentioned something about the glacier that we went to see - some of you might have seen something about it in the news or on the internet. When we were there, it was two days before it formed the ice bridge that subsequently collapsed into the lake. Luckily, this happened at night, so we didn´t feel too bad about missing it. Here are some pictures from when we were there:

A shot of the glacier from several kilometers away:

Closer, from a different angle:



Even closer:



After spending another night in El Calafate, we rode the bus out to Chalten, which was a four hour ride along a rocky unpaved road, along with a half busload of people like us. When we reached the town, it was cloudy and rainy and we headed off along similar dirt roads in search of somewhere to stay. Luckily, it was the closing of the tourist season, so there was plenty to choose from and we found a four-person cabaña for (relatively) cheap. Chalten is a small and very relaxed place where everyone is there for one reason - to hike and enjoy the outdoors.

The view from our cabaña:



I should have know by some of the names of the places in this town - for example, Paseo de los Viento (Passage of the Wind) - that we were in for a windy stay. The wind blew so hard that night that dust came through the walls of the cabin and made things gritty. The next day was sunny so we went on a hike that was supposed to lead us to a lake with a great view. We hiked for three hours and got within about 200 feet of the lake and the view until the hurricane-force winds stopped our advance (well, maybe it was only tropical storm-force, but it was still strong enough to knock us around) and we didn´t get to enjoy the view. Here are some pictures from before we got blown back:


The next day was supposed to be a hike to view the peak in the picture from our window, but when the wind finally stopped, the rain started. So we spent the day playing Scrabble and drinking hot coffee. Travel is hard, you need to take it easy every once in a while. Of course, the next day was rainy as well, but we decided to brave the rain in hopes that it would clear up while we were hiking. It didn´t, but the scenery was spectacular:

Another good thing about this small town is that they had a travel office that sold airline tickets. We scored some to fly from El Calafate to Buenos Aires, which involved a lot of waiting and delays, but was still shorter than the 40 hours required to take the bus. While we were having breakfast before our flight, Melanie saw the roof she wants for our house:

It´s the roof that you plant!

EL Calafate

Hola from El Calafate, Argentina.

Sorry it´s been so long since posting, but long bus rides and small cities make it easy to neglect the blog. And the internet places in small cities with slow internet connections generally don´t appreciate you posting pictures. So, alas, no pictures this time. But we have some great ones to post. Coming soon.

While we were still in Buenos Aires, we took part in a free Tango lesson that was sponsored by the Tango Festival that was going on. They didn´t tell anyone that you should have at least had some Tango experience before coming. So, I, along with my two left feet, left my dancing partner (Melanie) wishing she had worn steel-toed boots that night and wishing for a suave Argentenian to come sweep her off her feet. That was the night I almost got robbed.

So, that did it for Buenos Aires - it is a great city and there is plenty to keep one occupied, but it is a big noisy city, so it was time to get going. Which brings us to the next dilemma - remember how I was saying we were going to fly back down south? Well, that didn´t quite work out. Nobody heard that the tourist season was supposed to be over and that they shouldn´t be flying anymore. We didn´t want to stay in BA for another three weeks until the next available flight, so we headed south on the bus to Puerto Madryn.

Puerto Madryn is a small sea port on the Atlantic coast of Argentina. You reach it by driving through desolate and windy Patagonian steppe - we´re talking barren out here. The main attraction in Puerto Madryn is the peninsula with sea animal colonies. We got there and decided that all of the tours were either too expensive or didn´t offer enough for the price (it´s hard to be sans car or other means of independent transportation in a place where they have you by the neck), so we decided to keep heading south.

Which brings us to El Calafate, which is a relatively small town in the south of Argentina. Like many places, the town has one main attraction which everyone comes to see. In this case, it is the glacier Perito Moreno, one of the only stable (not retreating) glaciers in the area. It is, in a word, awesome. While there are tons of people there to see it and they have these balconies built on to the hill side so the masses can view it, it is worth it all to see this glacier.

The glacier terminates in Lake Argentino, where it calves off great chunks of ice that roar throughout the valley. We saw some chunks fall off that looked like pebbles from where we were but sounded like cannon shots from a few feet away. We took the ´alternative´ tour, so we got to hike around and see the glacier from a trail (where there weren´t so many people) and take a boat ride out to see the face of the glacier up close. Melanie wanted to ride a raft up to the face (they don´t offer this type of tour) which would have been even more exciting . . . and dangerous.

So, now we are heading a bit further north to El Chalten, which is even smaller than El Calafate and should offer nice hiking and not much else (this is good). And not much oppurtunity to post pictures . . . sorry.

Chau

Being a Tourist

I knew it would happen at least one time during our trip - and I am glad that it didn't turn out worse than it did.

We were walking down a busy street in Buenos Aires with some friends from Melanie's Spanish class. We were talking, having a good time, not paying attention to anything else than each other. When we stopped for a stop light, I felt a tug on my backpack, and looked back to see a woman quickly turn away from us. She was flanked by two men. I quickly checked my backpack and saw that the front pocket had been opened. Luckily, nothing was gone (nothing of importance was in that pocket anyway).

At first, I was mad. I didn't do anything right away - just told everyone to check their belongings. We crossed the street. The group of people stopped at a kiosk another half a block down to buy something. I was still feeling angry, so I ran into the woman with my shoulder. Looking back on it, that was a pretty stupid thing to do. But sometimes emotions take over being smart. She shouted "Ay, estupido". We kept walking down the street.

When we stopped at the next light, they came up from behind us and the woman spat something on me. I think it was just water, but whatever it was, I didn't really want it spat onto me.

And that's where it ended. We are lucky that we didn't have anything stolen in the first place and the two hoods that were with the woman didn't decide to do something in retaliation for me being dumb.

Travelling Tip From Dave-O: When you're travelling and someone tries to rip your stuff off and you catch them don't get mad and try to eke out some sort of street justice.