new look

look - i've got a new look!

brazil, 5 months after the fact, was great. vast and varied, so it's hard to envision it in any particular way. i guess i've been trying, without knowing, to come up with one quintessential brazil moment/scene/landscape/experience, so that i could sum up our six weeks there easily. i can do that with peru - my peru 'moment' is eating head soup in this dusty town 2 hours west of arequipa, being laughed at by children and barked at by dogs, while waiting for the 'bull fight' to begin. you know. i can do it with argentina - san telmo on a cold sunday, drinking a big beer, eating peanuts, and watching street tango. i can do it with ec, of course, sitting on a bus careening wildly over and down 5000 m mountains, fighting over the window with the person behind me. colombia? new years in cartagena, on a carriage ride next to the ocean, swigging from a bottle of rum with ant and the carriage driver, bits of firework falling in my hair. but brazil's moment is difficult. there were vermont-esque cobblestreet mountain towns, tropical islands, snooty beach towns on cliffs, big cities, suburbs, and a river hamlet. all too varied for one definition. so you can imagine my difficulty....

until last night. last night in this chapped, cold city, we braved the dark and set off for Brooklyn Academy of Music to see their 'red hot rio 2'. now, i agree with the rest of the world that brazilian music is amongst the best in the world. but, like the country itself, the music is so varied that it seemed odd that the ad for the show only announced 'brazilian music', and not what KIND of brazilian music. but i saw that babel gilberto would be there, so i figured the music would be bassa nova, mostly. b/c babel is bassa nova, right? and, largely, it was. but there were other types of music as well. and overall, it was a pretty good show. but my favorite part of the show was the very end, when the stage lights went down, and we could feel, without yet hearing, the samba drums approaching as Harlem Samba marched down the 1st floor album. they marched on and up on stage and drummed, standing in front of their own silhouettes on the screen at their backs. nice. and that was when the quintessential brazil moment was born in my memory. sometimes, you have to weed through things, great things, to find what stands out the most. so here it is - 

-pelhourinho, salvador on a tuesday night (july, of course). we are drunk off of street caipirinhas and kabobs, and it is about to rain. we hear music from all 4 directions, so we just pick one and follow the drum beats. the street we wind up on is choked with teenage girls carrying enormous drums strapped to their waists, and dancing tourists. we duck into a doorway and lean against its frame, buying a beer when a vendor with a cooler on his head passes by. some people we recognize from our language school are there, doing a funny dance, and we wave hello but do not join, choosing instead to laugh hypocritically at them. the drums are loud and we can feel them. the girls do little dances as they tap their drums much more gently than the sound it produces would have you think. then, it begins to rain and the crowd disperses. we stay where we are, sipping our skol and getting wet, not really caring, because it is july and we are in brazil.

seasons

they say its winter here in brazil. when we landed in sao paolo late sunday evening, we kind of felt it. we descended from the airplane via stairs, which i always find interesting because it makes me feel like im a president, or something, and immediately i felt a chill in the air. not a real chill, mind you, but a 60 degree chill. i put my fleece on and hoped that in recife, our ultimate destination that evening, it would be warmer.

about 8 hours later, after a long layover at the sao paolo airport and a quick flight north, we woke up, as the plane landed, to rain streaking the windows - sideways. when we got off the plane, we were supposed to be met by someone from our hotel, pousada peter, which is located not in recife but in neighboring olinda. olinda was to be hilly and nice, with art everywhere and forro (northern brazilian music) in the streets. anyway, we got off the plane and looked for a dude holding a sign with our name on it but, alas, there was none. we waited around a bit but no one showed. already extremely unimpressed with pousada peter, we got a cab. the cab driver drove like mad the long way to olinda. still, rain streaked the windows and we hydroplaned through most of the red lights encountered along the way. finally, eventually, we made it to pousada peter, but not without getting soaked in the progress. but the cab driver was extremely nice, and helped us stay dry as best he could.

the night check in guy (it was 5am) at the hotel didnt mention the forgotten pick up, and we didnt know how to, so the issue was dropped. we showed us to our room and we learned a few things: 1) they have bidets here in brazil, but different than in argentina. not another toilet seat but a hose like thing. interesting. 2) like many other countries in south america, toilet paper is not flushed. 3) there are electric showers here, too and 4) pousada peter decieved us because their website shows pictures of rooms that dont actually exisit. no matter though, we didnt let this last part get us down. we fell into bed for a nap before breakfast without even unpacking.

we woke up a few hours later, determined not to miss the free hotel breakfast. let me just take this opportunity to tell you how impressed i am with breakfast in brazil. they take it seriously here, and so far it seems that it is always included with the hotel. there are fresh juices, tons of fresh tropical fruit, eggs, bread, cake, cereal and strong coffee. really, anything you might want for breakfast is laid out on a table, and you just help yourself again and again while someone cooks you eggs. its such a wonderful way to start the day. so we had that and set off to explore olinda, though it was still raining intermittently.

olinda is, as more than one european traveler described it, (actually we only met 2. they both described it this way) very special. it is all cobblestone and hills, with views of the ocean and the buildings of recife from all angles. the people are friendly and there are museums and colonial buildings everywhere. what really impressed me, though, was the art. in olinda there is art EVERYWHERE. literally every other building is a gallery, which one is free to wander in and out of. the walls of the streets are covered in paintings, the hotels have art, the bars and resturants have art, even the bathrooms have paintings hanging in them. it makes for a lovely, friendly, if not a little sleepy, town. we spent 2 days exploring it and eating street food in the rain. after a while, the rain got old, our pousada became unbarably damp, so we left and headed for porto do galinhas, a beach town 2 hours south. we figured the rain wouldnt bother us there since we´d be wet anyway....

upon check

just when i thought i was out....

i have this friend with whom i am in frequent contact these days. but there have been times throughout the past 20 odd years (we met in second grade and i'm pretending to be younger than i am), during which we spoke only sporadically (clueless). the nice thing about those times during which our contact was infrequent, was that we would always, always pick up just where we had left off, not bothering much with the details of where we had been and what we had been doing since we last spoke. it was, and is, the sentiment of our communication that was more important, and we always managed to get caught up without the seemingly mandatory fill in session. so, you, my dear blog should be just like that friend of mine. therefore i will skip the details of the past 13 months and just pick the story up from here. and we'll get caught up along the way, somehow.

13 months later and here i am, a married elementary (charter) (see, there' s one detail down) school teacher with two loving kittens and an oddly shaped apartment in east harlem (spaha, didnt you know?). i love my happy home life but south america, of course, calls once again. other places call as well but anthony and i have decided that brazil will be next for us. so in 2 weeks, we will leave for a rather lengthy honeymoon of 6 weeks. we will start north, in recife, and go south towards rio. we might hit the pantanal and other places along the way. so if you are at all interested in stories about us bumbling our way around another south american country (but in portuguese this time) check back soon. i might have blogged something by then.

que lastima, pero adios

we fly to ny at 8pm tonight.

so, this is goodbye to south america. and goodbye to argentina. and goodbye to spanish. and goodbye to: crazy landforms, endless busrides, strange animals, new foods, palm trees (even where they dont belong), street protests, catholic holidays, missing home, aguardiente, learning history, soy de los estados unidos (pero de nueva york), tour groups, shared bathroom hostels, our tiny freezing happy apartment, cafe cortado, frescito, my godfather Cesar and his wonderful family, almuerzos, foriegn exchange students, trying to read the newspaper, trying to understand the history, big steaks, mangy dogs, long scary hikes, altitude, blue blue water, random diarhea, internet cafes, mistranslations, sony channel, itoitoito, siga no mas, relying on the kindness of strangers, big beers, the inevitable lack of loose change, daily parades, $3 gourmet meals, wondering about the euro, dutch girls traveling in pairs, bus fumes, cobblestones, colorful sweaters, feeling cold, hammock time, reading a book a week, leather jackets, feeling lost, chifas, counting money, wierd plants, snowcapped mountians, learning 10 new things every day.....

so, bye.

if only there were a cat to crazy glue myself to.....

¿podria ser???

so, as fantastic as the food is here, buenos aires suffers from a serious dearth of non argentine/italian/spanish restuarants. what it does have, however, is numerous peruvian retsurants. one fantastic one is in our neighborhood, 2 blocks from our house. since we are lazy gluttons, we like to go as often as possible. but so does everyone, and there is always a line outside. sometimes we are deterred by this, since its kinda cold here these days, and waiting outside is no fun. but last night we made a pact: we were going to go no matter what. we would go later than the other times, at 1130, and if we had to wait, we reasoned, we would buy a beer from a nearby almacen and make the best of it.

so we went, as planned. and of course there was a line of 8 other parties waiting ahead of us. so we executed our plan, and were rather contendedly waiting outside sipping from a can of quilmes, planning our menu for the evening, when i saw all the mosquitos. they were flying around, bouncing off the window, attracted by all the ceviche i guess. i should have left them alone, but lately ive been on a mosquito killing kick. see, even though it is winter, there is an invasion of mosquitos occuring now in buenos aires. its really bad, some people are getting dengue, and i dont want dengue. so, i had just finished killing 48 mosquitos in our apartment when we left for dinner. therefore, when i saw more mosquitos, a part of my brain switched off and i began to swat at them menacingly. the fact that they were sitting on the window of the restuarant did not deter me and i began, rather like a maniac, to smack the window in hopes of killing the mosquitos.

well, i didnt kill them, but i did attract the attention of the party seated close to the window. they were a part of 3 seated at a table for 5, and when i smacked the window for the fourth time, one of them stood up and waved maniacally at us. we waved back, but then realized they were waving us to come into the restaurant. we entered with our can of beer and they invited us to sit at the 2 vacant spots at their table, thus helping us to skip the line entirely. what luck!! we sat next to them and exchanged a bit of small and not so small talk. for example, they asked where we were from and if we liked buenos aires, and then the old man talking to us the most pretended like he was a cannibal. it was cool, he was very funny, if not a little bit drunk. but, by that point, so were we and we appreciated the company and the fact that we got a table quickly.

as we were seated i noticed 3 things:
a) we were sitting at a table marked "reserved" in a resturant with no other reserved tables.
b) people looked at us a lot. one guy who had been on line with us looked at me and shook his head with an ironic smile which indicated that he thought we were lucky. but, i attributed this to the fact that we had skipped the line. also a few people said good night to the man at our table when they left. but, you know, the people here are pretty friendly like that. so i didnt think much. and:
c) the waiter, who is a good waiter but always very busy, was especially attentive. how nice, i thought, he must remember us from other times weve been here.

i noticed these things, but i was really hungry and concntrated on the absolutely delicious parihuela that i had ordered, as well as anthonys ceviche and the rest of the beer from our can. at one point the man next to me looked at me and said, "you must be very hungry". i was a bit embarrassed by the way i had been eating. see, argentines are very blunt, and wont hesitate to tell you if you are eating like a pig or getting fat. i have been hearing about my incredible appetite a lot lately from my surrogate argenitine family (cesar and his family), and im beginning to get embarrassed. so, to detract attention i offered the man some of my parihuela, and anthony offered his ceviche, and the man dug into both with gusto. the he looked up at us and said, "you dont know who i am, do you?" we said no and his friend said "hes charly garcia!" to which we smiled politely and shook our heads. all 3 burst into laughter and we shrugged and ordered dessert. they left and wished us luck and we thanked them and marveled to each other about our luck in finding a table. then we went home.

today there was a big lunch with above mentioned surrogate family. we asked my cousin (ok not my cousin at all, but for lack of better word lets just call him my cousin) axel if he had ever heard of charly garcia because we had eaten dinner with him the night before. axel dropped his fork. turns out this charly garcia guy is the argentine equivalant of mick jagger. extremely influential and famous and all that. who knew???

was it really him?? well, we arent 100% sure, but i googled him today and whoever we ate with looks exactly like him, and this guy seemed a little famous or something. but then, people always think my father is eric claption and he doesnt exactly deny it, so maybe this guy was playing off the fact that he just looks like charly garcia. who knows thought. if it was, we must have looked like such assholes, sitting there with this big time famous rock superstar and drooling over our seafood. but it was really good....

anyway.

theendoftheworld; otherwise: engaged!

so, we got here to buenos aires and looked around and ate some steak. its really good here, and unbelievably cheap. we also drank a ton of wine, also startlingly cheap. we met up with my godfather, cesar, who hooked us up with an apartment right in the center of town, a block away from the congreso, if you know BsAs. its a great location because its busy and convinient without being touristy. we were very happy with it all and spent 2 weeks strolling around and drinking cafe con leches and whatnot. glorious after those endless month of horrid nescafe.

but then the weather turned bad, like torrential storms every day, and there were all of these annoying little biting bugs all over the place. one night i found 1578300057399 on our ceiling, and i killed them all, which anthony thought was crazy, but it felt good. on the 5th day of the downpour, we decided to get out of town. we went to the bus station and bought a ticket to mendoza: wine country. we figured we´d only stay a few days and come back, but in a moment of foreshowdowing, i packed 11 daily vitamins. sometimes i think i know things, without really knowing them.

so we got to mendoza, which was pretty. after a few days, however, we realized it was awfully boring. but for some inexplicable reason, we stayed on for 5 nights. 4 of those nights were spent in an intolerable hostel with a broken bathroom and absurd backpàckers. they listened to sublime and hopped around, drinking mate and headbanging. no really. most of them talked about how they were traveling forever, never going home. whatever. and to think, i used to actually like sublime.

but we went on a wine tour, which was cool. and to a pretty park. oh, and they sell wine in their mcdonalds.

anyway, for some reason we decided not to go back to BsAs immedeiately, and we went to bariloche, in the lake district of patagonia. 19 hours away by bus and completely worth it! it was the most beautiful place ever. the weather was chilly and sunny, like nice late fall, and we climbed little mountains, took gondolas, and ate ice cream. at night we cooked stews and hung out in our cozy, heated hostel. it was really great, and insprired us, after 4 nights, to see more of patagonia.

so we went to puerto madryn, but realized there was nothing to do in the town itself. so we booked a tour of nearby peninsula valdez and a bus ticket out the next morning. the landscape, though, was incredible. all flat, with a low, horizontal sky. the sun was weak and it felt like winter, but in the best way possible. and the tour was cool, we saw penguins and a whale and ostrich like things and a million other animals i didnt know existed.

then we took an extremely fancy bus back to BsAs. it had been 2 weeks since we had left and id run out of vitamins. the buses here are glorious, i actually look forward to them. so we got back here and the weather was still grey but we were happy to be back in our little apartment. we joined a gym and made a pact to get diesel before coming home.

then, a few nights after we got back, we went out to a famous cafe, cafe tortoni. nice place. then we decided to go eat steak and drink wine in a restaurant. on the way we had to cross the widest street in the world, 9 de julio, with 16 lanes and green walkways with statues and fountains. out of nowhere, as we were crossing, anthony insisted we sit down under a statue of a disembowled horse. i couldnt understand why, but it was actually a nice night and a pretty view, sitting there in the middle of the street, with the lights of cars whizzing by and the fountains and trees and all. BsAs really is very pretty, in a city sort of way. so we were sitting and anthony was acting funny, shifting around alot. we got to talking and anthony said some stuff and then took out a little black box, the velvety kind, the kind that all women, no matter how un girly they try to be, love. inside was a beautiful white gold amythest ring, and with it anthony proposed. nice guy. i, of course, accepted in .01 of a second and he put the ring on my finger and we felt very surpised and new and giddy. we sat a bit and eventually waltzed off to call parents and eat steak. life is good.

out of ecuador, with a little help from our heavily armed friends and the entire town of puerto inca (seemingly)

so, as we crossed the rocks fell all around. like, the second we stepped forward rocks fell in the exact spot in which we had just been. at one point in the crossing, we had to jump off of a newly made ledge into an abyss of red mud (all of this must be very hard to picture. its hard to explain - i really wish i had taken pictures, but at that precise moment in time, the act surely would have been life threatening and percieved as insane. plus i never post pictures on this blog, because blogger is such a bitch about it). wearing and holding all of my luggage, i was certain i would break both knees. somehow i didnt, and we made it across. but by this point i was feeling that things, in general, were very uncool. i began to whine. anthony was pretty symapthetic and understanding. he is used to seeing me utterly freak out and regress when in life threatening natural disaster type situations. but he was nice, and we had made it to the other side, and all we had left to do was beg a ride, somehow, to puerto inca. it turned out there were none of the entrepeneurs our nice friend had promised us (refer to part 2). we went running, bags and all, up to a police car that had started its way down the mountain to puerto inca and asked for a ride. they told us to ask this elderly couple with a pickup truck filled to the brim with steel rods. we asked them and they said no, then changed their minds and said yes. so we hopped in, or i should say on, on top of the steel rods and clung to the sides of the pickup as it careened down the mountain. the fog, at this point, was blinding, and we could hear little landslides all around us, and we were so precariously perched atop the steel rods, not really inside the truck at all, and the road was bumpy and slippery...it was really one of those dont-know-if-ill-make-it-out-alive situations that are becoming all too familiar. but at one point, 3 minutes into the ride, we began to laugh. i dont know why, but we laughed and laughed the whole long way down. it made the ride fun, and by the time we got down to sea level puerto inca, the weather had turned hot and humid, we were inappropriately dressed in layers of muddy fleece, and we were still laughing.

we hopped off the truck and tried to give the couple $10, which they refused to take, which was really nice. anthony got them to take $5 of it, and then we stood on the only street in the town, asking a million people a million questions about the ormeño bus that supposedly passed through the town on its way to lima. we gathered that if we went to the piaje, tollbooth, there was a chance we could flag it down as it passed. we had 2 hours to spare though, so we sat down and drank 17 cokes each. something about jumping over landslides and almost dying makes you want to drink coke. i dont know why. mr. coca cola should really consider this for his next advertising campaign.

then, wearing our layers of sweaters n fleece, we carried our bag to the piaje, which was not too far but not near either. as we approached the booths a few heavily armed guards looked at us curiously. we explained that we needed to flag down the ormeño when it passed. they looked at our muddy clothes and sweaty faces and nodded knowingly. i dont know what they knew and how they could possibly have known it, but they were nice. they offered us some pepsi but we declined, having just drunk many cokes. we threw our bags down and sat on the side of the highway, across from the tollbooth. the bus was late.

have you ever hung out at a tollbooth for a few hours?? if not, i wouldnt necessarily recommend it. especially not when its horribly hot out. or after a landslide. its just not that entertaining, not nearly as much as you think it would be. but there was a man with a suitcase full of sandwiches who was oddly hanging out there too. we talked to him for a bit, and then he jumped onto a moving bus headed for huaquillas. nice man. we also met a watermelon seller, who sold us delicious watermelon and later became an integral factor in getting us here to argentina.

finally, after 46 years, the ormeño bus pulled up. as practiced, we jumped to our feet and started waving our tickets around, jumping up and down like lunatics. the lady at the ticket booth might or might not have mumbled something to the driver about picking us up. the guard stood up. but: the bus didnt stop. luckily, our new guard friends sprung to action, running towards the bus, waving their machine guns. it stopped. the bus drivers assistant got out irritably, and motioned for us to move quickly if we wanted to get on the bus. anthony grabbed his bag and went running ahead. i tried to do the same, but my bag felt like leaden bricks, and my left hand was holding a huge chunk of watermelon. i struggled with it, trying to run, tripping over it and getting nowhere, growing desperate. suddenly my i felt one end of my bag rise, and i turned around, and there was the watermelon seller. he had easily picked up my bag and was running towards the bus with it. he got it on the bus and i barely had time to thank him as the bus began to move again. i just waved my watermelon and hoped he understood.

we sat down in our seats, crossed the border, spent the night in lima, and caught our smooth flight to buenos aires just in time. and that is how we got to argentina.