Justin and Hazel Around the World

Well, we have about 30 mintues until we´re off on a 47 hour bus trip heading south to Ushuaia and there´s a lot we could still say about our time in Buenos Aires.  I´ve had an unfortunate couple of days with a yucky stomach bug and on top of that I managed to explode our plug adaptor.  Pretty big spark there.  Despite all of that we had an awesome Valentine´s Day picnic with some bread, cheese and bubbly and we´re very excited for the next step in our adventure.

Favorite Empanadas in Buenos Aires

Empanadas are everywhere in Buenos Aires and they are a delicious snack.  This place had our favorites so we´d often run off there on our break from Spanish class.  They have a ton of different kinds.  My favorite were the Caprese – little pastries full of cheese, basil and tomato, but the beef ones were yummy too.

We´re already missing our Spanish class.  We learned so much and had 2 really great teachers over the 3 weeks.  We learned a lot about Argentina and our communication skills definitely improved.  Both of us were tempted to stay longer in order to learn even more. 

Spanish Class with Alejandro

Last week we finally made it out to tango at La Viruta where we had a yummy dinner with a view of the dance floor then took a tango lesson.  Awesome!  There were so many amazing dancers there and we had a great time watching them.  We didn´t really get the typical tourist show, but we saw a lot of real tango.

View from our table - sorry it´s blurry

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We’re settling into a pretty awesome routine here in Buenos Aires.  Lots of sitting in cafes and studying, lots of good food, and lots of Spanish classes.  I’m very behind on emails, but will try to get caught up in the next few days.

We spent the past weekend exploring the city and had a really great time looking around.  Friday night was swing dance night and we were really pleased to discover that we could understand a LOT more of the Spanish than the week before.  On Saturday we went out to Palermo, the fancy area of town, on the Subte (Subway) and explored the giant complex of parks there.  We had thought to go to the Planetarium, but it was closed for renovation.  Instead we wandered around the rose garden and botanical garden and saw the outsides of the zoo and the racetrack.  These parks are truly enormous and really well kept up.  There were a lot of people lounging in the shade with picnics and it was a really pleasant place to hang out.

Click for Palermo Parks Gallery

On Sunday we had a busy day exploring the street market in San Telmo and going to the New Year celebration in Barrio Chine (Chinatown).  The street market was really colorful and fun to explore.  It was also a surprise to us that it was pretty low-key even though it was really large.  People were very laid-back and there wasn’t much persuasion to buy anything.  San Telmo is a cool old neighborhood, but I didn’t take too many pictures since it was pretty full of people.  In the afternoon we took a long subway ride and made it to Barrio Chine.  This was a bit of a disappointment since it was completely packed with people.  We could hardly even move, let alone look around.  We did get to see a dragon, but not a very good view.

Chinese New Year Celebration - Click for photo gallery

We’re dancing again tonight and starting to work on our plans for leaving the city.  I have to admit, it would be pretty easy to get sucked into spending quite a lot more time here.

This morning we headed out for a bit of an explore around the Plaza de Mayo.  This plaza has been the location of many historical and political events and has some pretty cool buildings.  We saw the Casa Rosada – we have a white house, they have a pink house!

Casa Rosada - click for photo gallery

Then we looked around the cathedral for a while.  My pictures really don’t do this justice as it was pretty impressive and the light was tough for photos.

Cathedral

We stopped at a cafe and sat outside enjoying the city and drinking a coffee.  There is a real cafe culture here and it’s fun to sit and watch the city go by.  After that we visited Florida St. which is known for it’s shopping – cool to see, but not of too much interest to us.  Then we walked up to school by way of the obelisk.

Obelisk

One of our most touristy days yet.  All of these spots were full of people with cameras, but it was still nice to see some of the big landmarks of this city.

We have had one negative note, which is that I accidentally left my memory card reader with my camera’s memory card in the computer at school and it looks as though it’s gone for good along with all of my New Zealand photos.  I had a lot that I hadn’t uploaded!  It’s pretty lucky that I’ve been uploading most of the major events, and I’ll be more careful from now on.  We’re also lucky because we have extra memory cards and a second reader and my camera is just fine.  Still really annoying, but of all the things that could go wrong it’s not too bad.

Well, you asked for it — some photos of our new apartment! Here you go:

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Not a bad place! It includes amenities like satellite TV (Los Simpson is a pretty good show to watch), air conditioning (!!!!!! muy importante!), and an easy walk to all sorts of public transportation. Second floor means it’s reasonably cool and not a long lift ride, and the neighborhood is not too shabby!

Buenos Aires the town is a lot more manageable when you have a space to yourself. Instead of going into a locker for your stuff, worrying about leaving food around, worrying about other people snoring, etc, you can have a nice relaxing evening after a long afternoon in school studying Spanish. Being relaxed allows us to enjoy some of the details of the town, like how there are little shops everywhere, selling fresh fruit! We made a ton of OJ out of 2 kilograms of oranges that we bought for a whopping 7 pesos (that’s $1.75 for those listening at home). Super sweet and delicious! Other interesting bits are the dogs lying around everywhere, busy following or imitating their owners, the way that little cafes and restaurants pop up in the strangest places, and the super cheap food. ¡Bueno!

Last night we had an amazing date at the parrilla (grill) at which we sampled some beautiful food and drink. For our wine we had a Malbec “Alamos”, which was really quite a delicious drink. I think it may be available in the US as well! For the “plata principal” Hazel had “Bife de Lomo”, an enormous Sirloin steak, cooked as the Argentines like it — “a punto”, which means medium-well in US steak terms. It’s a bit of a change, but the flavor of the Sirloin really comes out when the steaks are cooked to that doneness. I had pork chops ‘a la riojan’, which means that one chop had an egg on it and the other had ham and red peppers. This came with potatoes and peas. Along with a side of steamed chard we were in heaven! That was before dessert which was just a sugar overload. We decided to have the homemade chocolate mousse (Delicious) and a side of dulce de leche, which was almost too much!

It turns out that there is in fact dancing in this town, even in enero (January) when it seems many of the dances shut their doors for the holidays. We found one on Friday that was at a cute little space near our apartment! Hazel had the great intuition to pick a place that is only 7 blocks or so from a couple of dance venues in the city, including the main swing one here:
View Larger Map

We had a lot of fun trying to understand things like “put your weight on the right foot” or “stop on 6” etc all in very fast Castillano. It was a trip! The dancing was really entertaining too — there were about 30-40 dancers there of all levels. We’ll be back next week!

Avenida 9 de Julio with the Obelisk in the background

It’s such an adventure learning our way around this city.  Last night we decided to go out dancing and even managed to figure out the subway to get there.  We were a little early, so we found a restaurant and had a really nice dinner.  Even though we’re starting to understand the menus a bit, there’s a lot of guesswork involved every time we eat.  Justin has a very brave strategy of picking something at random and seeing what shows up.  So far this has resulted in a really tasty beef sandwich and a nice chef salad.  I’m a little more careful and have mostly not been surprised.  Our dinner last night was $7 each for dinner, dessert and a glass of wine.  All of the food here is very expensive and very delicious.  We then went over to the dance, and were surprised to hear loud thumps instead of music.  Turns out the dance doesn’t start up again until February.  Oh well.  We’re anxious to get out dancing soon.

Avenida 9 de Julio

Time for Spanish class now.

We made it to Argentina!!!  Still working on getting our feet back on the ground, but so far Buenos Aires has been pretty good to us.  It was a looooong trip to get here.  We woke up at the holiday park in Auckland at 5 am and then got a taxi to the airport.  It was a 3 hour flight from Auckland to Sydney and a pretty bumpy one at that.  We only had about 35 minutes in Sydney to transfer and found out when we got there that we had to go through security again.  I was bummed because I had bought a bottle of water in Auckland for the long flight and not even opened it yet and it got taken away at Sydney security.  We had just enough time to get another bottle of water before our flight started boarding.  This flight was the longest that either of us had ever done at a little over 13 hours.  It was a nice flight on a giant plane and the food was actually good.  My favorite part was right before it began to get dark outside they came by and gave us hot chocolate with a marshmallow and a cookie as a goodnight snack.  I was able to sleep a little, but Justin didnt get any.

The airport in Buenos Aires was incredibly chaotic.  It took us over an hour to buy some shampoo, get some money from an ATM and get change for the bus.  By this point we were pretty exhausted and quickly realizing that we dont speak Spanish.  We somehow managed to get the city bus and arrive at our hostel in one piece (2 hours later).

Since then weve managed to get around a little better and are starting to lose the deer in headlights look when people talk to us.  We have registered for a Spanish class and will spend 4 hours a day for the next 3 weeks learning how to speak.  Weve had one day already and its incredibly helpful to hear a native speaker and start to get our ears used to the language here.  Its actually quite different from Spanish in Spain or Latin America.

Language school common room

The Spanish school has internet, so we should be able to check in fairly regularly.  Thanks to everyone who is keeping us up to date on everything going on at home!  And sorry for the weird punctuation in this post…I havent quite figured out the keyboard.

View from the language school

Days spent: 49

Cost of postcard to US: NZ $1.90

Exchange Rate: NZ$1 = US$0.75

Average coffe price: NZ$3.75

Average price of petrol per litre: NZ$2.00  (that’s US$5.729/gallon!)

Vinnie’s average km/litre: about 11.  Not so bad.

Kms we could go on a full tank: about 300.  But sometimes the gas stations were REALLY far apart.

Fish and chips eaten:  Hazel 2.5, Justin 3.5 (unless we have another tonight!)

Pages of our NZ atlas not explored: 14 out of 91.  15%

Hours spent surfing with Steve: 6

Hours spent in caves: about 3

Hours spent in museums: about 5

Trigs climbed: 3

Most nights spent in same place: 4 (Christchurch, but on 2 separate visits)

Road most traveled: Lake Tekapo to Twizel.  5 times.

Most expensive internet: NZ$2 for 10 minutes.  Insane.

Longest camera exposure: 60 seconds

Biggest bird: Shy Albatross (we think)  8 foot wingspan!

Biggest fist: The shark caught on our cruise.  5 feet long!

Longest hike: 19.6 km

Hours until we leave: 13

Highlights:

• Our cruise with Captain Fiord and Fiordland Expeditions.  This was an overnight cruise and we truly cannot say enough about how much we loved it, how pampered we were, and how much fun we had with the fishing, kayaking, and amazing food.
• Paua Nite!  Chris and Leah-Anne are some of the most gracious people we’ve met anywhere!  And good cooks!  And they have awesome kids.  It was so incredible to meet people who live here and chat with them and hear about their lives and we absolutely hope some day they will come and visit us!!!
• Mt. Cook.  Incredibly beautiful.  Awesome DOC campground.
• Franz Josef glacier.  It’s so cool.
• Blackwater rafting and surfing.  Both absolutely great experiences and things I had never tried before.
• Christmas in Christchurch.  We liked that town!
• The Twisted Hop Brewpub.  Best beer in NZ.  Awesome sweet potato (kumara in NZ) fries.  Awesome atmosphere.
• Hiking and wildlife and all things outdoors.  There are birds and trails and swimming holes and seals and strange scenery and waterfalls and cool tree ferns EVERYWHERE here.  It is not hard to find an awesome outdoorsy adventure every single day.
• The Tongariro Crossing.  Totally unique.

Lows:

• Being rained out a couple of times.  Most notably at Arthur’s Pass where the trail had turned into a flooded river.
• One or two of the DOC camps were a little stinky.  Filthy smelling restrooms and right next to the highway.  That being said, we stayed in tons of them and it was only two that were a little unfortunate.
• Mosquitos and sandflys.  If you do a little research it’s not hard to predict where you’ll find them.  But they are totally evil and Vinnie (our van) had no screens on his windows.
• Queenstown madness.  This was actually in a couple of places.  Crowded town designed mostly to get tourists to spend their money.  Not hard to avoid, but a bit of an eyesore, and sad because the countryside around needs no money spent to have an amazing experience.  We mostly avoided these touristy places.
• NZ coffee.  The same everywhere, but always a milky, mediocre experience.  (Except in Raglan and one place in Christchurch where we had very good coffee)

All in all, hardly any lows, and only minor.  We’ve loved New Zealand and would definitely come back for another vacation, short or long.  It’s an incredible country to visit.  Easy to get around, friendly people, incredible scenery.