Next in the rapid-fire posting: our trip to Bariloche!

Our trip to Bariloche, in the lakes region, was originally supposed to be next weekend but once Annie found out she had to go home early, we pushed it up in our schedule.  My teacher thought the story was pretty funny when I had to tell her why I missed 2 days of class (my friend's Grandma is really sick, so we are going on vacation a week early), but it was worth it!

Bariloche is known for skiing in the winter and beautiful hiking in the summer.  It's also the "Switzerland of Argentina" since it has a sizable Swiss population (that makes delicious artisanal chocolates!) as well as beautiful Swiss-like terrain.  Apparently it also used to be a haven for former Nazis, but we chose to pleasantly ignore that sordid piece of history and enjoy the brunette Heidi that we found in Colonia Suisa:


The first day we "hiked" around the Lakes on Circuito Chico through the National Park. I put hike it quotes b/c it was completely paved, but it was a really nice day out, and I couldn't stop taking pictures because everything was just so beautiful. We also stumbled upon a delicious chocolate shop and adorable tea house:

On Circuito Chico:






We saw a chicken cross the road!!


and a family of ducks:


In town we also caught up with our friend Jacquie from Santiago (who took classes at ECELA in Bariloche for a week), did a tour around the various chocolate shops ("podriamos probar" became a favorite phrase), and ate fondue!

The next day we took a boat tour of the various lakes (each one a different color b/c of the various minerals in the water), making it all the way to the Chilean border where we drank delicious "chocolate con coñac"and saw a spectacular waterfall.  Sadly, the day was a bit overcast so the pictures are nowhere near as spectacular as the views were.

Shameless glamor shot on the docks:


So yeah, I totally fell in love with Bariloche - the calm atmosphere, beautiful scenery, and sordid Nazi past (ok, not that part). You would love it too if even from your cheap hostel you got to see this:

Now back to Buenos Aires to say goodbye to Annie and explore the rest of the city!

with love,
co

Mendoza and first days in Buenos Aires

Readers, it has been far too long without an update: I’ve been in Argentina for THREE WEEKS without a single post about it (luckily I can change the time stamp on these posts so it looks like I've been more diligent)! So, to catch you all up to speed, I’m going to do a few brief (for me!) posts about what I’ve been up to since arriving.

We left Santiago in a bit of a rush on Friday afternoon, right after my classes, and headed to Mendoza - the famous wine region of Argentina. I think I was expecting the entire area to be like our experience at Matetic, which is of course near impossible. Instead, Mendoza is about the business of wine; at times it almost felt industrial. (That said, there are over 1,300 wineries in the region, and our tour took us to 3 of them, so I’m providing you with quite a limited view). Our tour was nicely balanced and included: a large, industrial company which does a lot of private labels; a small organic vineyard which still uses a horse to plow the field; and a vineyard focused on small batch production for the international market. Afterwards we had a ridiculous lunch and tons of wine... so delicious!

In Argentina!

Lopez was definitely a commercial Bodega (winery - not corner store!)

A horse plowing the fields


Maryin a wine cask:


The beginning of our luch spread:



Sunday we got to Buenos Aires, got into our apartment and met our roommate – Sonja, a design engineer from Toronto who is thinking about moving down to Argentina permanently.

My apartment in Buenos Aires is in a neighborhood called Once, which is kinda like the Lower East Side in that it was once a heavily Jewish neighborhood, and now is full of whole-sale shops. There is still a pretty big orthodox and Lubovitch presence, but otherwise BA’s wealthy Jews have left for greener pastures. Once is what one of my professor’s called “the real BA” – dirty, loud, gritty. One day walking home I saw 2 dogs gnawing at what must have been a cow’s femur from one of the local butcher shops. No one around me seemed to notice. Best part: Sonja said she had seen the same femur (with maybe a little more raw meat on it) 2 blocks away about 5 hours earlier. Meaning that dogs had been dragging around a huge part of a dead cow around my neighborhood for half the day and no one had put an end to it; probably, no one else even noticed. So, yeah, the neighborhood is dirty, loud and gritty. We have porno shops and neighborhood drunk guys. My apartment building is none of these things, though. It’s an adorable building with about 4 apartments and 2 resident turtles.

Once borders an old, wealthy neighborhood: Recoletta, which is where my school is. So on the first day I was a very good tourist and went to the Recoletta cemetery, famous for its mausoleums and also because Evita Peron is buried there.

The rest of the week was spent getting used to the new school, new city, new apartment. I ate Argentinian beef and tried to get used to the Argentinian accent (yo = jo, calle = cashe). We also went to go see “This is It!” the Michael Jackson movie. Unlike Scrooge, it was in English.

Even the malls have beautiful fountains:

Quick Note Re: I <3 Obama bag

Nikoletta and Gillian.  The bag in the picture is not mine - and I'm not even holding it! It's Tyesha's bag that she bought at some political thing during the election, but you can find them easily on CafePress in whatever style you might want. 
The Chileans LOVED her bag.  In general, most everyone we've met likes Obama (although found the Nobel Prize ridiculous), hates GW Bush, and when polite have expressed confusion as to why he was in office for 2 terms.  The Latins have been more more respectful when discussing the US, whereas the Europeans have been more judgmental to the point of being rude. No one seems to think much about China or the other BRIC countries, which is funny since after B-school all I can think about is how in the not-so-distant future the US's bills to China will come due and I'll have to go wash dishes in Shanghai.
Anyway, that is the story of I <3 Obama.

xo
co

Sunday in La Serena and Goodbye Santiago!

We slept in Sunday, and after figuring out that we wouldn’t be able to go to Isla Dama to see the penguins, sea lions and other adorable marine life, we stowed our bags at the train station and started exploring the city of La Serena. La Serena is Chile's second oldest city, founded 2 yrs after Santiago in 1543. It is well-known for it's beautiful beaches and temperate climate: it is rain-free about 9 months of the year, and never really gets cold. The colonial renaissance style of architecture is also really beautiful, and we ended up walking down a few streets that were simply charming.
We wound up on the beach, where I laid out for a bit (finally getting a tan in Latin America!)

After a relaxing ocean-side lunch we made our way into the center of the city. Every Chilean town seems to have a Plaza de Armas, which is a great place to sit and enjoy the city center. Usually there are a few vendors with toys and candies.

AND, do you remember the ads for power wheels from when we were younger? As a city kid, there was no way I would ever get one of those so obviously I wanted one really badly. I’m not sure I ever even told my mom how much I wanted to be able to drive Barbie’s pink jeep around town. My cousins had a lower-tech, Flintstone’s style car like this one: http://edge2.dealsdirect.net/images/products/27688/1/product1_27688_600x600.jpg
Which I coveted -- along with their He-Man/Shira castles, full collection of Care Bears and house with working fireplaces-- throughout my childhood. Anyway, all this to say that kids in Chile can rent these awesome vehicles and DRIVE them around the town square. BRILLIANT! Here is a picture (yes, Nikoletta I am now one of those creepy people who take pictures of children in parks):

Some other pictures from our exploration of La Serena:
This Church was closed on Sunday:

Astoria in Chile:

It was starting to get dark and we still had to wait a few hours for our overnight bus back to Santiago, so from the park we went to… THE MALL:

and in the Mall we went to the movies! In Spanish!

I basically understood 25% of the dialogue in Las Fantasmas de Scrooge, but since I am obsessed with Christmas I know Dickens’ A Christmas Carol well (let’s be honest: I know the Mickey Mouse version well!) Also, that movie was SCARY! I was jumping out of my seat the whole time – I can’t believe it was marketed to children!
From the movies to the bar in the bus station, where we drank them out of mini bottles of red wine:

Then it was back to Santiago for a full day of class (not sure why I thought this would be a good idea).
During my last week in Santiago, I tried to do some touristy things and some real-life stuff as well. We walked up Cerro Santa Lucia and visited the Presidential palace, drank one last bottle of wine at Bar Liguria and had a picnic in the park by school. Of course, we also went to our last MiercolesPo – the party for foreigners and the Chileans that love them – and danced the night away.

I cannot express how sad I was to leave Santiago. It was such a nice month and I made great friends that I hope to see again (some I definitely will: 5 of us are traveling on to Argentina). The 4 weeks flew by fast and Annie keeps telling me I’ll love Buenos Aires as well. Before then, we’re off to Mendoza for the weekend to drink delicious Malbec!

Chao (can you believe that’s how it’s spelled here?!)

co

Fin de Semana in La Serena, day 1

This weekend Annie, Tyesha, another classmate - Jacqui - and I went to La Serena, a city that is about 475 km north of Santiago.  We took an overnight bus Friday night, leaving around 11:30 (after washing faces, brushing teeth, and putting on PJs, of course):

After a (relatively) comfortable bus ride, we got to La Serena around 5:30am.  Our hostel was awesome and let us go to sleep for a few hours in the room that we were taking Saturday night.  They also arranged our tours for the day: to the Elqui Valley (home of Pisco, Chile's brandy) and the observatory Mamalluca. 

In the morning (as opposed to the hours around dawn!) we re-awoke and hopped onto a tour to the Elqui Valley.  Having booked it through our hostel at 6 in the morning, we had no clue what we were in store for, but it turned out to be awesome!  The drive East from La Serena into the Valley demonstrated once again how gorgeous the Chilean countryside is.

The region is well-known for its agriculture because of the great climate and mineral-rich soil in the region.  In fact, the area typically yields 3 harvests a year, which our tour guide insinuated was really good and sounds pretty impressive to me.  They grow lots of strawberries, avocados, lettuce, spinach, artichokes and GRAPES... table grapes, wine grapes and pisco grapes.  All of the produce I've had while here - especially the strawberries - here have been ridiculously good so this region is doing something right. According to Annie, the produce goddess, Chile's grapes are the best and are one of the reasons we ended up coming to Santiago to study.  The only problem: Chile's table grapes are solely for export! Annie was relegated to staring at the grapes from our car:

Needless to say, Grapes are an incredibly important export for Chile.  We learned how to tell the difference between vines for the various types of grapes, and also learned how the farmers manipulate the sugar content for various markets (Germans like their grapes less sweet than other markets) by using light shields, like the white one seen below which will reflect light, as opposed to a dark net which will concentrate light (and therefore sugar) in the grapes.

These nets are shielding the delicate crops from the strong valley wind:

On the tour we also went to:

• The Puclaro Dam, which had this really cool art installation (the horns of this Toro were also a harp, being played by the wind):

• The city of Vicuna, birthplace of Chilean poet Gabriella Mistral.  As the first Latin American, and only Latina, to win the Nobel Prize, she's quite a hero and her likeness is everywhere.  For example, in the town fountain (creepy? yes.):

• The town of Pisco, re-named by a former Chilean President so that Chile would also have a claim on Pisco (there is a rivalry over this brandy between Peru and Chile).  The town is adorable and we went to a gorgeous place to have some pisco in Pisco.  It had tons of old world charm (but new world amenities!), just look at this picture:
  

• Lunch at a typical Chilean place, where they use Hornos del Sol (solar ovens):
  

• A Pisco distillery:

• And plenty of places to take in spectacular views of the valley
  

That evening we went out to the Mamalluca observatory.  For a New Yorker, seeing the stars is a real treat, and the Elqui Valley boasts some of the clearest night skies in the world, so there are a bunch of scientific observatories dedicated to astromony.  There are also a few dedicated to tourists, and Mamalluca is the most famous of these.  We saw Jupiter so clearly through their telescope that we could see its rings, and its two planets (did you know that Jupiter is 300x the mass of the Earth?!).  I finally got to see the Southern Cross and even neighboring galaxies (the Magellanic Clouds) with my bare eyes!  Seeing the constellations, so many stars (new blue ones and old, almost-dying red ones) was awe-inspiring... I even teared up, dear Readers, thinking about our Creator and what else might be out there.  When you get the chance to do this, you should.
Our tour guide was an adorable and petite Chilean woman with a cute, high voice that was especially hysterical while she was showing us digital representations of the sun dying in a few millions years: "it is not fun to see how we will die, but that's it.  Here goes Mars... there goes Earth... oh, we died again."  It may not sound so funny, but it was.  Here are the pictures of Jupiter:

Stay tuned to hear all about Sunday in La Serena!