Cordoba, Argentina!

I took a quick trip to Cordoba to visit Argenta Price, a Fulbrighter who's just finishing up her project there. She only has two weeks left! I also was able to tour around the city and spend a good amount of time at the city's memory museum. I was only there for about 48-hours, but it was a lot of fun. I got to meet Argenta's friends from her lab, who are AMAZING!

Here are a few pictures of the weekend:



This is an awesome map of the secret military detention centers throughout Cordoba. I spent most of the afternoon at the Memory Museum in downtown Cordoba, reading through documents, looking at the exhibits, and watching this awesome film!



A lot of the focus of the museum I went to was about how books were considered subversive material and many were banned and burned during the military dictatorship. They had copies of many books that were banned during the era, including The Little Prince and the Latin American Bible!




This church was so big, you need two pictures to show the whole thing!



This is a Jesuit mission in downtown Cordoba. I think there are 5 Jesuit missions in Cordoba that have been named UNESCO World Heritage Sites.



Argenta and this cool girl from the Philippines, Rizza, at the Jesuit mission.



Cathedral in the main square in downtown Cordoba.

San Antonio de Areco

Today I went with two of the lovely ladies I met from the Google office, Eugenia and Geraldine to the campo. We went to a little town called San Antonio de Areco, which is about two hours outside of Buenos Aires. It is the capital of gaucho country-- gauchos are Argentine cowboys. Today was a special celebration in the town so there were lots of activities. We went to a parade of all of the local estancias (family horse ranches) and we went to a horse show where they paraded their horses around and competed in games. I've put up a few pictures-- be warned these are almost all pictures of horses :)

The actual truck used by the volunteer fire department :)



More of the parade.



There were all of these little kids riding on ponies and I just thought they were so cute!





Ok last one :)



This is the church at the center of the parade.



Ok I couldn't help myself!



The beautiful campo-- it's so nice to escape the city sometimes and just breathe some clean, country air.



Eugenia and the gaucho. This is how this conversation went:
Gaucho: "Do you like my horse?"
Leslie: "Yes, I think you're horse is beautiful."
Gaucho: "Would you like to take a picture of the horse?"
Leslie: "Uhhh ok that sounds great. I'd love to take a picture of your horse."



Typical Argentine gaucho wares.



Horses!



Gauchos!



Aaah so cute!



Here's a video of a bunch of different estancias parading around their various horses.



And here we have a traditional gaucho game called something to the effect of "La Corrdia del Cuero" or running of the cowhide leather.

To see the compete album of pictures from today, click here!

Iguazu!

After we got back from Bariloche, we spent the weekend in Buenos Aires. Then we were off again to Iguazu Falls, Argentina. It was a bit cold, to be honest, but the scenery was spectacular. Because our hotel was directly in the national park, we would leave early in the mornings and basically have the entire place to ourselves!

Here are some pictures:



The view from our space-age hotel.



This is the long-distance view of La Garganta del Diablo, otherwise known as Devil's Throat, which is the coolest waterfall at Iguazu.



Walking outside of our hotel.



It's so easy to take pictures of pretty things :)





Pretty, pretty things.



Mom being very brave :) (She's afraid of heights!)



We were able to go on a moonlight hike to La Garganta del Diablo, which truly was amazing. Unfortunately it was very cold, but still worth the trip :) The pictures do not do the experience justice, but at least they can give you an idea of what we were able to see.



Just down, down, down forever.





And some videos of the waterfalls-- there was so much water coming over the falls the days we were there.



This is the panoramic view from our hotel room.

See the rest of the pictures on my Picasa web album here and here!

Bariloche

Very early the next morning, we were off to the airport for our first to Bariloche, Argentina which is a popular ski resort town. We had an absolutely amazing time touring the town, taking hikes, spending a day visiting an even smaller lake town called Villa La Angostura, and buying lots of delicious Bariloche chocolate. Apparently Bariloche has the best chocolate in all of Argentina.

Here are some photos:




This is the view from our hotel :)





Our beautiful hotel.



On our second day, we took a long car trip with a local named Enrique out to Villa La Angostura. In the morning, the weather was so cloudy, you couldn't see anything at all. But as the clouds burned off, the views were absolutely spectacular. And according to Enrique, everything was "maravilloso." You would only think this was funny if you had been sitting in the car with Enrique for 10 hours.





On our way to Villa La Angostura, we had to stop at this small cove of arayan trees (I have no idea idea how this translates into English, but apparently Walt Disney got his inspiration for the trees in Bambi from this forest.)



Apparently this is the shortest river in the world :)



Us in Villa la Angostura at Nahuel Wapi Lake.





Snobby Llao Llao Hotel-- blech.



Us on the beach.







Mamuschka Chocolates-- by far the best chocolates in Bariloche.





The lakes are so blue in Bariloche!

Check out the rest of the pictures on my Picasa web album by clicking here!

I haven't posted in ages!

Agh sorry for not keeping up-to-date with the blog. My parents were here for two weeks and my friend, Frank, is currently here so I've got lots to write about. We took several trips while my parents were here, so I will address each trip in a separate post. It was absolutely wonderful to have my parents here-- definitely recharged my batteries. I was very sorry to see them go :(

My parents were actually supposed to arrive on Monday morning, but because of fog and the fact that the main airport in Argentina is currently not using radar to land planes (another bureaucratic nightmare that further proves to me that I could never live in Argentina long-term) they were forced to spend their entire first day in a different city to which their plane was diverted. At least they made some friends!

The "first" night my parents were actually in Buenos Aires, we went with Frank to a famous tango club in San Telmo called el Viejo Almacen. It was quite an experience-- we had a very nice dinner across the street and then were shuttled to the theater to enjoy a two-hour production of tango dances, tango singers, Andean musicians, and a full orchestra. It was veeeery touristy but was still so much fun.

Here are some pictures :)

Mom and Dad still a little bleary-eyed from the looong flight down here.

Me and Frank.

Aaaw the family (well at least three out of four of us!)

Video from Viejo Almacen!

And here we have some amazing Andean musicians :)