Argentina!

That's right! I'm running around Argentina with Kristin this week.

We're having a fabulous time!

We spent the first 2 days of my trip in Buenos Aires. Kristin is staying in BA for a few weeks to study Spanish. So she's renting an apartment with a kitchen (very helpful!) and got there a week before I did.

the view from Kristin's apartment... I can't believe my piddly little camera got this picture

Fiona wrote a nice post about how it's important for ex-pats to just be plain ol' tourists sometimes. I have to say that it's kind of nice to just be whisked around to typical tourist-y things with other tourists and with English-speaking tour guides so I don't have to think as hard, going to easy-to-manage tourist-y bars and restaurants, etc. After the mental workout of figuring out how to live in a foreign country, getting around as a tourist is easy-peasy.

I've only spent 2 days in Buenos Aires, so I'm not an expert, and I'm sure after living here I'd get a deeper understanding of it and would think differently, but so far it just feels kind of generic (but keep in mind that I'm just doing typical tourist-y stuff, which I'm sure is causing this feeling). Kristin keeps comparing it to New York. But it's fun because almost everyone I've met has been super friendly (albeit curt and efficient), it has a lot of beautiful parks and plazas and a lot of great bars, and everything is huge and clean and organized.

Kristin and me on the 2nd widest Avenue in the world 

I'm not sure if other Americans living abroad do this, but whenever I go to other, bigger, foreign cities, I end up eating very little local food because I'm so excited to be in a big city with immigrants again where I eat my tried and true international favorites. The last time I was in Sao Paulo with dear buddy Bruna, we went to a Thai restaurant. In Buenos Aires, Kristin and I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant, and I've been drinking only cheap margaritas and even cheaper wine all week (the wine is local!). But I know, I know, I need to get to an Argentinian parrilla. I will, I promise.

Trying to speak Spanish again is quite the doozy. But I am rockin' the Portunhol! I get away with it and people are nice about it because I'm young and sprightly and I smile a lot. If I think before I speak (psh), I can usually get out a sentence that's like 90% Spanish and only 10% Portuguese. But sometimes if I'm feeling lazy or if I can't remember the Spanish word, I just speak in Portuguese and people figure it out. My new word is Obrigracias. Because I start saying obrigada and remember to say gracias halfway through. My drunken metaphor from last night was that, in terms of comfort and self-ness, English is my skin in this freezing and harsh terrain. Spanish is like a nice thin jacket that'll get me by but leaves me lacking something, and Portuguese is like a big warm coat that I can wiggle around in. Eh? Eh? You guys like it?

Anyway, right now, Kristin and I are in USHUAIA!! “The end of the world!” Patagonia! This place is beeeaauauuuuutttiiiiffuuulllll.

I've never seen any terrain like it. Kristin and I thought it could be accurately described as “tundra”, but apparently the word “tundra” only refers to northern regions. Wikipedia refers to the land here as “a region of steppelike plains”. Ushuaia proper has a ton of trees, but our airplane stopped in a city called Rio Gallegos, and it didn't have a single tree. So, so interesting:

I have a reoccurring dream in which I'm stuck out in the ocean at a place that looks just like this.

Yes yes, so Ushuaia! In case you don't remember from my other posts or already know, it's considered (by one definition) the southernmost city in the world.
It's just. Gorgeous.
Pristine waters. Snow-capped mountains (according to our taxi driver, some are technically glaciers). Ancient forests. Islands. Tiny little Scandanavian-style houses and a quaint downtown area.

We're staying in a fantastic hotel, which I'll write more about later once I'm not in it.

On our first day, we went to... bum bum bum.... a penguin island!! We had to take a bus ride to a small pier, from which we took a tiny freezing boat ride to the secluded island where 2 penguin species migrate to.

OMG! Penguins!

all those little black and white dots are penguins!

Then today, we went to the national park to hike around. Again, freezing but breathtaking. The cold makes everything feel so clean and fresh. I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Can you see the huge mountain in the background?

Did I mention the cold?? The high today was 43F / 6C without factoring in wind chill. Quite possibly the coldest place this California-born traveler has even been. But part of it may just be psychological, knowing that I'm so close to Antarctica.

Tomorrow is our last day. We check our early but fly out late, so we're leaving our bags at the hotel and then going on a tour of the Beagle Channel (which includes a bird island!).

Speaking of birds, I've been so disappointed with what I thought was going to be a bird-filled vacation. The birds in Buenos Aires are the same ones we have in my part of Brazil, and the birds here in Ushuaia are elusive little stinkers! I can hear all kinds of different ones, but I can almost never see them up in the trees. Sometimes I'll catch one that just landed on a fence or something, but they're so quick. So I haven't gotten ANY pictures yet! :( :(

Well, I'll get the rest of the pictures up once my internet is faster. Some of the penguin pictures are already up on the Flickr album on the right side of the screen.

It's midnight now, and fireworks just started going off over the Beagle Channel. They're shaking the hotel room walls as I type. The 12th is the day that the city of Ushuaia honors as its "birthday". Time to celebrate one of the most beautiful places in the world. :)

Read More about my Buenos Aires and Ushuaia trip here.