screeching cicada!

Today we hiked in the reserve and were followed by a huge monkey who was super playful. Apparently some sickness just killed a bunch of monkeys so this guy who was gathering firewood told us that monkey probably lost his pack and thats why he was following us. We went to a small agate and amethyst mine and walked around the caves. I bought some agates and now am hauling more rocks in my backpack, geez, I need to cut down. I lady rescued my favorite coat for 20 pesos. She is totally a miracle worker, I feared it was unfixable. I´m leaving tomorrow. I will miss this place and all the beautiful shirtless boys, I mean, uhh, the beautiful scenery. I haven´t done a scrap of homework. I´ll think about it tomorrow....after I hit up the swimming hole one last time of course. Saw the cutest animal in the world today! It was a tiny baby deer, smaller than a cat, don´t know what its called but I´m going to find out!

post christmas lazies

This has really been a true vacation. I get to sleep in every morning to the sound of a blaring fan (you know how I like that). They are putting me up in my own room with its own bathroom apart from the house. I wake up, read a chapter or two from the book mom sent me, then work on my collages. Then I drink some iced coffee with Quique. Their house is beautiful and they have 2 cute dogs named Ican and Tieffy. No idea if I spelled that right. Yesterday we had a water fight, and I really hope to have another one today as its so hot out. We went out for icecream after dinner then played 7 games of pool. I lost 4 of them, grrrrr, but they were really close. You know I was just playing easy, tonight I won´t be so merciful.

Christmas cheer

So this was the most unique Christmas I´ve ever had. On Christmas Eve, Quique and I had a picnic at a small waterfall and spent the day swimming, jumping off rocks, eating incredibly juicy mangos and painting ourselves with the red mud. In the evening we listened to the Christmas CD mama sent me (I might have shed a tear or two), and then had an amazing dinner of a roasted pig (head intact), salads, asparagus pie, and these amazing beef rolls that his dad makes. The meat is soaked in milk for a long time then rolled up with peas and spices. It was really delicious. We counted down until midnight, then toasted with cider and danced around the living room while fireworks exploded outside. It was quite like New Years. Then they brought me a birthday cake and all sang feliz cumpleaños. It was so sweet! Earlier I had heard Quique yelling at his dog. Apparently the cake was hiding in his room and the dog got in and started licking the corner of it. I kept asking why he was mad at the dog and he wouldn´t tell me, but I laughed a lot about it later. Then we went out with his sister and her friends to a club and had some champagne. I didn´t get back until 4 in the morning (which is really early here, his sister got back at 9 am) and so we slept in through most of Chirstmas, but thats normal since we already opened all the presents at midnight. I opened my birthday presents and we spent the day lounging and playing madlibs. Then we went out to dinner at a nearby town and walked around afterwards, stopping by the casino. We decided to go in and spent 5 pesos (less then 2 dollars) and we won some then lost it all, of course. It was so creepy to see the people glued the machines just playing over and over, and if someone got up off one of the machines next to them, they would start putting coins in both machines! Yesterday we went to a wildlife sanctuary then to a place where the natives use fallen wood from the forest to create beautiful structures. We tried some artisan beer from Misiones and some special jam and dulce de leche. Then we went to the hummingbird garden and the woman tending it was so nice. She sat and talked to us, helping me identify all the hummingbirds as there were around 8 different kinds that frequented her garden. When she saw me looking for feathers, she got out a little box and dumped its contents into my book. It was about 20 hummingbird feathers! I couldn´t believe it, I was so excited! They are adorable. Two are simply extrodinary, a beautiful shiny copper color. I´ve been wanting to find a hummingbird feather for so long and now I have like 20. Most of them are black and white, from this one type of hummingbird, can´t remember its name. Those ones are probably easier to find then the darker colorful ones. Anyways, one other amazing thing about this place is how beautiful it is at night. You can see all the stars, its warm out, and the takataka come out. They are like fireflies but bigger and glow a bright green! They are pretty much the coolest thing ever and look like little fairies. Hope everyone is having wonderful holidays! I miss my family and hope they know that! I love you all!

sunshine and bus exhaust

Buenos Aires greeted me with a blazing car fire. Its great to be back in the old stompin grounds.

Not a good idea to eat an entire pineapple. My mouth hurts. What would I do with out agua con gas? Off to the boliche!

Iquazu waterfalls

So basically this place is Never Neverland. There were rainbows, millions of butterflies and tropical birds, sunny blue skys, lush trees and flowers and waterfalls everywhere.

hola hooola hooopla

We stayed a few days at the perfect setting for a horror film, a field station in the middle of patagonia desert along the coast. We drove trecherous dirt roads for miles, getting stuck in the sand every now and then so that we had to get out and push. We completely ruined the rental cars, it costed 100 usd extra per car when we returned them. Tarantulas scurried accross the road and bones littered the landscape. We were the first group of students to utilize this facility. It was converted from an old sheep ranch 5 years ago. I seriously expected people to start disappearing one by one. We were a couple miles from the coast and the beach was incredible, just cliffs and flat rock, covered in fossils. A mother/calf pair of southern right whales hung out less than 15 meters from shore, making awesome roars and calls next to a rock full of sea lions. I´ve never been to such a deserted beach or experienced a landscape as dramatic. It felt positively prehistoric. The first night we stayed there we found a scorpian in the kitchen. This turned out to be a nightly occurance since they were living in the walls. Poisonous snakes were not hard to find either, not in the building, but chillin in the pathways. Apparently there were so many black widows in the area that there was a station set up nearby that specialized in catching them to aid in making the antivenom. These were like the only things we didn´t encounter, thankfully. I finished the book Geek Love, loved it! Now I´m reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its totally annoying but I still can´t put it down. I´m runnin low on fictions. I went on a whale watchin excursion and got super close to a bunch of whales, the guides were breaking every law in the book. I saw kelp gulls landing on the backs of whales, eating them alive. Gross. I hate kelp gulls. Dusky dolphins chased our boat and jumped out of the water, sometimes over eachother, like a dance. Surreal. Just like Iguazu felt like Neverneverland, this felt like Little Mermaid or something. We camped on the beach and it was my first time sleeping alone since I´ve been here. I´ve been on this 90s kick lately. A lot of ratm, pumpkins, cranberries, ect. Trying to recreate my childhood? Minus the angst. I just found out that Pete and Nessa are planning to come down here and want to kick it. So insanely excited! I realize I totally hate facebook. It doesn´t make me feel connected to people. Just the opposite, I feel totally apart. Its useful for what it is, but I don´t feel good about it. I had a nightmare about the postal system here. Impossibly long lines followed by rapidfire spanish while the lady shakes my package then hands it back. Rough translation: rattles to much? I turn to leave because there is nothing else I can do. Wait, that wasn´t a dream. I guess I won´t be sending my loves care packages any time soon. Its a challenge for me to complete the simplist tasks here. I will ask something in previously rehearsed spanish, get a confused look, then repeat myself a few times. Suddenly it clicks. They go, ahhhhh, then repeat exactly what I said back to me as if it was completly different. Then they laugh. Thats a good scenerio. Bad is when they get annoyed or bring me something completly different then what I asked for and I just accept it because I don´t want to bother repeating the situation.

i was gettin gettin gettin getgetgetget gettin..

After 35 hours in a bus I arrived in Puerto Madryn last Sunday.

Here´s the summary: This week I snorkled with sea lions, saw a dog car surf, got hooked on soda water, hung out with sea elephants, saw a giant tarantula and some right whales, celebrated katrina´s birthday at a fancy seafood restaurant, found a bar that had microbrews and enjoyed my second ipa in argentina (they are quite rare here), climbed down a cliff full of fossilized shells (from the Pacific ocean, moved here from glaciers), couldn´t put down the book Geek Love, biked 26 km on an ass-bruising rental bike (4 classmates and my professor wiped out, Levi got a minor concussion after deciding to go down a steep cliff and landing on his face), walked through a penguin colony and nearly froze to death from the arctic winds, and finally caught up in my species journal after sitting in a cafe for five hours drinking irish coffees. Tonight, boliche? Time to put on my fancy shirt.

p.s. does anyone even read this?

give it up, baby give it up!

The last week has almost been more than I can take in. My class arrived in Missiones on Tuesday morning(ish) after a 17 hour bus ride that consisted of the worst American movies in existence, more alcohol offered than water (dehydration), and incredible reclining chairs, its one saving grace. Its embarrassing how much stuff we are carrying; giant backpacks on front and back, causing us to stagger and walk awkwardly down stairs, totally conspicuous and disoriented. Reaching the hostel made everything better though. It has a pool next to the outdoor covered kitchen and hammocks. We had dinner and seminar poolside and this just totally beats any class setting I´ve ever had in my life. Its hot and we are surrounded by jungle. I´m sharing a room with a girl and guy (Morgan and Katrina) and it even has a tv so we can watch south park dubbed in spanish and horrible kung fu! So on to the good parts. Wednesday we hiked to the Iguazu waterfalls, the most beautiful, breath-taking, mind-shattering natural phenomenon I have ever experienced. Words cannot describe. They are massive and were created from edges where lava stopped flowing. Along the paths we stopped to identify birds and other wildlife. I saw giant tucans, monkeys (one with a baby on its back, another that threw an orange at me which I tried to eat but it was overripe, on that tried to hit us with a stick while sucking on its foot, and another with a hard-on that was growling at us while playing with its balls), coatis (raccoon like creatures with long noses that will not hesitate to rummage through your backpack), turtles, and an incredible amount of butterflies. The next day I woke up at 5am to go bird watching. I saw almost 40 different species and was totally mesmerized. I cannot believe I ever went hiking without binoculars before because they are the greatest things ever. Now I totally want a pair for my birthday. We also saw a crocodile swimming through the water, looking so much like a dinosaur. I have a new fear: bullet ants. Giant ants that are nearly as long as my thumb, shiny black and poisonous. Their bite is like a bullet wound and they are everywhere in these jungles. Like you take a few steps, look down and there´s another one. Some part s of the year they even have wings so they can land on you. No bueno! Last night I jumped in the pool after dinner with my clothes on and lost a hundred pesos. Then I got bite next to my eye by a mosquito and looked like Quasimodo for a second. But my money was recovered the next day and then we went to a hummingbird garden nearby. These people have been feeding birds in their garden for 10 years so it was completely full of them! I saw like 6 different species of hummingbirds. More to say but out of time. Peace!

the cool things i saw today..

yeah, totally in the wild...

its days like these thatll make you happy.

So we shocked the whole hostel by putting vegetables on the asado. We were told that that was unheard of here. So delicious! Last Friday I went to the zoo with Quique. We paid 2 pesos to ride a merry-go-round only to be yelled at once we got on it because its for children only. Oh well, we got half a ride anyways. Monday we went to the most amazing drum show in a really cool venue. Totally want to take Lindsey there. Got a whole list going for her. Anyways, its been really funny ordering at restaurants and getting something completly different then what you ask for. Like a giant steak for example, or a leg of chicken. I think everyone is in on this big joke or something.

its raining gatos y perros!

Got a B plus in my spanish class, just finished the finals. Time to celebrate, but its totally raining. We leave on Monday! So excited!

battle in buenos aires

So I don´t know where to start. This week has been incredible. Got to see rage against the machine and they just tore it up, but the best part was the crowd. Everyone sings along to the guitar in unison rather then the lyrics. The last song they played was killing in the name of and it just started pouring down rain which was amazing because everyone was so hot and sweaty. It was just beautiful and so fun, I think one of the best concerts I have ever been to. Sooo, it takes way to much concentration to write a decent blog post and its pretty impossible since I am always surrounded by people at the hostel, so this is it guys. Thats all the attention I can muster.

And more pictures..





















So saggy crotch pants are apparently all the rage here....had to try them on.