Age of Aquarius

Liz and I split up today for a little bit to have our own adventures after a little sightseeing. In the morning we visited a church called the Parroquia Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, which is very close to our hostel.

It was finished in 1934 and has a glaring neo gothic oddity, its missing steeple which was intentionally left out to symbolize human imperfection.

The interior has beautiful stained glass, thick white marble, and high arching ceilings painted with a royal blue and gold leaf stars.

Across the street from the church is a little shopping center square with some beautiful iron sculptures. My favorite was a little man on his horse. He was constructed what looked like stray bolts and nails and twisted horse shoes.




After walking for a ways together we split up and I found a bookstore which sold books in English. I picked up a novel on Che Guervara and a book of Ray Bradbury´s best stories. So im pretty happy with that. I then walked the short distance to the Plaza San Martin, where I had a lovely little conversation while pearched on my park bench feeding the pidgons with an old Italian man, Andrea Abrescia, about Theology and the meaning of life. He was an interesting character who is now retired but once taught Theology in British and French universities, has several books published on the subect, and claims to be the second best informed theologist in the world. God himself being the first of course, as was explianed to me, along with the meaning of life, haha. He was a very intriguing little old man who now writes poetry and lounges around the plazas of Cordoba thinking and writing. I got his address and phone number and an invitation for Liz and I to attend his latest poetry reading this Thursday.

XOXOX

We arrived in Cordoba yesterday after a 20 hour bus ride. Me with a possibly broken toe and Liz with the head cold of death. We are a sad and sorry pair at this ponit, and it has only been one week. Gimpy and sneezy are taking it easy today and seeing sights that are close to the hostel. I uploaded a few more pictures to the Iguazu post below. Dont be worried about us though, we just need to take it easy for a bit. Ill write more later, but in the meantime...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACKIE!!

and CONGRATULATIONS Uncle Juan!!!

Love everyone loads!!

Our hostel is amazing. It is called the Hostel Inn and as soon as we arrived from the bus station we took one look at the outdoor pool and what appeared to be a five star hotel lobby and decided to stay another night before we even reached reception. The best part is that its only 12 US dollars a night. Wonderful! We met some cute little Irish lads who we have been hanging out with. They are named Mikey, John, and Patty... oh yeah, his real name is Patty. Awesome, I know! There is a cute little cabanna bar outside and the Irish boys and myself used that to our full advantage on Wednesday night. It was a BBQ buffet and impromptu party with Brazillian show girls that looked like Las Vegas show girls, but danced like strippers in their little sequined thongs and high feather head dresses, then they got the entire crown involved to do a dance and conga line and other ridiculous alcohol induced booty shaking activities. Our hostel is hosting a ship party tonight that Liz and I are going to, and I guess it goes out to this private island and on the boat there is a bar and a dj and dancing for only 25 pesos, which is about 7 US dollars. I am so happy to be here!






Liz and I have been treking around Iguazu for the past three days and it is absolutely wonderful. The weather is beautiful, sunny, tropical and warm. There are palm trees and tropical flowers and millions of butterflies. We spent about 7 hours each day traipsing around the national park of Iguazu. The waterfalls are so incredibly vast and absolutely amazing we couldnt get enough on the first day so we went back for round two yesterday. I think my favorite of the hundreds of falls was the Garganta de Diablo, which means the Devils throat! When you are standing over this gargantuan waterfall it feels like you could fall off the edge of the earth. The mist from the bottom is flying so high it is covering your body with the cold water and the impact from the bottom, hundreds of feet down is so loud you have to yell to be heard.

Garganta del Diablo!!!



I also got to swim under a cute little fall that was still 100 or more feet high, but it was tiny so my ulimate and untimely death wouldnt be via waterfall crushing. It was called the Salto Arrechea and was surrounded by a little natural swimming pond.

It took us about an hour to hike to it down a path that looked like it came out of an enchanted forest, My Little Pony style. Everything here is so green it looks like its glowing, and the butterflies travel in packs of hundreds, im not sure there are even enough names in the english language to classify all the different vast colors that the butterflies wear. If you stand really still they will land on you and you can have a little friend traveling with you for a while.



We are leaving this magical place tomorrow to head to Cordoba which is in the middle of Argentina. It is supposed to have a large student population. Im excited to find an English bookstore because I finished my book two days ago and have been kinda bored with this book Liz gave me, so I just started rereading the old book, haha. Anyone have any good book suggestions for when I get there?

Love you all and I LOVE the comments! Keep sending them! XOXOXO
Click here to check out Lizs blog too!

Shinanigans!!! Thats all I have to say about Argentinian futbol games! Liz and I traipsed to a game yesterday afternoon with three girls from Ireland and the girls Susan from Holland. Now I have to say that I thought I had seen the best of crowds at UO sporting events. Like for example those guys who paint their entire bodies green and yellow, or the people in the pit who chant little songs at the players. In my mind those were die hard sports fans... Then I saw the Argentinian team Boca play Tigre. I can now say with pride that I have been to the most intense sporting event on the planet and survived the crowd, not the game, but the crowd. This game had the best hyper crazed, most caffinated sports fanatics that I could have ever participated with. They sang songs about their beloved team Boca for the ENTIRE game. Not one fan rested until half time and then for the 20 min the team was off the field everyone was dead silent, conserving energy for the next round. Unreal! There were flags hanging down onto the stands that were a hundred feet long and yellow cement blocks that fans would stand up on and dance while holding onto the flags for support, swinging their arms around in the air and holding on for dear life, oh and did I mention that they were dangerously close to falling 40 feet down to a stiff cement death. Man, talk about love for your team. Awesome! Sadly Boca lost so we moped while Tigre gloated across the way, but Im okay with that, because I cant even imagine the crowd explosion that would have occured had Boca won.

Today we went to the Recoleta Cemetery to see Eva Duarte de Peron´s grave and wander around a really swanky part of town. The cemetary was gorgeous. Every grave was at least 6 feet wide and varied in height. There were hundreds and wandering through felt like being in a miniature town with all the shops on the streets closed for the night. They were beautifully ornate with stained glass windows of jesus and the virgin, wonerfully intricate wooden carvings and marble architecture and spires that reached so high it hurt your neck to look upward. It was a very tranquil place to spend the day, especially since this is the first sunny day we have seen since we´ve arrived.

Liz and I are leaving the city tonight and heading to Iguazú Falls for the next few days. We are fed up with this cold city and need to be north for a while, closer to the equator. Then we are thinking about traveling to Cordoba in the middle of the country then maybe west over to Mendoza for a wine festival. Im thinking the atmosphere in the smaller towns will be a good change of pace for a while. Lots of love! Ciao!

So turns out I did go to that hostel party on Thursday night, surprise surprise right? haha. They played the worst wedding reception music ever! Songs like Love shack and YMCA, it was pretty bad American tunes. We mingled with our roommates who are awesome and from all around the world, Israel, Ireland, Canada, France, and Holland. The girl from Israel named Tali became my party buddy for the night and we decided to head out to a club at 2am (thats when they all start and go until sun up) after being peer pressured from our Irish roommate who claimed that the party scene in BA is ´Brilliant!´ haha. Liz headed home early but Tali and I shook our bon bons until we realized it was 430 in la manana. Then club really was uber brilliant though. They had this sort of carnival show with people dressed up in drag and on stilts and breakdancing on rollerskates. I woke up the next morning mith a skid mark on my leg!

Something that shocked me though was I got a fake 10 peso bill. Apparently counterfeit money is huge in Argentina. Our roommate from Holland, Susan got 100 peso fake bill which we think they switched out the real one for the fake one at the club. Rough.

Liz and I made it safe and sound to the bustling city of Buenos Aires this morning. After 18 hours of travel and a psudo-identity change. I made up a new Juli on the plane while talking to some hunky beefcake to kill time. Psudo-Juli is a fashionista who is coming into the BA afte the mondo awesome fashion month of August to play clean up crew and findo some manolo blancs to squeeze into her backpack, hahaa. After the rollercoaster ride American Airlines calls a flight we boarded a bus and got to the center of the city just in time to ditch our packs at the Millhouse hostel and go on a walking tour of a cute little district which was the docking point for many Italians imigrating to Argentina back in the day. It was a super cute little neighborhood where all the houses were painted in bright neon colors: canary yellows and turquoise, green, fucia, and mandarine orange.

Beautiful little houses construcxted out of beached wood and metal from the ships that carried the passengers to South America from Europe. Our tour guide was a girl in her mid 20s who was spanish/Euopean chik with short curly black hair and slim black jeans. we lunched at a little outside cafe and watched tango dancers strut thier sexy moves in the streets for tips. After a brief respite back to the hostel to claim our beds and lock all our shiz in our lockers we braved the streets once again to find a banco, which was a great success, after a series of mishaps that is, ha ha ha. As I write I am sitting in an internet hotzone google chatting with Erika and Lisa and I am so tired I have become dizzy. There is a party tonight at our hostel but I don´t know if im going to be able to make it, and that is saying a lot for me to miss a partay, So I am going to say Ciao for now! Lots of Love!

Over labor day weekend Charlie, Momacita, my Aunt Susan and I went to the amazingly pyromaniacal Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. We started out at 5am on Thursday morning lugging our trailer, Little Gary, with the big 80's teal green Chevy truck. By 11 or so we reached the playa after only two or three cliff related near deaths thanks to Jan behind the wheel. While the elders are figuring out how to get the trailer into camp Charlie and I take off on our bikes to go see the man. Once on the open playa Charlie speed races ahead of me, AGAIN, thus his new playa name is Speed Racer. As soon as we return Speed Racer and I situate ourselves in camp. We make a team decision that the best course of action is to drink thoroughly and steadily from the bottle of Jägermeister, all the while quoting from the youtube video My New Haircut. Through these shenanigans we managed to befriend John's Son, Derek (AKA Son) who is 20 and goes to TMCC. I met John last year and will henceforth refer to him as Mr. Clean because of his wonderfully smooth non-haired head, although the man can truly fix anything, MacGyver style, so thumbs up to that.
After drinking and bonding for a bit Charlie and Son and I take off on foot to go explore the Playa. We hop on an art car and wind up somehow at the big center camp at 6 o'clock which is a huge shade structure and has stages for people who want to act out plays or do dances or juggle or just roll around all over each other... for real, they do that. Now after leaving center camp things get a bit blurry, maybe it's because of all those jager bombs, but somehow we meet this wonderful little topless Brazilian girl named Laura who is filming a documentary. She is sweet and endearing and Charlie has the hotts for her so she is invited along to continue with us on our journey.
We decide to start heading back to our camp at 3 o'clock and get distracted along the way by the boobie bar, Barbie death camp, and numerous other new friends. Thursday night was a fabulous night of drugs and shenanigans. Then Friday though Sunday we rinsed and repeated, although on Friday and Saturday another guy in our camp let me borrow his fabulous white tutu which had blue glowing LED lights hanging on strings at regular intervals down through the taffeta folds. OH MY GOD! I couldn't have been more in love with this skirt if I were 6 years old and found out I was a legitimate princess of some far away land and a handsome prince charming was already lined up for me to marry. It was the most fabulous outfit I have ever worn.


Burning Man 2007.