Weekend

This weekend was busy, in a productive way!

On Saturday, Jamila and I braved the rainy weather and took a bus to the Mueso de Bellas Artes in Recoleta. It's on Avenida de Libertador, a beautiful long avenue of gorgeous apartment buildings and tree-lined lanscaping.
The museum itself was alright. It was free, a plus, and poorly curated, a minus. Rooms seemed to be organized with no rhyme or reason, mixing eras and origens. The best parts were the Pop Art section and the Argentinian art section.

After artwork, we went with our friend Mariah and her host sister Jimena to café La Biela, a classic café that overlooks the famous Recoleta Cemetary. It was a very nice merienda (snack), with delicious coffee and scrumptious bittersweet chocolate accompanying our drinks.

We then headed on to a birthday party of another person on our program, Chelsea. Her host mom (and host aunt) planned a pizza birthday party, cooking 4 different kinds of pizza (the best was by far spinach and ricotta), a brownie cake with dulce de leche, cream, and merengue, and birthday hats. It was really fun and super generous of her to host us all.


Today Jamila and I went to the San Telmo fair. On Sundays, it seems as though all the streets in the neighborhood are lined with vendors of antiques, artwork, handicrafts, you name it. When we got tired, we took a break in Pride Café, a small café with great vibes and delicious and inexpensive food. http://www.adondevamos.com/bares/Pride-Cafe/1529/?b6=11&js=0 I got Caprese Brusqueta and Jamila got a walnut brownie with a class of milk. We shared both of them.

Besides enjoying the city, Jamila and I have both been busy doing research for our independent study projects, conducting interviews, and writing a LOT in Spanish! I'll let Jamila post about her topic later, but my topic explores identity formation in the Sephardic Jewish communities of Buenos Aires. As some of you may know, Buenos Aires has a very large and diverse Jewish population. The Sephardic members of the community are descendants of people from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and from the Middle East. The majority of people I have interviewed have been of Syrian descent. It has been a very interesting research process and I will happily show the final product to anyone willing to read over 20 pages in Spanish!

This week, my parents and sister come to visit me in Buenos Aires. It will be a nice excuse to do any touristy things I haven't yet done and eat some yummy food!

Delicious Food

Last night we had an incredible dinner with Ellen at Lelé de Troya, a beautiful restaurant in Palermo. The food was Mediterranean, but simple, classic food. We were served bread with a delicious spread of carrot, ginger and honey. We got some "cheap" rose wine, but it tasted delicious to us! For our main course, Jamila ordered an incredible lamb dish with a rich chocolate sauce and a nice tomato-mint-basil salad. I got Salmon Rosado, a great piece of fish with a ginger/coconut milk sauce. Ellen also got the salmon rosado. The food was rich and complex and completely delicious. The restaurant also had great vibes- it's in an old mansion, and each room is painted a different color. We sat in the red room, on relaxing couches. For dessert, we ended our incredible meal with a chocolate volcano and white chocolate ice cream. Ellen also got a chocolate dessert, and hers came with a dessert wine! Overall, it was an amazingly lovely night. It was a little more expensive, but super delicious and a great ambience.
http://leledetroya.com/

Compared to one of the other fancy restaurants Jamila and I went to with a group of our classmates, Quimbombo ( http://www.quimbombo.com.ar/ ), the food at Lelé de Troya was much better. Quimbombo was more trendy and tried to do middle eastern/Indian fusion food, but fell short on some of the flavors we were used to. To them, curry was mustard.

We've been really fortunate to eat at some of Buenos Aires's loveliest restaurants, and will keep updates on any other food adventures.

Grafitti Mundo

Before leaving for Iguazu, Jamila and I, along with some of our classmates, took a tour of street art in Buenos Aires with Grafitti Mundo on Thursday. http://graffitimundo.com/en/
It was a cool opportunity to see lots of different street art, a lot of which was political, of many different aesthetic influences. We also walked through some cool neighborhoods, boutiques and restaurants. It gave a different feel of the city.

The photo above was probably one of my favorite works.

Food You Must Eat

My former employer told me the only updates that matter are those about food/drink.

In honor of Dan Kully, here is a list of food you must eat when coming to Buenos Aires. A list of cool restaurants/bars are up next!

• Medialunas (croissants)
• Churro relleno (filled with dulce de leche dipped in chocolate)
• An amazing lollipop called Pico Dulce
• Chocolate Marroc (Like Reese's kinda)
• Submarino (hot milk + chocolate bar)
  
• HELADO (Tramontana, Dulce de Leche granizado)
• Empanadas (carne is best)
  
• Alfajores (sandwich cookies with dulce de leche)
  
• Parrilla (barbecue! meat!)

....And wash it all down with some Malbec from Mendoza!

Last Thoughts

We stayed at Hostel-Inn in Puerto Iguazu, which was amazing. It is also known as the "Club Med of Hostels". It was gorgeous and only $10USD a night! I would highly recommend it: http://www.hihostels.com/dba/hostels-Puerto-Iguaz%C3%BA---The-Hostel-Inn-Iguaz%C3%BA-002092.en.htm
Here's a picture of the pool.

Also, at the Argentinian Park, there was a gigantic hot water heater to drink maté, the national drink. Only in Argentina would there be a demand for hot water in 90 degree tropical weather!

Foz do Iguaçu

After going to the Argentinian side, on Sunday morning before our bus ride back to BA, we went to Brazil (thanks to our visa that we already had from our trip this summer).
It was amazing to be back in Brazil and interesting to see how quickly languages changed across the border.
This view was very different- not as up close and personal, but an incredible panoramic view. We saw waterfalls we didn't even know existed and from afar, it looked as though the Argentinian side was untouched. We couldn't even see anyone walking around.

Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat)

All of the guide books recommend that tourists save the best for last.
In this case, the best was Garganta del Diablo. The name may seem strange, but it's for a good reason. Many waterfalls collide creating steam, foam and lots of noise. It was such a force! And if anyone were to fall in, it would not be pretty.
We went right after our rain storm, but even in the clouds, it was an amazing sight.

Flora and Fauna Part II (This post by Emily)

I had quite an encounter with the Quati, otherwise known as the South American raccoon. It looks like an anteater.
It grabbed at my lunch bag with its dirty little hands and thus began a showdown between human and animal. While Jamila encouraged me to just drop the bag, Brazilians gathered around to take pictures, I held my ground and kept our lunch as the silly quati scampered off.
There is also a picture of an alligator that we happened upon during our ecological tour. This one was probably about 6 feet long. We will put up a better picture when we raid Ellen's camera. We also saw a crocodile, which was a bit smaller.

Flora and Fauna

We got a million bug bites (Emily's back is particularly covered), but we were able to observe some of the bugs from afar.
The coolest discovery was a little family of birds nestled on the side of the falls. I don't know how the didn't fall down or get soaked, but was adorable!**
We got a really close-up view of some rather large lizards. People who know me might be surprised that I am even including pictures of bugs and crawly animals, but there was something really cool about seeing them in their habitat.




** Bird comments made by Emily

Butterflies

I did not know this, but the National Park is filled with beautiful butterflies.
We must have seen as least 10 different species, and it was such an amazing sight to walk through the jungle and be surrounded by butterflies.
For anyone who has read 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you might remember a scene where yellow butterflies fill the town, a sign of death. There was a moment in the park where we passed through hundreds of yellow butterflies. It reminded me of the book. No worries, didn't get a sense of death though.

Cataratas de Iguazu

The twin waterfalls are named Dos Hermanos (two brothers). As you can see, the steam from the falls rises above the forest, which at first looks like a fire.
The weather was extremely hot and humid, and we got caught in a tropical rainstorm towards the end of our visit. It was about 95 degrees and 100% humidity.
Somehow, however, Ellen, Emily and I were able to spend 9 hours at the falls without getting bored!

Side note: on our ecological tour, we sat next to a girl from Chicago. It turns out her name is Jamila. This is the second Jamila I have ever met, and it made Iguazu even more special for me.

Welcome to the Jungle!

For a long weekend, we took a 18 hour bus (uphill both ways in the snow) with our friend Ellen to Puerto Iguazu, home of a wonder of the world. We arrived Friday morning and on Saturday, we went to Las Cataratas (Waterfalls) de Iguazu.
We took an excursion, which included a Jeep ride through the jungle, an ecological tour on a raft down the river, and a nautical adventure that took us right beneath the waterfalls and left us soaked...not sure if this would have been allowed in the States for safety reasons, but it was so fun!
It was really hard for us to cut down our pictures, as they were all so amazing.

Little facts about the falls:

• Taller than Niagara, wider than Victoria
• Located on the border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay
• It is made up of 275 individual falls and stretch along 1.7 miles
  

Sunset in Colonia

It was a long day in a lovely town. We probably didn't need more than a day to see and enjoy a lot of Colonia.

PIctures from the Beach!

As you can see, it was a beautiful day in Colonia and we spent a few hours just lying on the beach, catching some sun (a bunch of girls on our program got too much sun).
It was probably 85-90 degrees and most of us were afraid of cooling off in the river. Rio de la Plata is brownish, due to the sediment it picks up along the way to the Atlantic Ocean. It's the not the most inviting water I've ever seen. However, on the east coast of Uruguay, there is a famous beach town full of resorts called Punta del Este ("Rio meets the Hamptons", but its still South America).
Emily took a nap on the beach and miraculously did not get burnt. I took the liberty of decorating her pants.