Filling in the Holes

It fills me with glee to hear that some of my friends and family are actually checking this site once in a while. Really, you should see me; I’m so filled with glee that I have to go to the bathroom every couple hours. I was beginning to think that I was wasting time on this endeavor. Anyway, if I’ve spent too much time on this silly blog, I have spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with photos. It’s a bitch captioning, orienting, editing, archiving, etc. And for what, most everybody I know is too busy to even look at one slideshow, let alone 15!! Well, what am I going to do…? I guess I’ll just hope that some people enjoy what they have time to. As of October 7, 2006, there were 9 posts on this blog, today there are 16 . I don’t know what’s going on now; I seem to be experiencing some type of hyper-productivity spurt. I hope nobody minds but I’ve filled in some of the more glaring holes in the story of my blog. Furthermore, as a convenience to regular visitors, following are links to new entries, chronologically no less, to save you from scrolling through the archives.

Vegas baby, Vegas. That’s right; I’m taking you all the way back to the gold plated turd that was our second stop out of Hawaii. It wasn’t really much to talk about so if you don’t have much time, skip to something really cool like Patagonia or Brazil.

Patagonia should be its own country and I would dutifully accept the responsibility of being its president. Watch the jaws of the Argentines drop with shock, incredulity, and disgust as these words hit the screen. Who is this imperialist Yankee that wants to take over Patagonia? Hey, don’t worry, my Argentine friends, my first act as president would be to protect the whole damn newly formed country as a world nature park, or heritage site, or patrimonial cultural, or whatever the hell you want to call it. Patagonia is rugged, remote, and, in my opinion, one of the best places in the world. If you want to read my posts on southern Patagonia, click here, or on the archive (left sidebar) for January. Northwest Patagonia, or The Lake District, can be found here, or in the August archive.

Buenos Aires, the cosmopolitan capital of Argentina has hosted me now three times. Posts from my first visit flying solo can be found here (archives from the first half of February)

Brazil was such great fun. If you’ve never checked out my Brazil photo set on Flickr, then you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the half naked samba dancers that bring Carnival to life. I have a post on the Brazil Bug, which I promised my Brazilian friends I would write. (Camila e Tiago, aqui é já e eu ainda não falo portugues)

Our month-long journey northward can be accessed here, in the July archive.

Our ten days in the Lakes District can be accessed here, in the August archive.

Scroll down a bit to read about our adventures with “Arturo y Susana” Bauckham. Highlights with the Padres include Tango in Buenos Aires, Jesuit Ruins in San Ignacio, the mighty waters of Iguazú, a day in Córdoba, and exploring the city of Mendoza and the nearby Andes. We ate a LOT, sometimes repeating meals just for the heck of it. We also visited a bodega and made an asado in Vista Flores.

Two wild weeks with Art & Sue

Bauckhams Burst into Buenos Aires

Wendy and I head to Buenos Aires a day before the Bauckhams to spend time with fellow Hawaii expat Cat Black and her boyfriend Marcello. They generously offered to let us stay at their lovely home in San Telmo. They toured us around their charismatic barrio by day and at night, we went to see an impressive performance by the Uruguayan carnival style performance troupe, Agarrate Carolina. The next day we encountered Art and Sue around the corner from their hotel, “The Cocker” while wondering the neighborhood looking for each other. We had a mini Christmas at The Cocker as they had brought a whole list of things we requested.

Let the Eating Begin

We enjoyed eating meat and drinking wine. A few words about Argentine cuisine: meat and more meat, pizza and pasta, empanadas, meat. The following words do not apply to Argentine cuisine: variety, service, ethnic foods, spicy. For better or worse, our first meal out in Buenos Aires was the best of the whole trip. The restaurant “1880” in San Telmo offered excellent quality and service. I’ll go back there if I have the chance.

How Many Does it Take to Tango?

For some reason, we really got into the tango scene in Buenos Aires. We went to a milonga, which consists of regular people doing the dance they love. It was more informal and authentic than the tango dinner show or the street dancers performing for tourists. The tango at Bar Sur was ok but the service and prices sucked. You can check out my review of the place on TripAdvisor: “What’s worse? Bad service, or no service at all?” It was so horrible that I the only enjoyment I got was when I slyly told some people who were deciding whether or not to pay the price of admission to get the hell out of there as fast as they could. The many street performers were fun to watch. The coolest experience was at Lina’s Tango Guest House where Art & Sue stayed with a bunch of tango aficionados after The Cocker. They invited us to a dinner where everyone partied and danced long into the night.

Mighty Iguazú

The falls themselves are an incredible experience that defies explanation. That said, I don’t have to try to come up with mouthfuls of superlatives strung together in a flowery paragraph overflowing with commas. That is my wife’s specialty. We all took millions of photos. Those are pretty great too, but still don’t compare with feeling of being at the precipice of the Devil’s Throat or along side a cacophonous wall of water the size of a building. We spent three days and four nights in the cute Argentine town of Puerto Iguazú. We stopped in San Ignacio on the way there to take in the extensive ruins of a Jesuit Mission. We enjoyed eating meat and drinking wine and got good value out of the free breakfast buffet at the Hotel St. George.

Córdoba Pit Stop

We broke up the grueling 36 hour bus ride from Puerto Iguazú to Mendoza by spending a day in Córdoba. We got an informal tour of the legislative building, visited the second oldest university in South America, witnessed the public humiliation of a recently graduated lawyer, sat in a café drinking beer, and met up with friend, Liz, for an absolutely lovely pasta dinner at La Mamá. The dinner was so good, I have to second guess my earlier statement about the best dinner being at 1880.

Around About Mendoza Province

We took advantage of the best the city has to offer. We drank wine, which we enjoyed, and also ate meat outdoors on the spacious sidewalks of the city. We visited the University, went to Ana & Roberto’s bodega in Vista Flores, hiked to Lago Horcones in the Aconcagua National Park, visited friends in Potrerillos and stopped in at our favorite (and only good one in the country) microbrewery, Jerome’s. All in all it was a great time and so very hard to say goodbye.

Edited October 19, 2006

The Brazil Bug

Tiago & I saw a bug. It was not just any bug. It was big and it was ugly. We closely inspected this nasty creature. It was taking a break from shaking the ground foliage to spend a while thrusting its head piece out-from and in-to its body carapace. UGH! Disgusting. While it was doing this, its back legs which were barbed and looked like crablegs, were wiggling behind it, under its butt. This was an enormous, vile, bug, doing really weird things. We tried to carry on a normal conversation. Or at least as normal a conversation as two or three people who don’t speak the same language can have. Every once in a while, we would mark its location by observing the quivering plants. We would take a few moments to gross ourselves out by observing the hideous bug. After a while, Tiago brought my attention to a gigantic flying bug. I remarked that at least it wasn’t that bastard from the ground foliage. Tiago informed that yes, in fact, it was. Oh, bloody hell. “I sure hope that thing doesn’t come near me or I’m gonna freak out”, said I. “I’d like to see that”, said Tiago. “No you wouldn’t”, said I, almost knowing, that having had that exchange, that it was inevitably going to happen. After a while, the unthinkable (if you haven’t been paying attention) happened. The hideous, vile, disgusting, enormous, flying bug flew at me! And crashed into me. And STUCK ON ME!. Noooo! I jumped up and down, and screamed (a manly scream) and shook myself furiously. When it was al over, I looked over at my friends hiding under the yellow tarp that sheltered my tent. What happened next was a surprise. They laughed and continued to watch me as if to see what antics would follow the preceding hilarious (to them) display. “Yeah, so?” I said, trying to regain my composure, “I told you I would freak out and that is precisely what happened.” Tiago said, in his thick Brazilian accent “It’s on your dick.” No, I looked down and lo and behold, affixed to the outside of my pants, in the vicinity of my dick, the hideous, vile, disgusting, head in and out of carapace, ground shaking, bug was. ARRRGGH! I smacked that thing once, jumping around. The tenacious demon remained. I swung again, this time harder, and hit meat. I would hurt for the next twenty minutes. I saw that the bug was knocked off my dick and onto the ground. Before I could think about what I was doing, I drove that bastard into the ground with my right foot. I hadn’t wanted to kill it, but obviously, I was given no choice. This ends the funny story… funny, at least for my Brazilian friends.