Buenos Aires Sunset

Okay, here's are the pictures of the sunset from our terraza I promised before. Enjoy!

Gualeguaychu Video

Here's a little video I took at the carnaval. The invasion of the spacemen.

Carnaval del Pais - Gualeguaychu

We went to Gualeguaychú for El Carnaval del Pais on Saturday night. And whoa, what a crazy time it was. Our bus from Buenos Aires left at 9:30pm, so to get all of us showered and ready to go we starting getting up at 7:30. Luckily we were able to sleep for a while on the 4 hour bus ride in the nice semi-cama seats. But once we got there and bought tickets, we found a nice little park by the river to sleep in. We pretty much weren't able to get anymore sleep then until the bus ride back. The carnaval ended at 3:30am but then we went downtown and about 6:30 we decided it was time to call it quits so we went to the bus station to wait for our bus that left at 10:30, so we ended up all sleeping/trying to sleep in the bus station. But oh all the laughs.

Below is just a sample of all the pictures I took.

Feliz Compleanos a mi!!!!

So I know I'm a little late in the putting these up, but here are the picture from my birthday.

Kim, Ceci and me in Plaza Dorrego.


Juliana. This was sadly also her last night in Buenos Aires.


Antonia in Plaza Dorrego.


Gisselle doing the birthday dance.


Naill, Rubia and English Adam.


Me receiving my birthda cake!


Here's Antonia and Rubia with their proud and delicious creation.

Nuesta Nueva Casa

So we finally got out of our old house in San Telmo and are in our new one in Colegiales. It's in an area much more traquila.
We're on the other side of the trecks from Belgrano which is a pretty upper-middle class neighborhood, but Colegiales is still pretty nice. It's farther away from touristy activities and the center, but it's refreshing to be in a neighborhood primarily of houses and trees rather than buses and office buildings.

This is the house itself. There's two sections. In the middle going up to the third floor is an apartment for just the owner and his wife. And the rest of it is our section. Our room is actually the one of the first floor on the left, but we're thinking about asking for the one on the second floor with the balcony when the girl who's in their now moves out.


This is the living room. That's Luke (Duck) ducking out of the picture on the couch.


This is our street.


This is our terraza. It's pretty cool with the built-in grill and everything. I promise pictures of the sunset soon.

Plaza del Congreso

On the west end of Av de Mayo sits Plaza del Congreso. On the east end is the Casa Rosada in the Microcentro. This is an intersting place near the Alkimista Hostel, which just found out will be closing after the tourist season ends this year. When we took the pictures the sky was looking pretty ominous but it never actually stormed or even spinkled.

This is the Palacio del Congreso which happens to be the national legislature.




Here's my attempt at taking an artsy picture.


This is the headquarters of Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo (the Plaza de Mayo is on the opposite end of the Av de Mayo) who were intrumental in restoring democracy to Argentina. Their status as mothers (and grandmothers) allowed them to protest the dictorship without great reprisal. At this location they have a book store and café as well which is a nice place for breakfast or just a cup of coffee in the afternoon.


I feel like this picture really needs an explanation. I mean, what am I doing putting up a picture of weird-ass statue with a crazy horse and crazy guy? Well, it's a giant statue of Don Quixote. I think it says something about the Argentina national identity that this is at the intersection of two of their most important streets. ;-)

Parques de Palermo

I know it's been a while since I posted to the blog. Apologies. We've been pretty busy looking at apartments again and other things. We did get a chance to take a break Sunday and stroll (and bike) around some of the parks in Palermo. There were a lot of people out and not just because it was a bright, sunny day, but because the zoo with the white tiger cubs is right there too. We got there too late and too tired to try to battle the crowds, but we did have a pleasant day in the parks.



The zoo with the tiger cubs is on the left. The US embassy is really close to here too.




This was taken in the Botanical Gardens. There are cats everywhere there. It's crazy. Rumor has it that this is the place where Porteños leave there unwanted cats. But we saw people who also looked like they were there to adopt. So, who knows?


More cats in the Botaical Gardens.


Even more cats in the Botanical Gardens.

¡¡Budweiser no es la unica cerveza para el Superbowl!!

Here are picture from our Argentinian Super Bowl party! Clydesdale horses aren't colts anyways, so who needs Budweiser, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Quilmes and crappy wine endorsed by Diego Maradona will do just fine.

This is our Superbowl crew minus English Adam (who actually knew the rules of of American Football!). From left to right: Sus (the psychiatrist who just arrived from Mardid), Guillaume (He's form France and is sadly leaving tomorrow, despite his awesomeness), Antonia, Jean (another French guy who speaks English so well I thought he was a native), and Gillom's argentinian girlfriend whose name I still don't know but everyone calls her La Chica Mas Linda en El Mundo even though they've met Antonia so I'm completely confused.


Me and Antonia. I think I'm looking especially Argentinian and Antonia is looking very much like a Roman statue in this picture.


I've wanted to try this wine since the first week we were here and I saw it in the grocery store. Come on, it's a 12 peso limited-edition (we have bottle 22,000 something out of 33,000) bottle of Maradona wine! Unfortunately it didn't live up to the price or the endorsement and was the first absolutely terrible wine I've had here. I mean, here 12 pesos for wine is a lot. In US dollars it's about $4, and tasted worse than a u$s4 of wine in the States. But whatever, it added a nice Argentinian touch to our little Super Bowl party.


I think it's worth pointing out that the coverage we saw was totally geared towards Mexico, not Argentina and also, we found out that there was a bar downtown showing the Superbowl that had a bunch of NFL players and all you can eat pizza and drinks for only 35 pesos, but that was right before the game started so we couldn't go. Que lastima, ¿no? But whatever, we still had an awesome time.

Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur

This week's touristy attraction for the blog is biking around the Ecological Reserve I mentioned in the Puerto Maderno post. It was a lot of fun and our first chance to get some exercise since we've been here (aside from walking for hours). I really wanted to get out of the house and get some fresh air too since I had dysentery all week. If you were wondering why there hadnt been any other updates this week, that's why.

This is from the back of the reserve. I thought the city through the swamp was a nice juxatposition. The big building being constructed in the front is in Puerto Maderno. The tall building on the right are in Barrio Norte (sort of a rich area and sort of the Silicon Barrio too). And the lower building in the middle are downtown.


This was our first time really seeing the "river". Even though we've been here for over two weeks we still hadn't really seen it. And it's not even really a river. It's a bay! But whatever, it's brown in any case.






There was this cool little turtle tank where you could literally reach out and touch about a dozen turles at once.