Traveling While Traveling Is The Ultimate Trip!

Happy belated Easter, everyone! Here Easter (or Pascuas) provides an excuse for a very long weekend, and most people in Buenos Aires take the time to escape the city. After enough people asked me "where are you going for Pasucas?" I determined that going somewhere was apparently the thing to do, so I began scouting for some possible trip mates. Early last week my German house mate Pablo had a friend from his school over for dinner. I sat with them for only a few minutes--just long enough to ascertain that Medea (Pablo's friend) had plans to go to a neighboring city for the holiday. I began asking questions about the trip. Though Medea is Swiss Italian, she speaks Spanish quite well, and way too fast for me, so I misunderstood what she told me. I thought she said that she and a friend planned to rent a car, but in fact she had said that they planned to hitchhike. I thought renting a car sounded fun and told her as much. At this point, both Medea and Pablo became excited... apparently I had offered up a brilliant idea! Rent a car! If enough people would come along, renting a car would be cost effective, and thus a possibility! So Pablo and myself kindly offered to fill the car and put this new plan into action. Ta da! I had a trip! I guess sometimes it pays to suck at Spanish...

The plan for this excursion changed about a million times, and each incarnation was relayed to me through a text message in broken English. Suffice it to say that by the time we actually left I was friggin' confused and decided to stay out of all decision making. The too many cooks theory...
I think it panned out.

We ended up leaving in a taxi from my house at 2 am on Wed night/Thurs morning to catch a train at 3 am. We slept for 3ish hours on the train and arrived early in the city of Rosario where we rented our cute red auto. We headed for the Central Sierras area of Argentina--the countryside west of Buenos Aires and surrounding the second largest city of Cordoba. The drive was estimated to be about 5 hours, but it took 8 due to protesting in the streets. At this point in the story I am in the dark about this mysterious protesting, so you will be too. All we knew was that every couple hours we were inexplicably encountering loads of traffic, at which point we would wait awhile, then eventually creep through a mob of protesters blocking the road.

So 8 hours later we finally stopped in the town of Embalse, a lovely place situated on a lake. We set up camp, hit the grocery store, and made ourselves a yummy dinner. The next day we swam in said lake, then made our way to El Durazno, a picturesque spot at the bottom of a craggy winding mountain road. After a wonderful day/evening in El Durazno, we walked to one of two little restaurants in the town, Daniela's Cabana. There we were greeted by Daniela herself and gorged ourselves on gigantoid slices of homemade cake. (Daniela's Cabana is a special looking place- check out my pics on Snapfish to see for yourself). During our night in El Durazno, Pablo started getting sick, and then it started storming (after we were already cake stuffed and back in our tents, thank goodness). Unfortunately the weather, combined with Pablo's worsening cold, forced us to hurry out of the place early in the morning. The bottom of the road out of El Durazno was now a lake. There was a line of cars attempting to "wait out the weather." Of course, this plan made no sense because the lake would only grow bigger with the increasing rain. We decided to be the pioneers! We got the rental car through the lake and up the mountain again, and the rest of the cars followed suit.

The next day we went to the town (the name escapes me) of Che Guevara's house. That little museum is muy interesante!

Next day Cordoba. Deserted. Apparently everyone leaves Cordoba for Pascuas, too.

That night we all slept (albeit a good 7 hours!) smooshed in the car before driving it back to Rosario, where we went to the famous Argentinian flag monument and caught the bus back to Buenos Aires.

All in all, the four of us--A Polish girl (called Karolina), Medea the Swiss Italian (who is nothing like her namesake, I promise), and Pablo the German (yes, that is his real name in Germany too), and this gal--had a fantastic time together. We all got along dandily. Traveling while traveling is the best because people join up who don't know each other from Adam. If you're traveling while traveling, you don't have to bring your own friends, you just pick them up along the way! There's a special kind of openness about the situation...

Now I'm back and I'm studying studying studying my espanol. And teaching some English, too. I spent the 2 hours before my first official tutoring session trying to cram the entirety of English grammar back into my head. But luckily my student, Leandro, really doesn't care about the names of words and clauses and stuff, he mostly just wants to practice talking. I can do that real good! Phew!

Ok, the protests. The rich people are protesting the President, Cristina Kirchner, because she is imposing a gargantuan tax on exports. Rich people own the farms, and they don't want to be taxed up the wazoo on exports. But Cristina refuses to budge, claiming that the tax will keep goods in Argentina and this will be better in the long run. In the meantime the rich people are mad cause they hate taxes and the poor people all mad cause food prices are rising. Everyone I've spoken to seems to be of the opinion that this extra money is really just gonna pad the pocket of Cristina. Come to think of it, I've not heard any Argentines say they like her too much. Anyway, last night Cristina went on the tv saying that she refused to change her mind and this incited a HA-UGE protest. When I came to school this morning everyone was talking about the noise last night. I was totally confused because last night I sat on my back porch eating a delicious salad, listening only to the voices of my amigos and the hum of the night. When I told this to my classmates, I got lots of screwy looks. Apparently last night and tonight the whole city has been in the streets banging pots and pans. Apparently that was pretty hard to miss. I immediately assumed that my ignorance to the whole thing was a result of my frequent state of oblivion to the world around me, but was relieved to learn that the loud business skipped my neighborhood for some reason.

I want to go eat some cake that my roommates made. All the internationals here cook so much and so well! Cha-ching for me! I help though, I really do. But I want to eat cake now, so I'm gonna do my "What I Think I've Learned" section now.

What I Think I've Learned About Argentina, Pt. 2:

- You aren't supposed to throw toilet paper in the toilet. Oops.

- It takes a million years to get through the line at the grocery store because there never seems to be a simple transaction (my own included).

- McDonald's here is super swank! It's the trendy coffee house! It's the special treat burger! A Big Mac is way more expensive than a burger made from heavenly Argentine beef!

*NEWSFLASH*
I found peanut butter at the grocery store in the Sierras! There is a constant conversation among ex-pats regarding the lack of peanut butter in this country. This is a big deal.

Love, Danielle