Ho Ho Home!

After a wonderful time in Floripa Liz and I headed up to Rio de Janiero for our final days. Our first day we were able to enjoy the famed Copacabana beach. Unfortunately our last two days it was grey and rainy. We still found things to do and enjoyed our time in the city. Including going on a walk and accidentally stumbling across the famed Rio Favellas (most dangerous slums in the world).

After many Delta delays we finally made it home, a day later than we had hoped, but safe and sound. It was great to be greeted at the airport by Meghan with a big sign reading, "Liz y Erin Welcome Ho Ho Home!"


We are excited to be home and can't wait to see everyone for the holidays.

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo!

Beach Bums!

Liz and I arrived in Florianopolis, Brazil after a slightly painful overnight bus ride. We had gotten so accustomed to the luxury buses of Argentina, that after what we paid, we never expected to be back at Bolivian style buses. It was hot then cold, the seats barely reclined, and we both had to sit next to strangers. Liz had some old lady yell at her at 3 am to tell her she was in the wrong seat. I had a young brasilero sitting next to me who made himself quite comfortable sleeping on my shoulder, but he shared his blanket, so I couldn't really complain.

We took a short cab ride to our hostel that is actually located in Lagoa de Conceição. We just happened to luck out by staying at the best hostel in the world, Tucanos Backpackers. It is an old house that Caio and Lilia, a brother and sister team, converted just a month ago to a beautiful homey hostel. This is my recommendation for all to stay here next time they are in Brazil.

We spent our first day walking around checking out the town, napping in hammocks, and making our dinner in the kitchen. There is only 7 total travelers staying here. We all made fast friends as we drank caipirinas and vodka with guarana juice before going out. One of the guys who works here at night was teaching us to dance Forro, a traditional dance of Brasil. We all piled into car and went to the local Forro party. It was live music and watching the brasileros dance was amazing. We all danced too, but certainly not as well! We had a blast.

Next day we woke up to a wonderful breakfast, a huge spread of fresh fruits and everything else you could want. We put on our new bikinis (very Brazilian - tiny in the hiney) and headed to the best beach in the area Praia de Mole. We laid out and surfed in the enormous waves. It was loads of fun. We tried a traditional snack at the beach too of frozen blended Açai fruit with bananas... Amazing!

We met up with our American friends we had made on the bus ride over, Alex and Jeff, and made plans with them and the Aussie girls, Nicki and Mandy, that stay at the hostel to go to a Churrascuria for dinner. We all met up at our hostel for some caipirinas and vodka guaranas and a few rounds of ping pong before heading out. We had a massive meat dinner that was amazing. Went out for drinks again at a local bar and had tons of fun. The boys had so much fun with us we even convinced them to check out of their ritzy hotel and stay at our hostel. It's just too much fun here!

We decided to stay off the beach the next day to let our burned skin rest. Instead we went into town to check out the markets.

The following day Liz and I went on a walk with Nicki and Mandy along the Costa de Lagoa. After about a 2 hour walk we ended up at the end of the road which was tons of seafood restaurants specializing in the local fair. We had loads of prawns and fish. It was all delicious. We took the boat ferry back and went straight to town for our dessert of frozen açai.

Nicki, Liz and I made dinner for everyone in the hostel that night and then we all went out to a bar with live music. It was really entertaining as the guy was singing Beatles and CCR but had a really strong Brazilian accent. It was funny. And as it was the weekend the hostel had filled up to nearly 20 guests. But everyone was so cool and we all got on so well, that we all hung out together.

the following day we went to the Praia Mole again, but we rented an umbrella to cover our still slightly sensitive skin. But we couldn't stay away for too long from splashing in the surf and eating frozen açai.

That night at the hostel Caio and Lilia hosted a BBQ. We all sat outside enjoying cold beers and tasty meat. Everyone went out clubbing, but Liz, Alex, Jeff, and I decided to take it easy and just went to a local bar. We didn't stay out long as everyone was exhausted. Jeff and I were hungry and decided to get some food at a stand on the way back. As I was eating this brazilian style hotdog I knew I had made a mistake. I came back and went to sleep. Didn't actually sleep any and spent the whole next day sick with food poisoning. Liz was still able to go out and enjoy the day at the beach.

We have really loved our time in Florianopolis. And of any places we have stayed this is the first that I truly don't want to leave. It is paradise.

Iguazu Falls

After returning from Mendoza we had a few more days in Buenos Aires before we had to say goodbye. We really loved the city and tried to get in as much as we possibly could. We saw some museums, walked around our favorite neighborhoods, and had some delicious meals. Our last night Maria (friend we met in the Bolivian jungle) stayed with us. We went out to dinner with two Argentine guys we made friends with, Nacho and Oscar. They brought us to the best fondue restaurant I've ever been to in my life. All I know is that we were dipping cooked meat into melty cheese and drinking red wine. What more could you ask for?

Our next stop: Iguazu Falls. These are the most impressive waterfalls I have ever seen in my life. They are situated right at the Argentine and Brazilian boarder. We arrived at the falls at 8am on Saturday morning. We stayed until 4 pm just walking around seeing all the falls have to offer. We also went on a speed boat ride that brings you right under the falling water. It was so fun. We were screaming and giggling like kids! We got completely soaked, but it was great as it was so hot all day. It was one of the best days we have spent in this trip. We walked around all day seeing so many waterfalls. It was really impressive.


Our hostal, to our surprise, has the nicest swimming pool we've seen in ages. It's huge, clean and cool. This hostal is more like an all inclusive resort for young people. It looks like the setting for an MTV spring break edition. And the people act it is sometimes as well. Our first night we took it easy because we were tired from the overnight bus ride and had to be up early for the falls. But Saturday night we decided to let it rip. The hostal hosts a huge Parrilla (bbq) and all you can drink caipiriñas party. They even had some samba dancers for entertainment. At one point, both Liz and I were pulled up on the stage to dance samba and god knows what else with the group. It was loads of fun, but that might be the caipiriñas talking! We met a group of young Swedes and joined them after the hostal party to a bar in town called Club Bar. They gave us more caipiriñas there, then we went dancing at another dance club Cuba Libre.

We spent Sunday laying around the pool. We heard it was about 40 degrees Celsius. Sounds hot right, yup that's a whopping 104 degrees Fahrenheit! It was too hot to stay in the sun. We mainly swam around in the pool and also hid in the shade reading books. A friend we met in Mendoza, Ben, showed up in the afternoon. So we wemt in to the city and had dinner. We called it an early night as we knew we had an early morning check out and a lot of errands to take care, i.e. getting Brazilian visas!
We are now on our way to Florinopolis on the beach of Brazil.

Mendoza

One of the top cities we wanted to see in Argentina was Mendoza. And (sadly) because our trip is coming to an end soon, we had to pick a weekend and get there.


We took an overnight bus and arrived in the afternoon finding an amazing hostel complete with a pool. The city itself is beautiful. It is right at the base of the Andes and has this great atmosphere everyone would enjoy. All the streets are lined with trees, and there are 5 city squares or parks in the center of town. The main park has statues, fountains and a huge stretch of booths of an outdoor flea market. Next to the park is a pedestrian mall filled with outdoor cafes and tons of boutiques and shops. Erin and I sat for a while and people watched, then headed back to go to bed early... we were going wine tasting the next day!

We went on tours of 3 different wineries. The first one was the largest of the 3. The coolest part of this tour was seeing the HUGE casks they use while making the wine. Erin says they are the biggest she has seen, normally they are about 250 liters, these were taller than us! The largest one (which Erin is helping herself to) is the 3rd largest in the world.

Normally the smaller casks last 5 years before they are recycled into furniture, floors, serving platters, this large one can last 250 years! The wine from Weinert was ok. We had 3 different tastings and my favorite was the dessert wine that had a strong honey flavor.

The second winery was Vinniterra. The guide for this was a hoot. He was very knowledgable and gave a great funny tour. This winery was pretty new, the owner used to be one of the head honchos of a huge commercial winery but sold his stake to start his own smaller family company. One of the neatest things I learned was for some of the fermentation process, they put the wine in steele barrels and add logs inside in order to get the oaky flavor. The wine here was really great, Malbec was our favorite.


The last winery was Carmine Granata. It was the smallest of the 3. It was more artesinal and independent. You could definitley tell a difference between this and Weinert. The wine here was pretty good too, but we only got to sample 1 type, their Malbec aged 6mos.

The best part of the day was lunch. We had this great spread of cheeses, meats, little dishes filled with snacks. Olives, beans, corn, artichokes, just a table full of food. And all you could drink wine. Who doesnt like that?



At night, we went to dinner with a group from the hostel. It was pretty fun, most were cool peoople. Erin and I shared the parilla aka Argentine BBQ and it was great.

When we got back to the hostel we got a great suprise! My cousin Ryan was waiting for us! He came over from Santiago to party with us for the weekend. And we definitley crossed that off the list. Erin went to bed around 3a, Iturned in around 630a and Ryan about 8a. We ended up hanging out with all the people that work at the hostels bar. (They chill in the backyard when they´re finished working, about 4a). Before we knew it the sun was coming up!

The next day Ryan and I went to a huge park on the west side of town. It was beautiful and reminded me of Golden Gate Park in that it was fairly large and had tons of activities to do. Clearly it was a great hangout for everyone. Kids doing bike tricks, soccer games galore and families having picnics. While Ryan and I were at the park, Erin was helping out a fellow American traveller from our hostel. She spent the day translating for the girl at the police station and hospital. Not a fun job for anyone, but she did a great job.

We decided to make our last night quiet. We had a great dinner and hung out at the hostels bar. Erin went to bed around 1a after being exhausted from her day of working as a translator, I went to bed around 3a and Ryan made it home as we were waking up. This kid knows how to party!
As with all South American citites Sunday´s are slow days. We found a place for breakfast along the pedestrian mall and then found a place for Ryan to get his haircut! The men down here have a classier version of the mullet that everyone has. Ryan mentioned wanting one and when we walked by a barber we convinced him it was now or never.


The rest of the day was spent lounging by the pool waiting for our bus to take off. Mendoza was great but we were ready to head back to BA to enjoy our last week in Argentina.

Our Tigre Trip

After spending a couple weeks around Buenos Aires, we decided to get out of the city and explore. First trip... Tigre. We were told of this cute town about an hour north of BA that we needed to check out. It is right on a delta and has a great outdoor shoping market, good restaurants and close enough to make a day trip out of it. After one of my Spanish classes we met up and took off. The train to get there was about an hour and went through all the suburbs of Buenos Aires, including past where the president lives. We ran into a guy on the train whom we went out with on the first night in town and he reiterated how nice Tigre was and also told us of a new art museum to check out. We were pumped. Shopping, good food and a great museum? Perfect day!

We arrived and headed straight to the Puerto de Frutos. Not just a fruit port, it has hundreds of stalls of things to buy. Supposedly, that is. When we arrived there was nothing. It was like a ghost town. A few people had their stalls open but most of it seemed tacky or useless junk. Confused, we asked around and found out that the market is really only hopping on the weekends. We went on a Tuesday.

Disappointed, we decided to head to the art museum. The town was small but was on a number of rivers. It also didn´t have many bridges so we did a lot of walking. We came across a tourist information booth and asked what the best way to get to the art museum was. She told us we could take a collectivo (bus) but that the museum was closed on Tuesdays. Good to know. She did say there was a Naval museum up the river and there were plenty of restaurants nearby. We decided that was our best bet and started walking. The town really was beautiful. We followed the river bank which was lined with trees and lovely old houses. Being so close to Buenos Aires it is a major destination in the summer for people getting out of the heat and it also is a huge spot for rowing. About 10 huge mansions owned by different rowing clubs lined the banks.


We arrived at the Naval Museum and was told that it was closed! Just kidding, it was open but just for an hour, and we were told it wasn´t enough time to see everything. We smiled and said that it was fine, we´d be ok. And we were. We spent about 45 minutes looking at old ships, models of old ships, flags, weapons and everything involving the Argentine Armada. I thought the most interesting was the collection of artifacts from the exploration to Antartica in the early 1900s. I couldn´t imagine going 100 years ago without today´s tecnology and fancy warm clothes North Face makes!

After the museum we had a great din at a restaurant on the river. We were the only ones there! (quite common for us) but it was early after all, Argentines eat late, like 10pm; we sat down at 530p. After yummy fish and delicious wine we headed back to the train station. We wanted to make it back in time for our yoga class. We did, but were so full (and a bit tipsy) this class was not our best one.

Busy, busy Buenos Aires

Lizzie and I have been keeping ourselves very busy here in the bustling city of Buenos Aires. We have signed up for Yoga class that we go to twice a week and we love by the way. We have a great instructor from Texas so he does a bilingual class. It's just the relaxing we need.
We have also dolled oursleves up a bit going to the salon for our hair and nails. We needed it!
Our first big event here in BsAs was Creamfields. Creamfields is an electronica-techno music show from England. Big techno djs such as Chemical Brothers, Too many djs, and LCD Sound system. Not really Lizzie and my kind of music, but everyone we met was going, so how could we pass it up. It started at 3pm, but we didn't arrive until about 10pm. As music would be raging until early morning we figured that was early enough. We danced all night and ended up having a really fun time. We left at about 4am, but people went on well into the next day.
Other than that we have been doing lots of shopping and sight seeing.

Last Tuesday James, Liz's brother, came for a visit. We were so excited to have some family come stay with us. We were really excited when he showed us that he had brought some Peanut Butter!!! We had been craving this sweet snack for months! But that wasn't it. He had an even better surprise in store for us. Cooking lessons! He was taking us to learn how to make some traditional South American fair. We jumped up and down as we were so excited.
The woman in charge, Terecita, is a cute little Argentina. She greeted us with a big smile and showed us into her warm kitchen. First lesson - Empanadas! Liz was especially excited as she had been wanting to learn the art of empanadas for the whole trip. We made two kinds, meat and corn. We even learned how to make the dough for frying and baking. It was so much fun and she always kept our wine glasses full.
After there we made our way to the futbol stadium to watch Buenos Aires' River Plate team play soccer against Arsenal. The game was crazy. The fans jump, yell, cheer, and even light off fireworks! River Plate lost in the end in penalty kicks, but it was a good game to watch.


The next day we took a bike ride through the whole city on a tour. It was a great way to really get an idea of where everything is and how much there is to see.
Then came James birthday! We had another cooking lesson at Terecita's. Parilla aka Argentine BBQ. Meat. Our driver, Buda, picked us up and drove us to the local butcher, best butcher in town. We picked out kidneys, intestines, sweetbreads (glands), morcilla (blood sausage), skirt steak, flank steak, ribs and more. We had loads of meat and I doubted we would be able to eat it all(very wrong). There were two Canadians staying at the bed and breakfast that joined us in our parrilla lesson. The guys tended to the charcoal and Terecita taught us how to make the tradicional sauces. The chimicuri is amazing, but the others were good too (I'll make them for you when I get back).



They put all the meat on the grill and slowly brought it over for us to eat. I can't forget to mention the wine! We started drinking at about 11am and didn't stop until we left that evening at about 6pm! Terecita knows her wines and picked out a fabulous selection. As for what our favorite new meat are - James' favorite was the ribs, Lizzie loves intestine, and I loved the morcilla! Yum. We just ate and ate and ate for hours. They surprised us at the end with a cake for Jamie. We all sang happy Birthday and stuffed ourselves even more.

Our last cooking lesson was brazilian Poa de queço and muceca de pescado - a delicious cheese bread and fish soup. With that we made rice and fried bananas. We also learned to make caiperiñas (traditional brazilian drink similiar to mojito). All amazing!


Our original plan had been to make our own attempt at a Thanksgiving dinner. But with out really knowing how to work our stove, and being exhausted from three days of cooking with Terecita we kind of flaked out on the idea. But at the last minute we thought we had at least try. So James and I went to the store to pick up an already made rotisserie chicken while Liz started on the mashed potatoes and salad. We even got apple pie for dessert. So, it wasn't the original Thanksgiving we had hoped for, but it was still family and it was delicious.

For our last event we had planned with James we were going to go to the Miguel Bose Papito tour concert. We were so excited and had been listening to the cd all week. We got all dressed up and wondered why when we arrived no one was around. We found out the concert had been cancelled due to illness. This is us being very sad.

We have really been loving BsAs and can't wait to see what is next!

And the winning number is....

011 54 11 4953 3821

Now you can call us!

I'm not sure how to do it exactly, but the country code is 54 and the city code is 11 then our apartment number is 4953 3821. We don't have an answering machine or voicemail. So, either email us to plan a time to chat. Or, just keep calling. We'll be home sometime!