Last time we left off, it was evening time in our last night in Valparaiso. Luke and I went down a few blocks and found a restaurant and ordered hamburgers and fries. Luke ordered his new South American favorite drink, leche con platanos, which is basically just milk blended with bananas. It doesn't help our image has a homo couple when he orders that. We picked up some beer on the way back and ended up playing cards with Nikki and Maria, our two hostel mates from England and Spain. We did this 'til about 1 and decided to go check out a bar down the street just to see what was going on. It ended up being pretty humorous. Although the place is right next to a few hostels, we were the only caucasions there. We went upstairs in the pub, grabbed a table and ordered some beer. About two tables over was a group of locals, maybe 7 of them, who seemed pretty excited that we were there. They were drinking and singing and keep shouting "salud" to us. We thought it was pretty friendly, and then they started to chant "gringos, gringos, gringos..." which in south america is a friendly thing to say and they even came up and took pictures with us. In Buenos Aires we stood out a little but I think mostly because of our hairstyles and dress. In Valparaiso, we stand out completely for every reason and we get lots of looks just walking around. So the events in the bar were no surprise, but we laughed thinking about if we were with our friends back home some Mexicans walked in and we started chanting at them. When we left the bar, we were approached by two shady guys who acted like they just wanted to chat with us. One guy was wearing a tank top and baseball hat, they other normal clothes but sunglasses, and they came across as sheisters so we just sort of kept walking. Maria took the lead in dealing with them and gave us a good lesson in how to deal with that. First of all, she speaks Spain spanish and I think a lot of south americans are excited when they find out she is from Spain, but she also told us just to give chile compliments and talk about how nice the people are. Whatever they wanted, they left us alone after we got near the hostel. Tank top kept asking me why am I nervous, which was odd because I really wasn't and explained that to him; Maria just said he was trying to seem tough to foreigners, which is basically what I figured. It was not a problem at all though.
We left the next morning to go to Santiago around 12, caught the Tur Bus which is direct to Santiago. The drive from Santiago was great, very pretty. We saw tons of vinyards along the way. The bus right was about 2 hours long and cost us $7, so that was great. We realized that we had no idea where it dropped us off and thought about getting a cab to the hostel, but that can be expensive. Instead, Luke asked some guy where we were and he ended up telling us how to take the subway to near our hostel and that worked out great. However, their numbering system is odd. Our hostel was building number 0184, which is different from 184, so we got lost and took a while to find the place. We got there around 4, and the place was really nice. The guy working here doesn't even speak Spanish...I think he's from California. That works out fine for us. But this place has nice beds, lots of nice computers and bathrooms that can handle flushing toilet paper, and its walls actually intersect at right angles. A nice place to finish the trip up.
Our first night in Santiago was relatively uneventful. We were under the impression that Jamie was going to Santiago on the first night; we were wrong. She actually showed up the second night. But our first night we walked around the neighborhood and ate dinner at a local restaurant. The food in Chile is all the same; some kind of hot dog or burger food with a ton of mayonnaise. Our hostel is near this big street called Pio Nono, and all along this street there are tons of pub/restaurants with outdoor seating. Everyone grabs a table outside and drinks Escudo, a Chilean beer. So we did the same. When we got back to the hostel we played pool with some guys staying with us, then went to bed.
The next day we decided to explore Metropolitan Park, this huge hill in our neighborhood that at the top, you can see the whole valley where Santiago rests. We brought Dre, some guy we met in the hotel, and the three of us checked it out. Seeing the valley was really cool, but the park was very touristy and we got over it quickly. Afterwards we walked downtown and checked out some stores, got lunch, the usual. We got back to the hostel, napped, and woke up to Jamie checking into the hotel! It was a nice surprise. The night turned out to be pretty awesome.
Earlier in the day I read in a Santiago newspaper about this popular local band called "Banda Conmocion." Check out their website: http://www.myspace.com/bandaconmocion. So I go to their website and see that three blocks from our hostel, they were having a concert at a club. I didn't know anything about the band, but for $5 I thought it was worth checking out. In the computer room, we meet Jason, an outgoing guy from Michigan, and Mark, a bloke from Manchester. We all decide to go out to dinner, and this turned interesting. First, Jason orders this massive beer contraption at a pub down the street, it was like a 3-lilter glass with a tap. Everyone else is drinking from 1-liter bottles, but he saw it necessary to get the loudest device possible. It was pretty cool but kinda loud. Then the night's conversations turned wierd. I was sitting next to Mark and we were talking about books, but Jamie and Luke got into a heated argument with Jason that I tried to tune out to not appear rude to Mark but had a hard time. Jason seems to be the type of person that believes everything in the Loose Change documentary. Basically, he was saying that he doesn't feel he has to payback student loans because he doesn't agree with how the US spends their money and because his loans would go towards things he doesn't agree with, and whenever Luke or Jamie would argue with him he would smugly flail his arms and say "you just don't get it!" Luke and I earlier were talking to the table about how much we loved food in Buenos Aires and how inexpensive it was. He had to correct us and just say that since he lived there for 6 months, he knows that it's not that great and not that cheap and we just don't know any better. When I pay $15 for appetizers, a tenderloin entree, a liter of beer and glass of wine that is all delicious, I have a right to say that Buenos Aires has good food for cheap. Anyway, it was arguments like that all night and Mark and I decided to take the group to see Banda Conmocion. Thankfully, Jason had no cash and knew nobody would give him any, so just the four of us went. The concert ended up being really, really fun. The band had like 20 members and it was very intense latin american polka-rock really hard to describe music, but there was a ton of energy in the crowd. Everyone loved it. We left a little before the concert actually ended and grabbed some more beer down the street. While drinking, two local guys drinking next to us asked for a lighter and we invited them to join us. I forgot one of their names, but the other was Claudio. These guys spoke English very well. I guess Claudio is studying to teach English and has lived in the US for a few months. These guys were very interesting to talk to and were very well-educated vegans. Most importantly, they loved Avenged Sevenfold and Killswitch Engage. It was great being able to talk to Chileans about music and politics. We drank with them til closing around 5 and walked back to the hostel to go to bed.
Friday was spent packing and buying last minute gifts. At 6pm our shuttle came to take us to the airport and we had to say good-bye to Jamie. It was cool that coincidentally, our trip was the same as Jamie's basically. Once we got to the airport, we met a really ridiculous Canadian in line to check in. We didn't get his name, but he first asked about San Luis Obispo cause Luke was wearing his shirt and he just read a biography about Chuck Lidell. This guy was very friendly and candid, and outspoken. He kept loudly talking to us over other people about mixed martial arts women and how big their jugs are, stuff like that. It got really funny when he asked us what we were doing in Chile, and Luke told him that we were impregnating locals. His response was literally: "Oh really? You guys were having sex without condoms down here? Yeah me too, I'm pretty nervous actually." We almost laughed out loud at him but kept going. Luke told him he was burning and the guy was all excited and said "No way!" Later in line to board the plane, he asked if we were brothers and I said "No, actually we're gay." He was like "OOOh, gay!" I told him actually no, and he laughed about that. Then he asked if we slept mostly with hookers or non-hookers (his literal words were "hoes or girls") and then how many women we slept with. It ended with him informing us that his doctor friend told him that if you have unprotected sex with a female, you have a 14% chance of getting HIV so the odds were in his favor. Anyway, the rest of the journey was not too exciting...shuttle, waiting in the airport, plane rides, etc. The whole thing was about a 24-hour process. But now the trip is over.
Thanks for reading and making comments during our trip, we had a great time talking about this stuff and reading the responses. Especially the polls results. Check our Facebook profile for pictures and we left out a lot on this blog for purposes of being somewhat concise and to not mortify our family members! Thanks, ciao!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Last Night In Valparaiso
We have now spent three days in Valparaiso. Last post, we had basically just checked into the hostel. I said that the hostel was like the other ones, but dirtier, and that was an understatement. The hostel is located on some pretty steep hills, and I think in the event of an earthquake the building would just come undone. The walls do not form right angles with each other, and it appears to be leaning towards the street. However, it has a few redeeming qualities. In Argentina, breakfast is really light, usually just a piece or two of bread and coffee. Here, we get fruit, bread and butter, and scrambled eggs. The hosts are helpful, but not nearly as professional as our last places. Oh well.
Our first day here, Luke and I went out around 3 or 4 to get lunch and just walk around a little bit. We really wussed out in the end. I really don't remember what we did until 9, but around 9 we decided to take naps and just ended up going to bed. At this point, two girls had checked into the room but there were still 4 open beds. I slept very well, probably because I needed it badly, but Luke had a hard time sleeping and with good reason. There were dogs fighting outside, the final four people showed up around 12 and 4am, people talking, and some jerk playing guitar and singing loudly like all night. Normally this would all bother me a lot, but thankfully it didnt, and I slept for about 11 hours. Luke was pretty pissed at the guitar player. We found out later that the hosts are the morons playing and singing loudly were hosts. Not very professional to keep your guests from sleeping. In the morning we invited Lisa to come get some coffee with us. Lisa is a Cal Poly Pomona grad from June so we had to give her crap the whole time, but she is pretty funny and actually agreed with most of our jokes. We went to this cafe a few blocks from the hostel, and ended up eating breakfast. It was okay and the service was good. We went back to the hostel and tried to plan out our day. We really didn't know what to do, but I came up with a pretty loose loop to do around the city. In Valparaiso they have what are called "ascensors", which are like gondola lifts that take you up maybe 100-150 feet the hill because some parts are really steep and taking roads would be long. We road one and got a good view of the city, then walked around to the port, walked to a museum that ended up being closed, picked up our laundry, and got back to the hostel around 6. We had lunch that day that was awesome, and I think it's a Chilean thing. It was fried steak with two eggs on top and grilled onions, with a huge side of french fries and we split a liter of the local beer. It was awesome.
Later on that night, Luke and I went out again and bumped into this guy Olivian, a French-speaking Belgian who is in the same room. We ate dinner at this Mexican restaurant that is a block from the hostel, and that was pretty interesting. The dishes were all Mexican dishes, but the meat was cooked like locals would and the ingredients were all local as well, but the food was still tasty. We chatted with the Belgian, then bought some more beer at the liquor store and brought it back. Back at the hostel we had earlier met Ben, a bloke from Manchester who's travelling with the Belgian, Maria and Nicki, two girls who are graduates from university in the UK, Gorgie, this girl from Australia, and Lisa. They were all sitting in the room and so I got some cards and did the usual icebreaker: Kings Cup. It ended up being a pretty fun night, we just played a game of Kings which they seemed to enjoy, and chatted afterwards til about 3:30. I'm pretty sure Gorgie thinks Luke and I are idiots or something, and was making jokes to Maria about how the way we talk is like American high school movies or something in a sort of condescending way, which I ignored but thought was a pretty stupid thing to say. And later we made a new friend, "David", who was this shitfaced local whose brother works in the hostel and apparently he does to. This guy was smashed, and had the most standard drunk look on his face while he tried to talk to everyone. Understanding Spanish is hard enough for me, let alone when someone is hammered, but it got pretty annoying. Again, pretty unprofessional for an employee to be smashed and annoying the guests. All in all though, it was a good night and nice to meet more people.
We got up today around 9:30 or so and had a great breakfast at the hostel. Our plan was to meet Jamie and her mom in Viña del Mar, the city north of us, and I wanted to early in order to watch the inauguration. That didn't quite work out, but we met up with them later at their hotel. Our plan was to go to the beach and hang out. Ben joined us, which was fun, but the trip didnt go quite as planned. We took the train into Viña del Mar, but the hotel was actually quite north. We probably walked about 3 miles along coastline to get there, and since I had the right address but marked in wrong on our map, we overshot the hotel and lost about an hour of just wandering. We really had no idea how the buses worked either and didn't want to end up somewhere completely different. Regardless, we got there and chatted with them for a few hours by the pool. Jamie decided to spend one night in Santiago before heading back to Buenos Aires, so that will be nice having a third member of our entourage when we roll into the hostel.
Right now, our plan is to grab some food then go back to the hostel and shmooze with the people staying there. About half of our room left today, but this way we get some new faces.
A few random things Luke and I want to talk about regarding Chile so far:
1. Mullets. Mullets are extreme here. In Argentina, they were around and seemed to be pretty hip, and we got a kick out of that. Here, people go wild withthem. Some have hair two feet long in the back, some have them in dreads, some have them dyed wild colors. It's pretty rad. If I had my hair longer, I definitely would cut myself a mullet. I think the local girls wouldn't let me leave if I did that.
2. The toilets here kinda suck. They don't flush well, but worst of all you are not supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet. Instead, you put it in a wastebasket next to the toilet. We were really confused, because if water treatment can handle my dumps I'm pretty sure it can handle some paper, but apparently the water just goes into the ocean. It makes just being in the bathroom unpleasant to smell.
3. Dogs. There are dogs everywhere in this city. Dogs just wandering around and living in the streets. All the dogs have humorous looks in their faces, kinda smug but also quietly content.
4. Unlike Argentina, there are tons of fat people here. I really don't think there is a difference in body shapes here versus California. I am disappointed, because the US gets so much crap for being fat, but I see plenty of fatties here.
That's it. Tomorrow we are in Santiago. Bye.
Our first day here, Luke and I went out around 3 or 4 to get lunch and just walk around a little bit. We really wussed out in the end. I really don't remember what we did until 9, but around 9 we decided to take naps and just ended up going to bed. At this point, two girls had checked into the room but there were still 4 open beds. I slept very well, probably because I needed it badly, but Luke had a hard time sleeping and with good reason. There were dogs fighting outside, the final four people showed up around 12 and 4am, people talking, and some jerk playing guitar and singing loudly like all night. Normally this would all bother me a lot, but thankfully it didnt, and I slept for about 11 hours. Luke was pretty pissed at the guitar player. We found out later that the hosts are the morons playing and singing loudly were hosts. Not very professional to keep your guests from sleeping. In the morning we invited Lisa to come get some coffee with us. Lisa is a Cal Poly Pomona grad from June so we had to give her crap the whole time, but she is pretty funny and actually agreed with most of our jokes. We went to this cafe a few blocks from the hostel, and ended up eating breakfast. It was okay and the service was good. We went back to the hostel and tried to plan out our day. We really didn't know what to do, but I came up with a pretty loose loop to do around the city. In Valparaiso they have what are called "ascensors", which are like gondola lifts that take you up maybe 100-150 feet the hill because some parts are really steep and taking roads would be long. We road one and got a good view of the city, then walked around to the port, walked to a museum that ended up being closed, picked up our laundry, and got back to the hostel around 6. We had lunch that day that was awesome, and I think it's a Chilean thing. It was fried steak with two eggs on top and grilled onions, with a huge side of french fries and we split a liter of the local beer. It was awesome.
Later on that night, Luke and I went out again and bumped into this guy Olivian, a French-speaking Belgian who is in the same room. We ate dinner at this Mexican restaurant that is a block from the hostel, and that was pretty interesting. The dishes were all Mexican dishes, but the meat was cooked like locals would and the ingredients were all local as well, but the food was still tasty. We chatted with the Belgian, then bought some more beer at the liquor store and brought it back. Back at the hostel we had earlier met Ben, a bloke from Manchester who's travelling with the Belgian, Maria and Nicki, two girls who are graduates from university in the UK, Gorgie, this girl from Australia, and Lisa. They were all sitting in the room and so I got some cards and did the usual icebreaker: Kings Cup. It ended up being a pretty fun night, we just played a game of Kings which they seemed to enjoy, and chatted afterwards til about 3:30. I'm pretty sure Gorgie thinks Luke and I are idiots or something, and was making jokes to Maria about how the way we talk is like American high school movies or something in a sort of condescending way, which I ignored but thought was a pretty stupid thing to say. And later we made a new friend, "David", who was this shitfaced local whose brother works in the hostel and apparently he does to. This guy was smashed, and had the most standard drunk look on his face while he tried to talk to everyone. Understanding Spanish is hard enough for me, let alone when someone is hammered, but it got pretty annoying. Again, pretty unprofessional for an employee to be smashed and annoying the guests. All in all though, it was a good night and nice to meet more people.
We got up today around 9:30 or so and had a great breakfast at the hostel. Our plan was to meet Jamie and her mom in Viña del Mar, the city north of us, and I wanted to early in order to watch the inauguration. That didn't quite work out, but we met up with them later at their hotel. Our plan was to go to the beach and hang out. Ben joined us, which was fun, but the trip didnt go quite as planned. We took the train into Viña del Mar, but the hotel was actually quite north. We probably walked about 3 miles along coastline to get there, and since I had the right address but marked in wrong on our map, we overshot the hotel and lost about an hour of just wandering. We really had no idea how the buses worked either and didn't want to end up somewhere completely different. Regardless, we got there and chatted with them for a few hours by the pool. Jamie decided to spend one night in Santiago before heading back to Buenos Aires, so that will be nice having a third member of our entourage when we roll into the hostel.
Right now, our plan is to grab some food then go back to the hostel and shmooze with the people staying there. About half of our room left today, but this way we get some new faces.
A few random things Luke and I want to talk about regarding Chile so far:
1. Mullets. Mullets are extreme here. In Argentina, they were around and seemed to be pretty hip, and we got a kick out of that. Here, people go wild withthem. Some have hair two feet long in the back, some have them in dreads, some have them dyed wild colors. It's pretty rad. If I had my hair longer, I definitely would cut myself a mullet. I think the local girls wouldn't let me leave if I did that.
2. The toilets here kinda suck. They don't flush well, but worst of all you are not supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet. Instead, you put it in a wastebasket next to the toilet. We were really confused, because if water treatment can handle my dumps I'm pretty sure it can handle some paper, but apparently the water just goes into the ocean. It makes just being in the bathroom unpleasant to smell.
3. Dogs. There are dogs everywhere in this city. Dogs just wandering around and living in the streets. All the dogs have humorous looks in their faces, kinda smug but also quietly content.
4. Unlike Argentina, there are tons of fat people here. I really don't think there is a difference in body shapes here versus California. I am disappointed, because the US gets so much crap for being fat, but I see plenty of fatties here.
That's it. Tomorrow we are in Santiago. Bye.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
We Are In Valparaiso
Today Luke and I finished the cruise. We were both happy and sad to leave. We eventually met some really cool people on the ship...our bloody Aussies, Jamie, some cool Venezuelans, Gaz (our nickname for Garrett the tool, also G-Bag), a few Canadians, Andrea and Andréa, John and Sally (the old people we had our murder mystery dinner with. John offered for me to come to his room one evening to drink and smoke pot with him, some "good shit" he got in Mexico. I politely declined.), Dr. Grant and FEng (the east-coast couple that moved to Berkeley that were impressed with our maturity and enjoyed living happy un-married lives vicariously through us), and a few others we probably forgot to mention. But, we were ready to get off the boat and be in a city again. The food was getting pretty tiresome, and we are looking forward to warmer weather.
A few awesome things have happened since the last update, again we'll talk about it in no particular order because our timeline is way off. Last night was a riot. Luke and I planned to meet with Mike, Anna, and Jamie at the sports bar to start off the night with Kings Cup. Everyone came in late at staggered times, but eventually we had at the table the original five plus Dr. Grant, Feng, Andrea, Justin and Danielle (Mike and Anna's less-social cousins who are really cool), and of course bumbling Gaz who showed up wasted with purple teeth and baggy eyes due to drinking whiskey all day. We never got to King's Cup, but the night was awesome thanks to Gaz. Gaz went downstairs to get more whiskey, brought a glass back up with about two shots worth, and eventually passed out while we were all talking and eating. Idiot. In the US we call it Chiefing, and Aussies call it Texting, but we got a hold of a felt-pen and Luke performed some artwork on his face. This may sound really mean, but when we get the pictures you'll realize it was all pretty fun. Basically, he drew a unibrow, mutton chops, and a curly moustache, and chest hair! It was so damn funny, we all almost wet ourselves laughing. Eventually, Luke woke him up and walked him back to his room to face his parents. He kept talking about how his mom was mad at him for drinking too much. Hahaha. We have been laughing all day imagining how she reacted when she woke him up this morning! Unfortunately others have the pictures, so we'll have to wait to they put them on Facebook or something.
We ended the last night at Dazzle's, the on board disco which is pretty bad. Everyone was there so we rolled in just to chat and say some goodbyes, and ended up being there pretty late. At one point, after the music ended and we were all just talking, this drunk Argentine girl who said she was 17 came up to me and asked if Luke and I were Americans, and wanted a picture when we said yes. But then she came back to me and asked if the two of us were gay. I thought this was pretty funny, especially because she ran back to a group of teenages and said three times "No son gay!", like they had a bet going or something.
The day before, after rafting in Puerto Montt, Luke started to actually feel pretty feverish. He decided to spend the evening in the room to rest up, I went out with the Aussies and did sort of the same thing we do every night. I guess nothing special about that.
This morning we got up early, had breakfast, and just waited for our floor to be called so we could get off the ship. We disembarked around 10:30 but itwas a semi lengthy process. Once we got to the port and picked up our bags, it was a huge cluster-f. There were about 3000 people looking for shuttle buses and taxis, and hailing a taxi had absolutely no order whatsoever. It was annoying, but we actually got one pretty quickly. We got to the hostel and waited til about 12:30 for our room to be ready. This hostel is pretty neat, a lot like the other ones we stayed at but perhaps a little dirtier. The girl who is running it is from Wisconsin and moved here a little while ago, so that is helpful. The crowd at this hostel is hard to read, however. There is a bar, and currently the bar is completely occupied with girls and gay guys extravagantly doing hair, and people taking photos of them. Everyone seems kinda like hippies. This will be interesting. We are taking our time at this internet cafe, then we'll head back and see about mingling. The area we are staying in is very cool and we look forward to exploringit more tomorrow.
Responses to your comments--
1. Anonymous: thanks for the useless chuck norris tip
2. Nick: some of the photos have been posted on Facebook by the other people. Luke and I don't actually have a lot of photos right now. Check it out there.
3. Mom: We wanted to go to the steak house, but our east-coast Asian favorite couple Dr. Grant and Feng wanted to eat at the buffet instead. So we missed out on the steak but had good company.
4. Russian twins: you did not show up to Dazzles for a death match at 12:34 pm. You wussed out. You were probably too busy wearing matching speedos and making out.
5. Lucy: We actually permed our hair for the speedos, not trimmed. We wanted to volumize. Also, we're not sure if that tour guide was stylish or not according to Ushuaia, but he is South American so a fruity scarf is no surprise.
6. Phil: Luke is not convinced the women in Chile are very attractice. I'll agree that Argentina was better but I don't agree about Chile. Also, Luke was not "pointing" at anything in particular, but was flipping off the Celebrity cruise ship. It tries to have the same itenerary as us, but we always beat it to port and even passed it one evening in the ocean.
7. Robin: See response number 4!
8. Chris Garcia: Thanks for the comment. At least once a day, Luke and laugh out loud at the thought of you, JW, Arvand, and Josh Bellinger on a mother-f-ing cruise ship. Luke didn't know that was part of your trip this summer, and when I told him we almost died laughing. You guys form the Super Idiot, and that's pretty dangerous in the middle of the ocean.
And just in case you are curious, here is a list of all the jokes we have buried on this cruise from overuse:
1. Anything JP says in Grandma's Boy, particularly "Sit on my face!"
2. Lonely Planet's "J In My Pants" video. We showed this to our mate Mike and he loved it. Oy!
3. Andréa, our cruise director. Mom and Dad you may appreciate that. This guy runs activities on the ship, has a background in chemical engineering, and speaks like 6 languages on the ship over the intercom. We make jokes about the way he says everything.
4. Just 2 Guys and we're having a good time! "Guy number one, I love to dance, fancy-feet moves put you in a trance!" If you don't get that, sorry.
5. We have BUTCHERED the Australian accent. So badly, in fact, that we even perverted Mike's accent to sound more like the way we try. Justin actually said Luke sounded like an autistic swedish kid. We have completely destroyed the meaning of "Oy." Sorry mates.
6. East coast stereotypes. Specifically, New Jersey and Baaaston.
7. Married jokes. Dr. Grant, we think you appreciate them? Thanks for waiting til the last night to tell us you have a PhD.
8. Serious jokes about how poorly South Americans' concept of space is. They get like 10 people together and just stand and talk in the hallway. Perdón!!!
9. The teenage gangs of South America. These idiot kids showed up to the gym, Luke's and my one place of manly refuge on the boat, wearing dresses and got in our way trying to be funny. No, it was not funny.
10. Otto in general. Otto, we wish you had come on this trip. Once a day we come up with something funny for you. At the White Hot party, we cut a rug to Abba. Plus, we have bumped into like 50 of your family members.
We'll leave you guys with a few pictures of our rafting trip. Ciao!
A few awesome things have happened since the last update, again we'll talk about it in no particular order because our timeline is way off. Last night was a riot. Luke and I planned to meet with Mike, Anna, and Jamie at the sports bar to start off the night with Kings Cup. Everyone came in late at staggered times, but eventually we had at the table the original five plus Dr. Grant, Feng, Andrea, Justin and Danielle (Mike and Anna's less-social cousins who are really cool), and of course bumbling Gaz who showed up wasted with purple teeth and baggy eyes due to drinking whiskey all day. We never got to King's Cup, but the night was awesome thanks to Gaz. Gaz went downstairs to get more whiskey, brought a glass back up with about two shots worth, and eventually passed out while we were all talking and eating. Idiot. In the US we call it Chiefing, and Aussies call it Texting, but we got a hold of a felt-pen and Luke performed some artwork on his face. This may sound really mean, but when we get the pictures you'll realize it was all pretty fun. Basically, he drew a unibrow, mutton chops, and a curly moustache, and chest hair! It was so damn funny, we all almost wet ourselves laughing. Eventually, Luke woke him up and walked him back to his room to face his parents. He kept talking about how his mom was mad at him for drinking too much. Hahaha. We have been laughing all day imagining how she reacted when she woke him up this morning! Unfortunately others have the pictures, so we'll have to wait to they put them on Facebook or something.
We ended the last night at Dazzle's, the on board disco which is pretty bad. Everyone was there so we rolled in just to chat and say some goodbyes, and ended up being there pretty late. At one point, after the music ended and we were all just talking, this drunk Argentine girl who said she was 17 came up to me and asked if Luke and I were Americans, and wanted a picture when we said yes. But then she came back to me and asked if the two of us were gay. I thought this was pretty funny, especially because she ran back to a group of teenages and said three times "No son gay!", like they had a bet going or something.
The day before, after rafting in Puerto Montt, Luke started to actually feel pretty feverish. He decided to spend the evening in the room to rest up, I went out with the Aussies and did sort of the same thing we do every night. I guess nothing special about that.
This morning we got up early, had breakfast, and just waited for our floor to be called so we could get off the ship. We disembarked around 10:30 but itwas a semi lengthy process. Once we got to the port and picked up our bags, it was a huge cluster-f. There were about 3000 people looking for shuttle buses and taxis, and hailing a taxi had absolutely no order whatsoever. It was annoying, but we actually got one pretty quickly. We got to the hostel and waited til about 12:30 for our room to be ready. This hostel is pretty neat, a lot like the other ones we stayed at but perhaps a little dirtier. The girl who is running it is from Wisconsin and moved here a little while ago, so that is helpful. The crowd at this hostel is hard to read, however. There is a bar, and currently the bar is completely occupied with girls and gay guys extravagantly doing hair, and people taking photos of them. Everyone seems kinda like hippies. This will be interesting. We are taking our time at this internet cafe, then we'll head back and see about mingling. The area we are staying in is very cool and we look forward to exploringit more tomorrow.
Responses to your comments--
1. Anonymous: thanks for the useless chuck norris tip
2. Nick: some of the photos have been posted on Facebook by the other people. Luke and I don't actually have a lot of photos right now. Check it out there.
3. Mom: We wanted to go to the steak house, but our east-coast Asian favorite couple Dr. Grant and Feng wanted to eat at the buffet instead. So we missed out on the steak but had good company.
4. Russian twins: you did not show up to Dazzles for a death match at 12:34 pm. You wussed out. You were probably too busy wearing matching speedos and making out.
5. Lucy: We actually permed our hair for the speedos, not trimmed. We wanted to volumize. Also, we're not sure if that tour guide was stylish or not according to Ushuaia, but he is South American so a fruity scarf is no surprise.
6. Phil: Luke is not convinced the women in Chile are very attractice. I'll agree that Argentina was better but I don't agree about Chile. Also, Luke was not "pointing" at anything in particular, but was flipping off the Celebrity cruise ship. It tries to have the same itenerary as us, but we always beat it to port and even passed it one evening in the ocean.
7. Robin: See response number 4!
8. Chris Garcia: Thanks for the comment. At least once a day, Luke and laugh out loud at the thought of you, JW, Arvand, and Josh Bellinger on a mother-f-ing cruise ship. Luke didn't know that was part of your trip this summer, and when I told him we almost died laughing. You guys form the Super Idiot, and that's pretty dangerous in the middle of the ocean.
And just in case you are curious, here is a list of all the jokes we have buried on this cruise from overuse:
1. Anything JP says in Grandma's Boy, particularly "Sit on my face!"
2. Lonely Planet's "J In My Pants" video. We showed this to our mate Mike and he loved it. Oy!
3. Andréa, our cruise director. Mom and Dad you may appreciate that. This guy runs activities on the ship, has a background in chemical engineering, and speaks like 6 languages on the ship over the intercom. We make jokes about the way he says everything.
4. Just 2 Guys and we're having a good time! "Guy number one, I love to dance, fancy-feet moves put you in a trance!" If you don't get that, sorry.
5. We have BUTCHERED the Australian accent. So badly, in fact, that we even perverted Mike's accent to sound more like the way we try. Justin actually said Luke sounded like an autistic swedish kid. We have completely destroyed the meaning of "Oy." Sorry mates.
6. East coast stereotypes. Specifically, New Jersey and Baaaston.
7. Married jokes. Dr. Grant, we think you appreciate them? Thanks for waiting til the last night to tell us you have a PhD.
8. Serious jokes about how poorly South Americans' concept of space is. They get like 10 people together and just stand and talk in the hallway. Perdón!!!
9. The teenage gangs of South America. These idiot kids showed up to the gym, Luke's and my one place of manly refuge on the boat, wearing dresses and got in our way trying to be funny. No, it was not funny.
10. Otto in general. Otto, we wish you had come on this trip. Once a day we come up with something funny for you. At the White Hot party, we cut a rug to Abba. Plus, we have bumped into like 50 of your family members.
We'll leave you guys with a few pictures of our rafting trip. Ciao!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Puerto Montt
Today we are ported in Puerto Montt, Chile. Since our last post, Luke and I have had 2 sea days and yesterday we ported in Puerto Chacabuco. In every port, the cruiseline plans "excursions", different tours and adventures and such. Most of these cost $90 to $300, so we sort of planned on limiting how many we would do to like two or three. In Ushuaia, we did a hike and today went river rafting. We did nothing in Chacabuco, which was a mistake because it was a really small city with just a few thousand people. Instead we walked around the place for an hour, then came back to the ship and did the same thing we do everyday...nothing.
The whitewater rafting today was incredible. The weather here is pretty foggy with light rain, and the terrain is amazing. It sort of looks like Jurassic Park minus the dinosaurs. We have a ton of great photos that we'll post right after this (because the computer i´m using doesnt have an opening disc drive). We got off the ship around 9:30 and took a bus to this river, roughly 1 and a half hours away. We got dressed in all the gear, then formed teams. All in all, there were about 22 people from the cruise there. The rest of the boat is doing some wuss bus tours and whatnot. Our foursome had to split up; myself, Luke, and our bloody Australian mates Mike and Anna. Luke and Mike went in a boat with a Canadian gang, and Anna and I got on a boat with this family from New Jersey. The rapids were not too crazy, but it was so much fun. The water was actually fairly warm, and at one point the people in our boat jumped out and we just floated around. Afterwards, we dried off, had some snacks and a glass of Pisco, the Chilean alcohol.
Since our last post, not too much has happened. I'm trying to recall specifics. A few nights ago, the boat hosted a "white hot party", basically a party at the disco where you are supposed to wear as much white as you can. At first, it was a little lame because the age range was huge, the music was not for us, and it was awkward because the dance floor is small and maybe 40 or 50 people were dancing, and like 300 just sitting and watching...eventually I grabbed Jamie and we got out to dance and the other blokes followed. It turned out to be a lot of fun, because we finally met people about our age that were non-english speaking, for the most part. We met a bunch of people from Venezuela, more Brazilians, some Argentines, etc, and were dancing til about 3:30 or so then hung out at the sports bar and just chatted.
Last night we got a small group to go out to dinner with us...the two of us, our newleywed buddies Grant and Fang, Mike, and Jamie. We spent like 3 hours eating and talking in the restaurant. Later, we went up to the bar for some extreme King's Cup which Fang turned into a pretty loud game, making it more fun. After a few drinks we went to the disco and socialized a little, and eventually went back to the sports bar when it closed with more or the less the same gang of Venezuelans we met at the white hot party.
The other night Luke and I went to the sushi place for dinner. To be honest, we have been a little cautious about just going out to dinner the two of us, because it doesn't help us look like heteros. Anyway, sushi was awesome because we sat at the bar and chatted it up with the chefs who were totally ridiculous. They gave us all of the awesome lowdown about the crew: how crew romances work, how expensive hookers on shore are, and that through the grapevine, somebody saw the two crazy Russian looking guys making out, which is probably a lie but I was laughing so hard just that these guys would even discuss that with us.
Everything in between has been pretty quiet. I have been reading a lot, Luke has been napping a lot, and both of us have been working out and running probably too much. The weather has been for the most part pretty cold, and only one day on the cruise so far has the weather been good enough to sit outside. Luke's burns are recovering nicely, but honestly he got burned pretty good.
Again, we're rushed with time so if I forgot anything we'll update in Valparaiso. Thanks for being better posters!
By the way, Phil...we can talk about the South American women some other time.
The whitewater rafting today was incredible. The weather here is pretty foggy with light rain, and the terrain is amazing. It sort of looks like Jurassic Park minus the dinosaurs. We have a ton of great photos that we'll post right after this (because the computer i´m using doesnt have an opening disc drive). We got off the ship around 9:30 and took a bus to this river, roughly 1 and a half hours away. We got dressed in all the gear, then formed teams. All in all, there were about 22 people from the cruise there. The rest of the boat is doing some wuss bus tours and whatnot. Our foursome had to split up; myself, Luke, and our bloody Australian mates Mike and Anna. Luke and Mike went in a boat with a Canadian gang, and Anna and I got on a boat with this family from New Jersey. The rapids were not too crazy, but it was so much fun. The water was actually fairly warm, and at one point the people in our boat jumped out and we just floated around. Afterwards, we dried off, had some snacks and a glass of Pisco, the Chilean alcohol.
Since our last post, not too much has happened. I'm trying to recall specifics. A few nights ago, the boat hosted a "white hot party", basically a party at the disco where you are supposed to wear as much white as you can. At first, it was a little lame because the age range was huge, the music was not for us, and it was awkward because the dance floor is small and maybe 40 or 50 people were dancing, and like 300 just sitting and watching...eventually I grabbed Jamie and we got out to dance and the other blokes followed. It turned out to be a lot of fun, because we finally met people about our age that were non-english speaking, for the most part. We met a bunch of people from Venezuela, more Brazilians, some Argentines, etc, and were dancing til about 3:30 or so then hung out at the sports bar and just chatted.
Last night we got a small group to go out to dinner with us...the two of us, our newleywed buddies Grant and Fang, Mike, and Jamie. We spent like 3 hours eating and talking in the restaurant. Later, we went up to the bar for some extreme King's Cup which Fang turned into a pretty loud game, making it more fun. After a few drinks we went to the disco and socialized a little, and eventually went back to the sports bar when it closed with more or the less the same gang of Venezuelans we met at the white hot party.
The other night Luke and I went to the sushi place for dinner. To be honest, we have been a little cautious about just going out to dinner the two of us, because it doesn't help us look like heteros. Anyway, sushi was awesome because we sat at the bar and chatted it up with the chefs who were totally ridiculous. They gave us all of the awesome lowdown about the crew: how crew romances work, how expensive hookers on shore are, and that through the grapevine, somebody saw the two crazy Russian looking guys making out, which is probably a lie but I was laughing so hard just that these guys would even discuss that with us.
Everything in between has been pretty quiet. I have been reading a lot, Luke has been napping a lot, and both of us have been working out and running probably too much. The weather has been for the most part pretty cold, and only one day on the cruise so far has the weather been good enough to sit outside. Luke's burns are recovering nicely, but honestly he got burned pretty good.
Again, we're rushed with time so if I forgot anything we'll update in Valparaiso. Thanks for being better posters!
By the way, Phil...we can talk about the South American women some other time.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Below and to the left is the best manger scene located in a chapel in Punto Arenas. Below and to the right is a view of our ship and the town of Punto Arenas
Left is a picture of the unique shrubs in the cementary in Puntos Arenas. Below is Mike looking almost as hot as David Steele in the cementary.
Left is picture of myself with some people on our same shore excursion in Ushuaia. The man with the beard is our guide. The Lady and the man to left were the victims of Mike and my bordom. The lady in the back works for Exxon and was the most normal person on our exursion. 
Left depending on your viewpoint is the start or the end of the Argentine highway that goes from Ushuia to Buenos Aires.
Below is Mike and myself at the SOUTHERN MOST POINT in South America. The tip of the great horn.
Left is Mike and myself on the ship in front of the southern most coastguard station in South America. There is a monument for all the ships lost at sea in these waters.
Below if you look closely you can see our Russian twins in Stanley a town in the Falklan Islands. They are going up the stairs. We did not attempt to take a photo from the front in fear they might see us.
Left is Mike and myself in front of house in Stanley. Look at the British flag. Our flag is coolerBelow is picture of the typical vehicle driven in Stanley. They are called Defenders and everyone whose is anybody drives them here. 4x4 is big here I wish everywhere in South America was like this. I spent more time looking at the rigs here than looking at the town.
Below is picture of myself in Stanley with a real truck. I wish I could drive that to the supermarket.
left is myself with the hustlers in Stanley. They had a stand in the front yard selling biscuits and scones to the tourist visiting the town. Mike and myself bought biscuits and scones. If they were not so cute I dont think they could charge the price they did.
left is a picture of us saying hello to Celebrity Cruise line. We are winning the race.
Left is picture of myself with huge truck that races in the Dakar Rally.
Below is the statue the mujer in Buenos Aires
Left is our cruise ship the Norwegian Sun
Everything Since Puerto Madryn
First of all, we know a fair amount of friends and family read this and Luke and I are getting upset with the lack of comments. Comment, people!
At our last post Luke and I had basically finished up our exploration of Puerto Madryn. The cruise has been a blur of laziness so let's see what I can recall over the last 5 days or so. We have been hanging out with Jamie, our friend from the hostel in Palermo and we also met a few Aussies that I think we mentioned earlier. They are all pretty fun but since they are all with their families, and Luke and I are bastard cruisers our schedules often conflict. We've met up in the Sports Bar a few times and hit up the hot tub. Anna, one of the Aussies, went up to the cruise director to try to organize a dinner for people 20-30 years old. The outcome was Luke, me, Mike and Anna the two Aussies, Jamie, and these two newlyweds who live in Berkeley. So it was kind of a bust because we already knew most people, but the newlyweds (Grant and Fang) are really cool so it was good. We had dinner then later that evening played King's Cup in the Sports Bar.
At some point, Sandy (Jamie's mom) signed Luke and I up for a murder mystery dinner, which ended up being pretty fun. The setup was 8 people per table, and we each chose a character. They gave us books with character descriptions, the murder story, a few clues, and a question to ask someone and a response to a question somebody asks us. There were four courses, and with each course there was a new clue, question and response. I was the murderer and knew it from the get go, so only I was allowed to lie. At our table was myself, Luke, Jamie, Sandy, and Sandy's friend Carol, then Sally and John in their 60s from Texas, and Garrett. Garrett is the biggest tool Luke and I have ever met. Hes 20 and from New Jersey, and very blue-blooded. Since his character was an ass just like him, Luke and I turned murder mystery into "make-Garrett's-character-look-like-the-murderer mystery" instead and by the end almost everyone thought it was him. Somehow we turned his entrepeneur character into a selfish, arrogant, gay, raging jealous and impotent oil tycoon. It was hilarious. I don't think he got what we were doing, and Jamie invited him to join us for beers later that night. We tried to play King's Cup with him, but instead he bragged about how he's going to Antarctica and how he has a suite with a jacuzzi, mostly all of this directed to Jamie. I think since Luke and Jamie and I have crude humor, he thought it was okay to just be an idiot. I'll omit some of the wierd things he said, but the night ended with Jamie telling him: "There is no chance ever of you and me hooking up, ever!" and ditching him at some other bar.
Since the last post, we have visited three more cities. The first was Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Stanley was very pretty and the cold weather was a nice change. We decided not to do any excursion and just walk around. Stanley is a British city that was the center of a war, because Argentina feels it belongs to them but the locals and England disagree, so it was neat going to a museum and seeing all the pictures and newspaper clippings during the British-Argentine war of '82. There were tons of sweet trucks on this island. Luke is probably going to post photos of that. Eventually we bumped into Anna and Mike, then went to a pub to drink some beer. Oddly, the bartender spoke like no English and just spanish, so we took a risk and ordered what looked like a local beer. Instead it was some crappy hard cider. Oh well. We were also dying on the boat to shore from the ship, because they were playing some very innapropriate music but nobody noticed because everyone is South America. I forget the name of the "artist", but the chorus goes "I wanna f*** you, f*** you..." and the driver was just blasting it. We found that very odd!
Luke and I finally got tired of hearing about everyone's sweet excursions in these cities, so we signed up for a hike in Ushuaia. Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world and is in Argentina. It looks a lot like Alaska, its very beautiful. We asked the excursion planners if it was a good hike and they said yes. Well, when we got on our bus there were about 15 people over 50 years old. Turns out for NCL, "hike" is more like a leisurely stroll where people ask questions every 3 minutes that causes the line to stop. At first we were annoyed, but eventually we went to a very beautiful area so it worked out well. We also played some dumb game because we were bored at first. There was this really loud woman from New York getting high off of birds, and she had her whipped husband by a leash, so Luke and I kept getting in between them just so see if he'd keep strolling and enjoy the hike. Instead, he would squeeze by every time and follow her. It was probably a mean thing, but c'mon. The boat left at 1:30, giving us not enough time to explore the city. I would seriously love to return and just hike around the terrain for weeks.
Today we are in Punta Arenas, our first city in Chile. Its very cool. It is the southernmost Chilean city, and we have plenty of time. To make a long story short, we negotiated a tour around the city from $10 per hour, and it was guided by a local girl Roxanna who was studying English at the University. The whole thing was a little sloppy, but it was nice to be guided by honest locals and not a strict cruise-organized tour. Now we are just relaxing on the internet in some cafe. On the ship, using the internet is about $45 per hour, and anywhere offshore its more like 1 or 2, so we save it all for when we are off the ship.
At our last post Luke and I had basically finished up our exploration of Puerto Madryn. The cruise has been a blur of laziness so let's see what I can recall over the last 5 days or so. We have been hanging out with Jamie, our friend from the hostel in Palermo and we also met a few Aussies that I think we mentioned earlier. They are all pretty fun but since they are all with their families, and Luke and I are bastard cruisers our schedules often conflict. We've met up in the Sports Bar a few times and hit up the hot tub. Anna, one of the Aussies, went up to the cruise director to try to organize a dinner for people 20-30 years old. The outcome was Luke, me, Mike and Anna the two Aussies, Jamie, and these two newlyweds who live in Berkeley. So it was kind of a bust because we already knew most people, but the newlyweds (Grant and Fang) are really cool so it was good. We had dinner then later that evening played King's Cup in the Sports Bar.
At some point, Sandy (Jamie's mom) signed Luke and I up for a murder mystery dinner, which ended up being pretty fun. The setup was 8 people per table, and we each chose a character. They gave us books with character descriptions, the murder story, a few clues, and a question to ask someone and a response to a question somebody asks us. There were four courses, and with each course there was a new clue, question and response. I was the murderer and knew it from the get go, so only I was allowed to lie. At our table was myself, Luke, Jamie, Sandy, and Sandy's friend Carol, then Sally and John in their 60s from Texas, and Garrett. Garrett is the biggest tool Luke and I have ever met. Hes 20 and from New Jersey, and very blue-blooded. Since his character was an ass just like him, Luke and I turned murder mystery into "make-Garrett's-character-look-like-the-murderer mystery" instead and by the end almost everyone thought it was him. Somehow we turned his entrepeneur character into a selfish, arrogant, gay, raging jealous and impotent oil tycoon. It was hilarious. I don't think he got what we were doing, and Jamie invited him to join us for beers later that night. We tried to play King's Cup with him, but instead he bragged about how he's going to Antarctica and how he has a suite with a jacuzzi, mostly all of this directed to Jamie. I think since Luke and Jamie and I have crude humor, he thought it was okay to just be an idiot. I'll omit some of the wierd things he said, but the night ended with Jamie telling him: "There is no chance ever of you and me hooking up, ever!" and ditching him at some other bar.
Since the last post, we have visited three more cities. The first was Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Stanley was very pretty and the cold weather was a nice change. We decided not to do any excursion and just walk around. Stanley is a British city that was the center of a war, because Argentina feels it belongs to them but the locals and England disagree, so it was neat going to a museum and seeing all the pictures and newspaper clippings during the British-Argentine war of '82. There were tons of sweet trucks on this island. Luke is probably going to post photos of that. Eventually we bumped into Anna and Mike, then went to a pub to drink some beer. Oddly, the bartender spoke like no English and just spanish, so we took a risk and ordered what looked like a local beer. Instead it was some crappy hard cider. Oh well. We were also dying on the boat to shore from the ship, because they were playing some very innapropriate music but nobody noticed because everyone is South America. I forget the name of the "artist", but the chorus goes "I wanna f*** you, f*** you..." and the driver was just blasting it. We found that very odd!
Luke and I finally got tired of hearing about everyone's sweet excursions in these cities, so we signed up for a hike in Ushuaia. Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world and is in Argentina. It looks a lot like Alaska, its very beautiful. We asked the excursion planners if it was a good hike and they said yes. Well, when we got on our bus there were about 15 people over 50 years old. Turns out for NCL, "hike" is more like a leisurely stroll where people ask questions every 3 minutes that causes the line to stop. At first we were annoyed, but eventually we went to a very beautiful area so it worked out well. We also played some dumb game because we were bored at first. There was this really loud woman from New York getting high off of birds, and she had her whipped husband by a leash, so Luke and I kept getting in between them just so see if he'd keep strolling and enjoy the hike. Instead, he would squeeze by every time and follow her. It was probably a mean thing, but c'mon. The boat left at 1:30, giving us not enough time to explore the city. I would seriously love to return and just hike around the terrain for weeks.
Today we are in Punta Arenas, our first city in Chile. Its very cool. It is the southernmost Chilean city, and we have plenty of time. To make a long story short, we negotiated a tour around the city from $10 per hour, and it was guided by a local girl Roxanna who was studying English at the University. The whole thing was a little sloppy, but it was nice to be guided by honest locals and not a strict cruise-organized tour. Now we are just relaxing on the internet in some cafe. On the ship, using the internet is about $45 per hour, and anywhere offshore its more like 1 or 2, so we save it all for when we are off the ship.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Puerto Madryn
Day three of the cruise and we are ported in Puerto Madryn, a beach town in central Argentina. It's funny because the culture of the town seems like any beach town in California, like there is some global way to live next to a beach. We've done some basic exploring and saw some of kind of ocean life museum, only to find out since Argentina has done almost no sea research, nearly all photos and info came from Monterey Bay in CA! What a rip off!
Yesterday was our first day at Sea. Luke and I decided to get up early and try a Yoga class, which was pretty cool so we signed up for all of them. Then we had an awesome breakfast, something we haven't really had since we left. We decided to spend the afternooon by the pool, get some tanning done, read, and just check out the scene. We were kind of idiots. We got to the pool around 11 after putting on some SPF 30 sunscreen. Either because we are careless or cocky or both, we never reloaded so four hours later we got back and felt a little burned. Well, we definitely burned. Not terrible burns, but Luke is worse then I am and felt a little sick last night. Just after he gets over feeling some stomach sickness from BsAs, he gets heat stroke. Idiot. Oh well, we'll be fine tomorrow and 100% the next day, which are both at sea anyway.
After this, we went to a beer tasting at one of the bars which had a team competition of trivia. Luke and I met some woman and this guy Luciano, another Brazilian with like 16 family members, so we was pretty excited to be at the bar. We completely emasculated the other teams, doubling the second best team's points, but the winners apparently dont get any diffrent prizes than the losers, which was a 33 oz beer mug that we can use all over the ship. We went upstairs to another place for food, and we bumped into Jamie from our hostel in Palermo! When we met her in Buenos Aires, she knew was going on a cruise with her family but couldn't remember which ship. For the first two days, we never saw her so I assumed she had gotten on a different boat, but turns out were on the same one. This is great, because with a female as part of our gang we don't appear as just a gay couple. Anyway, we had dinner with her mom and her mom's friend, then afterwards got some drinks and met three Australians on a family trip who are roughly our age that were pretty cool. So hopefully the social life will pick up.
Luke and I also discovered that on our ship there is a more extreme, Eastern-European version of us. These guys are way more muscular, way more hairy, have more skimpy speedos, and just like us its hard to tell if they are brothers, friends or lovers. These guys are crazy looking. If they are lovers, I really feel bad for whoever is sharing a wall with them.
This post is kinda weak but honestly not as much has happened. Our next stop is three days from now in Stanley, Falkland Islands. We'll try to update then. Adios.
Yesterday was our first day at Sea. Luke and I decided to get up early and try a Yoga class, which was pretty cool so we signed up for all of them. Then we had an awesome breakfast, something we haven't really had since we left. We decided to spend the afternooon by the pool, get some tanning done, read, and just check out the scene. We were kind of idiots. We got to the pool around 11 after putting on some SPF 30 sunscreen. Either because we are careless or cocky or both, we never reloaded so four hours later we got back and felt a little burned. Well, we definitely burned. Not terrible burns, but Luke is worse then I am and felt a little sick last night. Just after he gets over feeling some stomach sickness from BsAs, he gets heat stroke. Idiot. Oh well, we'll be fine tomorrow and 100% the next day, which are both at sea anyway.
After this, we went to a beer tasting at one of the bars which had a team competition of trivia. Luke and I met some woman and this guy Luciano, another Brazilian with like 16 family members, so we was pretty excited to be at the bar. We completely emasculated the other teams, doubling the second best team's points, but the winners apparently dont get any diffrent prizes than the losers, which was a 33 oz beer mug that we can use all over the ship. We went upstairs to another place for food, and we bumped into Jamie from our hostel in Palermo! When we met her in Buenos Aires, she knew was going on a cruise with her family but couldn't remember which ship. For the first two days, we never saw her so I assumed she had gotten on a different boat, but turns out were on the same one. This is great, because with a female as part of our gang we don't appear as just a gay couple. Anyway, we had dinner with her mom and her mom's friend, then afterwards got some drinks and met three Australians on a family trip who are roughly our age that were pretty cool. So hopefully the social life will pick up.
Luke and I also discovered that on our ship there is a more extreme, Eastern-European version of us. These guys are way more muscular, way more hairy, have more skimpy speedos, and just like us its hard to tell if they are brothers, friends or lovers. These guys are crazy looking. If they are lovers, I really feel bad for whoever is sharing a wall with them.
This post is kinda weak but honestly not as much has happened. Our next stop is three days from now in Stanley, Falkland Islands. We'll try to update then. Adios.
Monday, January 5, 2009
The Cruise
Chris left to go to the airport after our last post. His plan was to fly to Bolivia, spend the night there, then go to Peru and hike Machu Picchu.
We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out. Luke, Butter (the girl from Turkey) and I went shopping in Palermo and first stopped at one of our favorite cafes. Luke and I just got some empanadas (they are like small calzones) and spent the afternoon checking out some shops and helping Butter find some art. Then we did the BsAs thing and sat at a table drinking around massive crowds, just chatting. I showed the picture earlier of Luke spitting on foreign culture with our Budweiser. We got home and napped for an hour or so.
That evening, Hostel Suites Obelisco was throwing an apology party, called "Failure Party", because most people were upset they spent 140 pesos on New Year's for a sub-par party. This was a free party with free booze held at our first Hostel, so we got a gang to go to it. We got there at about 11:30 and the place was going crazy. When we walked in we thought there was a fire from all of the smoking that was going on, but it was awesome. We bumped into Gi, our French friend who we continously make fun of just because we are American and he is French. He is smug and smokes like a Chimney and is really funny. We also saw people who work there that were great to us. At this party, there were a ton of Brazilians. This whole trip, we have met more Brazilians than Argentines but they are extremely friendly people. You just go up and say hi and they start talking and asking you all sorts of questions. I gave one guy my e-mail because he plays baseball in Sao Paolo, and apparently gloves are very hard to find and he wanted me to mail him one. Why not. They also taught Luke and I drinking chants and some awesome inappropriate Portuguese. Actually, earlier, some of our friends wrote down for Luke to say (to a hooker) "How much for your services? Do you have AIDS?" and so we he was showing off this knowledge, and everybody he asked laughed hysterically. We are now confident that our next trip has to be to Brazil.
The party started to die down around 1:30, so we tried to get everybody to leave but ended up getting split up. I took a cab back to Hostel with some of our friends to meet Norway and his Jamie, then possibly go out. Instead, we drank and played cards at the Hostel with people there. For me, it was a pretty quiet night. Here is Luke:
So I got split up from mike/our hostel group and I ended up going to crobar with the brazillans I just met. I was hanging with them in the club and they said they were leaving. Somehow I lost them in club on the way out and I was stranded. I was thinking ohh crap, I am all alone and not miguel to save the day. So I left the club to find my way back to the hostel. Everything looked different at night and I was having trouble finding my way. In some areas that looked sketchy I ran down the street preparing to sprint if things went south. I was solicited by four hookers on the way to the hostel but did not use my new found brazillian lines. The last hooker that approached me I asked in spanish where the hostel was and how to get there. Just as I said this, a police car pulled up. Me talking to hooker at 3 in mourning looked pretty bad. They called me to there car. I asked them in spanish where the hostel was. After the cops helpful directions, I made it back to the hostel with all of my organs. After getting back to the hostel I told everyone my story .
Since we had to get up early to check out, it was another night of 2 hours sleep. I got up before Luke, posted those four pictures, ate breakfast, packed up and checked out. We met up with the Brazilians, Norway, and Jamie because we wanted to do one last tour before leaving. We all happened to be leaving that day. For whatever reason, the Brazilian girls LOVE Mcdonald's and the rest our crappy American fast food, and everyone decided to have lunch at Mcdonald's, and Luke and I were apprehensive, but then we realized that it would be pretty funny. We decided to give everyone there a treat by being walking stereotypes. We both ordered supersized big mac meals and Luke ordered a Mcflurry. When we got the food, the mcflurry wasn't there and so Luke asked for it. Apparently here, you pick that up after you are done eating. The girl looked at him and was like "You want it now?", like it was the strangest/dumbest thing she had seen. Luke didn't get it, but Norway almost peed his pants laughing at him. We ate and I almost wet myself from laughing at our jokes, we all were just brainstorming ideas on how we could be more stereotypical. We decided that if we were all fat, wore sweatpants, had southern accents, were any louder, and crashed through the wall in an H2 to park inside the eating area, that we would be the most extreme Americans ever! The food at this Mcdonald's was way better than the US. The beef was better and more of it, and the presentation was jsut like the pictures.
We then went to the zoo, which sounded like a lot of fun and normally would have been, but it was super hot out and everybody was tired and dehydrated. The zoo itself was pretty cool but we all noticed some things that were funny and sad. They dont seem to take too good of care of the animals there. We saw this polar bear that was just standing in one place with his head dropped, like he was too hot to even move. Every once in a while, he would look over at us sadly, then put his head back down. At first it was funny, then we all though it was really sad. The rest of the park was a pretty standard zoo. We got back to the Hostel, called a cab, and said a sad goodbye to all of our friends. Luke, in the meantime, must have caught something nasty because he had to quickly dash to the toilet and Dumb and Dumbered into the toilet. He thinks one more second of waiting and he would have crapped his pants. Then we got into our cab, went to port and got into our boat. The check in was longer than that, but boring so not really worth mentioning.
Luke and I were so tired we basically just napped when we got to the boat. Around 7 we got up and toured the boat, then ate dinner. Luke was still feeling kind sick, so he spent some time in the room and I went to the gym to have a much-needed workout. That evening, we went out around 12 to see what was going on and nothing was. We are starting to realize how crazy our Hostel stays were and that the ship will probably not be like that at all. We'll just have to make friends with some elders and completely re-arrange our eating/sleeping schedule.
Right now we are ported in Montevideo, Uruguay. It's a very pretty city but being ported for a few hours does not give us a lot of time to check it out. I bought a Mate, a Bombilla, and Yerba Mate so Luke and I can experience this crazy South American drink.
Overall, we are a little thrown off with the cruise. The people are predominately South American, it's mostly families, and hardly anyone our age. With the Hostels, everybody stays there because they are outgoing and will go out of their way to meet you and invite you places. The nature of being in a Hostel makes everybody social. The cruise is different, so far. People are not as aggresive at being social. This will just be a slight adjustment for us. So were going to some events this evening to see what's up, and are totally looking forward to being able to see some great cities and scenery in South America that this cruise provides us.
We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out. Luke, Butter (the girl from Turkey) and I went shopping in Palermo and first stopped at one of our favorite cafes. Luke and I just got some empanadas (they are like small calzones) and spent the afternoon checking out some shops and helping Butter find some art. Then we did the BsAs thing and sat at a table drinking around massive crowds, just chatting. I showed the picture earlier of Luke spitting on foreign culture with our Budweiser. We got home and napped for an hour or so.
That evening, Hostel Suites Obelisco was throwing an apology party, called "Failure Party", because most people were upset they spent 140 pesos on New Year's for a sub-par party. This was a free party with free booze held at our first Hostel, so we got a gang to go to it. We got there at about 11:30 and the place was going crazy. When we walked in we thought there was a fire from all of the smoking that was going on, but it was awesome. We bumped into Gi, our French friend who we continously make fun of just because we are American and he is French. He is smug and smokes like a Chimney and is really funny. We also saw people who work there that were great to us. At this party, there were a ton of Brazilians. This whole trip, we have met more Brazilians than Argentines but they are extremely friendly people. You just go up and say hi and they start talking and asking you all sorts of questions. I gave one guy my e-mail because he plays baseball in Sao Paolo, and apparently gloves are very hard to find and he wanted me to mail him one. Why not. They also taught Luke and I drinking chants and some awesome inappropriate Portuguese. Actually, earlier, some of our friends wrote down for Luke to say (to a hooker) "How much for your services? Do you have AIDS?" and so we he was showing off this knowledge, and everybody he asked laughed hysterically. We are now confident that our next trip has to be to Brazil.
The party started to die down around 1:30, so we tried to get everybody to leave but ended up getting split up. I took a cab back to Hostel with some of our friends to meet Norway and his Jamie, then possibly go out. Instead, we drank and played cards at the Hostel with people there. For me, it was a pretty quiet night. Here is Luke:
So I got split up from mike/our hostel group and I ended up going to crobar with the brazillans I just met. I was hanging with them in the club and they said they were leaving. Somehow I lost them in club on the way out and I was stranded. I was thinking ohh crap, I am all alone and not miguel to save the day. So I left the club to find my way back to the hostel. Everything looked different at night and I was having trouble finding my way. In some areas that looked sketchy I ran down the street preparing to sprint if things went south. I was solicited by four hookers on the way to the hostel but did not use my new found brazillian lines. The last hooker that approached me I asked in spanish where the hostel was and how to get there. Just as I said this, a police car pulled up. Me talking to hooker at 3 in mourning looked pretty bad. They called me to there car. I asked them in spanish where the hostel was. After the cops helpful directions, I made it back to the hostel with all of my organs. After getting back to the hostel I told everyone my story .
Since we had to get up early to check out, it was another night of 2 hours sleep. I got up before Luke, posted those four pictures, ate breakfast, packed up and checked out. We met up with the Brazilians, Norway, and Jamie because we wanted to do one last tour before leaving. We all happened to be leaving that day. For whatever reason, the Brazilian girls LOVE Mcdonald's and the rest our crappy American fast food, and everyone decided to have lunch at Mcdonald's, and Luke and I were apprehensive, but then we realized that it would be pretty funny. We decided to give everyone there a treat by being walking stereotypes. We both ordered supersized big mac meals and Luke ordered a Mcflurry. When we got the food, the mcflurry wasn't there and so Luke asked for it. Apparently here, you pick that up after you are done eating. The girl looked at him and was like "You want it now?", like it was the strangest/dumbest thing she had seen. Luke didn't get it, but Norway almost peed his pants laughing at him. We ate and I almost wet myself from laughing at our jokes, we all were just brainstorming ideas on how we could be more stereotypical. We decided that if we were all fat, wore sweatpants, had southern accents, were any louder, and crashed through the wall in an H2 to park inside the eating area, that we would be the most extreme Americans ever! The food at this Mcdonald's was way better than the US. The beef was better and more of it, and the presentation was jsut like the pictures.
We then went to the zoo, which sounded like a lot of fun and normally would have been, but it was super hot out and everybody was tired and dehydrated. The zoo itself was pretty cool but we all noticed some things that were funny and sad. They dont seem to take too good of care of the animals there. We saw this polar bear that was just standing in one place with his head dropped, like he was too hot to even move. Every once in a while, he would look over at us sadly, then put his head back down. At first it was funny, then we all though it was really sad. The rest of the park was a pretty standard zoo. We got back to the Hostel, called a cab, and said a sad goodbye to all of our friends. Luke, in the meantime, must have caught something nasty because he had to quickly dash to the toilet and Dumb and Dumbered into the toilet. He thinks one more second of waiting and he would have crapped his pants. Then we got into our cab, went to port and got into our boat. The check in was longer than that, but boring so not really worth mentioning.
Luke and I were so tired we basically just napped when we got to the boat. Around 7 we got up and toured the boat, then ate dinner. Luke was still feeling kind sick, so he spent some time in the room and I went to the gym to have a much-needed workout. That evening, we went out around 12 to see what was going on and nothing was. We are starting to realize how crazy our Hostel stays were and that the ship will probably not be like that at all. We'll just have to make friends with some elders and completely re-arrange our eating/sleeping schedule.
Right now we are ported in Montevideo, Uruguay. It's a very pretty city but being ported for a few hours does not give us a lot of time to check it out. I bought a Mate, a Bombilla, and Yerba Mate so Luke and I can experience this crazy South American drink.
Overall, we are a little thrown off with the cruise. The people are predominately South American, it's mostly families, and hardly anyone our age. With the Hostels, everybody stays there because they are outgoing and will go out of their way to meet you and invite you places. The nature of being in a Hostel makes everybody social. The cruise is different, so far. People are not as aggresive at being social. This will just be a slight adjustment for us. So were going to some events this evening to see what's up, and are totally looking forward to being able to see some great cities and scenery in South America that this cruise provides us.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A few pictures
I took a lot less photos than the other guys, so here are a few that I have. First one is a view from our Hostel in Palermo. Second is luke diving right into Argentine culture. Bottom left is Chris with our two brazilian friends at lunch in Puerto Madera, and bottom right is brazilian 1 with norway and his fiance of 1 day being introduced to King´s Cup!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
We Are Sugar Band
Thursday evening we went out to a great café a block away from our hostel. I ordered a some kind of grilled chicken with fried potatoes, Luke ordered an excellent pizza, and Chris got some kind of white fish. When we order, we rarely know what it actually is that we order. We've been laughing a lot about the smirks we get when speaking spanish. A few people look annoyed, some confused, but most look a little humored. We also had a great local merlot.
After dinner we went to Hostel Suites Palermo, the host we checked into Friday morning, because we met some Brazilians who invited us to come hang out. We found them out back with a group of people playing "shithead", some competitive card game. At the table were the three of us, two guys from Colorado and Texas, a girl from Turkey, a guy from Norway and his fiance from the US (who met here and literally 48 hours later decided to get married, which we thought only happened in chick flicks and Las Vegas), 3 or 4 Brazilians and a girl from the US who graduated from Cal Poly in 2001. We got sick of Shithead and dropped a American culture bomb on them, introducing them to King's Cup, a very animated drinking game with cards. They loved it. Luke spent the whole night making stupid Turkey puns, and we did our best to learn as many Portuguese words as possible.
The next day we checked into Hostel Suites Palermo, and Turkey organized a trip to Puerto Madera, which is an area the three of us were the first two nights. It was the three of us, plus Turkey, Cal Poly, and two Brazilians. We took the subway over and walked about 6 or 7 blocks so that we could walk along the port. In the subway, somebody attempted to rob me because it got really crowded and after checking my back, it had been slightly opened. The passengers on the train at first were concerned and told me to wear it in front, then after things were okay they started smirking and laughing with each other. Along the way we saw the President's house and took a few photos. We settled down for lunch at this place in the port that was hard to describe, but kind of luxurious, trendy, elitist, something like this. Half of us ate while sitting in lounge chairs. The service was great and so was the food, and at some point during this meal we all came up with funny nick names. The nicknames go like this: Luke is Cream Cheese, Chris is Doce de Leche (Portuguese for Dulce de leche), I am Honey Mustard, Cal Poly was Choco, Turkey is Butter, one Brazilian is Pudding and the other Brazilian is Cheesecake. Don't ask how they came up these hilarious names, but we have been using them overkill since we got them. Then Cheesecake decided that we should be a band, and she came up with the name Sugar Band!
Eventually we split up, I went back
because we had laundry to pick up before closing, and three others went to La Boca just to sight see. Once we got back Cheesecake and Pudding wanted to go to the Dakar starting line to meet up with their father, so we tagged along. The place was crazy with tons of people everywhere. Walking back, we passed three cops standing out of this armored tank-like SUV that was rad. Luke took a photo with them wearing one of their hats, and then the cops posed with the Brazilians. Luke yelled out "Queso!" right before I snapped the photo, which made them laugh because we are pretty sure nobody does that, we just thought it would be funny.
because we had laundry to pick up before closing, and three others went to La Boca just to sight see. Once we got back Cheesecake and Pudding wanted to go to the Dakar starting line to meet up with their father, so we tagged along. The place was crazy with tons of people everywhere. Walking back, we passed three cops standing out of this armored tank-like SUV that was rad. Luke took a photo with them wearing one of their hats, and then the cops posed with the Brazilians. Luke yelled out "Queso!" right before I snapped the photo, which made them laugh because we are pretty sure nobody does that, we just thought it would be funny.Eventually we came back at about 9pm and napped until 11. The three of us gringos went to another cafe a few blocks away and had a very excellent dinner, splitting a pizza and drinking café. When we came back, we basically decided not to go out and instead played a few games of King's Cups. Everybody went to bed a little earlier this night because we were so tired from getting no sleep the night before.
Today, we slept in, then got up and grabbed some breakfast. Right now, Chris is shopping for these sweet Brazilian sandals and in a few minutes he has to leave to the airport. The plan is for us to go shopping with some people from the Hostel because Luke needs some obnoxious shorts and better-fitting Speedo, and tonight we are going to an apology party for how poorly organized New Year´s was, even though we had fun. We will update with the details later. Here are some pictures:
Left is a photo of Francisco and Nally, and me after a very satisfying meal.That´s it for now. We have more photos but are kinda rushed. Next time, you can see Sugar Band. Adios.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Centro and Palermo
The last few day have been pretty awesome.
Monday was spent exploring the parts of the city near our first hostel. Chris's flight from Iguazu didn't come until 8pm so Luke and I did lots of walking during the day. The three of us went out to dinner around 11 at a steak place that was recommended to us by one of the receptionists in the San Telmo neighborhood. The food was amazing. We all got tenderloin steaks that were slightly different for about $12 a plate and they were all very, very good. We came back to the hostel around 1 and made friends with a few people staying in the hostel and some of the employees, and basically spent the entire night drinking Quilmes, playing pool and talking with everyone. It was a lot of fun. Argentines like to stay up all night and we went to bed sometim around 7. Everything here seems to be delayed about 6 hours from our regular schedule in the states, so the time zone changes is really helping.
Tuesday afternoon was spent doing more of the same thing, exploring the city with no actual agenda. We were actually supposed to play soccer with one of the employees, Francisco, and some of his friends around 430 but they Argentined us and cancelled it around 6. Instead, Francisco took the three of us and his lady Nally, a tourist from Australia, out to the port area for drinks and eventually another nice restaurant. The drinks and restaurant were about a mile from the hostel so Francisco was able to show us a lot of the city. I think we got back to the hostel around 3 and hung out until 4.
Wednesday, New Year's, we switched hostels and moved to a different neighboorhood, Palermo. Palermo is very pretty and a lot nicer than the hood from earlier, Centro. People in Centro love to throw their garbage out on th streets and the city has trash everywhere. There also seems to be some more poverty there. Palermo is maybe comparable to downtown Berkeley in my opinion. Our new hostel is bigger and much cooler architecturally, has more friendly people but the employees are less friendly. Apparently New Year's is a big holiday but not exactly a big night for Porteños to go out at night so we went to a party organized by our hostel. The hostel company organized this huge party that for $140 pesos took us in a bus to Le Tigre (an hour away or so) to some waterfront party hall that was very pretty. It was a lot of fun because there were probably 200 people or so from the different hostels, including the people we made friends with from Centro. There were actually very few Argentines and a lot of Australians, French, and Brazilians. We had a blast because everybody we are around is friendly...the kind of people who are travelling and going to this party are just naturally going to be outgoing. We were at this place for a while, went to this club called Crobar and eventually walked back to our hostel. The whole night was seriously a great time.
Overall we are all really, really enjoying this trip. The city and lifestyle is similar enough to the United States for us to get around, eat, socialize, etc., but different enough that every single thing we do is a great cultural experience. For example, the restaurants here are very similar in terms of what and how you eat, but still different. Nearly any place you go you get waited on. The servers do not intereract a whole lot, take their time, and never rush. In the US, we would be getting extremely impatient; here it's just fine.
We have taken tons of pictures, but they are mostly and Chris and Luke's cameras and those idiots are napping upstairs right now. Next update will have pictures of a lot of this so you all can see the city, where we've been, and to prove that people here are very tolerant of Luke.
¡Ciao!
Monday was spent exploring the parts of the city near our first hostel. Chris's flight from Iguazu didn't come until 8pm so Luke and I did lots of walking during the day. The three of us went out to dinner around 11 at a steak place that was recommended to us by one of the receptionists in the San Telmo neighborhood. The food was amazing. We all got tenderloin steaks that were slightly different for about $12 a plate and they were all very, very good. We came back to the hostel around 1 and made friends with a few people staying in the hostel and some of the employees, and basically spent the entire night drinking Quilmes, playing pool and talking with everyone. It was a lot of fun. Argentines like to stay up all night and we went to bed sometim around 7. Everything here seems to be delayed about 6 hours from our regular schedule in the states, so the time zone changes is really helping.
Tuesday afternoon was spent doing more of the same thing, exploring the city with no actual agenda. We were actually supposed to play soccer with one of the employees, Francisco, and some of his friends around 430 but they Argentined us and cancelled it around 6. Instead, Francisco took the three of us and his lady Nally, a tourist from Australia, out to the port area for drinks and eventually another nice restaurant. The drinks and restaurant were about a mile from the hostel so Francisco was able to show us a lot of the city. I think we got back to the hostel around 3 and hung out until 4.
Wednesday, New Year's, we switched hostels and moved to a different neighboorhood, Palermo. Palermo is very pretty and a lot nicer than the hood from earlier, Centro. People in Centro love to throw their garbage out on th streets and the city has trash everywhere. There also seems to be some more poverty there. Palermo is maybe comparable to downtown Berkeley in my opinion. Our new hostel is bigger and much cooler architecturally, has more friendly people but the employees are less friendly. Apparently New Year's is a big holiday but not exactly a big night for Porteños to go out at night so we went to a party organized by our hostel. The hostel company organized this huge party that for $140 pesos took us in a bus to Le Tigre (an hour away or so) to some waterfront party hall that was very pretty. It was a lot of fun because there were probably 200 people or so from the different hostels, including the people we made friends with from Centro. There were actually very few Argentines and a lot of Australians, French, and Brazilians. We had a blast because everybody we are around is friendly...the kind of people who are travelling and going to this party are just naturally going to be outgoing. We were at this place for a while, went to this club called Crobar and eventually walked back to our hostel. The whole night was seriously a great time.
Overall we are all really, really enjoying this trip. The city and lifestyle is similar enough to the United States for us to get around, eat, socialize, etc., but different enough that every single thing we do is a great cultural experience. For example, the restaurants here are very similar in terms of what and how you eat, but still different. Nearly any place you go you get waited on. The servers do not intereract a whole lot, take their time, and never rush. In the US, we would be getting extremely impatient; here it's just fine.
We have taken tons of pictures, but they are mostly and Chris and Luke's cameras and those idiots are napping upstairs right now. Next update will have pictures of a lot of this so you all can see the city, where we've been, and to prove that people here are very tolerant of Luke.
¡Ciao!
Monday, December 29, 2008
Our Arrival
Luke and I got to SFO two hours early and killed some time at the Anchor Steam restaurant. When we got to the gate, they announced that our flight to Miami was cancelled! Luke cut his way to the front of the line and sweet-talked a stressed out Jennifer into really helping us out. As stressful as the situation was, she somehow got us a ticket for a flight leaving in about 10 minutes. We sprinted the whole way and Luke's running form was as graceful as a deer, and made it right on time, although "Peter" at the gate desk was rather unhelpful and was lying about giving Luke his boarding pass. Nonetheless, we got on the plane which took us to Washington DC, and from there to Buenos Aires.
Some girl tried to run with us because she was going to Buenos Aires also. We tried to help her out, but basically her inferior genetics for athletics kept her behind. Actually, she just didn't speak to America Airlines before and got no help at the desk.
Due to our quick switching of flights, we do not have our checked bags until tomorrow. We had to deal with that after arrival, and then leaving the airport we were approached by Walter, a local taxi driver. At first we were apprehensive, but he worked his Argentine charm and convinced us to take his cab. We figured between the two of us we could easily kill him if he tried anything funny. He turned out to be very helpful, speak English well enough and allowed us to try our Spanish (or Castellano here) on him.
We are now in our hostel waiting for our room to be ready. Our reservations were NOT cancelled, like the website said they were. So everything is going well and in a few minutes we'll get our room and go explore.
Adios.
Some girl tried to run with us because she was going to Buenos Aires also. We tried to help her out, but basically her inferior genetics for athletics kept her behind. Actually, she just didn't speak to America Airlines before and got no help at the desk.
Due to our quick switching of flights, we do not have our checked bags until tomorrow. We had to deal with that after arrival, and then leaving the airport we were approached by Walter, a local taxi driver. At first we were apprehensive, but he worked his Argentine charm and convinced us to take his cab. We figured between the two of us we could easily kill him if he tried anything funny. He turned out to be very helpful, speak English well enough and allowed us to try our Spanish (or Castellano here) on him.
We are now in our hostel waiting for our room to be ready. Our reservations were NOT cancelled, like the website said they were. So everything is going well and in a few minutes we'll get our room and go explore.
Adios.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Itinerary
Hey all! This is the outline of our trip:
12/28/08: Fly out of San Francisco
12/29/08 through 1/3/08: Mess around Buenos Aires, Argentina. My roommate from Sacramento, Chris Hirzel is getting there before us and spending six days with us. We plan on staying in three different hostels throughout the city, one being in El Centro and the other two being in the"hip" Palermo barrio (according to Laura Rasmussen).
1/4/09: Set sail out of Buenos Aires and cruise. You can check out our ship here. We look forward to being the youngest people on the ship, and disproving our homosexual couple image (Despite our matching speedos).
1/5/09: Port in Montevideo, Uruguay
1/7/09: Port in Puerto Madryn, Argentina
1/9/09: Port in Stanley, Falkland Islands. We're not leaving without finding a restaurant that serves penguin.
1/11/09: Port in Ushuaia, Argentina
1/12/09: Port in Punta Arenas, Chile
1/15/09: Port in Aisén, Chile
1/16/09: Port in Puerto Montt, Chile
1/18/09: Finish the cruise in Valparaiso, Chile. Tentative plan is to spend two nights here.
1/20/09: Bus over to Santiago, Chile and live it up
1/23/09: Fly out of Santiago back to San Francisco
2/2/09: Face the brutal reality of being a working adult with no summer break ever in sight.
12/28/08: Fly out of San Francisco
12/29/08 through 1/3/08: Mess around Buenos Aires, Argentina. My roommate from Sacramento, Chris Hirzel is getting there before us and spending six days with us. We plan on staying in three different hostels throughout the city, one being in El Centro and the other two being in the"hip" Palermo barrio (according to Laura Rasmussen).
1/4/09: Set sail out of Buenos Aires and cruise. You can check out our ship here. We look forward to being the youngest people on the ship, and disproving our homosexual couple image (Despite our matching speedos).
1/5/09: Port in Montevideo, Uruguay
1/7/09: Port in Puerto Madryn, Argentina
1/9/09: Port in Stanley, Falkland Islands. We're not leaving without finding a restaurant that serves penguin.
1/11/09: Port in Ushuaia, Argentina
1/12/09: Port in Punta Arenas, Chile
1/15/09: Port in Aisén, Chile
1/16/09: Port in Puerto Montt, Chile
1/18/09: Finish the cruise in Valparaiso, Chile. Tentative plan is to spend two nights here.
1/20/09: Bus over to Santiago, Chile and live it up
1/23/09: Fly out of Santiago back to San Francisco
2/2/09: Face the brutal reality of being a working adult with no summer break ever in sight.
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