Big Brother is Watching

There's a small bit of irony in having video surveillance in the George Orwell plaza. Hurrah to the city planners of Barcelona.

Pizza, Pizza

Some might wonder if thirty hours is enough time to wolf down eight pizzas... let's just say that it was with the two of us. Deserving in reputation, Naples has the best pizzas we've ever had. So good in fact that Matt pretended to be a local and told some American tourists, that "Da' Michele's does good pizza" with the bored affect of one who goes there all the time and has no doubt that it'll be good pizza. And it is.

The only down side to Naples is that all the weight loss of South America is coming back with a vengeance. We figure it's a small price to pay.

The End of an Era

Well, there's so much to say... First off, we have left South America and are now in Europe... Italy to be precise. It's beautiful, the food is good, the toilets flush, but...

As we were leaving Buenos Aires, I couldn't stop thinking about how much I have come to love the idiosycrsies of Latin America... the bad music guaranteed to be played on buses, the packs of wild dogs in the streets, the diligent dirt watering of the shop keepers, the ability of roosters to live just about anywhere... it's all just so good there. I think it's fair to say that we both loved Latin America. From Mexico to the tip of Argentina, it's an amazing place and we were lucky to see it.

And, another era has ended... Matt turned 30 on Tuesday, and now he's all grown up. Or something.

The Walk a Thon

You could make the argument that a 7 and a half day hike, carrying all your food, a tent and sleeping bags for a hundred kilometers, that stretches in altitude from sea level to almost four thousand feet, through a park whose name translates to ¨Towers of the Paine¨ seems a little masochistic.

Actually, I am fairly certain Mary made that exact argument before she became good friends with an ultramarathoner (our friend Becky who runs the "Jungle Marathon" 200 K through the Brazillian Amazonian rain forrest carrying all her food, tent and clothes for a week. And she`s placed first amongst women two years in a row now). Hearing Becky`s stories makes our complaints look sad.

While we skipped out on the last 15 kilometers to avoid rain, wind, and tourists, the hike was beautiful. Really, really beautiful. And we were fortunate to have two amazing friends to share the journey with.

I don´t want to recount or think about the total number of blisters, bruises or sore muscles on the four of us combined, and I definitely don´t want to think about our hike through forty mile per hour rain on our last day in the park.

And even though finding stairs in the middle of a one and a half mile, three thousand foot descent was brutal, it was all made a lot better by staring at a rainbow covering an ice field bigger than Manhattan (See photo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2235081966/in/set-72157603830655102/).

Lamb the Argentine Way

A big touristy thing to do in Argentina is to visit an estancia-- a working sheep and cattle farm where cow hands show you how to rope cattle and you eat lots of good meat. The unfortunate thing about this activity is that most estancia stays start at about $60 a person and that´s a bit spendy to stare at cows. We`ve renamed all estancia tourism places Estancia Club Med.

So a few weeks ago we felt very lucky to have stumbled upon a working estancia in the middle of Parque Nacional Lanin in Argentina, where we camped in our tent amongst a field of sheep on a gorgeous lake in the middle of the Patagonian Lake district.

While there, our amazing luck continued and we met the worlds kindest, greatest family who, upon seeing our ineptitude at making campfires, invited us to join their family camp of 20 people for two days.

They taught us local dances to the tune of the ranch owner`s accordion, a guitar and a kid playing a drum (dance photo, aqui: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2196273232/in/set-72157603725623931/), we drank wine out of cow bladders (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2196296556/in/set-72157603725623931/
), and Matt watched the lamb we roasted be killed (roasted lamb is in the above photo). Matt also had the opportunity to watch the castration of a bull (if you have any interest, testicles sans cow can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2195504815/in/set-72157603725623931/ ). Basically, it was an incredible time of bad spanish, great grilled meat and a feeling of love and inclusiveness.

And, of course, the lamb was some of the best we`ve ever tasted.

Cruisin`

So, everyone loves a cruise. Well, maybe not everyone.

Honestly the thought of one has always frightened me. But somehow we ended up on a four-day, three-night boat ride (meals included) through the islands of Chilean Patagonia. Technically it was a cargo ferry, but any boat that has a bingo night is close enough to a cruise in my book.

Let me say that the icebergs, penguins, islands, seals, glaciers, sunsets, and straits were all spectacular. And we made great friends with our cabin mates. And we were blessed with beautiful weather. I mean you hear about people looking out cabin windows through sleet and snow at the islands, but we were up on deck worrying about getting sunburned. Yes, the food was pretty mediocre (a hint to cooks throughout Chile, herbs and spices are an acceptable way to inject flavor into food, it doesn´t all have to be done with mayo), and the lack of drinking water was obnoxious. But our first cruise was spectacular.

And I am fairly certain I won´t do another one for a long time.

¡Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year with much ablomb and general weirdness. Here`s the story:

We pulled into the bus station in Valparaiso, Chile at midnight the night before New Years. Having skipped dinner in order to make it through Chilean customs in under 3 hours I was a bit grumpy. As we start to head toward some Lonely Planet reccomended hotel, this weird guy in a velvet jacket comes up to us and keeps saying "you reservations?" and finally I´m all "hablamos español" in this snotty, stop-talking-to-me-in-bad-english voice. Which is funny, porque no hablo español. Mucho. Entonces....

We start to figure out at this point that we may be in a place where a lot of people go for New Years. Turns out, yes. Yes, we were. As a matter of fact, had we bothered to read the "special times of years" section of any of our guide books we would have learned that Valparaiso boasts the biggest party in South America for New Years and the town has, on average, a million tourists descend for their fireworks extravaganza. Yeah. So we decide that it´s time to start talking to weird velvet jacket guy.

He has some fliers that say "Hostel!" on them so we figure he´s safe to follow. Keep this in mind. If you want to be a mass murderer, all you need to do is print some fliers that say "Hostel!" and tourists will follow you anywhere. So, we start walking with him and the neighborhood gets progressively sketchier. And, mind you, I´m still starved and cranky (Matt is much more mature and doesn´t get cranky without proper snack times). As we start to walk up a really dark hill we pass a lady sleeping on a mattress in a corner of the street... and then we pass some graffittied houses that say "if you have bread, help your neighbors"
You can see the photo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2173051732/in/set-72157603648426454/. Apparently the author followed that same logic, and decided that if you have spray paint, you should share it with your neighbors house.

By the time the hill ascent begins, I´m giving Matt looks that are intended to say "I am going to kill either myself, you or weird velvet jacket guy." Do these looks stop us from following a stranger into a seemingly bad neighborhood at 1AM? No. Of course not. You can see what the neighbors house looks like here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2173053074/in/set-72157603648426454/

And then we get to the house. Which he shares with his mother and the whole place is pretty sketch, and has structural problems like the ceiling caving in but I don´t really want to leave since I don`t want to go back into the neighborhood from which we had just emerged. So we stay. And the velvet jacket guy, Carlos, brings me delicious white nectarines and water since I´m hungry and all... and the view is incredible... and the beds are comfy. See view here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2173039436/in/set-72157603648426454/

The next morning, the mom (whose name I was never able to understand) demands that Matt and I have tea and cake with her and she explains to us the Valparaiso mess of New Years (because we still didn´t know at this point, we just knew there seemed to be no hotel rooms). And she says they will cook dinner for us and have a party with us, their relative and 4 other "hotel" guests and we should stay through the New Years. So we do. And it´s totally strange.

We have a processed lunch meat turkey and some lamb and sausage and mayonnaise (Chileans really, really, really LOVE mayonnaise) for dinner. No one spoke English. At all. And I have a long conversation in Spanish with a nice lady about metaphysics. The fireworks were nice, the city was a massive party for three days prior to the actual New Years extravaganza and the dancing in the streets and drinking entirely too much was a lovely, although liver debilitating, time. Anyway. Here is a photo of Mom, Velvet jacket man and their relative:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/2172263685/in/set-72157603648426454/

I think this sums it all up. Mostly. Weirdly, I feel that we got very lucky with this experience... We found a place to stay in a city where park space to sleep was limited. We met some incredibly kind, although incredibly strange, people. We most definitely had a "cultural experience." And these are not the sort of things one does everyday.

To 2008, may it continue to bring surprises.