Were going on a Patagonian picnic....

and we brought.... a glacier, un penguino, a dolphin, algunos pesos, y mucho mas! (Had to keep entertained on our long trek). The first night in Calafate we feasted on an all you can eat- all you can drink BBQ held at our hostel, which might have been the best meal weve had yet! loads of lomo (loin), papas, and even our first veggies, which is great because I think we were starting to get signs of scurvy... (ha, jk mom!) Our British mates, Tom & Christian joined us for penguinos full of wine and we had a great night.
Early morning we left for our excursion to Perito Moreno Glacier, a 3 part tour. To give you an idea of size, the whole city of BA can fit on top of the glacier and it is 20 stories high (and 60 stories below the water). This is no ice cube! Tons of pictures but for some reason we cant upload them... but not even sure if they could do the glacier justice. It was amazing and because of an optical phenomenon, parts of it looked very blue, like a painting. We took a boat up close to the glacier and then continued to get our crampons on (get get get your cramps on ) and hike on top of the glacier for an hour and a half in the sunshine and glacier rain, which alternated about every 5 minutes. this was brilliant! we felt truly accomplished, and tired.
after a long day at Calafate, we flew back up to BA and went through what seemed to be like going through immigration at Ellis Island in order to catch the BuqueBus (a ferry and bus) to Uruguay, to the beach town of Punta del Este.
Which brings us to now, where we will rub it in a bit that we spent the morning on the beach (covered in sunscrean of course) and relaxing. The weather here is perfect, not too hot, but definately summer. They call this the Hamptons of S. America so we will enjoy this last leg of our trip before returning to the North Pole of NY.
Wishing we could show all the pics... but soon hopefully!
ciao!

Flying South....

Since our last post, we have spent another day in the beach town of Puerto Madryn mostly relazing and walking around town, reading, shopping and meeting people from around the world at our hostel (Austria, Sweeden, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, London, etc.) We went for a great seafood dinner at a place that was reccommended that only took us two trys to find. delicious and freshly caught from the owners, who were also the fisherman who caught our dinner. this morning we took an early early flight to El Calafate, which took about 2 hours and was WELL WORTH not being on another bus. El Calafate is a beautiful town with a serene backdrop of snowcapped mountains and not a whole lot else. it is really breathtaking though. spent the day walking around and exploring the mainstreet here and near some lakes where there were horses, sheep and tons of dogs roaming around. tomorrow we hit up the huge glacier and are doing a minitrek with the hot pink and red winter coats that we rented for the day. very exciting. its like a whole other country down here. pics to come if the internet connection decides to catch up with 2007.
lataaaa!

the dreaded bus...
our awesome Aussie bus mate Shane and his ¨devin¨
we were a bit loco after 40 hours on a bus...

one more video of the falls for your viewing pleasure

So we survived 40 hours of bus rides...just barely. We made it back from Iguazu to Buenos Aires and even had time to check out a weekend street market in San Telmo before our next bus. Unfortunately we didn´t have ANY movies on the last bus to Puerto Madryn which forced us to amuse ourselves for about 6 hours before it was bedtime...led to some pretty interesting conversations :) Dara and Erica made friends with some Argentinian guys who barely spoke English...I was asleep!

We arrived in Puerto Madryn at 8am, and immediately jumped on a tour to Punto Tombo. Our tour guide, Ugo, was really nice and we met some fun British boys, Tom and Christian, who added to our Britsh vocabulary. Our day started with a boat ride where we got to see dolphins and sea lions up close as they swam right up to the boat! Unfortunately a camera battery crisis prevented us from taking as many pictures as we would like but our new Brit friends have promised to share with us - so stay tuned. We then headed to Punto Tombo, a colony of over 400,000 Magellan penguins. We got to hang out with the baby pengiuns! We made it back to Puerto Madryn, with a short stop in the Welch town of Gimon, around 8pm. After a MUCH-NEEDED shower, we headed to a seafood restaurant with our Brit friends and just got back to the hostel. So much fun!

Tomorrow we are going to bum around Puerto Madryn, see the beach and small town life...very relaxing. Then on to El Calafate....stay tuned :)

xoxo
j

Thirsty?

It´s Tango Time

we loved the dancing in the aisles

dara and sr stink

Hola!! Btw, we think that holla prob came from hola, but I digress. We spent our last day wandering BsAs before we attempted to find our bus to head north to the falls. The buses here make taking a long trip not so awful. The seats recline 160 degrees and the staff tuck you in with a pillow and blanket and feed you meals followed by coffee and cookies, yum. They tried to have a thing for your feet which was pretty pointless, it was basically an angled board from the seat to the floor, no clue. After about 16 hours we arrived in Iguazu Falls, think Niagra Falls on crack. So beautiful, dont worry there are lots of pics to entertain you all at some point. We took a jungle tour, didnt see any monkeys or tucans but did get to see some other interesting wildlife. We then had a ´shower´in the falls. The boat driver we were on thought it was hysterical to keep running straight into the falls which obviously doused everyone on board. We were all cracking up screaming Ótra Vez!!!!!!!!!´There were also lots of rainbows. We met this guy from Sweden, Farouk, who joined us for a fab dinner complete with stray cats, appetizing. We kept saying, ´Jamie, you´re following us.´More falls to follow tomorrow and then a power bus trip down to Puerto Madryn which should only take about 48 hours so dont expect many blog posts during that time.

Ciao for now,
Las Chicas

BTW- Will all Barbaras and Jasons please distinguish yourselves when commenting. Thank you.

it takes three to tango....

hola! we spènt the day yesterday strolling the streets of Palermo Viejo (broken down to Palermo SoHo and Palermo Hollywood, which should indicate the type of area pretty well). lots of cute boutiques and cafes, artsy designers and little shops very reminiscent of the Village. Needless to say, we loved it. very impressed with our self guided tour (mostly led by Jackie) we headed back to plan out the rest of our transport around the country. unfortunately.... this was harder than anticipated and we spent a long time trying to plan out the days we will spend on buses (yes, 20 hours or so each time.) but it all came together!
the last thing to cram in had to be Tango so we did what any self respecting american would do, and went to a tourist trap. this turned out to be just what we were looking for. an hour dance lesson where I danced with a smelly smelllly man and jackie was erica´s man. hm. right.
we did however think we were getting good, dancing with the stars style... until we saw the tango show..... and realized that maybe we could use some more practice ha. if you are lucky, we might be able to show a video of our hot moves. hot.
this package deal came complete with dinner, where we were joined by Rachel, a really sweet and fun Brit, that became our friend for the night after 3 bottles of vino. we all danced with the performers (see pix and they should speak for themselves), we were all a bit OTT (over the top... and yes, that´s our new fav phrase that Rachel taught us). amazing show filled with cheap costumes and Tony Bennett wannabes.
came back to our rooftop bar at the hostel to mingle a bit before dozing off in our sauna of a room... that the insane orange haired girl thought was ´mucha fria´
ready to go to iguazu tonight where we will put our man vs wild skills to the test!

- las chicas

Cows Dont Have Balls...

bulls have balls. and we might have eaten some. oh lordy. tonight we decided to spring for a meat-tastic meal at a restaurant reccomeded by Frommer´s. It was a lot of fun...on the way there we definitely got ´taken for a ride´ and after too long and muchos dineros we decided arguing in the little Spanish we knew was not worth the extra pesos which translated to about $5. The restaurant was crowded and trendy and we knew we were in the right spot when they kept the champagne flowing while we waited for our table. We decided to spring for the meat delux or whatever the monster share platter was. You should all be proud, we all tried the different meats, unfortunately it was only after the fact that we learned the different parts we had eaten. When in Argentina!! Then we tried to go to the Argentina Crowbar club, hm that sounds familiar, lol. The drinking age here is 18 so when they didnt card us and we saw the crowd (with full on ´mull-onies- mullets in ponies) we decided that was not our scene...which brings us to now, socializing in our hostel with pablo, paulo, k-fed, and lots of other randoms who are so much fun. Miss you guys lots!!!

Ciao bellos y bellas!!
*E

mas fotos

japanese gardens

we swear this nasty cat was jamie in spirit! (love you)

la boca

recoleta cemetario

pix 1

airport
texas size jellybeans.. the one thing we found bigger in texas
presidential parade
caballos
the streets of la boca

Busy busy day today!! We were up early, especially after the cute british girl and crazy organge hair/organge pj girl who were staying in our room were up! we started in La Boca, the historic tango area turned tourist trap that is best known for cute houses painted crazy colors and funny statues lining the street (we made up our own history of the town based off these statues bc we are that cool). After about a half hr of La Boca, we hopped on a bus and somehow found our way to Recoleta, a nice neighborhood best known for its cemetary where Eva Peron and others are buried...We had to say it was the nicest cemetary we have ever seen (see pics). From there we headed over to some gardens, and some more gardens, and one last garden....Japanese, Rose, Botanical, you name it we saw it :) , j

then to be extra city savvy we took the subway and finalmente made our way home! exhauting although it doesnt sound it, these areas are the equivlent of going from battery park to the UWS and back down to time square, that sounds about right.

other things to note... emanadas are delicioso... our spanish is NOT good, but we are trying and it is quite comico. tonight we might try to tango and hit up some good steak. , d

adios for now!

day 1, BA

this keyboard is awful... so it took us 24 plus hours straight of travel... 2 flights, a layover, bus, cab, the works! but we are here now and its beautiful! very tired today but we kept ourselves awake and toured the city. it seems kind of like miami, with palm trees, shopping, ehh maybe not really miami but thats the closest i can think of. the cars are all older versions so it feels like we are in a slightly different time..
it was the first day of the new presidency which was a woman, cristina.. the spanish version of hillary and it was a big deal with a huge parade, men on horses playing music, fireworks and way too many people. she rode by too (jfk style) which was pretty neat. our hostel is very cute and homey and has a nice roof top. the best part of this all is that its summer here! sorry for all those in the cold, but it is flip flop and tank top weather! long day today so we are calling it an early night. will try to post pix and more posts soon.
love you all! we are SAFE and miss you.
:)
d

We're too excited to sleep!!!

It's 1:26am and we are all wide awake. Good thing we have 21 hours of travel tomorrow to catch up :)

xoxo
Jackie

'Twas the night before takeoff.....

And all through the house....
Every creature was stirring...
Even the mouse (ew.)

So... we caved and started a blog! Hope you enjoy our trip as much as we do. Stalk away!
xoxo
gossip girls....