Thayn Moore's Space: Travel

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 12

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:48:35 GMT

We arrived in Utah and finished our trip this day. It was a nice and uneventful trip. I actually slept this time (I didn't sleep on the way in, I must have been more tired or used to traveling). On our last leg of the flight we watched Ron Burgundy (as recorded off the TV, on my portable MCE). So here we were, watching the movie and listening via headphones, and we kept laughing out loud on the flight. People were giving us dirty looks and everything, but we didn't care. It was funny and we were tired.

Holly, looking happy to be able to see our kids!

We had so much fun and the trip was so memorable but we were definitely happy to be back and see the kids. My dad picked us up at the airport and upon arrival we hurried and changed and slipped into the back at church. Kaitlyn saw us and yelled at the top of her lungs in the middle of the meeting "MOMMY!!!". It was great!

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 11

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:39:26 GMT

Leaving Argentina - Second Try!

We got up and packed again. We didn't really have anything planned for that day so we kind of walked around and relaxed. We went to a laundromat and had our clothes washed. In a way, it was really nice. We had been so busy during the final days of our trip that we hadn't had much relaxation. This day we just relaxed, shopped, and was almost mugged.

I had stepped into a bookstore, looking for a cookbook (which I never found). In the mean time, a guy started to eye Holly's backpack. As we walked down the sidewalk he started to follow us (I, of course, was oblivious to all of this). When we stepped into another bookstore, he turned around and walked off. Crazy.

We went to La Florida, which is a big road in the city that has been converted to walking only. It was really touristy and packed with people. We didn't buy anything and we weren't that impressed.

Check out the living statue

This guy does those cool spray paint paintings as seen on YouTube

We grabbed some final empanadas and alfajors, then made sure to arrive at the airport with plenty of time this time. Because we weren't trying to get there during a traffic jam, instead of taking 1 hr 30 mins like the night before, it only took about 20-25 mins. Se la vie!

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 10

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:25:59 GMT

Today we got up early and packed in preparation to fly out. We had a nice breakfast of pastries and juice at a little coffee shop then caught the subway to Barrio La Boca. We hit the classic tourist location "El Caminito" which is a flea market of sorts. We figured before going that we had seen so many flea markets by then that it would be lame, but in the end we really like it! It had a lot of atmosphere and there was actually a lot of nice souvenir stuff. We ended up buying the majority of the stuff we brought back for people there. Holly also bought a really nice purse there.

We stopped at a little cafe and had some crepes with dulce de leche. It was a TINY place, no more that 10' by 15' in floorspace. Inside, there was a tango band playing live music in the corner, and a pair of tango dancers improvising on in the tiny space. They were so great! They moved through the tiny space, around the waiters and customers, it was really great! I caught this picture during their dance (not "posed").

All of our frustration from the night before was gone. We were happier to see this display than anything pre-choreographed. What fun.

We then went on to geocache a bit more (especially since we had been skunked the night before). After wandering around for a while, we found that the monument we were searching around was the cache!

We then went to the national cemetery in Recoleta. It was a great site full of tombs, vaults, cats and owls!

Eva Peron's gravesite

We then went to a great buffet Argentine BBQ (asado) place. We ate until we hurt then staggered out to catch a cab to the airport. Just our luck, it was a Friday evening, there was a big rainstorm, and it was the beginning of a long holiday weekend so the traffic out of the city was CRAZY. We also chose the one sane cabby in the city, who wouldn't drive fast. We got the the airport about 55 minutes before our flight and they wouldn't let us in! After fighting, yelling, raging, and going all the way to the top, they still wouldn't let us on. The biggest problem was that it was Kaitlyn's second birthday the next day and the next flight was 24 hrs later. :(

There was nothing we could do. We caught another cab and headed back to the city. This cabby was great. We went hotel shopping (at that point we were upset and not in the mood to stay in a crappy hotel again) and after some searching, our cabby took us to a hotel where his friend was working and got us in to a great room at almost half off!

It was a really nice room and made us feel more at home at such an upsetting moment.

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 9

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:52:23 GMT

We got up and had a great breakfast in our room, then got a ride out to a nearby town where we could catch the bus.

While we were there, we stopped by an old bar/cafe. It hadn't changed in decades and still had that old fashioned feel.

We then caught a bus into Buenos Aires, it was beautiful!

Traditional Kiosk

We stopped and got some great pizza (this is the sort of pizza that I missed, fresh olives, boiled egg, palm hearts, pickled peppers, love it!)

We walked down the center of "Avenida 9 de Julio" which is the widest street in the world, we counted 29 lanes. This obelisk is right in the center.

We really loved the architecture. This it the National Cathedral where San Martin is buried.

"La Casa Rosada", like the white house. The Balcony in view is the location where Eva Peron gave her famous speech.

I just love this silly shot of Holly with the national seal.

We spent the rest of the evening geocaching (unsuccessfully, I might add) and walking around through Puerto Madero. We went back to our hotel, which really stunk, it was cheap but by far the ickiest of the trip.

We then dressed up and went out to see a Tango show. We searched all over and could never find one! It was crazy. We kept taking cabs all over the city and no-one even knew where to take us. We finally found some, but they were kitschy, tourist traps, priced for foreigner (read: EXPENSIVE!). We gave up and ended up eating at a nice upscale restaurant for a fraction of the price, but we were pretty bummed about missing the tango shows.

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 8

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:33:28 GMT

We arrived early in the morning in Zarate, a town in the outer province of Buenos Aires. We were there to go to a horse ranch. We arrived in town and walked around the town for a while.

The Garbage Man

We then took a taxi out to the ranch (estancia). When we were within a mile or so of the place, we arrived at a road that was washed out by mud. The cabby wouldn't take us any further so he called ahead to the place and left us by the side of the road. Since we were quite a bit further south, the climate felt cold. Poor Holly was freezing!

We waited for a while in the cold then decided to walk it. We carried our luggage on our backs and picked our way down the muddy road. About half way down the road a car came by and stopped and gave us a ride. Thirty seconds after we got in the car, along came a wagon from the ranch to pick us up.

When we arrived, it was well worth the trouble. We were assigned a nice little cabin. It was well decorated and even had satellite TV and a stocked fridge. We bathed (yuck after the night on the bus!) and shortly thereafter the other guests arrived. We had a small breakfast then went out to ride!

Me, drinking Mate

Riding was a blast. We both took to the horses quickly (we had more experience than the majority of the other guests). We rode all morning then came back to a wonderful Argentine Asado (BBQ).

After lunch we went out again, then came back to more food (the merienda or afternoon tea). Then it was time to relax!

We sort of hung out and relaxed the rest of the evening. We ended up being the only guests that stayed the night that night so after everyone left, we went back to our cabin, watched a movie, and dined by candlelight. When we went back to our cabin a fire had been lit and they asked us what we wanted for dinner. Later the maid served it directly in our room! I think it is safe to say, this was the favorite day for both of us!

We got around to updating our bingo cards. The new things were all seen in Corrientes Capital.

Plants on a power line (we wanted a pic but it didn't turn out!)
Diario (Newspaper boy's call)
Chipa Caliente (Get yer hot cheese bread!)
Garbage House (that says it all)
Gypsy (...she's a gypsy...)

BINGO!

For Day 8

Pig head, side of beef in a butcher shop
Huge mosquitos everywhere!!!

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 7

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:10:40 GMT

Today we got up, spent some time visiting and shopping in Resistencia then took a taxi over the bridge to Corrientes, Capital.

Holly in a Santaria in Resistencia

We had a lot of fun seeing the sites and walking around. We had breakfast at the wonderful pastry shop that was my favorite from before called "San Martin". We also stopped by the mission home and the church where I went to church while in Resistencia. They had demolished it and built a beautiful new building in its place.

The Door to the Mission Home where I once lived

The day was hot up there in the north, even though it was only early spring. We stopped and had a wonderful ice cream cone. I love Argentine helado!

When we arrived in Corrientes, we did kind of a scary thing and trusted the taxi company to store our luggage. We then went around shopping, buying souvenirs, and taking pictures of the architecture.

I wouldn't recommend sending your child to this English school.

We also took a romantic stroll down the boardwalk (costanera). It was fun. We even saw the fishermen catching huge fish out of the river.

We also stopped at the flea markets there.

We then fetched our luggage and got on the bus to Buenos Aires. It was a great "coche-cama" bus, which is an overnight bus with huge bed-seats, dinner, movies, the works.

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 6

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:36:13 GMT

We got up a little late, ate breakfast, checked out, and went shopping. There's a huge flea market in Posadas where we bought a bunch of stuff to bring back for friends and family. We spent half of the day running around doing that. We did stop for lunch at an Italian restaurant. Holly got a yummy spaghetti with both a red and a white sauce on top. I got homemade raviolis with chicken.

We then caught the bus to Resistencia. We were on a semi-cama bus which means that it had big comfy reclining seats and they even brought us drinks and a light supper. While we were on the bus, we stopped at some remote location in the middle of Corrientes. There was a traditional goucho there waiting for a family member. While I was sitting there, explaining to Holly the different traditional aspects to his clothing when to my huge surprise he pulled out a cellphone! How times are changing! We were straining to get a shot with the camera but this is all we got.

That night we arrived in Resistencia and spent the rest of the evening with a friend of mine, Eduardo Espinosa and his mother. To my dismay, we were having so much fun visiting with them that we never pulled out our cameras! I'm still bummed. Eduardo's mom made us a wonderful supper, a great arroz con pollo.

That night we stayed in the Covadonga hotel, which was also a bit of a dive (though better than the Julio Cesar). It was annoying though that the next morning they raised the price on us!

As you can see, the room was very pink!

Bingo Pieces:

Bottle of Concentrated juice (This stuff is often set on the table so that you can mix it to your liking, almost all Americans unknowingly try drinking it straight the first time, ZOOWW!)

Holly got Bingo this day!

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 5

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:14:31 GMT

Day 5 was Sunday so we got up early, ate breakfast at the hotel, and headed down to the stake center on foot.

We stopped and looked around on our way there, but we avoided buy anything since it was Sunday. We stopped in the biggest plaza to take pictures.

An interesting thing has happened in Argentina since I left. During the big protests during the economic collapse, a ton of people started to stay in the plazas where the protests took place. Apparently some of the poorest moved in with them, so when the protests ended, they didn't leave.

After having a good look around, we ended up at the stake center where they had a live feed of General Conference, we even watched it in English (they had an extra room where the missionaries watch).

It was fun to see people I knew from before. During the break between sessions we went with Pinky and her family on a walk along the newly constructed boardwalk.

This was an interesting site, a monument to the Falkland Islands. Those are stones brought all the way back from there. They had a sign protesting England's claim on them.

That night we went back to Pinky's house (the Rivero family) and visited with them until late.

Bingo Piece:

Garbage house (we forgot to mark it until later)

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 4

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 07:40:16 GMT

We got up early to leave Puerto Iguazu. We had a nice breakfast at the inn then caught a bus to San Ignacio.

We had planned to watch a movie on our portable DVD player along the way, but the bus ride through the jungle was so magnificent that we ended up just watching out the window the whole time.

San Ignacio is a complex of ruins of a Jesuit mission founded in 1632 as part of an effort to convert the Guaranis. It is really beautiful.

San Ignacio, the town, is a tiny pueblo about an hour and a half from Posadas. As with most towns in that part of Argentina, it only has one paved road, the rest are cobblestone. When we arrived we had all of our luggage with us and the bus kind of dumped us off in an intersection in the middle of town. We then drug/pulled our luggage the 5-6 blocks over to the ruins where the park rangers were nice enough to keep them in a back room that happened to be their kitchen/lounge and they were all sitting around eating a nice rice "guizo" or stew, if it hadn't been rude I would have asked for some since all we had while we were there was restaurant food.

We started by walking through their museum, then walked through the park. It's really fun because the jungle has grown back over all of the ruins.

This is an ancient sun dial in the middle of the big courtyard

This is called "The tree with the heart of stone". Notice in the first pic that there is a tree in the place where a column should be in the row of columns. What happened is that the tree started as a seedling on the top of the column and it's roots grew down over the column, eventually covering the entire column.

From there we caught another bus to Posadas. We were going to stay in another hostel that was cheap and seemed pretty nice but it was full so we ended up in the Julio-Cesar which was the priciest place in town and pretty small and crumby.

That night we went searching for a restaurant I used to go to, Tiberios, but it had closed. Posadas has grown a ton in the past ten years. There were new stores and everything had been updated. Things were really nice. We ended up finding a nice ice cream and hamburger shop where we bought some hamburgers and ran into some of the local missionaries.

We stopped that night as well to visit some friends of mine, the Rivero Family. Instead of taking a taxi all the way to their house we stopped at the nearby bus terminal and walked through their neighborhood to their house. We passed by my old apartment, how the memories flashed by.

Bingo Pieces

Open Sewage Ditch
One-eyed Monster

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 3

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:35:55 GMT

This was definitely the biggest or busiest day of our trip so far. We woke up early and ate the breakfast provided at the inn. It was a standard Argentine breakfast with croissants, ham and cheese, fruit salad (yummy yummy), and sweet breads. (Yay, and boxed milk!)

We took a city bus out to the park, it was packed, mainly with locals heading out to their jobs at the park. We were among the first to arrive at the park. We decided (the 3 to 1 exchange rate helped) that we would go for broke and try everything there was to do. We figured we probably wouldn't ever be there again so we should make the most of it. We bought the full package ($53 US a person, including park admission). First they took us on a big truck on a "safari" sort of thing through the jungle. It was sort of fun but mainly just took us down river a ways.

Holly waiting for the truck, love the red dirt!

From there they took us on a powered raft up the river towards the falls. It was fun, we saw turtles sunning and other wildlife as we zoomed by. When we came up on the falls it was really dramatic. They really are huge!

From there they took us Disneyland style up against a bunch of the falls, soaking us several times. They called it being "baptized by the falls".

From there we took a small boat over to an island that kind of breaks up the "devil's throat" from the rest of the waterfalls to take pictures. We took pictures all day long, eating leftover pizza from the night before for lunch. It was a lot of fun. The only expensive thing was the water, it was hot and the food and water at the park was really pricey. We had brought enough food for the day, but we kept having to buy water.

We saw a bunch of wildlife, including tons of guinea pigs, lizards, and iguanas and what seemed like a cross between a raccoon and an anteater called a coti.

The falls is made up of a ton of little falls and big falls. Here are a few of the better shots I took. I found myself pretty frustrated at times, it's impossible to capture how absolutely incredible it is. To call it a wonder of the world is an understatement.

Later in the day we took a tour train over to the top of the Devil's throat. It was amazing. So much water goes into that canyon that you can't see anything at the bottom for close to a mile.

After seeing the Devil's Throat we took a paddle raft down the river (this time in a section above the falls) where we relaxed in the afternoon heat and watched for animals such as this alligator, we also saw a toucan.

We headed back to town and decided we'd go and see the "Tres Fronteras" or three borders point. The guy at the bus terminal said that it was just a few blocks away, yeah right, we walked for miles! Finally, at dusk, we arrived at "Tres Fronteras". It was pretty cool. At each border there is a small obelisk with the country's flag.

That night we went to dinner at Tio Querido. It was one of the nicer restaurants in town. We were so tired by that point that we didn't really enjoy the dinner that much, we went back and swam, then went to bed.

For our bingo game we checked off the following...

A Wild Tropical Bird (A flock of Toucans)
Someone drinking mate while driving (our bus driver in the afternoon was drinking Terere, a cold version of mate)

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 2

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:24:01 GMT

The overnight flight to Argentina was pretty hard. I didn't sleep at all and Holly slept very little. We arrived at about 8:00 in the morning in Bs As and caught a taxi to the Newberry airport for our flight to Puerto Iguazu. After we checked our bags in we went for a short walk along the costanera (boardwalk) of the Rio de la Plata, where it's the widest river in the world. You can't even see the other side.

It was really hot and muggy and the visibility was horrible. Then, the airline delayed our flight several times. They kept changing which terminal we were supposed to leave from so all of the people without assigned seats (luckily I had set up our seat numbers online previously) had to run to the new terminal whenever the change would show up on the monitors. I found myself giggling in a snarky sort of way (shame on me) as I would see this mad rush from one side of the terminal to the other whenever the terminal number would change (we sat in the center and I started writing the first day post).

Finally the flight left for Iguazu...

It was actually quite a nice flight. The seats were bigger than the Delta Airlines planes. The snack they brought included a great Bon-o-Bon candy bar that is new since I lived in Argentina. I always loved the Arcor Bon-o-Bon line and this bar was yummy. I also was reminded how different soda pop with cane sugar from corn syrup. Yum. I don't drink soda often but wow, it is so much better with cane sugar! Both Holly and I instantly noticed the difference. The only thing unpleasant about the flight was that my poor infected ear finally decided it couldn't handle another flight and started to hurt and plug.

The arrival in Puerto Iguazu was great. The airport was built right out in the middle of the jungle and the ecologists won't let anything else be develop there so as we landed we could just see jungle as we got closer and closer to the ground. At the last possible second, it cleared and we landed on a tiny runway cut right into the jungle. It felt like we were in an 80's Contra movie.

We arrived at La Sorgente, our inn/hostel were we are staying, it's not bad. They have wireless internet, which is nice because we've also been using the internet to make "phone calls" since we can't use our calling card anywhere since none of the phones want to take 800 numbers because they want to be able to charge for all calls.

Here I am in our room, hurting with ear troubles...

We decided we were way to tired to do much that night so we just went for a walk and got a pizza. We decided a while back that we wanted to liven up our trip so we came up with a whole bunch of funny things that I remembered seeing in Argentina and made Bingo cards.

As we went out, we watched for these things and checked them off the list...

We checked off the following...

A Bidet (Holly actually broke the one in our room when she tried to see how it worked :))
A Saint Shrine (at the police station as we walked by)
Hear Random Explosion (we don't know what is was but we heard one several times while swimming in the inn's pool)
A drunk (once it got dark we saw several)
A kid asking for money (we also were asked if we wanted to buy marijuana, that never happened as a missionary)
3+ on a moped/bike (we saw a family of 5 on a moped)

All in all it was a great first day in Argentina, though we took it easy, rested from our trip, and geared up for day three!

La Gran Viaje Argentina - Day 1

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 01:48:14 GMT

I'm going to try and log a little bit each day of our journey. I'm sure that most of it will be boring to everyone else but we are sure having fun. We actually started our trip on the 28th of September when we drove from Washington to Utah. We left that night and drove through a blizzard white-out in Idaho through the night (note: scary).

We arrived Saturday morning (I was a tiny bit tired by then and almost drove off the road the last few minutes before we arrived, what is it with me and wimping out at the very end of a marathon?) and spent the next few days getting the kiddies adjusted to "nee-ma" and "dee-pa".

Holly and I left for Argentina on Wednesday the 3rd at noon from the SLC airport.

Look how happy Holly looks! No kids, no kids! j/k :)

Wow, we still look fresh here, it must have been taken before we had done 24 hrs of straight travel

Our first flight took us to Atlanta, where we changed planes and left at about 9:30 (We sat on the runway for almost an hour, grr). Our next flight was from Atlanta to Buenos Aires was LONG! We arrived in Bs. As. at 8:00 the next morning (I didn't sleep a wink). At least they were nice enough to serve us dinner...well kind of...

This is supposed to be ravioli, sometimes its better to go hungry

It was not the same in-flight meal that Top chef claimed in on flights these days! Er...the brownie was good.