Micah and I just spent a week living in the lap of luxury. Not only have we been spoiled with an apartment to ourselves, bikes, cell phones, computers and endless movies, we got wined and dined and taken on tours by Terry and his friends. And when I say dined, I mean DINED. China is known for its amazing, if slightly exotic, food. They even came up with a 5th taste category, savory, to add to the big 4: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. We had 5-course meal after 5-course meal. Monday night was 2 for 1 night at the burger joint in town. Naturally we went. The burgers were divine, a small taste of heaven for two Texas (I’m actually Oklahoman) girls having gone without good beef for months. It even came with a pickle! Since we were going all out we ordered chips and salsa too! The entire trip we have been craving chips and salsa and hadn’t found it anywhere, even South America. You know when you get so hungry you start daydreaming about food and it turns into a depressing game as you list one unobtainable food after another? We play this often. My list always goes as follows: chips and salsa, beef, pickle, fried okra. With one meal I knocked off 3 of the 4! Still looking for okra… I think Micah’s top four is: ice cream, cereal, cake and bread. We managed to knock all those off in Shanghai too!
While most of the food was good, some was just downright creepy. On Tuesday we went to a water-town on what ended up being a thoroughly entertaining tourist trip. We thought we’d just bought roundtrip bus tickets, but found ourselves marching behind a lady carrying a giant pink flag with a bunch of Korean, Japanese and Chinese tourists, average age: 65. We were officially the only white people in the group and quickly found we were somewhat of a tourist item ourselves, as people would slyly try to snap pictures as we walked by. Anyway, the day was quite adventurous. We ate miniature puffer fish (non-poisonous kind), fish with scales and eyeballs, and pigs’ hooves. The hooves were delicious and were supposed to be very good for our skin as they contained lots of collagen. Done. All in all, not bad except for the puffer fish, which was like sucking on a bouncy ball rolled in dirt. From here the day just got better. We marched back and forth 3 times over bridges with our fellow tour mates as we were told it would get us a promotion or raise at work. We had to be careful though because it was bad to cross more than 3 times! This made it vitally important to remember which bridges we had already crossed and how many times. On top of spring-boarding our careers, I’m pretty sure we heard the entire history of China. Unfortunately this history was presented in Mandarin, so we just followed the pink flag, clueless as to what ANYTHING was, but taking such talking moments as opportunities to pose in goofy pictures. Complete success.
Thanks Terry and Jessie!
te House, Recoletta Cemetery, where Eva Peron and many other Agentine greats are buried, and Avenida 9 de Julio, which is one of the widest avenues in the world, spanning an entire city block (at least 6 lanes each way). At this avenue is when I almost lost Micah for good. Carried away in a photographic frenzy we strayed from the usual pedestrian flow and ended up stranded on one of the medians, away from a cross walk. In an attempt to rejoin the crowd, Micah started running diagonally across the 6 lanes. Unfortunately she had completely misread the flow of traffic, and about halfway across the cars started speeding towards her. Screaming, she high-kneed it safely back to the median. Thankfully she made it okay, but she sure did cause a scene... Anyway, one of the best parts of BA was meeting up with some friends we'd met in Rio. They lived in BA and invited us over for a traditional Argentinian bbq. The bbq was on a balcony at the top of an apartment building. The mix between the beautiful weather, amazing view of the city and stars, delicious food and entertaining company made for a great night. We had more meats that I can count, including a disturbing blood sausage and some mystery meat they could only translate as a gland. I thought both were good, Micah thought differently. At dinner we met a girl who had just graduated from Yale where she had played soccer and was currently in BA playing professionally. It was great to talk with her and she invited us out to play at their weekly pick-up game that Sunday, but unfortunately we had just bought bus tickets to Iguazu Falls for the following day. After dinner we went to a huge BA night club where you had to have your name on a list to get in. Evidently our friends knew somebody, because we got in and even got VIP bracelots that got us into the special upper lever of the club. It was definitely an interesting experience but we were surprised that 99% of the songs were ones we listened to in the US. We danced for a couple of hours until we were exhausted and had to call it an early night by BA standards, around 3:30.
Vegas show) to amazing tango dancers, and it only cost $12 a night! Iguazu Falls was beautiful. I had never seen a big waterfall, so I was undoubtedly amazed. It is rumored that when Eleanor Roosevelt flew over Iguazu all the said was, "poor Niagara", so I am assuming these falls truly are as inspiring as I found them. We spent the whole day walking along to the various falls and even decided to make a two hour trek to the "hidden" waterfall. Little did we know the horrors that would aw
ait! Once we hit the rainforest area of the trail, we made the mistake of looking up and discovered, to our horror, that EVERYWHERE above us were enormous spiders hanging in their webs. I don't know where the fun reputation of rainforests came from, where they are known for big powerful cats, beautiful butterflies, entertaining monkeys, and colorful birds. This is a lie. We quickly discovered that the rainforest is a horrid and wretched place, and literally spent two ho
urs hunched over, ducking and dodging in an attempt to avoid the grotesque beings above. I actually spend the first 30 minutes in the sweltering heat wrapped up in my rainjacket, hood on and zipped because I was quite positive one of the spiders was going to dive-bomb me and that is an event I would not have survived. In the end, we saw a few toucans, some monkeys, and the waterfall which we found a small reward for all of the terrors faced...
tire tour was beautiful. First we went through the rainforest that doesn't like rain. Evidently the area receives little rain and when it does it causes massive mud slides. Instead, the forest grows by getting water from all of the fog. From there were went through the beautifully colored mountains, striped in blues, greens, reds, oranges, and purples. The wide range of colors is created by the oxidation of the various minerals. The climax of the trip was the Salt Flats, located on a huge flat at the top of the mountains. All we could see was an endless desert of salt broken only by the mountains in the distance. A river still runs underneath the flat, and we were able to see squares that had been dug out, only a meter or so deep, which filled up with the perfectly clear water from below. The whole day amazing, and needless to say, we were thrilled with our decision to NOT try to do it on our own.
We sprawled out in the front and enjoyed our panaramic view of the Andes during the 7 hour bus ride. The ride was gorgeous, but terrifiying at times seeing as they had no railings along the windy mountain roads. From our seats it literally looked like we were hanging off the mountain on a few of the turns and all the passengers would let off a tiny squeal then sigh in relief when we successfully rounded it. All in all the ride was great, and to our great relief we were not forced to pay the reciprical fee at the border which has been introduced in 2010. In Argentina and Chile, when a US citizen enters the country they are now forced to pay $131, the exact same price it costs to get a US visa. Annoying, but fair enough. It has been two days since my run and my legs are still sore to the touch...
nt tent which was serving as the makeshift terminal. We crossed our fingers as we approached the white board that had all the scheduled flights listed and our hearts dropped as we searched and searched for our missing number. We called our parents who began making the necessary calls and thankfully Mr. Stephens got through to the airlines. By this time Micah and I were sulking, dreaming of the great times we would have had down under, as we caught a bus back to town. Right when we arrived we got a call that will go down in trip history telling us the flight was still on, just postponed to 2 am!! We celebrated with steak sandwhiches and a pizza, a few drinks and a giant plate of steak, cheese and onion french fries! We then triumphantly returned to the tent. The airport that had been deserted mere hours earlier was now teeming with people. The whole scene was complete chaos, with no lines or sense of organization, just hundreds of people waiting around with their luggage. We were told to stand around until we heard an announcement about our flight and at that time make our way to the tent. Well we stood, and sat, and laid, and walked and we heard no announcements. A bit antsy, we finally pushed our way to the front of the mass and discovered their "announcements" consisted of a soft-spoken man saying the flights, no microphone, no speakerphone, not even yelling! Frantically we learned our flight had already been called and when we got into the tent we discovered we were the only ones in line. They looked at our passports and after an exchange of uncomfortable looks, they told us we were not on the list because we had not called some office we had never heard of. After explaining that if we missed this flight we would miss our flight to India which would cause us to miss our flight to Nepal etc. etc. etc. they quickly made arrangements to get us on the plane. The lady actually made up a boarding pass using a sharpee and a piece of paper which was sufficient enough to get us through the "security" they had set up. Because we didn't have a real ticket or seat numbers, we had to board last and just pick whatever seats were open. With our giant back packs, tent, jams and the rest we triumphantly boarded to the amusement of the rest of the passengers who thoroughly enjoyed watching our struggle.
ight. In the crunch of the moment, we bought the tickets, then realized how much we had to do. We ran back to our hostel to get our bags, bought a tent, and made it back to the bus station in time to catch the bus. Only then did we realize that a) the whole point of the bus ride is to see beautiful scenery, and it was night and b) we had no idea where we were going to stay that night.
at AND I forgot to mention the vicious wind that had picked up against us! We actually got blown off the road once. Anyways, once Micah got the chain back on, she turned to me and I fell to the ground laughing. Her fingers were covered in grease from the chain, and she'd happened to only touch her face right above her lip. When she turned to me she looked like hitler in a bike helmet. I honestly thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen...
ter to pore on the engine though to keep it cool, so Micah downed the last of her 2 liters to fill the bottle with river water to help out. I only had about 1 liter of water left, but at this stage we did not realize our predicament. We hopped back in the truck and completed the trip to the devils throat, 48 km into our adventure.
roof if you don't go in water deeper than them. A few steps in, the water came up to our shins and our shoes filled with water. But, since they are 'waterproof' they didn't drain the water like most shoes, but kept it trapped in. Heavy footed, thirsty and hungry we found our perfect camping spot.
p just as exhausted as we were when we'd gone to bed. In somewhat of a blessing, the wind from the day before had died down, but this just made the sweltering heat more unbearable. While we were completely unhappy at this stage, we were somewhat entertained by the fact that we woke up to wild pigs (not the giant dangerous hogs of some places) roaming around our tent. That made us feel that much cleaner...We gathered our energy and put up our tent and made the trying trek back across the river, mud and rocks to the highway.
itself is a series of contrasts, most notably the close proximity of the very rich and very poor. It was common to walk by million dollar beach apartments backing up to miles of favelas (slums). In fact there are more than 900 of these favelas in the city!! We took a tour through the largest one in South America, known as Rociera (sp?). Little did we know that the tour would actually begin with each of us being tossed on the back of a motorcycle that sent us speeding through the windy, traffic filled streets of the favela to the top! Micah and I screamed the whole way as our drivers decided to race each other up, knowing we were terrified! Anway, we survived and were completely taken aback b
y the favela. The tour guide led us through the small side streets, filled with decomposing garbage, barely wide enough to walk. He told us all about the politics and economics that go on within a favela run by a drug lord. The item we paid attention to most was the fact that when all the kites disappeared from the sky (they flew them as a sport, much like in The Kite Runner, with glass on the string to cut down opposing kites), it meant something was going down, either a police raid or an opposing gang was coming. We kept a keen eye on the skies...I wish I had time to go into all the det
ails, but if you are interested you might watch the movie "City of God", made about one of Rio's favelas. Its pretty graphic and violent, and definitely not a happy, feel good movie, but worthwhile if you are curious.
Another great experience was going to the Flamingo vs. Fluminense soccer game at Maracana Stadium. We were told it was Rio's biggest rivalry in the worlds largest stadium. The stadium used to hold 200,000 people before it was made smaller because of safety concerns! Our seats were at the top of the crazy Flamingo fan section. Flamingo is Rio's working class team and also the most popular, boasting 33 million supporters! The atmosphere was unbelievable with singing, chanting, jumping, flags, and flares and on top of that we even got a 
great game. Flamingo came back from being down 1-3 to win 5-3. I don't remember the last time I saw 8 goals in a high quality match, but I'm sure glad it happened while we were there!
were just going to WATCH the performance, but we were soon swept onto the dance floor and samba'd the night away with an old Brazilian man and the great Argentinian men we met at the hostel. Evidently our samba skills were less than par though, because a girl actually approached one of us and condescendingly asked if we were from the US...Haha, good stuff.
only issue were the little 12 year old boys that would weave in and out of the crowd checking people out for bags and feeling your pockets. Fortunately we made it out with everything, but our friend had his wallet picked straight out of his side pocket!Apart from the Carnaval events, we also checked out the typical touristy things. We went to the top of Corcovado to pose with the Christ the Redeemer Statue (the second largest statue in the world, after the Statue of Liberty), we took the cable car up to the top of Sugarloaf to watch sunset, we walked throught Tijuca National Park (the largest urban rainforest in the world), we drove through the streets of bohemian Santa T
eresa, went to Ipanema and rubbed shoulders with the correctly named "beautiful people", shopped at their famous Hippie Fair, drank coconut water and slurped acai, and even made some monkey friends during a nap on our terrace.
these fun things we did, the most entertaining moment of the whole week might have been watching the 3 year old girl walking in front of us as she stopped every few steps to pick the wedgie from the thong style bikini she had on. Haha, they sure start early! While its true that they wear very little in this city, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that speedos actually look quite good on certain men...