transmogrification

Tooth Aches and Travel Plans

I decided not to go to school today. Well, I have decided that I will not go. School does not start for another three and a half hours. Instead, I am going to spend the morning and early afternoon packing a bag, and making salsa for the road. The Doc and I are going to Mendoza today. He tried to get me to agree to drive all the way to Buenos Aires, but I am a stick in the mud, so I said no. I might have been convinced if it weren't for that test on Monday. I had to promise him that I would make my best effort to do it when classes are over... not that Buenos Aires sounds like a terrible place to be, or anything.

He is currently off taking a Spanish test, hopefully kicking its loving behind. And I am sitting in my oh so soft bathrobe, eating yogurt and feeling thankful for the warmth that is exuding from Becca's space heater. I hope this doesn't drive the electric bill crazy... but what can you do? The clothes have to get dry somehow, and a nasty mean French girl broke the dryer.

Frenchie Mala broke the dryer by means of obscene overstuffing. If it were my dryer, I would be inclined to ask her to pay for it. Instead, a sign on the dryer reads "Malo / Broken, cuelga ropa en patio" Perfect way to welcome winter in. Clothes dry on a line real well when it is pouring rain and 38 degrees outside. I think I will wash the sheets today, before we leave, so that we can leave them draped over furniture while we are away.

School is school. I turned in a short paper on Monday, and a very long paper and presentation on Tuesday. The thing I had due today was moved to Monday, which is why I don't actually have to go to school today, although I should. I will just read this article carefully. It actually interests me, so it wont be so bad.

I have a tooth coming in, way in the back. It hurts more than pretty much anything has ever hurt in my mouth. Could this be a dreaded wisdom tooth? Someone might need to send The Good Doctor more Advil, as I have decided to consume the bulk of his stash.

Beef and a Malignant Form of Narcissism

So, we got lazy for a couple of days here. Sorry. On Monday, we went to Retiro to buy a bus ticket for a trip back to Santiago. We wandered around the area, and went to a weaponry museum. I don’t think I have ever seen so many killing machines in one spot. It was insane. An interesting museum, nonetheless. Then we basked in a beautiful park for a long time. Finally, we went to the bus station, and got our ticket out of town.

Afterwards, we wandered a little more, and finally headed home. We spent a little time hanging out and resting. Then we headed to a Parilla, in hopes of finding some decent Argentine beef for The Doc. It turns out, I didn’t understand that he was looking for filet mignon. We headed back to the hostel and played cards and finished our bottle of Syrah.

Tuesday, we went to the Buenos Aires Zoo. It had a lot of depressing exhibits, but it was also totally neat because they seem to have accepted that they can’t get Argentines to stop feeding the animals, so they sell animal food at booths. You can go crazy feeding the animals. Essentially, the whole zoo is a petting zoo. Except, the goats and stuff which are actually behind gates. Not that it matters, because they are goats, and goats get out. We saw anteaters, capybara, and these weird little things that were kind of between an otter and a beaver and a capybara that swim around and wandered all over the zoo. I touched one of those things. We also witnessed a hippo family, and it was so cute because the baby hippo was such a pest and mom was kind of playing with him, and daddy hippo was tolerating baby hippo’s shenanigans, but when mommy played too he got quite grumpy with her. We spent like 5 or 6 hours in the zoo and, it was like no time had passed. It was an experience. I almost forgot to mention the elephants! Well, just this one:

That evening, we went to a ridiculously fancy restaurant that The Doc’s parents had recommended to us. We had a great time, and I realized that filet mignon actually tastes pretty good. I am still going to call myself a vegetarian, because it helps me to avoid eating meat that isn’t quite such a delicacy. Our check probably would have been over 300 dollars in the states, but in Argentina it was just under 100. We blew the bank on dinner there, but heck, it was totally well worth it. Just to let you know how fancy the place was we put ourselves on the waiting list, and while we were hanging out with our little pager they gave us complementary champagne, and it was actually pretty good champagne. When we sat down at the table, it already had appetizers on it (like an antipasto dish) we got to choose which type of bread we wanted from the bread man who walked around constantly, and the wine list was a book as thick as some dictionaries. We had a great time! And the wait-staff seemed to like us, even if we were the only folks with the gaul to show up in jeans and T-shirts.

The Proof:

We walked around a tiny bit by the waterside after dinner, checking out a very bizarre bridge in the process, and finally catching a cab back to the hostel. By the time we got into bed, where we slept very well, it was quite late. We had to check out the next morning. We were irresponsible so we had to wake up extra early to be all packed and fed by 10am. Yuck.

Then we wanted to go to a weird religious theme-park, but we discovered that it is only open weekends. I guess that is another thing we will have to do next time we’re in town. We went for a walk instead, and tried in vain to gain access to a tall building’s top floor for a view of the city. No dice. Finally, after a bit of ice cream, we headed to the hostel to reclaim our bags. We ended up watching Austin Powers until it was time to leave for the bus station.

Our last meal in Buenos Aires was the best Thai ever served by a gay ex-pat from New Jersey. I just needed to mention that. I wish I could remember the name of the place.

Then the bus!

The bus steward guy was possibly the meanest Spanish Speaking person since ___ fill in any heinous Latin American dictator here___. If you go by M. Scott Peck’s definition that evil is "a malignant form of narcissism that seems insatiable" you could say that this guy was truly evil. Sadistic even. He did his steward tasks, but lacked any finesse in doing them, and generally did not actually give a crap about anyone else, even though his job is kind of to give a crap about people. I could complain about this more, but I don’t want you to confuse my amusement for actual contempt.

We are back in Santiago. It is great. Not so hot anymore, too. This isn’t such a bad city, as long as you stay away all summer.

The Other Side of the Story

The Good Doctor wrote about our travels as well. His story has a big fat "To Be Continued..." at the end. Mine only ought to.

The Doc’s Version of Things.

Taking Off in Search of Prima Donas

We celebrated our last day in Ushuaia with a trip to the Prison Museum, which is really quite fantastic. It is so large that by the time we reached the end of it, we were pretty tired of reading about how much it sucked to be kept prisoner in Ushuaia.

We headed back to the Hostel to make lunch, and we nearly broke up over basil and boiling water. We have a disease that makes us mean and short-tempered when we are underfed and under slept. We hated each other for a little while, then The Doc took a nap, and because I can’t nap and furthermore wanted nothing to do with him, I went out and walked around for a couple hours. I got back to the hostel in time to help gather our things. We decided we probably didn’t hate each other, and called for a taxi to the airport.

We studied Spanish while waiting for our plane to leave. Soon enough we were off to Buenos Aires. The take off was a little shaky, so I was extra scared, I broke all of the bones in The Doc’s left hand. It was breathtaking, though, the way the clouds gather at the hips of mountains. The takeoff was one of the neatest parts because in Tierra del Fuego there are all of these super low hanging clouds, and then more clouds don’t start until you are way up high, so you get to look down on everything being dusted with clouding for quite a while before the clouds overcome you too. I spent most of the flight napping, but woke up just in time for our landing in Buenos Aires. I still think Lima is the prettiest city to land in at night, but Buenos Aires is pretty cool, too. Especially considering that we flew right by the stadium where the Rolling Stones were playing that evening, and in the moment we were passing they shot fireworks into the sky. We felt quite welcomed by Buenos Aires, even if that welcome came via the English. Considering the Malvinas (or the Falklands, depending upon your allegiances) it was all quite overwhelming.

We arrived at our Hostel (in Palermo) without a hitch, and crawled into bed promptly. At about 3-am a crazy-boy walked in the door, grabbed The Good Doctor’s leg and proceeded to lose his mind. Apparently we had been misdirected into his bed, and not the one that was actually unoccupied. Either way, both beds had new sheets, so what’s the deal? He yelled at me in Spanish, and then wanted to yell at The Doc in Spanish because it is apparently no fun to scream at someone through an interpreter. Upon discovering that there had been a reason for the translating, he decided to try to yell at The Doc in English, which he (Mr. Prima Dona) did not speak. We got the front desk chap involved, because the last thing I wanted was for The Doc to end up bed-less. The front desk chap told Mr. Prima Dona to sleep in the other bed. He whined that he was sick, which he obviously wasn’t. He passive-aggressively threatened, "I will just have to close the window if I have to sleep in that bed." Considering the night was hot and humid beyond belief, The Doc was essentially forced to move, which by this point he was happy to do. I ended up sleeping in the bunk above Mr. Prima Dona who woke
up no later than 730am the next morning, and took about 2 hours to vacate the room. He took care to slam the door several times in the process. We hated him. He took his sheets, but left all of his things, so we were left with this incredible feeling of anxiety. We were unsure whether he be back or not.

Regardless, we spent most of our first day in Buenos Aires sleeping. Then we headed out for dinner. In BA, you actually cannot eat dinner until at least 8:30pm. We tried to quench our hunger with popcorn and beer at an Irish pub. There is an Irish Pub in every city in the world. I didn’t manage to order Kilkenny in Argentina, though -- they were out. After cocktails, we went to this South-East Asian fusion restaurant, where we had the best Thai spring-rolls of our lives, and the most disappointing Thai main courses ever. So it goes.

The Ka

We love the Ford Ka. It is the sweetest little dream machine. It contributed to the unfolding of a really perfect day.

In our Ford Ka, we drove out to the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego where we hiked around, skipped stones, and met an overly precocious (and gullible) little boy with a stupid name who had already been to Antarctica. The little boy admired The Doc’s stone skipping abilities, which may or may not
be as good as my brother’s skills, and tried to convince his father to compete. What the little boy didn’t realize was that his father was already superior to
The Doc in one way, not stone skipping of course, but he had taken his family to Antarctica We want to go to Antarctica now. Apparently it is gorgeous, and whales can be seen every which way you look. For now, I will have to settle for having made it nearly to the bottom of the world.

After the longest short walk of the day, during which we saw woodpeckers that actually sound remarkably like Woody, we enjoyed a delicious picnic lunch by the side of an incredibly placid lake. We experimented with rock size in relation to sound. Does it make a cooler sound/effect to throw handfuls of itty bitty rocks into the lake, or is it preferable to throw good sized pebbles? I say itty bitty rocks, but I am itty bitty and certainly biased.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving from spot to spot, and wandering around a little. We didn’t much feel like doing any crazy hiking, so it was convenient. We observed a flock of tourists from Buenos Aires. I noticed that I could barely understand them as they sound way too Italian. Its one thing to add a bunch of shh sound to Spanish, it is pretty even, but to completely change the accentuation of the language? -- Huge headache. It didn’t bother The Good Doctor so much, as he doesn’t understand Spanish either way. Ha Ha. I am the nicest girlfriend.

We played on the beach in the park for a while. We conducted a grandiose South American damming project, which re-diverted a stream that flowed into the Beagle Channel. It seemed wrong, but not as wrong as stealing two rocks for The Doc’s father. He requested rocks from Tierra del Fuego, and we felt compelled to comply, even though it means hauling those rocks all over hell and back.

We left the park just before sunset, in hopes of finding a neat spot to watch the sun set over the water. We didn’t make it, but the drive out into the hinterland of Tierra del Fuego was stunning. The colors of the sky, and the colors those colors cast on the landscape (especially upon the craggy mountains) were fantastic. The Doc took some decent pictures of it, but I don’t think any photo could capture quite ho magical it was.

We drove the Ford Ka around until it got to be dark enough for star gazing. We pulled off to the side of the road and looked up in awe, but in time we
decided it wasn’t a very comfortable place to stay. For fear of being hit, we didn’t feel comfortable turning the hazards off. The hazards had the inconvenient side effect of luring helpful Argentines who then demanded that we explain that we are only crazy gringos who are in awe of stars we’ve never seen before. Finally, we decided that we had to move to a safer place. We were only allowed to drive 300 kilometers, so we had to head in the direction of home.

After several semi-panic attacks on The Doc’s part, the clouds were ominously gathering overhead, I saw the perfect place to pull off. We tucked ourselves away on a little driveway, abandoned during the non-ski season, and protected from the traffic of the highway. We looked out at the stars through the windows of the Ka for a few moments, and then set to preparing picnic number two. We had bought a very intriguing, but terrifying bottle of sparkling red wine. It was pretty much the worst thing either of us had ever tasted. We drank half the bottle, and promptly poured the remainder out on the side of the road. Roads need to get their drink on too. Dinner was much tastier.

After the meal we experienced several moments of dismay, realizing that the clouds had indeed covered our marvelous view of the sky. We decided to stick it out though because we were convinced that the fates had shown us the perfect place. In a few minutes, the clouds moved, the stars returned, and we grabbed the star map that I had printed and the flashlight, and stepped into the cool air outside. We spent the evening locating this and that constellation. I don’t think I have ever had a better night of star gazing. I saw more Milky Way than ever before. I am such a city kid.

At about 2-am, although we had not had our fill, we decided it was time to head back to the hostel. We had to return the car at 10-am the following morning. Yuck. So, we drove back, a drive not quite as breathtaking as the drive out, but equally marvelous. We arrived in the early morning hours, crawled into our bunks, and slept like rocks until it was time to wake up and return the Ka.