Floripa

After a 28 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires, I arrived in Florianopolis.
I stayed in near Mole beach and went surfing, tanning, and sand boarding. It was so awesome!
I didn’t get to know the city but I spent 4 days on Ilha Santa Catarina and loved it. It’s a beautiful island with 47 beaches, large lakes, sand dunes, and hills. I was there during low season but during the summers it’s usually packed with tourists from Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

On my way to Brazil!

I finally have a new camera! I'm relieved! Hopefully, I will be posting a lot more pictures from Brazil as I didn't have a camera for the whole of Argentina. I keep changing my plans about my trip! I am definitely leaving for Brazil on Thursday; however, I am not sure if I will be going straight to Rio or if I will spend a week in Florianopolis first. I plan on being in Brazil for about 3 months in order to learn Portuguese to a decent level. I am so excited for the beaches! As much as I love Buenos Aires and big cities, the Florida in me needs the beach and sun right now!

Brazil: Basic Facts

Largest country in South America

5th largest country in the world

Population: 195 million (5th biggest population in the world)

Capital: Brasilia

3 largest cities
1) São Paulo
2) Rio de Janeiro
3) Salvador

Currency: Real (about 1.6 to USD $ 1)

Brazilian national anthem with English and Portuguese subtitles:

Buenos Aires: La cucaracha

I absolutely love Buenos Aires! It's my favorite city along with New York!
Initially, I planned on staying here 2 months and take some Portuguese classes, find volunteer work, and possible work in a hostel or as an English teacher too. Therefore, I found a room in an apartment that seemed decent. The next day I realized I must have had visited the apartment while my mind was on a planet in another galaxy because it was horrible. I suddenly noticed dust everywhere and saw crumbs of food in all the drawers of counters. To top this off, as I went into the kitchen to wash my dishes, I saw cockroaches running on the counter. I approached the landlady about this and her reply was that she spends her life fighting cockroaches and that I shouldn't be phobic. She further chose to mention that they used to have a rat problem. At that moment, I told her I needed to leave immediately. She said she would give me my money back once she finds someone new so until then, I am spending as little time as possible in the apartment and not even stepping in the kitchen.

My mind lacks clarity sometimes! As much as I love BsAs, I want to have time to discover new places and I would learn Portuguese much faster in Brazil (even if it's way more expensive). My goal is to be fluent in 3 months! Hopefully, if I have money left by then, I will spend a month or 2 traveling in Colombia afterwards.

Bus to Buenos Aires: Floods and other miseries

Unfortunately, I am not lying when I say something goes wrong in about 50 % of my bus journeys. After 4 days of constant rain in Cordoba, I decided to head to Rosario for a night. I was supposed to arrive there at 4 pm, spend the afternoon there, and head to Buenos Aires the next day.
It was raining especially hard when I got on the bus but I was drowning myself into music while falling asleep. I woke up at one of the terminals only to see water everywhere in the bus. Of course, that had already happened in the last bus where I woke up soaked so I wasn't really surprised. What did surprise me however was that the drivers where being rained on as they were on the road and decided this bus was ending the journey preemptively. No big deal, we just had to wait an hour and a half for the next bus. We cram into the next bus and happily drive to Rosario. As I was calling hostels to book a bed for the night, the bus stopped on the highway. What now? Oh yeah- bus number 2 ran out of gasoline! Sure enough, we waited another 2 hours for another bus to come and get us in the middle of the highway. By that time, it was 8pm, cold and raining, so I decided to go straight to Buenos Aires.

Cordoba – rain, Che, and Jesuits!

After almost 2 weeks in the quasi-desert, I got to Cordoba and with my luck of course came 4 days of rain including the biggest hail storm I’ve ever seen in my life. I had never seen bullets of ice the size of ping-pong balls shoot down from the sky before.
Cordoba was okay but would’ve been a lot nicer with sun.

Night out with awesome people from the hostel Che Salguero:


Alta Gracia: Che



I went to Che Guevera’s childhood house in Alta Gracia; it was very interesting. It showed pictures from his childhood along with bunch of letters he had written to his wife, children, and to Fidel Castro. All of them were about being revolutionary no matter what. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez also recently visited “The Che Museum” which is also referred to as “The Temple of Revolution”:

http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2006/07/22/um/m-01238437.htm

Jesus Maria: I visited an old Jesuit mission which apparently was started in order to fund Argentina's oldest university, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. Jesuits used to enslave indigenous people to work at the missions.

Carlos Paz: A very touristy but beautiful town 30 minutes from Cordoba with a very nice river and a huge lake. It's a very popular summer vacation spot.

Price points and facts: Northeast Argentina (Regions of Jujuy and Salta)

Average price of a basic hostel: USD $ 6
3 course meal (soup, meat with side, desert, drink): USD $ 4 – 7
4 hour bus ride: USD $ 7- 12
Big loaf of bread: USD $ .50
A kilo (2 lbs) of tomatoes: USD $ .75
Altitude: Between 1500 meters and 4700 meters (La Quiaca)
1 liter of beer from the supermarket: USD $.50 to USD $ 1
1 empanada: $ .50
Main religion: Catholic and Pachamama
1st civilization: 10 000 years ago
Most villages in Jujuy only get about 20 days of rain per year