In Posadas

At the bus stop in Santa Rosa, on our way to Buenos Aires.

GRUELING bus ride yesterday, if only because the bus stopped in every little town along the way, PLUS they offered nothing to eat and no bathrooms were available on the bus.  So, it made the time of over 9 hours seem extra extra long.  We got into Buenos Aires late and quite tired, but at least our hotel was close to the bus station.  The Microtel was very nice and it even had a restaurant!  Which had been a concern of ours.  Since we hadn't eaten since the lousy sandwich we picked up for lunch in some bus station, we were quite hungry and the thought of getting a taxi to take us to who knows where was not appealing at all.  So, we were so happy to be able to check in and then just go downstairs for something to eat.  Rebeca and I shared an Olive Pasta dish, and it was very delicious!

Today we flew from Buenos Aires to Posadas, our little overnight stop before we head on to the Esteros del Iberá tomorrow.   Posadas is a very nice little city, lots of plants and vegetation.  Our hotel is a little on the rough side, but as it turns out, it had the best shower of any place we stayed in all of Argentina.  This hotel also had those old kind of elevators, where you have to open a metal grating, and then another metal door, and then close both before it will move.

In the evening, we walked through the center of town and it sure was bustling, with little stands all over the sidewalks and lots of people milling about.  We walked to the plaza and sat there for a long time, watching the children play in a splash pad.  Then we walked around to the government building, where some very smartly dressed soldiers were standing at attention out front.  We figured some kind of ceremony was about to take place, so we waited around for a while, but since nothing was happening, and it was getting a little late, we decided to go ahead and leave.

We walked to the restaurant we had picked for the evening and what a good choice it was!!!  La Querencia is a lovely place with excellent food.  We all had Argentinian steaks and wine - very delicious.  We got to the restaurant at around 9pm and by the time we were ready to leave at around 10:30pm, there wasn´t an empty table in the whole place.

Back to see the flamingos!

We had a relatively easy morning this morning - AFTER finding a place to drop off our clothes to get them washed.  They promised they'd be ready by this evening, and hopefully that's right, since we leave Santa Rosa tomorrow for Buenos Aires.
After dropping off the clothes, we went back by the hotel, got Rebeca and we drove out again to Parque Luro and to the little lakes that are along the road before that park.  The flamingos were there again, nice and close to the road, but as soon as we walked to where we could get a good picture of them, they slowly made their way to the other side of the little lake.  The day was overcast and COLD, and we don't think any of our pictures came out any good, but we'll see.
From those little lakes, we drove on to Luro Park.  We got a tour of the "castle" there, and then we had some good ham and cheese sandwiches in the park's restaurant.  After lunch, we drove to the start of the Forest trail, but since it was already getting late, and we had to be back in Santa Rosa in time to return our rental car, we didn't do much of the trail.  The little bit of the trail that we DID do was very nice, and the only wildlife we saw was when we flushed out two pheasants or something as we walked by them.

That evening, we were invited to join Jason, Rebeca and Dave at the Aeolian Research Banquet at Las Vinas Restaurant.  We were so happy to be able to go to that and join them for dinner and the festivities.  Many bottles of wine kept coming and going from our table, but sad to say, the food they served wasn't very good.  We enjoyed just being there, though.  Guillermo and I left relatively early, and it's a good thing we did.  When we walked out of the restaurant, we were going to wait for a taxi, but there were several other people waiting for one, so we decided to walk on a little bit, and maybe catch one a little later.  We never saw a taxi until we had walked practically into town, which was quite far!!!!  And it was cold!!! It was so nice to finally get in a taxi and be heading back to the hotel.  It turns out that the party, though, really didn't get started until about 2 or so in the morning!!!  Jason and Rebeca got in at around 3am!!!

Lihue Calel Park today

Today we drove even further south in South America to Lihue Calel Park.  We passed some lakes on the way to the park, where we stopped to take pictures of flamingos, but the sun wasn't out and it was VERY cold.  And anyway, as soon as the flamingos saw us getting closer, they all started walking en masse away from us.  So, we didn't get great pictures of them.

We also had a VERY unnerving experience while driving to Lihue Calel.  We were driving along, and up ahead in our lane we see a truck passing another truck.  As we got closer, it became very obvious that the truck was not going to be able to pass the other truck before we got to him, and he was NOT not going to slip back in behind the truck to get out of our way.  We had absolutely no choice but to swerve off the road!!!  We were very very fortunate that there was good shoulder and good dirt right there where we had to take evasive action.  So, Guillermo took to the side of the road at about 50 miles an hour (or at least it seemed that way), and the truck passes, we get back on the road and that's just the way it is.   We were pretty shocked, we were so relieved it wasn't any worse and we had no other incidents even close to that the rest of the trip.

As we entered Lihue Calel, we saw lots of Guanacos in the brush on the sides and even crossing the road in front of us!

We stopped at the ranger station, and then drove on to the trail head.  At the trail head were two dogs, that as soon as our car arrived, they hung around our doors overly eager for us to get out.  We sat inside the car for a while, wondering what to do - what the dogs were like, what they would do once we got out, etc.  We hoped they weren't mean, but just hungry, so we decided to give up a loaf of bread that we were going to use for our lunch.  We slowly get out of the car, and I think they jumped up on Guillermo once, but other than that, they just seemed happy to see us and were overjoyed to get some bread to eat.  We saw that one of the dogs had a very badly injured foot and really hoped that they'd both not follow us out onto the trail, but of course they did.  It hurt to see the injured dog follow us, but we couldn't stop him and he actually did really well there and back.

 They were good dogs, and seemed to be hoping for some help, so when we drove away, we went straight to the ranger station to tell them about the dogs.  The two people working there right away got into their vehicle and drove out to the trail head.  We sat in our car in the campground, munching on some snacks, and hoping the rangers would be back with the dogs, but we left before they got back.

On our drive back to Santa Rosa, we stopped in at Parque Luro, where the lady at the gate told us that there were a bunch of scientists on the grounds, and we thought, "Could it be - could Jason, Dave and all the other conference people still be here????"  So, we drove in, parked and first walked a little trail hoping to get close to the water where we could see the flamingos better.  But the end of the trail was at the dry end of the lake and there were no flamingos in sight.  We got back in the car, and drove around to the other side of the park, and saw all the buses and then Rebeca saw Jason walking with other people in the road ahead of us.  So, we pulled up slowly behind them, and Jason was so shocked to see us there!!!  Turned out to be a good thing for him, though, because he ended up riding back to Santa Rosa with us, instead of on the bus with everyone else.

In the evening, we ate an interesting dinner at Los Pinos restaurant, fairly close to our hotel.  They had big slabs of meat roasting over a fire, and basically, at this restaurant, you just let them know what kind of meat you want when they come around, and they bring that to you off of the fire.  They also had a big salad/vegetable buffet table, from which you could round out your meal.  We understand they had guinea pig in one or two of the containers, so anything that looked like meat, most of us passed up.  Jason thinks he tried from the container where they had said it contained guinea pig.

In the interesting town of Santa Rosa

Yesterday we took an almost 9 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Santa Rosa which is in the Pampa area of Argentina.  We left Bueno Aires at 1pm and got to Santa Rosa at around 9:20pm.  They kept us comfy on that bus, serving us sandwiches and snacks periodically.  Santa Rosa is the city where the Aeolian Research Conference is being held that Jason and his advisor are attending. Jason is doing a poster presentation on Friday.  Jason and his advisor (and many other conference attendees) actually left on the 10am bus - theirs was a special charter bus - and they got to Santa Rosa earlier than we did.  So, by the time WE got into town, Jason was already at a reception for the conference.

Once we were in Santa Rosa, we had a taxi take us to our hotel, which is not the hotel that most of the conference participants are staying in (Jason is staying at our hotel, though), but not being in that OTHER hotel has turned out to be a good thing.  Our hotel is really nice and we are so glad to be staying at this one.  After checking in, we walked across the street to a wonderful little parrilla, La Colonia, where we had absolutely delicious steak, fries, empanadas and salad.  By the time we got back from our dinner, Jason showed up a few minutes later and he told us how his bus trip went and we told him how we wished he could have joined us for dinner. 

Today, we woke up to Rebeca knocking on our door at what we thought was surely like 7am or earlier, but it turned out it was already 8am and we were shocked.  It was still dark outside!!!!!  So, we dressed quickly and joined her for breakfast in the lobby.  The conference participants all had already left.  Outside it is cold and rainy. It is really weird to think that back at home, it is the EXACT opposite season.

After breakfast, we took a taxi into town - stopping first at the bus station to buy tickets for our bus ride back to Buenos Aires on Friday.  Then we looked around in a few artesan shops, and Guillermo even took off the horse-hair belt that his brother Alfred made him and showed it to one shopkeeper, who summoned another person in the shop who summoned who we guessed was the owner.  They all looked over that belt and were so impressed that the owner even took several pictures of it!!  They did say, though, that the belt was so valuable that it probably would never sell there in Santa Rosa.  But they sure wished they could sell something like that in their stores!

For dinner we went to a little restaurant across from the Santa Rosa bus station - and it WOULD have been a very enjoyable meal EXCEPT for the wine I got.  When I took the first litttle sip, it tasted a little smoky, but  figured this was just a different kind of wine, but wondered how I was ever going to finish that glass.  It sure tasted weird.  Then, while sitting there, I saw something in the glass so I stuck my fork in and pulled out a USED CIGARETTE BUTT!!!!!!!!!  Talk about disgusting. We were all just so totally shocked.  From that point on, all I wanted to do was leave the restaurant, but we had the meal to get through, which wasn't too bad, but it was just the thought of what was in that glass that kind of wrecked the evening.

2nd day in Buenos Aires

Today we visited the Recoleta Cemetery, which Rebeca found quite interesting.  And it WAS very interesting, with all the unique graves, tombs and statues.  Fortunately the day was nice and cool for walking around in that cemetery.

That is Jason's advisor, Dave, standing with him here.

Then Dave took a picture of all of us.

Very nice ivy covering this tomb.

On the streets of the cemetery

Rebeca in front of some unique flowers at someone's tomb.

After visiting the cemetery, we walked to La Biela cafe and ate a snack at an umbrella covered table on the patio of the cafe.

We then walked on a street headed for Avenida 9 de Julio and stopped at the same place we had stopped with Fernando and got some delicious maracuya ice cream.

These apartments were right across the street from where we got the ice cream.  They look really nice!

When we got to the big, big street of Avenida 9 de Julio, we walked all the way to the obelisk.

 and after taking some pictures there, then caught a taxi to the neighborhood of La Boca where we had another snack at a sidewalk cafe and were able to watch a Tango show.
Some scenes from the La Boca neighborhood:

Very colorful buildings all over the neighborhood

Then we took another taxi to the neighborhood of San Telmo, and got caught up in the wonderful street market there.  After looking at the map, we decided to walk one street all the way back to our hotel, because looking up that street, we could just see street markets as far as we could see.  A scene from San Telmo:

LOTS of walking today, and now we´re resting in our rooms.

For dinner that evening, we decided to try a Spanish restaurant which was supposed to be just around the corner from our hotel, but after walking up and down the street twice, never saw it.  We asked someone and they said that restaurant closed about a year ago.  We ended up at a wonderful little restaurant where Rebeca had stuffed chicken, Guillermo had spinach crepes and I had a steak brochette.

The hotel we're staying in is called the Lafayette Hotel, and it is actually in quite a nice location.  The two pedestrian streets are very close by, and the hotel itself is in a quiet location.  Unfortunately, the hotel itself is not quiet, with lots of banging going on - of what we don't know, but it was pretty loud at times.  This hotel had an EXCELLENT breakfast buffet, with lots to choose from, so that was also very nice.

Enjoying Buenos Aires

The day we left for Buenos Aires turned out QUITE interesting!  Our friend Sergio took us to the airport at 2 in the afternoon, for our 5:09pm flight, and he thought we were leaving SO early for the airport.  It did seem like we were getting there with so much extra time to spare, but that was ok - we had stuff to read and besides they were showing the World Cup game on the TVs there, so there was stuff to do to keep us occupied.  At the check-in counter, the lady suggested we get on an earlier flight (4:03pm) since we were there in such good time.  We agreed, and went on to the gate.  When we got to the gate, we saw that it was raining outside (the remnants of Hurricane Alex - which we thought wasn´t going to affect us much) and we settled into our seats and watched the game on TV.  Well, it turned out that the plane that was already at the gate couldn´t leave because of the weather in Houston, and that the plane we were going to take hadn´t even left Houston yet because of weather.  Apparently the same weather system from Alex was affecting flights up there.  Then we found out that our ORIGINAL flight of 5:09 was cancelled, so we were glad the lady put us on the earlier flight.  They moved us to another gate, where they had brought in another plane, but we eventually learned that THAT plane had a mechanical problem, so they moved us back to the original gate and now our plane was due to leave at 6:20.  We were glad we had built in a long layover in Houston and it was SO nice to finally get on that plane and take off. 
We really, really didn´t want to get to Houston too late because we were going to meet Rebeca, Jason and Dave (Jason´s advisor) there and fly with them at 9:25 to Buenos Aires.  When we got to Houston, fortunately the weather was not an issue and we were able to land and get off the plane quickly.  By the time we took the tram and finally reached our gate and found Rebeca it was probably about 8pm, giving us only an hour or so to get something to eat.  Rebeca was the one who saw us first, and called out to us as we passed below where they were eating.  So, it was good to finally be with them! 

Our flight to Buenos Aires was 9 hours and 56 minutes - quite a shaky ride at times (especially over the Gulf), but it was a good flight.  Of course, there´s no way to get comfortable in those seats, so there wasn´t any really good rest for us.  By the time the taxi got us to our hotel, we were all very tired, BUT Argentina was having a soccer game that day against Germany and we all really wanted to watch it, as tired as we were.  And we wanted to watch it along with the Argentinians - so we went to Plaza San Martin, where they had set up a giant screen, and we joined the massive crowds watching the game.

Every now and then we'd get a good view of the screen....

But this is mostly how it looked to  us.

Even though it was so crowded and most of the time we couldn´t see the screen that well, we had fun just being there.  We didn´t stay for the whole game and actually went back to the hotel when Germany got ahead by 3 points.

Once back at the hotel, we all finally rested.  After resting, Rebeca, Guillermo and I took a taxi to Tortoni´s cafe where we asked about making reservations for a Tango show.  We also stopped in at the Hotel Gran Hispano (where we had stayed back in 2008) and made reservations for the night of the 16th.  Then we took a taxi back to the hotel, met up with Jason and Dave, and then walked up to the Plaza de Mayo, where we thought we´d find a Spanish restaurant some people had recommended.  We never found it, so we tried to get a taxi to take us there, but it soon became apparent that they didn´t know where it was either. Finally the taxis dropped us off in front of a Spanish restaurant, but it looked WAY too fancy, so we walked up Avenida 9 de Julio looking for a place to eat.  We found a little sidewalk restaurant, had a nice dinner there, and then walked back up Avenida de Mayo and back to our hotel.

That was our first full day in Buenos Aires.  :-)

Moving the Caltech Tree

Guillermo and Jesse, our neighbor, moved the Mango and the Avocado tree one house down to Jesse's house.  Then Jesse is going to get a trailer and take those trees (and others he's already taken) to his house way on the south side of town.

Those trees were so tall, they barely cleared the wires in our yard.

Here are some pictures of Guillermo and Jesse, putting the Caltech tree into Jesse's truck.  Jesse is also taking this tree to his house to take care of it for us.

 

Also, look what was in our tree the other day!!!  A raccoon in broad daylight.