VIAJE AL SUR!!!!

First off, Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

Secondly, sorry I don´t write more!

And finally, I just recently got back from a fantastic trip the Patagonia, the southern part of Argentina and, in some places, the farthest south you can go without getting on a boat and booking it to Antartica.

Honestly, there is so much to say about this trip, that I don´t think I could right it all down, so I´ll just leave it at some pictures and a few words, and I think you´ll get a feel for how incredible it was.

Our first city, as kids from Resitencia, was Córdoba. We went to the mall, but a few of the exchange girls and I walked around the city and got lunch at a grocery store. It was a great lunch.

After that, we got on the bus and spent a wicked long time driving before we reached Puerto Madryn, which I believe is one of the first ports to be colonized. We took a tour of the city and went out to a point on the bay to see some stunningly blue water and climb on the rocks. The picture really doesn´t do justice to how blue the water was. I´m talking cruise propaganda brochure hottie on the beach blue. Just gorgeous.

We then went and did some whale watching, which I thought was a great time, although all my whale picture look like ocean with a little dark rock in the middle. We saw a mama whale with her baby and they did some jumping and got really close to the boat.

After the whale watching we were hanging out on the beach and aw this kid doing flogger dancing. I havent explained floggers, but a flogger is one who follows a certain style (bright colored skinny jeans, shirts with words in bright colors (often nonsenical), big sneakers and crazy haircuts) and then takes pictures of themselves emo style and puts them up on FOTOLOG, a kind of Argentine Myspace. They also have a funny way of dancing that gets mocked a lot by non floggers, cumbieros, etc.

ANYWAY, this kid was dancing flogger, and then we all were cheering him, because he was really good at it. And then all his friends started cheering, and then we all got in a big circle of exchangers and porteñitos on their class trip and a showed off our sweet flogger moves. And it was great, it was like we were all pals. Laughing and joking and dancing everyone was probably one of the best parts of the trip, becaue it was so spontaneous and fun. As a note, there are no floggers in the picture, just people imitating their sick dance moves.

Then we did ome more driving and stopped to see PENGUINS!! What we saw were Megellan´s Penguins, which I believe are land penguin instead of ice penguins. IT was so weird to ee them doing all their penguniy activiy on a big rocky becah! They really weren´t the popularized idea of penguinhood, but it was a lot of fun to see them walking around, sleeping in their little land-nests, etc.

One really cool thing we saw at the penguin stop was a big bird swoop down and break open a penguin egg, eat it, and fly away. Hopefully the next reneration of penguis builds better nests!

Our next stop was Calafate, a very touristy little city that has gorgeous of the mountains, wonderful cabañas, and was very cold. Calafate had a big draw for tourists because of the outdoorsy stuff it offers, its proximity to one of the biggest lake in the country, el Lago Argentino, and the fact that an hour away is the famous glacier Perito Moreno WHICH WE WENT AND CLIMBED ON.

The glacier was a really big part of the trip. We all got dressed in our borrowed coats and hats and mittens and they drowe us out to the glacier. It was really cold from the viewing point where they first took us, but then we hiked down a ways, took a boat across the lake, hiked to the base of the glacier and then (I, at least) realized that it was really warm for some reaon! What sturck me about the glacier was the fact that it was right in between these two tree covered, green mountains. In retrospect, it makes sene that the glacier stays there through all the seasons, but it was surprising to see such a juxtaposition of ice and vegetation, when, as with the penguins, I was kind of imagining an arctic trek. The glacier was so gorgeous. We went ¨minitrekking¨ on it, which meant we had a guided climb on the ice and it was so beatuiful and unlike anything I´ve even seen.

And then we drank whiskey and ate alfajores on the top! I think it´s a tradition to do that, since some of my schoolmate asked about it when I got back :)

Alright, I´ll write more later about the trip and leave you for now with some more pictures!

xoxo