Hooooola,

Everything down here is wonderful.  I had class yesterday and today, and tonight had an hour and a half dance class.  I have decided that I am a really great dancer, and my true calling lies during the decade when my mom wore bell-bottoms and my dad wore short shorts--DISCO.  I don't know why I'm learning the American dance from the '70s while I'm in Argentina, but I just don't care because I love it.  Maybe there's something in the water, but when I hit the dirty gym floor every Tuesday night at 6:30 I really channel my inner Beyonce and constantly cut the rug for an hour and a half.  Anyways, last post I promised to continue with the Northwest trip so here it is....

Thursday: We woke up bright and early to snow, and headed in the Magic School Bus to our next destination. I call it the magic school bus because one of our chaperones looks/speaks/acts identical to Miss Frizzle.  As we ascended the mountain, we drove above the cloud line and the day suddenly turned sunny and beautiful.  Once we stopped the van near the top, you could see a "mar of nubes" or a sea of clouds. 

Here's the view--ignore the special girl trying to jump in the middle of the pic

The rest of the drive was beautiful as we passed through mountains with picturesque landscapes.  One time when we stopped to take pictures these three goats came running up the road from the opposite direction, and as soon as they saw our van they charged towards us.  One of them even jumped up on the drivers door.  I guess they wanted in on the party.  Also a little while after at another stop, Miss Frizzle got out to take a picture of a twig or something, and a wild goat started to chase her so she had to high-tail it back into the van. Super entertaining. It turns out there are a lot of cactus (cacti?) here in Argentina.  We even saw the oldest cactus in the region, called "abuelo" which means grandpa.  It is over 300 years old and has tons of arms.  Pretty crazy stuff, right?! Now onto more interesting happenings...a few hours later we arrived in a small village at the base of the mountain where we went to a museum that was made completely of rocks. I'm going to be completely honest, I didn't listen the whole time when the guide spoke in english because it's so easy to zone out in other language.  So instead I walked around and took a lot of pictures--

To get an idea, the guy in the last pic is Stanley, the one who is 6'5

Needless to say, the museum ROCKed.  We then went to a nice restaurant and ate Locro, which is argentine specialty and is kind of like a mix between stew and soup, but it's orange.  Sorry for that elaborate description.  After lunch we had some time to kill, so Louis drove us about half hour away to this indigenous site tucked away in the mountains.  The towns we visited were pretty insane; I wouldn't say they were impoverished-- it's more that they don't know any other way of  life.  They don't have much, but they make do with what they have.  It sounds terribly obvious, but being in Argentina, or any foreign country for that matter, has really made me appreciate how lucky I am to live the life I do at home.  It was a perfect day, in the 60s without a cloud in the sky, and the guide took us on an hour long hike.  The most amazing part was when we finally made it to HUGE rock formation, and there was a 10 foot crack in between the two.  Sand, water and rocks separated the two, and we walked on the rocks as we further ventured into the mountain.  It was very Finding Nemo-esque...but instead of going over the trench, we went through it.  We were able to see one Cascada (waterfall) which was so cool, but then our teachers made us stop because they were scared it was too dangerous.  They don't know how adventurous I am with nature because I promise I was totallllly fine in my vans.  

That afternoon, we drove to an observatory and went on a geology walk where we basically hiked down a mountain and learned about the history of earth since it's creation.  That's about all I could tell you about those 3 hours on the walk.  Rocks are cool, but they just don't grab my attention as much as other activities, like wine tasting at a vineyard (see future posts).  However, after our walk, we went into the observatory and watched the reflection of the sun hit a board above the huge telescope, and we counted down as we watched the sun set quickly over the mountain. We then had snacks and watched a video on telescopes.  My favorite part was when they spoke about the the VLT (Very Large Telescope) and the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope-coming in 2018).  The former is actually the largest and most popular telescope in the world, and is located in the neighboring country of Chile.  The other one is expected to be constructed soon, and I hear it's going to be extremely large.  Despite the fact it was so cold, the stars were unbelievable.  Never in my life have I seen so many stars, nor have I looked into such a powerful telescope...I even saw Mercury! If you didn't think I was a loser before, I can only imagine your impression of me after reading that sentence.  It was great though, and my one goal of the night was to see a shooting star.  I saw what I like to call walking stars, where they slowly went across the sky but was kind of disappointed that I never saw the real thing.  However, as we were walking down the side of the mountain, in the uneven gravel, I saw an orange ball of fire out of the corner of my eye and peered up.  There it was, a freaking shooting star.  Unfortunately, I got so excited that I screamed and jumped in the air, landing oh so gracefully on the rocks that I twisted my ankle.  Don't worry, I made a full recovery after about 6 minutes.  

That night, we arrived at our super swanky hotel.  I'll elaborate more on it in the next post, but to give you an idea it was surrounded by mountains, and located on a vineyard.  Thanks Richmond! The next 2 days will be coming to you soon.....

Chau,

Kris

To clear up any confusion, I have been verbally attacked a few times in the past few days regarding my use of the word ciao/chau.  Upon arriving in this country, I learned that most people say caio/chau here instead of adios.  So I obviously typed "how do people spell ciao in argentina" and was told by a questionable (yahooanswers.com) source that it was CHAU.  So for those of you who disagree, my apologies, but I'm sticking with chau.