The beginning of the trip started off as a District Conference, so there was only 23 of us students from Patagonia. This picture is in the Cordoba province. It is a mini Jesus like in Brazil, but... mini. :)
The following is the Sunday before we met up with all the other students. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but typically Sunday is a day to always eat Asado. Some families do it every week, in others only on occasion. Anyway, this is our sunday Asado. Nice to have good weather
After the group of 55 students was together, we had an overnight bus trip to Mendoza. Upon arriving, we went to a winery... of course.
The morning after we headed up into the cold mountains and saw Mount Aconcagua. Everything up in that range was beautiful! These pictures are of: Mate cups being sold, me with the mineral bridge thing and posing in front of Aconcagua.
This next photo is of a shrine we stopped by in a small village. The legend goes that a mother was hiking through the desert with her newborn baby in search of her imprisoned husband. She soon died of thirst, but the baby lived off of the milk in her breasts. She is now seen as a saint in this part of Argentina and people of the community donate their own water to that of the community almost daily. Along with many other traditions...
These next pictures were taken in the land of La Rioja. This was crazy! Everybody kept saying it was kind of like the Grand Canyon. The group shot is of the all the American's showing our PRIDE! ;) The other one is of Me and Grete, from Estonia... never heard of it? Look at a map :D
Along the way in our many hours in the bus, we passed amazing landscapes. This is just one place we stopped to take pictures because it was so pretty. And that's also a picture of the bus I just spent quite some time on.
Later in the day from when those pictures were taken, we stopped at a little place known as The Ruins of Quilmes. And later arrived at the small town of Cafayate in Salta Province. Where we enjoyed WINE ICE CREAM, and pretty much anything to do with wine. :)
After some nights there, we headed out on the way to Salta Capital. And we passed some great sights, I'll tell ya that! That's me feeding a Llama... if you couldn't tell.
Finally we made it to the Capital. And boy is it amazing! I really liked this city, out of the many we went to. I don't know quite what it is, but it just seems to have so much personality to it. One of the days we spent going to different small villages outside of the Capital and eventually ending up in Jujuy... a different province and capital. The food picture is of something they call Locro here. Usually consisting of big corn kernels, meat and things I'm not too sure about. But its quite yummy!
After our stay in Salta... it was eventually time to move on to the next and most breathtaking adventure of the trip. Iguazú and its Falls. Seeing as there is absolutely, inconceivably no way I would be able to put up all the pictures to summarize what I saw there... I will try anyway.
For the first part of our visit there, we had the chance to go underneath the falls. Yes, I know. It was cool. As you can see in one of the photos, there is a boat just like the one I was on heading toward the cascading water. After we changed into dry clothes we continued for the rest of the day to walk along the constructed pathways and see all that could be seen. It. Was. Incredible. Thats all I can say. Also all around the place were these strange animals that look like a mix between raccoons and anteaters, but I don't remember the name whatsoever. The next day, everybody except the American's and Canadians got to go across the Brazilian border and see that part. Unfortunately, to do this... we North Americans would have to pay a fee of 100 and something dollars. So no, I didn't see that part. But it didn't matter, after one day... I was all waterfall-ed out.
This was truly one of the best experiences of this exchange and also of my life. I would definitely recommend it if anybody was looking for something new.
All in all, I already miss all my friends from the trip and I can't believe I'm already going back the the States in about 40 days.
Sorry it took so long to get these fotos up and that this post isn't quite like the south trip one... But I just don't know how long this would get if I explained everything!
Not sure when my next post will be... there's a chance I will be returning to Buenos Aires again in a couple weeks but if not, then you'll probably hear next about my parents coming on May 29th! Yay!!! I'm so excited to share with them the things I've been experiencing for this past year. Anyway, until then everyone!
Besos
Chau
