First Impressions of Medellín, Colombia

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BOLIVIA

I'm in Brazil! In Bonito, which has not been so bonito because it has been raining through out our whole stay here but finally, I have gotten the chance to upload some photos that I took during my trip in Bolivia!

After four days in Bolivia, we embarked on this four day 4x4 adventure through the south of Bolivia (the first day of it was through the Salt flats pictured below) and it was the most WILD car ride of my life. As I mentioned in an earlier post- Bolivia does not have paved roads, all in all, I traveled on a paved road for a total of about twenty minutes through out my whole trip in Bolivia. Instead, dirt roads covered in crevaces and unimaginably deep holes weave through Bolivia. I just realized its seven and not six and I have to be on a night bus to Iguassu in ten minutes! I hope everyone is doing well and miss you all terribly! This is sunrise at 4am through Bolivia on one of the 4x4 road trip days!

The most beautiful place I have ever been to in South America (other than parts of the Inca Trail, I just can't decide) is a place in Bolivia that to me, reminds me of what heaven must look like. This place is the Salt flat region of Bolivia, which is made up of sprawling miles of pure white salt as far as the eye can see. January, when I was in Bolivia, is one of the months during Bolivia's rainy season which is a MAGICAL time in the salt flats because two or three inches of rain lie on the perfectly white surface so that an illusion of perfectly reflected sky is created (see picture below). I couldn't attempt to do justice to the experience of seeing this heaven on earth through words or photos but I can say that nothing I have ever seen compared..

This is a photo I took as we were driving for three hours (a car ride that not once anyone asked 'when are we going to get there?'), you can see the salt floor through the shawdow of the cloud and in the distance the perfect reflection of the sky.

This is our 4x4 driving through the flats, it seemed as if we were floating.

In a section of the salt flats that was not flooded with rain, we were playing around with illusion photos for about an hour. This is Alex in front from England and Adel on the other side from Sydney, Australia (she's back in Buenos Aires now and I miss her!).

That night we stayed at a hostel made entirely of salt.. the beds, the tables, the chairs, the walls, it was insane. (And we had a surprise birthday party for James' who's 24th birthday it was!!)

After a ten hour (ROUGH AND RUGGED- I had to run out of the car at one point because I was in the front seat when the engine started smoking. The driver had stuffed grass around the engine to keep the salt out it as we drove through the salt flats and a flame caught, I didn't know the word chance or explosion in Spanish but I understood the sign language well enough to get the hell out) car ride through dirt ditches and roads of sand we made a detour to see the Red Lake which is a much deeper color than this photo resolution shows- the water was a Coca-Cola-can red and the lake was absolutely enormous. I'm smiling in this photo but I was actually completely out of breath after having run/rolled down this STEEP hill with John and then having had to run back up it to get to the car before we left this lake.

Although mostly covered by ice, this is the Green Lake that we saw the next day, at the tip of the most southern part of Bolivia (and my friends and I trying to do something else other than stand and smile).

The word 'diverse' describes Bolivia perfectly. I found diversity in their language, which was perfectly clear to understand in La Paz, the unofficial capital, but hardly decipherable outside the major cities where primarily Spanish serves as a second language and is spoken with a scratchy and thick accent. Another diverse aspect is the landscape. By driving through what seemed like the entire country but was only half of it, I saw landscapes that looked like the moon, the desert, a snowcovered valley, a never ending abyss of salt, fields of flowers and crops, high mountains, rivers, the different landscapes never seemed to end.. the cities themselves were quite diverse, Sucre was a beautiful white city with cleanliness and plazas while every other city (this picture I took in Potosi) had streets lined with garbage and homeless people..

While walking through Potosi, I passed this and took a picture to show how people are living in the very center of the city. I was surprised to find that in one of the main cities of Bolivia, there was this much undevelopment two blocks from the main square, I was expecting to find it ten blocks away but I imagine it is even worse there.

There are some things I have yet to figure out in Bolivia- scratch that- many things. For one, on my morning walk exploring Potosi, I passed these four women sitting in the middle of the street knitting. Another is the valor purple track suit our tour guide wore every day. More importantly though, I found Bolivia to be very, very unorganized, and for the most part, rather filthy.

Bolivia is a great place to travel if you are on a budget because the exchange rate (currently) is one dollar to seven bolivianos, so divide every price by seven. Furthermore, everything can be negotiated down in terms of prices.. everything, anywhere. For lunch in Potosi, I wandered off by myself and went to one of the nicest french/bolivian cuisine restaurants in the city that was recommended in the Lonely Planet Bolivia and this plate was.. $4.75, with my tomato soup to start with, two waters and the tip, the meal was less than $10. Unbelievable, right?? Now I'm in Brazil where you can barely find a soup for less than ten dollars!

Feb 4, 2011
I have never been on a quad before but in all honesty, I don´t really have any fears of anything that I have not tried before. Fear of quading hadn´t even crossed my mind when I heard that it was an option for the next day because all I had heard before was that it is loads of fun. In fact, when a tour guide came to our hotel and was telling us different things we could do; rock climbing, visit dinosaur footprints, go mountain biking, etc. I coughed and yelled quading to try to sway some of my friends to go with me. I would like to think that I had no way of knowing what was coming but I guess I should have thought back to the four day 4x4 Uyuni Salt Flats crossing we had just done and the conditions of the roads.. roads? No, I´ve been on one paved road in Bolivia and it was for twenty minutes. Roads here are dirt paths that are filled with massive bumps and holes as if every meter you had to slow down for a speedbump, but since there are so many, there is no slowing down (people have jumped so high from their bus seats while the driver hit one of these ¨speedbumps¨ at such a high speed that they hit their head on the ceiling, that was two feet higher, so suddenly that tears started coming).

Have to run to a night train to brazil now, (goodbye BOLIVIA!) but will continue what happened once I have internet again in a few days.. includes flipping, tears and a little blood, not on my end but my friend´s.. miss you all! Xo alexa


Feb 2, 2011
I am running as fast as I can towards a moving bus. The problem is, I should be on that bus instead of running after it. The thought of being left in Potosi, Bolivia, instead of sitting comfortably on that three hour bus to Sucre, is probably the cause for my terror that I can see reflected on the faces of the local women around me. Moments before, they idled in traditional skirts by their doorways but suddenly they are breaking into a sprint only meters ahead, flailing their arms in hopes of catching the attention of the bus driver as this vehicle rides on forward down the narrow street steeped on both sides with garbage and litter, something I´ve found to expect of every Bolivian city. Running with the weight of a four year old child on my back (the backpack that I have been traveling with for the past four weeks) through a Bolivian city alongside women selling homebaked cakes and electric converters on the street, I am wondering what the hell I am going to do if I get left. I am traveling with 16 people.. on a three week trip through Bolivia to Brazil. I´ve been with them since the 27th of January where I met up with them in La Paz, the unofficial capital of Bolivia. For the most part, they are a year older or younger than twenty-two and from Australia or England, with the exception of a couple from Canada. Whats complicated is that each of them are on that bus.

After exploring the city of Potosi on my own all morning, I met up with the group at 2pm back at the hotel to catch our two thirty bus. When our not-so-fearless-but-attempts-to-look-it-everyday-in-his-purple-valore-track-suit-and-Brooklyn-hat leader said the bus was pulling up soon, a line quickly formed for the bathroom. On the first bus from La Paz to Uyuni days before, I learned my lesson about Bolivian buses the hard way.. after downing two liters of wáter due to the altitude that we were climbing, I desperately needed to pee. I waited but finally tried to nudge my neighbor John awake, who I had just met that morning and who was sitting in the aisle seat. No success, so I tried to go over him, a bit worried he would wake up at the moment it would seem I was straddling him to get to the aisle, I risked it and was lucky, but completely unprepared for what I was about to walk into. The bathroom, although I would prefer not use that word to describe what this unfathamble place was, was a hole clogged with a sweater and diarreah, toilet seat glued to the wall. A watergun sat in the ¨sink¨ under a dirty backpack and socks. I had to grasp both sides of the wall to make sure I didnt fall in, what I can only imagine would be one of the worst moments of anyone´s life. Which brings me back to today and why I waited, last on line, to use the bathroom at the hotel before getting on the bus. Sadly, once out, I picked up my bag from the luggage storage and walked out to find the bus sitting a block away. I was walking towards it when its doors locked and black smoke erupted from its pipes as it drove away. Running as fast as I could, I tried to wave it down but there were no windows in the back to see any of my desperate attempts. Luckily, one of the local women who had recognized my distress caught the attention of the bus driver who slammed to a halt and opened the doors. When our tour leader saw it was me running up and we had not stopped because of local women trying to sell juices and sweets to us on the bus, his mouth dropped in horror and embarressment. I got on and stretched out for the ride but my heart was still beating so fast for at least ten minutes afterwards at how close I had been to being stuck in Potosi.

What I've been up to..

Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires

Hello, world. Sorry I have been out of touch.. Since my last blog post, I went through the stressful two-week-without-sleep-period of finals at my University- here in Cordoba, the final exam for each class accounts for 45% of your final grade so there is an incredible amount of weight on how you do, ate alpaca in Peru- very common there, probably because they're as tasty as they are cute.. have tried my first official attempt with Salsa lessons, sat on top of an Inca temple at 12am surrounded by darkness, mountains, and the most beautiful stars I have seen yet and then proceeded to wake at 3:30am to run through the mountains in the dark to arrive at the Sun temple to see the most incredible view of Macchu Pichu by 6:30am.

Alpaca!

Some weeks before that, I went to Buenos Aires with my friend Kathryn. Her stepmom invited her and I for the weekend to go to the horse races that were being held that weekend and I saw the city for the first time since I went two years ago over winter break with my parents. INCREDIBLE weekend, four days that I would not change one moment of. We visited Plaza de Mayo, Puente de la Mujer, and had the best time at the horse races and enjoyed all of the delicious little finger foods that came with it.

Tango show in Buenos Aires

Standing at the horse races in Buenos Aires

Since I post the exciting things that I have come across in Argentina, I should probably post the not so fun experiences as well.. Several of my friends here, Argentine and American, have been robbed, although very infrequent, like any big city, things will happen and you have to be careful. Unfortunately, the same passed for me one night when I was walking home. I was with my friend Michael and walking past a park that I've probably only passed through twice in my time here, and five very young guys ran away with our cash and cell phones. The experience was difficult but at the moment, I didn't feel so anxious because Michael was so calm about it since similar things had passed with his friends where nothing bad had happened.

Soon I was too busy studying for my final exams to fret over the experience but I definitely will not forget it. My friends, Silvia and Sarah and I went to a small German town called La Cumbrecita for the day and trekked through beautiful lush forests to arrive at waterfalls and the clear, freezing cold, river. We loved it and spontaneously decided to stay the night. Some how, we each made it with the money we had brought for just the day to pay for the hostel and a delicious delicious steak grilled like a lomo with rosemary and some magical pepper. Although we had nothing to change into because staying the night was unplanned, we went to two boliches and found that Belgrano (the town next to La Cumbrecita where we stayed the night) has many preteens out late dancing, and we retired early to enjoy the city some more the next day before coming back to Cordoba and memorizing Spanish subjunctive tenses- yes!

Waterfall in La Cumbrecita

Penguin walk

I hurt my feet from walking around Cordoba in leather sandals the past few weeks instead of shoes.. The sidewalks all around the city are made up of different types of flooring that are patched together and are either slightly elevated or slightly downward so finally last night I was in a lot of pain when I was putting pressure on them and I went to the doctor here.. its going to take two weeks to get completely better mas o menos but for now I'm walking like a penguin around the city, so much so that Benjamin told me we didn't need to go to Puerto Madryn to see penguins because we had one walking around in our house.. haha hopefully getting better soon!

BTW.. planning my trip to Brazil and I can't wait.. I finish my exams at the end of november and then will be traveling through the end of december through Brazil with my friend. December-the end of February are summer months here so I have until March to travel through Patagonia (for three weeks in January) and then stay in Montevideo, Uruguay for a month before coming back for my second semester in Cordoba from March through July!

Zurich Orchestra

Saw the Zurich Youth Orchestra with Benjamin at the theatre next to Patio Olmos and it was such an impressive performance.. The conductor conducted the entire performance without any music in front of him and the theatre is something in itself, so beautiful inside. I want to go to another performance there before Benjamin leaves for France at the end of november and I go to Brazil..

Horseback riding with Marcelo

Marcelo con Joaquin looking at the sheep

My friend Marcelo invited me to go horseback riding at his family's place this past sunday.. I laughed and said I didn't know how to ride a horse and he replied that it would be easy.. I was so nervous but it was such a great day. I LOVED it. Him and his brother picked me up in the center and we drove about an hour and a half to el campo where his other brother lives with his family. Marcelo and his brother showed me how to ride Manela, Marcelo's beauutifull horse and they rode on two others with me past all the surrounding fields and fabricas, we went for about two hours and then came back and played with his nephew, Joaquin, who is soo cute.. Then Marcelo and I took a bus back to Cordoba. When we were horseback riding, there was no problem riding through other family's field's which was strange for me, but really nice to see how they're so open with their neighbors. We also saw some Argentines training dogs to chase rabbits and they go so fast I couldn't believe it. At one point we stopped to look for some white horses that they wanted to check up on and we came upon this vast field of purple flowers.. it was so beautiful, I think it might be one of my favorite places in Cordoba.

NY

Kenny, Francis, Tina (main actors) and me

In the beginning of the year I finished a short film called, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? It is a student production that I wrote with Grant Curatola, and directed and edited myself, based on the short story by Joyce Carol Oates. The chilling work of Oates was based on a true story of a serial murderer in Tuscon, Arizona. It is a cautionary tale that tells of a teenager who when acting provocatively attracts the attention of a sociopath who then proceeds to psychologically terrorize his victim.

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/8555442

I've submitted the film to several film festivals and am waiting to see where the film will be accepted. In April it won first place at the Guild Hall Student Film Festival which granted it entry to the Hamptons International Film Festival, which was AMAZING. The film had two screenings over the weekend of October 10th and I flew back to New York for a week to go to the festival and see my family. It was an incredible week. The film was chosen as one of the seven "picks" by The Independent to see at the festival, the only short on the list, and listed alongside recognized directors and actors. All of my friends came to the screening which meant everything to me.. And after the second screening, the manager of James Franco called Kenny (lead actor and producer) to request a copy of the film for James.. Could not have dreamed of a better week at home.

When I came back to Cordoba, Kathryn was waiting at the airport to pick me up, so sweet.. and it was really nice to be home. Although the cab driver took us the long way back to Cordoba, now I'll know to state which way I'd like to be taken in the future.

Renting a car and heading for the coast

Video we took from the boat

Stefan, Benjamin and I by the cliffs

To save pesos on guided excersions in Puerto Madryn (they are such a rip off in Puerto Madryn, especially since we got there on the first day of the tourist season- Oct 1st-.. I'd highly advise renting a car for the day and doing your own thing), we rented a car and went off of our map to make our own stops and watch whales off of cliffs (you can see them right from the beach). We made our way to a whaling town and got lunch before getting on a boat that got RIGHT NEXT TO the whales. It was UNBELIEVABLE! They swam right beneath the boat and being about to look down onto them into the clear water, instead of seeing only the tops of their bodies at eye level, made it an even crazier experience than kayaking alongside them. They are so graceful and their colas, tails, are SO BEAUTIFUL to watch falling back into the water.

Stefan (who drove) right after we rented the car the night before

Benjamin while we parked at the beach

Driving back to town to have some dinner before getting on our 11pm bus back to Cordoba, we stopped by a beach and saw some beached sea lions. The beach was blocked off but since we had not passed a car in forty minutes.. we jumped the fence.. One sealion was lying, it was so big I thought it was a baby whale and I came right up to it for a picture because I thought it was sleeping when all of a sudden it flipped over and made a really loud noise- absolutely terrified me and Benjamin, who had been waiting to take a picture, was laughing soo hard.

¿Que es un Gaucho?

As I've been studying the history of Gaucho's in Argentina through my culture class at the University, I might have neglected to describe who they are. So, to put it most simply, I'll use a definition from wikipedia: Gaucho (gaúcho in Portuguese, gaucho in Spanish) is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Region, Brazil. The word gaucho could be described as a loose equivalent to the North American "Cowboy" ("vaquero" in Spanish).

Puerto Madryn

21 hours to Puerto Madryn by bus..

50 hours in Puerto Madryn..

20 hours back to Cordoba by bus..

Class.

Difficult..

But the whales were AMAZING.

Benjamin, Stefan and me

Thats one of the whales.. and me in my kayak.. so close

Haha on the bus ride there they played the movie, Everythings Fine, which is awfully slow moving. Stefan slept while Benjamin and I stayed up and watched it. We all woke up and they put the same film on at 7:30am and Benja went, "Oh my god.. this movie went so slow the first time.. I dont know, it must go in slow motion this time". 5 hours left on the way home, and I was staring out the window at the picturesque country side of Argentina between Cordoba and the tip of Patagonia and the view of the fields and tall trees reminded me of impressionist french paintings.. Writing in my journal to pass the time, I wrote, "I feel like I'm looking at a 1880 french landscape painting when I look out the window, I wish Ben was sleep talking next to me so that it would seem even more legitimate." (Benjamin is from Grenoble, near the Alps in France). I read him that and he closed his eyes and began to mumble in french for the next ten minutes, perhaps the most entertaining thing on the trip for me.

The first night we ate an asado at our hostel and slept before waking up at six am to get dressed for our kayaking trip. We spent four and a half hours kayaking right alongside WHALES. It was hard after a while but seeing a whale for the first time, only ten feet away or so, was worth it. We were all exhausted afterwards but we took a break in the middle and went hiking along these cliffs that overlooked the nature preserve we were on and the water.. breathtaking. On the kayak ride back, the sea lions swam alongside us.

Learning some guitarra

One of my flatmates, Luca, moved back to Switzerland but before he left he began teaching me what he knew of guitar and I love it. I can play one song.. called Spanish ballad, and now several gaucho chords. After horseback riding, the gaucho cooked us an asado that was so delicious with wine and too many different types of meat. After, he began playing guitar and singing gaucho canciones which were so beautiful to listen to, culturally and simply for listening. When the girls started talking to his friend about Brazil, I asked him if he would mind teaching me something (although I was so nervous to ask since I can't even play but I thought whats to lose) and he spent an hour and a half teaching me the beginning principles of playing how the gauchos play. I couldn't have dreamed of anything better, such a unique experience, learning guitar from a gaucho.. so cool

.

"Is the Gaucho on his cellphone?"

Me and Cenizas (Spanish for Ashes), the name of my horse

This day I cannot imagine forgetting. We were picked up at two o'clock from our hostel and Silvia, Kathryn, and I headed off for an hour long drive on roads that ran along steep, impressive mountains and finally we arrived at a small ranch. The horses were beautiful and well cared for, mine was named Cenizas, which is Spanish for 'Ashes'. I hadn't had any preoccupations with riding alongside Kathryn and Silvia, who have both been riding horses for more than ten years, until I realized I was going to have to learn something, anything about horses, fast or always be lagging behind. We had a gaucho, an Argentine who has grown up on the farm, leading us and teaching me how to direct my horse. I was nervous about hitting the horse with the branch they gave each of us but the gaucho, Diego, told me Cenizas could barely feel it, it was more the sound of the whip motion that got him moving. After only five minutes we were riding on paths that ran amongst the same mountains we had passed on the road, but with nothing but nature in sight.

Silvia, Kathryn and I on our horses

Silvia, Kathryn and I

The scenery was overwhelming with its beauty.. it was strikingly hard for me to concentrate on holding onto the saddle or direct the reins because I could not take my eyes away from the view of the mountains. That changed when Diego rode up behind me and hit the horse with his leather whip and Cenizas began galloping. It took a little while for me to learn how to move with the horse but wow.. it was perhaps the most thrilling feeling I've ever had. Its hard to put into words but holding on and feeling yourself push against the wind at such speed is the most enthralling, confident feeling that I've ever had. I absolutely loved it. Still, of course, when the four of us raced to the end of the dirt paths, I finished last, but I would love more than anything to do that again.

In no sense an easy day..

The mountains we were trekking on, the guide and I are in the bottom corner

While Benjamin set off for his intensive mountain trek, Kathryn and I set our sights on slightly smaller mountains, but a mountain nonetheless.. We signed up for a day of trekking, repelling and rock climbing with a guide that Benjamin had gone with earlier in the week. Before we signed up we asked him how it was and he said it was easy, if anything maybe a little boring, what a joke.

Before we left, Kathryn painted her toe nails pink and I packed a hat and sunscreen in a small leather purse and off we went into the van to drive to the bottom of the mountain. We were with the guide and one other woman from Spain. When we arrived, both of them started taking out their rock climbing equipment and hiking poles.. Kathryn and I just looked at each other.

So we began climbing a steep trail, the two others leading and us almost on all fours grabbing every rock we could with our hands so as to not fall off the edge. The trail was so tiny, on one end was the rock covered with cactus and the other was a steep decline that if fallen over.. well that would just be horrible. The trail was also full of tiny pebbles that when stepped on would slide out from under your feet, making both Kathryn and I very nervous every time I slipped in my running sneakers (no traction). When we reached the top, we admired the view for ten minutes and then began descending.. The path was so steep that the guide gave both of his poles to Kathryn to use and told me to hold onto his backpack, I looked like an idiot but I was so glad to hold onto him. He was comfortable with the trails so as he skipped along, I clumsily stumbled/ran after him, attached. Ten minutes later, Kathryn slipped badly and her hand accidently reached out to the side, covered in cactus plants, and grabbed a cactus. She had roughly ten long thorns in her hand, one going entirely through her middle finger. She sat there and had to pick them out.. I get chills just remembering that.

Me repelling..

Kathryn rock climbing the cliff we had just repelled down

Soon though we reached the first mountain wall and our guide showed us how to repel down it. Since I had never done this before.. the idea made me so anxious. I don't generally have a fear of heights but when I'm standing on the edge of a cliff and someone is telling me I have to walk down it, ropes tied on me or not, I cannot help but be nervous. The woman with us was perplexed that I had no fear of paragliding but was soo nervous to repel down since I guess there is no way you can fall down even if you lose balance on the wall. I repelled down the first two walls, about 70 meters each, fine but it was when I saw the third that I began breathing heavily. My heart must have been pounding so hard, I went down second. About half way through, I made the mistake of turning around to see how far was left and accidently let out a scream, not that our guide or Kathryn heard me, by this point they could not even see me because the cliff was so steep. I finished as fast as I could and was so relieved at the bottom. I'm not sure why but the experience was so nerve racking for me.

We didn't fall off a cliff.. (just walked down some.. bad joke I know)

Afterwards we had lunch and walked down the road to a thermal pool alongside a cool river. Kathryn commented how well our guide and the other woman with us were getting along, muy buena onda.. and while we were walking, we looked at the mountain we had just climbed and ascended and said how although it was quite an experience, we were glad we did it.. Maybe I wouldn't have spoken so quickly had I known the experience was not over. To get down to the river, we had to descend another steep path, and once again I was holding onto the guide's backpack. But the thermal pool was worthwhile and relaxing.. and when we were in it, the silent awkward moment came when Kathryn turned to the woman and said quietly, "..those are my feet" (our guide and the woman had really hit it off it seems). Haha anyway, there were a group of Argentines in the thermal pool that we made friends with who were really cool and we will hopefully see again in Mendoza. Quite a day but fun overall.

Farewell to Benjamin

The three of us at our hostel!

The three of us in the wine cellar at the restaurant

Benjamin decided to go on a six day trek in the mountains.. I already miss him but I’m so glad he’s doing it, its going to be UNBELIEVABLE. He’s trekking every day for five hours with a guide on a mountain.. They cannot trek more than that each day because if you get too high too quickly you get altitude sickness and a horrible headache. He’s camping out in a tent and each day for water must find snow, put it in a bag, and leave it between him and the sleeping bag of the guide at night to melt.. Have to admire that. Last night we went out for the most delicious dinner he could have since the rest of the week will be mostly pasta and rice. The owner of the hostel called his friend who owns a restaurant called El Palenque on Avenue Villanueva, the best street in Mendoza for restaurants and dancing.. When we got there it was packed and the owner brought us down to his wine cellar and told us about his collection and about Argentine wines and food and then picked out an Andeluna Cabernet to go with our dinner, que riquísimo.. He also ordered our plates, entraña empanadas followed by carne matambre, hecho a la pizza. It came out on top of potatoes and when I picked up the meat with my fork to put on the side, it fell into two pieces, that tender. Is your mouth melting? Mine was.. could not have done better for Benjamin’s last night in Mendoza.

Benjamin leaving at 7:30 in the morning!

Why are we covering ourselves with mud anyway?

I'm not sure what part of covering ourselves with mud sounded inviting but the way it was described to us sounded deliciously so, as did thermal pools in the mountains.. so Kathryn and I ventured an hour outside of Mendoza and spent some relaxing hours drifting between different thermal pools surrounded by these incredible mountain cliffs and a freezing cold running river. I was hesitant with the mud but Kathryn and I did it twice.. somehow it made our hair so soft, so it must be good for something. What really made the afternoon was the location.. we were convinced that the views were more and more beautiful every time we returned.

I've never been to a festival like this one..

The grill that we ordered dinner from

There were probably close to 15 stands like this one roasting meat all day..

Generally Chileans and Argentines do not regard each other so highly but in Mendoza, there is a huge Chilean population. We were lucky enough to be staying in Mendoza while they were celebrating the 200 year anniversary of Chile’s independence (September 18th 1810). It was insane.. Plaza Independencia (the main plaza), just two blocks from our hostel, was packed with over a thousand people and a concert for three nights. Every foot of grass was covered.. with tables to eat at, open grills with 24 hour roasts, asados, with people dancing, salsa, tango, everything. Chilean flags were in every direction. Benjamin, Kathryn and I headed over around 10pm and stayed till midnight when the concert finished and shared a huge portion of roasted meat for dinner. Benjamin is still saying, “BEST MEAT I’ve had in Argentina.” They roasted the meat slowly and had it turning all day but it wasn’t dry because of the sauce that they were continuing to put on it. One of my favorite moments from the night was when I was getting salad and the guy next to me asked in Spanish if I was Chilean.. Whether there were not a lot of tourists at the festival or there are a lot of redheads in Chile, it was exciting.

Kathryn and Benjamin finishing dinner, the concert in the background

Benjamin and I in front of the Plaza

Paragliding, do it.. if you're scared, conquer the fear

To anyone that reads this- YOU MUST GO PARAGLIDING AT SOME POINT. IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCES I HAVE EVER HAD. My parents were happy to first learn of my paragliding adventure when I had safely returned to my hostel but I wouldn't trade it for anything else in Mendoza. If you’re scared of heights, its a completely different feeling.. I promise. A group of students we went with where terrified and afterwards, I asked them if it was a once in a lifetime experience and one girl said, “oh no, there is no way I am not experiencing that again”. I could not express the feeling better myself.

When we arrived in Mendoza, Kathryn ran into one of her friends she had met here during her last visit who is a paragliding instructor. Feeling invincible, I saw no reason not to go and when I asked Kathryn if she would go with me, she was just as excited. So while Benjamin went rock climbing today, we called up the paragliding company and asked if they had any room in their truck to take us. Since we had slept in, we called a little late, and they said yes if we could be outside in 5 minutes. The rush definitely added to the thrill of it, I didn’t know exactly how paragliding was done but I had heard that it was an incredible experience and this trip I’m really open to trying anything so I was so excited.

Kathryn and I in front of a breathtaking view of Mendoza

We picked up 4 other students from another hostel and set off towards the mountains. They were pretty nervous but since I didn’t have a clue what paragliding even entailed (I didn’t know if it was zip-lining or what.. maybe I would have thought again if I had known I’d have to run off a cliff), I wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. After half an hour we got to this camp site where Kathryn and I waited an hour for the others to go. The views were unbelievable, but the heat was too so we waited in the car most of the time. We saw everyone land and the girls who had been really nervous could NOT stop gushing about how amazing it was. I was so ready. We got in the car with the instructors and cranked up the music, it was another half an hour ride up to the highest point of the mountain we were jumping off of. It is hard to relay how scary that car ride could have been.. I don’t understand why I had complete trust in our instructor driving, probably because he had this amazing positive energy radiating off of him, but the roads carved into the mountain were tiny, and there while we were circling around the mountain, there were a lot of turns that needed pushes with the acceleration. Seeing the rocks fall off the mountain as we drove by, you could definitely not see where they were landing. It reminded me of driving in Greece, when I was 12 I visited the islands with my mom. We had a guide who was drinking beers at nine in the morning as he drove a white van full of 9 terrified women up these mighty cliffs. This truck was instead full of four enthusiastic instructors, us and two other visitors, listening to Black Eyed Peas and dancing to get rid of any nervous energy.

Raul and I right before we ran off the cliff!

The first thing that caught my attention when we arrived to the mountain top were the views. I lost all words. And then found them to ask someone to take a picture of Kathryn and I. It hit me what we were actually doing when we were paired up with instructors. Mine was Raul, such a sweet guy who told me he had been paragliding for 12 years. Once he started putting belts and a helmet on me, I started getting scared. He told me we had to wait for the wind to pick up and then we would have to run off the cliff. He stressed that it was important not to stop running once we were in the air and to sit down once he told me to. Kathryn was really nervous and when I saw her jump off, I started shaking. I turned to Raul and said (not in a steady voice), “I’m really nervous..” and he said, “me too..”. Not helpful! They had been saying that in the car and laughing but at that moment it was hard to relax. He kept kicking the dirt to see how high it would pick up and we had to wait a few minutes for another gust. By then, I’m not sure what happened but seeing Kathryn in the air, I was completely fine. Thank goodness the anxiety only lasted a minute before I went off because I wouldn’t have wished any other experience than the one I had. We started running and it was such a thrill.

Raul and I PARAGLIDING! (Kathryn took the picture from the air)

..how incredible is that view

Up in the air, I once again was completely speechless. The view of the Andes could not be replicated by anything. Just imagine flying with no boundaries, just a helmet and a kite.. nothing can compare. We jumped off at 1,800 meters and flew up around 150 more once we jumped. There was nothing scary about it, if anything it was completely the opposite because you feel so free up in the sky that all of your anxiety leaves and you just.. fly. And admire what you see.

Raul was making sure I was okay every few minutes and every time all I could reply was how much I was loving it. He said, “you can scream if you want” and it felt soo good. I screamed as loud as I could and was laughing at the same time.. He said the people in Chile could definitely hear me hahah. Another reason I probably felt so comfortable was because Raul was so nice, he noticed that I kept turning to see the Andes and would turn us so that I had the best view of them and said that the view of me in front of the Andes was his favorite. Out of the five pairs paragliding, we landed last with around a half an hour flight, which was significant because the flight usually lasts for fifteen minutes, but the day that we went the instructors said the weather was perfect. Raul was so happy he said he was going to print out the pictures of the two of us in the air and write on the back of them, “the best flight of the spring of 2010” and sent me a message on facebook that said, "alexa raul, the best paragliding team en mendoza" and then wrote on my wall something similar.

Raul and I after we landed

"alexa, el mejor vuelo, alexa raul, the best paragliding team

gracias alexa por tu muy buena onda" - Raul

On the way back to the hostel we stopped by an outdoor bar and all shared a beer and alfajones, this delicious type of cookie that can be found everywhere in Argentina that is generally two cookies with dulce de leche or chocolate in the middle.

One of the best things I’ve ever done. Highly recommended to anyone, anywhere. And if you ever visit Mendoza, get in touch with me and I’ll put you in touch with Raul and his instructors. It'll be worth it.