Marcella's Blog

(and then and then and then...) So I spoke too soon! We are still in the land of Gauchos! Our plane had mechanical troubles as we were flying over Brazil so we had to turn around and land back in Argentina! We are booked on another flight tonight so fingers crossed we get back tomorrow morning. Last night: Amanda and I got to the airport yesterday with a plan in hand - check in, duty free shop, drink wine and get on plane. We rode in what was our scariest cab ride ever to the airport. I dont know why this place bothers to paint lines on the road...NO ONE FOLLOWS LANES! Our cabbie was driving 100 miles an hour swerving all over the place and we even past police cars! Amanda and I just kept our heads down and sang to the radio. Luckily, it was english so we rocked out to ¨I wanna Rock and Roll all night, and party every day¨ The check in process was a slow and discombobulated but somehow we were bumped up to economy plus! Following our plan we checked out what Duty Free had to offer and ...

Hoy es nuestra ultima dia en el ciudad de Buenos Aires! Let´s first recap our plane ride home... After posting our last blog we sat outside and played cards while listening to some Argentine reggae. Our cab was to come around 7 for our 930 flight. The cab arrived a bit early, but no worries we figured there might be a crowd of people leaving the Natural Wonder. to our surprise we were two of 7 people in the entire airport. We proceeded to the check in line (of 3 people) and looked up in disbelief to the departure screen. The flight was delayed until 12:30am! We had to confirm that this was actully happening, so we asked about the reason for the delay as we checked in. The ticketing agent said there was a ¨Slight Strike¨ going on in the Bs.As. Aeroparque! WHAT THE!! He said not to worry as the strike should be over around 1030pm and then the plane would take off and come to Igauzu. We had been warned that the transportation to and from the falls is not usually on time, but we didnt thin...

Two days ago we made the best decision ever to buy two plane tickets to Puerto Igauzu! It was a choice we left up to the airlines and they played in our favor to provide us with the two last seats on an Thursday afternoon flight and returning late Friday night. I think we are still in awe of our day here! Did you know that Igauzu Falls is one of the 7 Wonders of the World! We arrived Thursday afternoon at the domestic airport after a morning of shopping on Florida St. We were met with a very crowded check in line but ended up meeting a family from Rockville, MD. It turned out to be an easy process and we moved thru with ease. The rules here are way `lax compared to USA. We meandered thru the Duty Free section since we had a few hours to kill )our plane was delayed an hour) and Amanda got a great idea to ask about buying wine to drink on the plane and later at our hostel. That turned out to be a great question since the answer was YES! Walking thru the airport to our gate we ran into 2 ...

Upon many recommendataions we headed to La Cabrera for dinner in Palermo Viejo..I am not one to take pictues of food but the steak we got the best we have ever seen. It was stuffed with cheese, sundried tomatoes and jamon. Totally worth every cent. The restaurant itself was a new experience. It was actually to buildings a block apart and we got there around 10 and waited for an hour for a table. We got to people watch and confirmed Amanda's thesis that only coastal amercians travel outside the country. We met some people from NJ who were in an MBA class and a crazy New Yorker. She was not the american export we would like to send out as a representative. When waiting at restaurants in Bs As they provide you with champagne and a light appitizer. we will be suggesting this place to anyone we run into traveling to BA. Yesterday, we slept in and then went up to La Boca where we toured the futbol stadium. We walked around the musuem and then went on a tour, which was all in spanish. Our...

The weather here is fantastic! Traveling around in 80 degress with light winds has provided both of us with burnt skin! We went on a bike tour the other morning and forgot to apply the spf 50 and now we are paying for it! It is a fun memory we will associate with this vacation. Today we went on a fun excursion to the Estancio. The name of the ranch was Santa Susana. We picked up the bus at 9am and arrived at 1130...it was a long and hot bus ride but the silver lining was that we saw the northern country side. We arrived to the smell of all you an eat empanadas and vino tinto! There were a few activities to choose from and we immediately followed the gauchos to the horseback riding. That may not have been the wisest of decisions following a 15 mile bike ride yesterday, regardless, the caballos provided us with some laughs. We even made new friends as our horses did not listen to us. (we were the moden day lucy and ethel...and being the only americans it was fitting). Lunch featured loc...

Hoy: we are listening to Cindy Lauper as we type up this blog. I have enlisted Amanda as my creative director for the blog as my last one was full of entonces, entonces , entonces (Are you mocking me?) Upon a neuvo amigo recommendation we went to the San Telmo market. The market had very nice selection of gifts and local BA items. the problem that occured over and over was that no one accepted plasitc. So being educated ladies we went to the local bank to take out cash from the atm. apparently one needs a pìn number to take out cash and amanda did not know that on her credit card. we had our international phone and decided to call capitl one. After being yelled at for not knowing the pin we finally got money from amandas credit card...enough for us to buy a few gifts at the market. let me ask you someting..do you know the pin number to your credit card? yeah i didnt think so. Tango: we went to Sabor a Tango anoche with our new amiga de UK. >We took a less...

Hola! Amanda and I have arrived in South America! We had a uneventful flight (which is how I like it) down to Buenos Aires. We had a couple of glasses of wine in the airport and took some nyquil and it did the trick to help us sleep for most of the flight. We woke up for our free meals of course :-) It was amazing to get off the plane and be so far away...we are still so excited to be here. The advice the flight attendents had for us was to be careful of being ¨slimed¨ that is when a guy squirts ketchup or something of that sort on your shoulder so you get distracted and then his buddy pick pockets you from the other direction...stranger danger! It took a while to get thru customs and pay our entrance fee, but the airport staff was working so I was happy. We had about a 30 minute commute to our hostel and so we got to practice our spanish right away with the guapo taxi driver. Our hostel is right on the main drag in downtown BA and we have a balcony with a great view! we checked in tal...

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