Inspired

Finding wisdom in the strangest of places.

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Dia numero veinte seis: Today we went to the cemetery. Sounds morbid, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too at first. I wasn’t too convinced either before I got there.Mum: Let’s go to the cemetery today.Me: No thanks, that’s morbid.Mum: We can look at Eva Peron’s crypt.Me: Still weird. Still no thanks.But alas, there was nothing I could do to deter them, so we decided to go. But first we checked out the football games that are coming up in BA. There was one for tonight, but at more than 200 US dollars each, from a tourism agency with a bad reviews, we weren’t so keen. Same goes for the game on Sunday night. At least tonight’s game was Boca though. Still, we decided to give it a miss. Now, back to the cemetery. I bet that was what you were excited about. It’s incredible. It’s like a city of crypts. It literally has streets and streets of them. It was crazy. They’re all really intricate and sort of beautiful whilst still being really morbid. I’ll upload the photos to facebook, but here’s me standing in a street. It creeped me out massively. I held on to Mum for most of it, seen too many zombie movies I think. And being able to see the coffins was a bit strange to me. We came across Eva Peron’s family crypt too, swarming with tourists. Shame on you if you don’t know who she is. Just kidding, I didn’t til today either! Haha! My parents did though. I still don’t really understand why she was revered/famous. When we got out of the cemetery (walled and guarded, might I add) the stalls had opened up, so we wandered around them for a while. There are markets everywhere here, it’s great! All homemade crafty stuff too. Legit stuff, not made in China mass-produced crap. I love it. Yeah, I think that was the majority of our day. Less than a week now til home. Yay!

Dia numero veinte seis: Today we went to the cemetery. Sounds morbid, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too at first. I wasn’t too convinced either before I got there.

Mum: Let’s go to the cemetery today.

Me: No thanks, that’s morbid.

Mum: We can look at Eva Peron’s crypt.

Me: Still weird. Still no thanks.

But alas, there was nothing I could do to deter them, so we decided to go. But first we checked out the football games that are coming up in BA. There was one for tonight, but at more than 200 US dollars each, from a tourism agency with a bad reviews, we weren’t so keen. Same goes for the game on Sunday night. At least tonight’s game was Boca though. Still, we decided to give it a miss. Now, back to the cemetery. I bet that was what you were excited about. It’s incredible. It’s like a city of crypts. It literally has streets and streets of them. It was crazy. They’re all really intricate and sort of beautiful whilst still being really morbid. I’ll upload the photos to facebook, but here’s me standing in a street. It creeped me out massively. I held on to Mum for most of it, seen too many zombie movies I think. And being able to see the coffins was a bit strange to me. We came across Eva Peron’s family crypt too, swarming with tourists. Shame on you if you don’t know who she is. Just kidding, I didn’t til today either! Haha! My parents did though. I still don’t really understand why she was revered/famous. When we got out of the cemetery (walled and guarded, might I add) the stalls had opened up, so we wandered around them for a while. There are markets everywhere here, it’s great! All homemade crafty stuff too. Legit stuff, not made in China mass-produced crap. I love it. Yeah, I think that was the majority of our day. Less than a week now til home. Yay!

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Dia numero veinte cinco: My first full day in BA. Or not, since the estancia isn’t really in BA, more on the outskirts. An hour and a half’s drive away. Worth the drive though, cute little place! We went out for an hour and a half in the morning on the horses, before sitting down for lunch. Which apparently, out here at least, consists of  three courses of meat. Each course contained one or two different cuts of the cow. I opted for the vego option, not that keen on huge amounts of meat. Another two and a half hours in the afternoon, with lots of trotting and my butt and legs are dying now. Woohoo! I had the cutest little ginger horse. She was fun! Jim’s horse was super smart and managed to take her bridle off. Which I guess is a bit dangerous but so clever! Aidan and I were racing most of the time, always trying to beat the other. Competition with siblings is such fun! We got back in time to snack on some chips and chocolate bars before getting picked up (yes, they sent a car for us.) to go to the Tango show. You know you’re important when the theatre sends a car for you!! Hehe! The show was good enough to keep me awake. Just kidding, it was great, but we all struggled to keep our eyes open! The theatricality and choreography was astounding. The ventriloquist woman who danced a riveting tango with her puppet was quite possibly my favourite, it was awesome! And the musical solos where we could see the whole band, and the bits of film interspersed. The whole show was quite theatrical, and incredible. I’m not much of a tango fan, prefer other styles of ballroom, but it was nice to watch! There were even some singers in there too for good measure. All in all, a good day, but I crashed when I got home. Literally, without even taking my makeup off, I fell asleep. Good thing I had a sleep in the next day.

Dia numero veinte cinco: My first full day in BA. Or not, since the estancia isn’t really in BA, more on the outskirts. An hour and a half’s drive away. Worth the drive though, cute little place! We went out for an hour and a half in the morning on the horses, before sitting down for lunch. Which apparently, out here at least, consists of  three courses of meat. Each course contained one or two different cuts of the cow. I opted for the vego option, not that keen on huge amounts of meat. Another two and a half hours in the afternoon, with lots of trotting and my butt and legs are dying now. Woohoo! I had the cutest little ginger horse. She was fun! Jim’s horse was super smart and managed to take her bridle off. Which I guess is a bit dangerous but so clever! Aidan and I were racing most of the time, always trying to beat the other. Competition with siblings is such fun! We got back in time to snack on some chips and chocolate bars before getting picked up (yes, they sent a car for us.) to go to the Tango show. You know you’re important when the theatre sends a car for you!! Hehe! The show was good enough to keep me awake. Just kidding, it was great, but we all struggled to keep our eyes open! The theatricality and choreography was astounding. The ventriloquist woman who danced a riveting tango with her puppet was quite possibly my favourite, it was awesome! And the musical solos where we could see the whole band, and the bits of film interspersed. The whole show was quite theatrical, and incredible. I’m not much of a tango fan, prefer other styles of ballroom, but it was nice to watch! There were even some singers in there too for good measure. All in all, a good day, but I crashed when I got home. Literally, without even taking my makeup off, I fell asleep. Good thing I had a sleep in the next day.

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Dia numero veinte tres:  Today we leave Corrientes, must admit that I’m a little bit gutted. Off to BA tonight! Woohoo Buenos Aires! A week there, and then off home. Little bit excited for that too. Corrientes is wonderful though, all the cool animals and the tranquillity, it’s a nice escape. We didn’t really do much today, except go for another walk to where the monkeys live. When we got there, my friendly little foxy friend came out to say hello, lay down at my feet and rolled over. He wanted me to rub his tummy! SO cute! I don’t know how I resisted the urge, honestly. He followed us for most of the walk, he makes such a nice little companion. At one point he got a hold of the rope that marks out the path, in his teeth, and was playing tug of war with it which was quite amusing. Cute little thing! I want to keep him. He makes me not miss my own pets hahaha. We (I) managed to find the monkeys! Which apparently is pretty hard seeing as Martin told us we had a lot of luck even seeing them all with a practised guide. So we saw the whole family again today, so cute. I want a pet monkey now too. I’m going to be that super weird lady with all the strange exotic pets and now friends or husband when I’m older. If I get to keep Foxy, it’ll all be worth it. On the way out of the track we saw some deer drinking from the stream. And the fox tried chasing them away.. so funny. He’s about a quarter of their size and not very menacing. Then he tried to follow me down the road. I think he wants to come home with me! Or at least, I like to let myself think that. Haha today’s blog reads like a bio of my little Foxy friend! He’s just that cute. Anyway, so we had to endure another 2 hour four wheel drive ride to Mercedes for the bus tonight, which was rather bumpy and unpleasant, but made worth it by seeing some real gauchos (cowboys) rounding up their cattle on the side of the road. Pretty awesome looking. 9pm overnight bus to BA, arriving at the awful hour of 6am. Not excited. But at least the seats are more comfortable than the last bus. Bring it on!

Dia numero veinte tres:  Today we leave Corrientes, must admit that I’m a little bit gutted. Off to BA tonight! Woohoo Buenos Aires! A week there, and then off home. Little bit excited for that too. Corrientes is wonderful though, all the cool animals and the tranquillity, it’s a nice escape. We didn’t really do much today, except go for another walk to where the monkeys live. When we got there, my friendly little foxy friend came out to say hello, lay down at my feet and rolled over. He wanted me to rub his tummy! SO cute! I don’t know how I resisted the urge, honestly. He followed us for most of the walk, he makes such a nice little companion. At one point he got a hold of the rope that marks out the path, in his teeth, and was playing tug of war with it which was quite amusing. Cute little thing! I want to keep him. He makes me not miss my own pets hahaha. We (I) managed to find the monkeys! Which apparently is pretty hard seeing as Martin told us we had a lot of luck even seeing them all with a practised guide. So we saw the whole family again today, so cute. I want a pet monkey now too. I’m going to be that super weird lady with all the strange exotic pets and now friends or husband when I’m older. If I get to keep Foxy, it’ll all be worth it. On the way out of the track we saw some deer drinking from the stream. And the fox tried chasing them away.. so funny. He’s about a quarter of their size and not very menacing. Then he tried to follow me down the road. I think he wants to come home with me! Or at least, I like to let myself think that. Haha today’s blog reads like a bio of my little Foxy friend! He’s just that cute. Anyway, so we had to endure another 2 hour four wheel drive ride to Mercedes for the bus tonight, which was rather bumpy and unpleasant, but made worth it by seeing some real gauchos (cowboys) rounding up their cattle on the side of the road. Pretty awesome looking. 9pm overnight bus to BA, arriving at the awful hour of 6am. Not excited. But at least the seats are more comfortable than the last bus. Bring it on!

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Dia numero veinte cuatro:

There are fifteen million people in BA. And I’m pretty sure that all of them were at the bus terminal when we arrived there this morning. The bus terminal is probably bigger than any NZ airport, legit. It’s huge. The bus ride was tolerable, can’t say I slept much though. Definitely slept more than the last bus ride. Still was tired enough when we got to the hotel to have a nap before we headed out to explore and hunt down lunch. This city is huge and there are heaps of people. It’s a bit dirty, but quite nice nonetheless. We had a pretty chill day, lots of sleeping and catching up on facebook or emails, interspersed with a little bit of wandering. We were productive enough to organise tomorrow’s adventures though, yay! We’re going out to an estancia (ranch) for a day of horse riding and then in the evening we are going to a tango show. It’ll be pretty full on. More full on than we wanted actually, as Mum is apparently useless with dates and managed to book them on the same day even though aiming for separate ones. Well done Mum! We’ll survive though. Mum found a vegetarian restaurant, so we checked that out for dinner. It was a hippie restaurant! I was so stoked. Loads of organic stuff, including all their wines, ‘lemonade’ infused with ginger, many strange teas and juices. So epic. Amazing food though, really really good meals. And the lemonade with ginger? Yummy! We’re all planning to return here before we leave. That’s all for today :)

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Dia numero veinte dos: Sorry about the lame photo, it’s webcam and thus crap quality. The grounds of our hotel are just so pretty! Haha. Today I didn’t really do anything. Suffering from extreme fatigue, so I slept and read all day, with a few breaks for meals. That was it. I even fell asleep during our tour. We had a boat tour this morning, I slept on the boat. We didn’t have Martin as a guide, we had Ricardo. I was tired. I managed to last about twenty minutes. But that’s okay, because my parents tell me that I didn’t miss anything as no new creatures were seen today. I was hoping to see river otters, as they’re the only remarkable animal here that I haven’t seen, as I caught a peek of a deer yesterday. The funny thing I did see today was a cow walking down the road. Alone. It’s actually a common occurrence here, animals wandering down the road. Nobody seems to care. I love it! That’s all there is for today. Ciao for now!

Dia numero veinte dos: Sorry about the lame photo, it’s webcam and thus crap quality. The grounds of our hotel are just so pretty! Haha. Today I didn’t really do anything. Suffering from extreme fatigue, so I slept and read all day, with a few breaks for meals. That was it. I even fell asleep during our tour. We had a boat tour this morning, I slept on the boat. We didn’t have Martin as a guide, we had Ricardo. I was tired. I managed to last about twenty minutes. But that’s okay, because my parents tell me that I didn’t miss anything as no new creatures were seen today. I was hoping to see river otters, as they’re the only remarkable animal here that I haven’t seen, as I caught a peek of a deer yesterday. The funny thing I did see today was a cow walking down the road. Alone. It’s actually a common occurrence here, animals wandering down the road. Nobody seems to care. I love it! That’s all there is for today. Ciao for now!

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Dia numero veinte uno: Today was full of adventure. Yay! Haha. First was breakfast. Why am I mentioning breakfast? Because relying on my experiences of lunches and dinners that leave you bloated, I was slightly nervous for it. But, to my delight and Aidan’s dismay, it was a reasonable sized breakfast buffet, not three huge courses. Thank goodness. On this morning’s agenda was a boat tour, with Martin as our guide again! He’s so good! We saw some really cool things today as well. More Capybara, only in the daylight this time. They’re part of the guinea pig family, and you can tell by looking at them. Like uber giant guinea pigs, so cool!  And we saw actual Caiman, up close. When I say up close, I was dangling my camera like half a metre away from the thing, and it didn’t blink an eye. They’re feisty creatures though, with fish and that. They mainly eat pirahnas, which apparently there are plenty of in the lake. Fingers remained cautiously in the boat after that! Caiman are like little alligators (they grow up to 3 metres), but the baby ones are tiny! We saw a mummy Caiman with her six wee babies, so cute! I wanted to keep them as pets! We also saw a deer, but that was too far away to get a decent picture of unfortunately. One of my favourite things was a mumma bird nesting on her eggs, which she’d laid 2 months early, so we were lucky to see that. She’d move her feathers round to keep them warm and it was just so cute! Nature is awesome. Except insects. The mozzies love me, and not the rest of my family. I have bites on my face :( And my neck, and my arms, and my earlobe, and pretty much everywhere. Even though the weather has been cool enough for me to wear jerseys and trackpants every day. So weird, like the weather from home of something. Can’t say I’m missing NZ’s weather. Maybe its people though. In the afternoon we went on another tour, a guided nature walk. With Martin! Yay! I swear I’m loving this guy more and more every tour, best guide ever. So glad we didn’t get an English speaking one. Things I saw on the afternoon walk: The fox again, love it! It came running to see us when we were on the track, wanted to be patted. Unfortunately we can’t because we’re not supposed to. Martin said the conservation people don’t like it when the fox is patted. It’s sooo cute though. I want to keep it as my pet. Also saw: More capybaras. A cattle tyrant, funniest little bird ever. Called a cattle tyrant because it is too lazy to fly, so hitches rides on cows and eats the insects that live near cows or their food. Love those birds. We saw them sitting on capybara too. The thing I was mainly there to see, however, was the monkeys that inhabit that area of bush. We got to the end of the track though, with no sign of them. Then Martin called us back and we walked round the corner to find the whole monkey family! 8 or 9 of them swinging through the trees. So cute! And again, the family groups consist of one male, a bunch of females and their kids. Woo. It was awesome to see them just a few metres away from us. In the wild. I’ve only ever seen them in zoos, but they’re way cooler in the wild. They’re hard to photograph though, hopefully I have a good photo somewhere. Not looking forward to uploading the hundreds of photos I have to facebook when I get back. I still will though. It’s been shocking, the internet here. Ridiculously slow, I can barely check my emails. Uploading blogs is out of the question, so they’ll have to wait until BA. Sorry Kaitlyn. Tonight the power went off, that was so exciting! I was just chilling next to the fire in the lounge, my family were in our room. They got all worried about me being along in the dark and came looking for me though. Ha. It was fun! That’s about all of my day. SO tired though. Ciao!

Dia numero veinte uno: Today was full of adventure. Yay! Haha. First was breakfast. Why am I mentioning breakfast? Because relying on my experiences of lunches and dinners that leave you bloated, I was slightly nervous for it. But, to my delight and Aidan’s dismay, it was a reasonable sized breakfast buffet, not three huge courses. Thank goodness. On this morning’s agenda was a boat tour, with Martin as our guide again! He’s so good! We saw some really cool things today as well. More Capybara, only in the daylight this time. They’re part of the guinea pig family, and you can tell by looking at them. Like uber giant guinea pigs, so cool!  And we saw actual Caiman, up close. When I say up close, I was dangling my camera like half a metre away from the thing, and it didn’t blink an eye. They’re feisty creatures though, with fish and that. They mainly eat pirahnas, which apparently there are plenty of in the lake. Fingers remained cautiously in the boat after that! Caiman are like little alligators (they grow up to 3 metres), but the baby ones are tiny! We saw a mummy Caiman with her six wee babies, so cute! I wanted to keep them as pets! We also saw a deer, but that was too far away to get a decent picture of unfortunately. One of my favourite things was a mumma bird nesting on her eggs, which she’d laid 2 months early, so we were lucky to see that. She’d move her feathers round to keep them warm and it was just so cute! Nature is awesome. Except insects. The mozzies love me, and not the rest of my family. I have bites on my face :( And my neck, and my arms, and my earlobe, and pretty much everywhere. Even though the weather has been cool enough for me to wear jerseys and trackpants every day. So weird, like the weather from home of something. Can’t say I’m missing NZ’s weather. Maybe its people though. In the afternoon we went on another tour, a guided nature walk. With Martin! Yay! I swear I’m loving this guy more and more every tour, best guide ever. So glad we didn’t get an English speaking one. Things I saw on the afternoon walk: The fox again, love it! It came running to see us when we were on the track, wanted to be patted. Unfortunately we can’t because we’re not supposed to. Martin said the conservation people don’t like it when the fox is patted. It’s sooo cute though. I want to keep it as my pet. Also saw: More capybaras. A cattle tyrant, funniest little bird ever. Called a cattle tyrant because it is too lazy to fly, so hitches rides on cows and eats the insects that live near cows or their food. Love those birds. We saw them sitting on capybara too. The thing I was mainly there to see, however, was the monkeys that inhabit that area of bush. We got to the end of the track though, with no sign of them. Then Martin called us back and we walked round the corner to find the whole monkey family! 8 or 9 of them swinging through the trees. So cute! And again, the family groups consist of one male, a bunch of females and their kids. Woo. It was awesome to see them just a few metres away from us. In the wild. I’ve only ever seen them in zoos, but they’re way cooler in the wild. They’re hard to photograph though, hopefully I have a good photo somewhere. Not looking forward to uploading the hundreds of photos I have to facebook when I get back. I still will though. It’s been shocking, the internet here. Ridiculously slow, I can barely check my emails. Uploading blogs is out of the question, so they’ll have to wait until BA. Sorry Kaitlyn. Tonight the power went off, that was so exciting! I was just chilling next to the fire in the lounge, my family were in our room. They got all worried about me being along in the dark and came looking for me though. Ha. It was fun! That’s about all of my day. SO tired though. Ciao!