Dear devoted readers and accidental passersby: I´m sorry I´ve neglected to update the blog for about a month. It seemed like for the majority of the month I was either too busy or, correspondingly, too tired to do a lengthy blog post justice. I´ll do better, just give me another chance.
I´ll make up for it with an exciting, dynamic, and ACTION-PACKED post. This mission is aided by the fact that (sorry if I didn´t mention it) I´m currently traveling through Argentina and Brazil. Before I left I had a really busy few weeks in the store and I also had my first public concerts with Coro Nova. The audiences responded really well to the performances and we sang two encores after the second. I left almost immediately after the concerts and after a week of getting back to my apartment around midnight every night, I slept very contentedly until the Argentinian border.
I immediately caught a bus to Salta, a city in northern Argentina with a larger indigenous population than most of Argentina. That said, as I was sipping my coffee and reading the paper in a sidewalk café on the plaza, it felt pretty cosmopolitan. In Salta I climbed a hill to the side of the city (and did the same in upcoming Mendoza; every city should have a look-out hill on the side) for a view of the whole valley. Other than that I basically just walked around town, drank real coffee, which after Bolivia, was a treat, and visited one museum. The museum, a very well-done exhibit on Incan child mummies in the mountains near Salta, was very professional and gave some new information on Incan society and its reach into what is now Argentina. The other cool thing about Salta was that I stayed in a hostel with free breakfast (normal) and free dinner (NOT NORMAL AND THE BEST). This should be a hostel policy worldwide.
After Salta I bussed to Mendoza, which had been highly recommended by many friends as a beautiful city and the center of Argentina´s world-renowned wine country. I met a French girl, Sofie, in my hostel and we proceeded to explore the city and, naturally, drink more coffee in sidewalk cafes. The best thing about Mendoza, despite its proximity to the Andes (but I sort of had a "been there, done that" sort of mentality there), is the opportunity to bicycle through the many vineyards and boutique chocolate/jam/liquor/olive oil producers in the area. We had some great tasting opportunities and because we were the only people in these tours who spoke Spanish the chefs gave us extra taste tests and more expensive options. Like, a lot of extra taste tests. Which wasn´t that problematic but we were on bikes. So to cool down, we took a break at a beer garden in the middle of a vineyard that sold artisenal beers. Just what we needed.
Now, after satisfying my inner wine-o I´m now in Buenos Aires for about a week. The city is beautiful and the organized chaos (opposed to the pure chaos in La Paz) has been really invigorating. I stayed with a couch surfer for my first two nights and spent about two days walking around the city. I walked around the strikingly modern Puerto Madero, the historic Plaza de Mayo, and visited the lower-class neighborhood La Boca. La Boca was definitely my favorite. Although there´s one street in which the colorful buildings have become super touristy, a couple blocks outside is pretty rough-and-tumble and I enjoyed seeing a different side of this cosmopolitan city.
I´ll be here for a few more days before I leave to spend a few days in Uruguay before I meet up with my friend Leah in Rio! We´ve been planning a trip to see each other since about December, so the realization of it should be pretty epic. We´ll travel back to Bolivia together quickly through Brazil and then she´ll spend a few days with me in La Paz before continuing on to more northern latitudes. I´ll be sure to write an update on that adventure at the first opportune moment. Until then, saludos desde Argentina, I hope everyone´s doing well.
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