Chile Pictures

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9th Entry -- 7-20-2012 -- Chile

Ok, so I’m now back in Texas and have been for about 4 days but….. I’ve been putting off writing this last entry.  Anyway, I’m jumping on it now!  The last week of my journey was spent in Chile.  Chile covers a large chunk of the South American west coast.  As I said in the previous entry, I stayed with my friend Jean Paul, JP.  We are friends from William Carey University.  We spent most of our time in Santiago, the capital of Chile.  Santiago is a huge city that I thought was really nice.  Granted we stayed in nicer areas of the city, but from what I saw the city is really clean and very modern overall.  There are nice parks and walking trails in the parks, police/security in many places that were really helpful, and a TON of malls.  I only note that there were a ton of malls because I felt that they were just everywhere  J.  There is also a lot of construction going on throughout the city.  New buildings are going up all over the place.  As a matter of fact, the tallest building in South America is under construction in Santiago right now.  The building is already HUGE, but it still has a ways to go before it is done.  I enjoyed spending time in the city and actually need more time to see it all.  The city is walled in on one side by mountains and about an hour the opposite direction is the beach.  The mountains around the city were beautiful and many were snowcapped.  There are also a few mountains (more like big hills honestly) in the city.  One of them is called Cerro San Cristobal where on top is a large statue of the Virgin Mary.  It is a beautiful place that is supposed to be quite, as it is a place of prayer, with some really great views of the city.  We also went to Viña del Mar and Valparaiso which are two really nice side-by-side beach towns.  One day we also went up one of the snowcapped mountains where there is a skiing area.  JP did some snowboarding, and I opted out.  The snowboarding in Argentina was nice, but….. I was definitely reminded for numerous days after that adventure that my Achilles tendon had been torn in the past. 

            JP and I also played some computer games while I was there.  I know you might say, “why would you do that when you are in a different country when you could do so much other stuff?”  well my response is “what’s fun is fun” and that’s just it (FYI:  I also played computer games with my friend in Paraguay and went to a movie…. I know I’m a terrible tourist).  We had a great time so why not haha.  We also saw the new Spiderman movie which was pretty good.  One night we went out with some of JP’s friends.  It was a lot of fun.  I was named “Gringo” for the night J.  Also, many of them wanted to practice their English with me so that was good because the Spanish spoken in Chile is VERY difficult for me to understand.  I did ok when someone was talking directly to me or if it was on the radio or on TV, but when I heard Chileans talking amongst themselves….. that’s a whole different level.  I also ate a lot of hotdogs in Chile.  There is a fast food chain called Doggis where JP and I had some pretty intense hotdogs J.  I had a great time in Chile, and I can already tell that I need to get back to South America sooner before later to explore everything again and try to hit up some new places!  That’s it for the South American part of this blog unless I think of something that I missed big time.  Thanks for reading!

Argentina Pictures

Argentine Pictures -- Click Here

8th Entry 7-9-12 – Argentina

8th Entry 7-9-12 – Argentina

Howdy All,
I’m currently in Santiago, Chile and have been here for about 36 hours.  Before Chile I was in Argentina.  From Brazil Christina and I flew to Bariloche, Argentina.  Bariloche is a town located in the Andes Mountains in Patagonia.  The town is pretty geared for tourists and is well known in South America as being one of the skiing and snowboarding hot spots.  The town is situated on the banks of a lake of which there are many in the region.  The town is beautiful and has many mountains all around.  While in Bariloche, Christina and I saw some beautiful scenes, ate a lot of local chocolate, took a snowboarding lesson, and had our first snow storm on the 4^th of July.  The snowboarding lesson was pretty fun.  Our lesson was in the morning on a mountain called Catedral.  There was snow everywhere, but it had warmed up a little the day before so much of the snow had a layer of ice on top.  We had a group of 6 people in our two hour class.  Our teacher was Dutch and travels to different hemispheres for winters so he can teach snowboarding almost year round.  During the class we pretty much tried to learn some basics of snowboarding.  I’m pretty sure I was the worst in the class which I’m blaming on my Achilles because it doesn’t let my foot bend quite like it needs to.  Christina did pretty good and was able to do a little bit of snowboarding by the end of the day.  I couldn’t really stand up with the snowboard attached to both my feet….  Oh well it was fun.  We stayed on top of Catedral for most of the day even though it started snowing pretty heavily by early afternoon.  We did a lot of walking around in Bariloche going up and down various streets.  There was a local mountain called Otto that we wanted to go up, but it didn’t work out. 

                We had planned to leave Bariloche at 10:30 one morning, but there was pretty serious snow falling at that time and our plan had to be rerouted to land somewhere else.  We ended up spending a great deal of time in the airport waiting for our plane.  Our plane finally arrived, and we took off for Buenos Aires.  Our flight lasted an extra hour because there was not a place for us to land in Buenos Aires because we had left so late from the previous place.  We ended up doing some circles in the air I think…. I’m not sure, I was in and out of sleep most of the flight.  We finally got to Buenos Aires which is the capital of Argentina and has about 13 million people in the metropolitan area.  The city is pretty impressive.  There is a combination of old buildings with classic architecture and newer buildings with modern styles.  Christina and I didn’t have much time in Buenos Aires and even less when we lost an afternoon because of the delayed flight.  We did a lot of walking around the city and saw many of the important buildings in the city.  We actually were able to go inside the Casa Rosada, The Pink House, which is where the president works.  We also went to a Tango show.  The Tango show was really entertaining.  There was a live orchestra, about 8 dancers, and 2 singers.  Christina and I both really liked the show.  We also had some typical Argentine meat.  Meat, and beef in particular, is very big in Argentina.  The first night in the hostel, there was a BBQ with all kinds of food.  It was really good.  Christina and I also had a great time in Buenos Aires. 

Now Christina is back home after two weeks of traveling around South America, and I am into my last week of travel.  I’m in Santiago, Chile right now.  My first impressions of the city so far are that it is really nice.  The city is has been really nice so far.  There are a lot of well-kept parks, the city has been remarkably clean, and everyone has been friendly.  I am staying with a friend of mine from William Carey University named Jean Paul.  His brother was on the tennis team with me, so I go to know them both pretty well.  It is awesome to have someone that can help show you around a new place. 

So my next post will probably be written from Texas or on the way back to Texas on one of my 342 layovers.  Over and out!

Brazil Pictures

I'm not sure why when I uploaded these it made two different albums, but here are the pictures from Brazil.

Brazil Pictures -- Link 1 -- Click Here

Brazil Pictures -- Link 2 -- Click Here

7th Entry 7-2-12 – Brazil

7^th Entry 7-2-12 – Brazil

Howdy from Brazil! 

I’m currently sitting in the airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil waiting to get on my flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina connecting to Bariloche, Argentina.  Christina is here with me.  She met me in the Rio de Janeiro airport.  Christina and I spent 3 nights in Rio at a pretty cool hostel located in a neighborhood called Santa Teresa.  Rio is a huge city, but there is actually way more “green” throughout the city that we didn’t expect.  You can see on the mountains around the city all the tropical jungle style vegetation.  The city is actually very pretty.  We saw some great stuff while there.  We saw the “Christ the Redeemer” statue that is the image most associated with Rio.  It was really great.  The statue is beautiful, and the views from the top of the mountain where the statue is located are incredible.  We also took two cable cars to the top of a mountain called “Sugar Loaf.”  We managed to be on top of the mountain at sunset.  Again we were able to get some really spectacular views of Rio and the sun setting behind the city.  “Escadaria Selarón” is a set of famous steps in the city that are made up of all kinds of different tiles from around the world.  The steps have been in TV shows, movies, music videos, and now my pictures so…. they are pretty famous.  Jorge Selarón is the builder of the steps, and he happened to be sitting on the steps when we came by.  He was nice enough to take a picture with our tour group; you’ll see the picture where we are all sticking out our tongues and holding up a hand… apparently that is his style of taking pictures.  Since Rio is right on the ocean, we had to go to the beach.  Although it’s is the “cold” part of the year, it was generally at least in the 85 degree range during the days.  The beach actually had pretty many people.  We went to one of the most famous beaches of Rio, Copacabana.  It was very nice.  The waves were pretty big though so we didn’t venture to far out into the water, especially after we saw a helicopter have to rescue someone out not far from us.  Before we went to Copacabana, we went to the “Jardim Botânico” (Botanical Garden).  The garden has been in place since 1809.  It was really a great place to visit; we saw lots of impressive plants, trees, and fountains. 

            After our days in Rio, we took a bus to Santos, Brazil.  Santos is where my friend Gabriel lives.  Gabriel played tennis with me at Meridian my sophomore year, was one of my roommates, and lived with me in Texas for a while when we worked at tennis camps.  I actually have another teammate that is from Santos who is also a good friend, but he was in the states taking summer classes.  The bus ride was about 7.5 hours.  It was supposed to only be 6 but….. that didn’t work out.  The ride was, for the most part, very pretty.  We got to see some of the Brazilian landscape.  When we finally arrived to Santos, Gabriel and his friend Gustavo were there to pick us up.  Christina and I stayed in Gabriel’s house where he, his dad, and his older brother live.  They live in a big apartment building about 5 minutes from the beach.  Christina and I spent some time on the beach that is close the Gabriel’s house.  The beach there is really nice because it is pretty flat, and there are big open areas of slightly compacted sand.  There were lots of people playing soccer and other sports all over the beach.  We also went to another beach called “San Pedro” in a nearby town called Guaruja.  The beach there was awesome.  It is actually a private beach, but since it isn’t really the high beach season in Brazil, it is open to the public.  The waves there were still pretty big for Christina and me, but they were a lot of fun.  There was also a lagoon near the beach with an artificial waterfall and a diving board.  We stopped there to jump off the diving board.  I did my customary diving board move, the pencil.  Well it turns out, the pencil wasn’t such a good idea because my foot smashed into the bottom and got scraped up a little…. oh well.  In Santos we visited Gabriel’s tennis club that had a sort of fair/party.  We ate some great food at Gabriel’s house.  His friend, Gustavo, who is studying cooking, made us Brazilian style stroganoff twice, and it was really delicious.  Just as in Paraguay, it was a huge help to have a friend there to show us stuff and help us out.  Gabriel, his family, and his friends were all fun and nice.  Also, it was really fun to see Gabriel who I hadn’t seen for between 2 and 3 years.  We had a lot of good laughs. 

I’m now finishing this entry from the Buenos Aires, Argentina airport.  Its 10:00 am, and Christina and I have been awake since yesterday morning sooooo if some of this doesn’t make sense (less sense than normal that is) sleep deprivation is to blame.