Buenos Aires

Greetings to all! Our whirlwind summer has continued to live up to expectations. We are currently on a 3 day traveling hiatus here in Santiago. With no offense to my family and no intent to imply anything, our apartment feels huge without 6 enormous (minus mom) people in it. I spent the last day with my family lying on the couch vomiting, weak as a damn kitten. I still feel bad to have ruined the last day of vacation (although Andrew rejoiced in having a day where he didn't have to "do stuff"). We dropped Kris, Terry and Andrew at the airport on Wednesday night and Justin, Meg and I flew out the next morning. Actually, the next afternoon. They canceled our original flight and since no Chilean likes to bear bad news, and despite the fact that we had made contact with at least 2 agents who clearly knew that our flight was canceled, we were not made aware of this until we were handed our tickets . Classic Chile!

Our plan in Buenos Aires was to meet the indomitable and ever-zesty Sarah Natchez at the apartment we rented in Recoleta. By the time we got there she had already connected to the internet and made several critical phone calls to strategic Argentinians. This included contact with a group of graphic designers that had been hired to build her company a mascot costume. Sarah runs a company that provides soccer programs for kids. They are called Super Soccer Stars. Their mascot is a big gold star named "Kick" (or Spanky and Wing-Ding or whatever). In any event, Sarah had volunteered to retrieve the mascot costume in Buenos Aires and hand deliver it back to her company. This didn't happen right away in the trip, but I can't resist showing this series of pictures straight away.

Dancing Kick:

Kick and Claire posing for prom pictures:

Kick taking a tough one in the Kick-family-jewels:

ooo--sorry Kick, that smarts

We would start each day with coffee drinks (never just coffee) and media-lunas (croissants but with more sugar--I can still feel their buttery sugary goodness flowing in my veins), and by the crack of noon we'd be ready to hit the streets.

Palermo

Recoleta
San Telmo

We have totally adjusted to Latin American eating times so usually ate breakfast around 11, lunch/snack around 4, and dinner around 10. I'm a pretty big fan of this on vacation. I could never do it during the schoolyear, but for vacation it forces you to slow everything down a bit. Plenty of time to go home before dinner and wash the two inches of Buenos Aires dirt and pollution off my face. We mostly spent our days rambling around the city, putting down many many miles a day in between death-defying taxi rides. A few of the more memorable sights...

This area is called La Boca. Touristy but also quite cool and filling with people doing dramatic tango things in the street. Our rendition of this is included.



This is a memorial to a guy named "Gaucho Gil" who was a Robin Hood-esque character in Argentinian history.

A major highlight, of course, was the designing and creation of Justin's mullet. For this privilege, we visited Javier Luna, a hair designer of apparently great acclaim in Argentina. His salon was filled with fashionable males and clippings about him from all sorts of Argentinian fashion magazines. Muy famoso. Javier himself sports a close buzz cut. Now, you might be wondering how such a man can be entrusted with hair. In fact, this very question was posed to him in one of the articles that had been clipped and was on display. His answer was that people saw gynecologists without vaginas all the time, so why not a hair designer without much hair? Touche, Javier, touche.

To properly document's Justin's emergence as a butterfly from his 10-years-of-self-or-girlfriendlaterwife-administered-haircuts cocoon (the record should stand that this was his first real haircut in a decade), we took some before shots:

As you can clearly see from these pictures, Justin's eyes are not being properly highlighted and his beard is WAY too dark for his face...at least that's what Javier told us later. Here is the first shampoo Justin has ever received from another human (since the time that he was big enough to wash his own hair). I assured the elfish imp doing the shampoo that I was only taking a picture of Justin but I lied; he was just too pretty!

Javier next fully appraised Justin's head, taking careful note of his features, head and ear shape, hair texture, etc. Our instructions were to please leave it long in the back (he somewhat complied, but to our dismay took about 3/4 of inch off) but other than that, to do his most glorious. In the words of Sarah, "you are the artist."

There is an important sidenote here. In Javier's salon there are men with extremely stylish haircuts doing blow-drys. The routine seemed to be:

Hombre #1: shampoos/preps customer
Javier (when he is damn well ready): appears, cuts quickly and decisively, moves on
Hombre #2: does blow-dry

Aside from the stylishly-coifed men, there was one more entity: Javier's chihuahua, "Maxima". Or, as Javier referred to her, his "wife." There was some serious love between man and dog going on here.
Maxima was generally skittish and suspicious of all people that were not Javier. According to Javier she only likes the beautiful people. Low and behold...




Javier took his task of giving Justin a hair-makeover very seriously, constantly appraising his work. We were all awed and inspired by Javier's attention to detail (which the exception of one sideburn that he forgot to trim...it was later decided that this was part of the look and that we should not question Javier). This was no cut-and-go like his other customers, many of whom were looking on with disgust and jealousy at the attention that was being lavished on Justin. I'm really not kidding about that. There were some pissed off women in the salon.


In the end, we could not have been more pleased with the outcome. Butterfly: emerged.


A couple of other random things to behold and consider. Lots of statues in Argentina look extremely cranky.
As in Santiago, there seems to be an obsession with enormous doors in BA:

Who knew?


Spectacular bookstore. This was billed by the TimeOut BA guide as the second most beautiful bookstore in the world. Haven't seen the first, nor was it named, but this place was really gorgeous. It was converted from a theater and still has the balconies and all the intricate artwork. The cafe was on the old stage.

Street in BA with at least 16 lanes. I'm not kidding.


Old man enthusiastically shows off bird-friend in San Telmo, home of street tango and the best street music I've ever seen:


All in all, we can't thank Sarah enough for being our guide. We had a fabulous week in BA and really can't wait to go back. The trip to Argentina also helped us appreciate more what is unique about Chile. They really are two very different places. BA felt like New York to us in many ways: bustle, a very cosmopolitan feel, cranky people working in stores and restaurants. For all that Santiago is, it is not bursting with flare. The flare is subtle and subdued. BA is the opposite.

Love to all. We travel to Panama with our friends Shafer and Pyka tomorrow night. We can't wait to surf. Many thanks again to Sarah and to Meg, who was our faithful adventure companion for the last month. We miss you!

Southern adventure...

We just got back from a pretty incredible trip south - after meeting Andrew at the airport in Santiago, we flew down to a city called Temuco where we rented a (thankfully huge) minivan and then drove to a town called Pucon. Pucon is right at the foot of a huge volcano and alongside an enormous lake:


There were a lot of great mountains right around Pucon. Here are a few pics from a hike we took the first day there (that's Meg tip-toeing across a pond in the first one):



On our second day we went along with a group to hike to the top of the volcano. We started at a ski lodge about a third of the way up, and we were all given some pretty hilarious gear - pick-axes, helmets, butt-protectors...


After about an hour we were up in the snow:


Here we are during a break (and here I am trying to sneakily get into a photo):


More hiking (pretty steep!)...


Terry and Kris nearing the top...


All of us up at the top (you can tell by the way that my shoulders and back are filling up that windbreaker that I took ample opportunity to carbo-load before the hike):


Once we were up there we had about 45 minutes where everyone could explore the rim of the volcano a little bit (I tried, unsuccessfully, to spend the time not being terrified of falling either into the volcano or down the side of the volcano):


Impossible not to think about the opening scene from Return of the Jedi with the monster that lives in the sand hole:


Here is a shot from one side of the rim looking at people standing on the other side (retrospectively, I can't believe that they let people walk along the icy rim of the volcano that you see in the picture. We definitely stuck to the rocky side...):


One of the best parts of the hike was that we got to sled down the volcano on our butts at the end! We used these little flat pieces of plastic to just slide down. Super, super awesome:


Meg and Claire at the bottom:


Here's a final shot of Pucon (from the lake)...


Our next stop was Puerto Varas, a few hundred kilometers further south. We spent our first full day here doing some zip-lining (our second opportunity in two days to look like huge nerds and wear goofy helmets).


Here are some pics from the zip-lines (Kris in the first one, crossing an enormous canyon - Meg in the second one, where you can see Vulcan Osorno in the background - and me in the third one, trying not to pee in my pants)...




After zip-lining we took a drive towards Osorno. We didn't climb all the way to the top, but here's a pic from about half-way up...


From Puerto Varas we drove to an island called Chiloe. Here we are ferrying the mini-van across a channel to the island:


We stayed in a town called Ancud (home of the biggest ever recorded earthquake - a 9.5 on the Richter scale in 1960!). From Ancud we took a boat out to see some penguins...



Sea otters were a definite bonus (the fact that they are called "chungungos" in spanish was another bonus):


From Chiloe we headed back north to Chillan, where we had another chance for a really great hike. Here's the whole family looking ridiculous on the top of a ridge that overlooks the town we stayed (Las Tranceras, about 80 km east of Chillan)...


Claire and Meg at the VERY top of the ridge...


... and then back to Santiago last night. A very, very awesome trip. We will be sad when we have to take Kris, Terry, and Andrew back to the airport tonight for their return to the States.

After much anticipation, here is the mullet that I have promised - this is a picture taken from the back of my head this morning:


Okay, just kidding. This is actually some dude that we saw in Ancud (the Frosted-Tip Mullet). I haven't gotten the Justin Mullet yet because research suggests that Argentina (and Buenos Aires in particular) is ground zero for south american mullets, and because we're headed there tomorrow morning I figured I would wait. If you're going to do something you might as well do it properly, right?

Happy holidays everyone!

The last week has been a great one because my family has been around - my sister flew in about a week and a half ago and my parents flew in on Christmas Day. Tomorrow we meet my brother at the airport in Santiago and then fly directly to Temuco. From there we rent a mini-van, and for about a week the six of us will drive around what is called the Lakes Region of Chile for a week. We're very excited, and we're hoping to have some pretty spectacular pictures for our next post. There should be some amazing hiking to be done and we are really excited.

We've spent the last few days exploring around Santiago. On Friday we drove to the coast and visited Valparaiso. One of the coolest things about Valparaiso is that there is some really intricate graffiti and murals. Lots to look at as you aimlessly wander.


Valpo is full of cool street art. Here's a particularly interesting piece:


Here we are in front of Pablo Neruda's Valpo house (beloved Chilean poet/politician/collector). Very cool house - built overlooking the harbor, and designed to be like a boat. He was of extremely eccentric tastes and his houses are amazing.


Here's my sis and mom hanging out with Neruda in a park after the visit:



On Saturday we got back in the car and checked out some vineyards about 60km west of Santiago. We toured an organic winery and it was very cool to learn about how they are able to keep the growing chemical-free (llamas were part of the process!). Amazing wine and amazing food. I guess the family knows how to deal with a generous wine tasting...



We spent today around Santiago - here we are with my dad, checking out the view from San Cristobal (the hill that has the huge statue of Mary on top).


We miss everyone back at home, especially now that it's the holidays! It was great getting to check in via skype with Justin's fam over Christmas, and we're looking forward to seeing more of our nephew Jacob's army-crawl! We'll be traveling for much of the next month and a half but we'll blog when we can!