Saturday, February 28, 2009

Argentina

I made it down to Buenos Aires with a 5 hour layover in Miami where Susan very nicely picked me up and took me to lunch on the beach. Pretty cool.

Then to Quito for about 30 minutes, then Guayaquil for about 20 hours. Guayaquil seems like a pretty cool place. Things in Ecuador are super super cheap. It was hot and humid there like Samoa.

and look, a breadfruit tree:




After Guayaquil, I had to go to Lima for a day. When getting off the plane in Lima I was waiting for the girl across the row to go and I looked at her, and it was Sam McManus. Crazy. Her and her fiance are also traveling around South America. They recently went to Antarctica too, which is pretty cool.

So I met Naomi at the Lima airport the next morning and we flew to Buenos Aires and met Maximo and Gonzalo for a beer by their work. Really cool to see them.



So Buenos Aires is not like Mexico at all, despite being in South Mexico. It is a lot more like Italy, but probably cleaner and definitely more orderly. People like to make lines for everything. The food here is really good and everything is really cheap too. You should come and check it out.

Maxi and Gonzalo have this group of friends that has kind of like their own private bar. El Pude:

They have stuff about 3 nights a week there, sell beer for cheap and have a bbq for sale as well. It is a great idea. Someone in Seattle should get that going.

We went to Uruguay for a few days also. Uruguay is pretty much the same as Argentina, maybe a little more expensive. Montevideo is a really nice city too. They have nice beaches and waterfront. We got lost and did a ton of walking there, as this has been a major theme of the trip so far--- tons and tons of walking duet to lostness...which is good for me.
We saw a carnival competition there, which was cool, but I didn't know what they were saying and parts of it were like a Mexican sitcom.
Next to Colonia del Sacramento, also in Uruguay. It is a small, well preserved colonial town on the river. The river here separates Uruguay and Argentina and is probably 60 miles across. 60... really.






OK, Maxi is hassling me to go to lunch, so here are some more pictures. Gotta go:






Fa!

Monday, February 2, 2009

3 more days

Well, my weekend started out on a sad note. My Grandpa passed away Friday morning. That is sad of course, but at least I got to see him when I was home in October.

I need to upload some pictures from this weekend. We had a going away sloshball game and mini Palagi Olympics Saturday. Really fun.

The Super Bowl was a good game, but come on...how many blatant holds can Pittsburgh get away with? When you have a slow QB that holds the ball for 20 seconds every play, why else is he not getting sacked. Oh, and you can clearly see the holding anyway. There were plenty of other ridiculous calls as well. And no replay at the end of the game? Really? Wow.



UW handily beats ASU at ASU, leads the Pac-10, and ASU is ranked ahead of them? How is this possible? UW has a tough road trip coming up, but if they can lose just 2 more and win the conference tournament, I think they'll be in line for a 2 or 3 seed.

I'm going to try to squeeze in one more round of golf and a trip to Sliding Rock this week. Then, I'll be mentally ready to go I think.

I will really miss this weather though. I saw that it might snow when I'm home!