Day 22-23: Horse Riding, Rafting and Zip Lining

Creative title I know.

About 3 days ago i took a bus from Mar Del Plata to a place called Salta, which is in the northwest of Argentina (pretty close to Bolivia). The bus ride took 32 hours. But luckily enough I had the screaming child next to me and blaring DVD sound system to keep me entertained for the duration of the journey. Wicked. I ate 3 very suspect cold steak sandwiches at the bus terminal and some empanadas that had been reheated at least 3 times. I had pretty much admitted defeat in the food poisoning department. However, it all turned out to be totally fine.

Anyway, after arriving at the hostel after that epic bus ride, I was just so ready to do something, anything. I just asked-what was good to do in Salta. The receptionist replied that the horse riding tours were pretty good. So I booked to go horse riding. First time ever on a horse for me. The tour was really good though. 

Firstly we arrived at this ranch where we were met by some guys dressed like cowboys. Then we saddled up, and went horse riding on this track. I can’t really make this sound very interesting because we were just sitting on a horse. However, all around us (as seen in the photos) were these tobacco plantations, wild horses  and huge mountains. We also went for a bit of a gallop. This hurt my buttocks. Then we arrived back at the ranch and they had prepared this absolutely massive feast. I must have eaten like half a kilogram of steak and lots of other things too. And they kept refilling our wine glasses. So by four o’clock I was pretty drunk and I decided that I would not involve myself in drunken horse riding, so I called it a day.

Also, I happened to run into these two girls from Melbourne (Anne + Kate) that I had met in Buenos Aires who were doing the tour too. They invited me for dinner at their hostel and cooked for me. Then, the world shrunk a little bit more when I ran into two guys that I went to College with at Mannix (Davor and Tim). So it was really good to catch up with all of those people and finally have a decent conversation with someone without having to use sign language.

The next day I booked to go rafting and zip lining. The place we went to was probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to. Unfortunately I didn’t want to wet my camera so I couldn’t bring it rafting. So I will vividly describe it for you. Close your eyes. Imagine crystal clear waters, huge mountains next to you, some of which have layers of different colours and some of which had fossils engrained into them. Then there were all these horses and cows next to the river feeding on the grass. A group of about 6 horses crossed the river in front of us. We accidently rammed on with our craft. It was frightened and ran away really quickly. The rapids themselves weren’t that challenging, although there were a few times when we almost flipped.That river behind me in this picture is where all the rafting was done.

Ok so now I’ll give you some time away from all that hard imagining and show you this video of me zip lining 600 metres across this valley.

Day 19: Land of the Thong

I arrived in a city called ‘Mar De Plata’ on Wednesday last week. I would call this town the California of Argentina. There are skate parks next to the ocean, lots of beaches, heaps of people surfing and really nice coastal boulevards. There also appears to be a rule that if you are not wearing a thong, then you may not enter the beach. The thong rule is great, however unfortunately it does not discriminate on size. There are quite a few women who don’t have the Jo-Lo rig...I won’t go any further.

I always find it fascinating how when you go to other countries you just see the little things that people do. Yesterday at the beach, everybody just started clapping. I’m talking like 1000 people on the beach clapping (it’s a long weekend and the beaches are packed). I asked one of my friends here what was going on and apparently this is what people do when there is a lost child- i.e. signalling that the child is not at that particular location. 

Anyway, i arrived at this hostel on Wednesday and I just happened to be the third guest ever to come to this hostel. Consequently I will now feature in the photos promoting the hostel (wearing a thong). As you can imagine, the hostel is really good because everything is brand new and all the staff are really nice because they have just started work. The resident bartender is also a surf teacher, so I went out surfing with him on Thursday morning. Unfortunately the beaches here aren’t nearly as good as the ones in Oz, and the water is about 15 degrees, so you really have to be pretty dedicated to go out surfing. So yeah, I spent most of Thursday carving up 15 metre swells and getting some massive air. Not really, I only stood up like 2 times and I drank a lot of sea water. 

Since then I have just been going out with the guys from the hostel and watching a lot of football. We have been out to de disco again a few times and on Saturday we had a BBQ at one of the guys houses. It was a very big meat session as seen in the picture below. Being able to just sit and watch football all day is pretty good. Argentina is perfectly positioned (timezone wise) to pretty much watch football live for about 15 hours a day.

In other news- I checked out the stats for this blog today for the first time. Turns out I have quite the international audience. 7 people from Russia reading it and 3 from Mexico. No big deal. I will have to start charging subscriptions soon.

Day 15: The Preacher and the Farm

I have never met a 70 year old who is so fast paced. Today Alec wanted to take me to his polo farm which is located about 2 hours drive from Buenos Aires. We arrived in 1 hour. Alec drives at 200km/hr. Literally. Alec is constantly telling me that ‘James you are too slow- you need to get with it (whilst clicking his fingers)’. So we were flying past all these other cars on the road and Alec comments ‘haha all these young guys in their pick up trucks see me...a white haired old man go past them...so they try and catch up...but they never do’! It's funny, I saw like 15 cop cars and motorbikes along the way- but Alec never seems to get caught!

We arrived in a small town outside of Buenos Aires called Monte at about 11 am. Alec is obviously quite a well respected man in the town as when we went into his favourite cafe- this man who was sitting in Alec’s seat apologised immediately. 

Afterwards Alec wanted to take me to this shop where they sold all types of hand made leather items and knives ect. I tell you, I couldn’t believe it. Here we were, in like the middle of nowhere, and we walk into this shop and there is some American guy pronouncing the name of the Lord in the shop. Two preachers in two weeks now.

Unfortunately I can only speak English, and so immediately this New York preacher starts up a conversation with Alec and myself. It wasn’t really a conversation as it was mainly a one way flow of information. He says to Alec, ‘what do you believe in’? Alec says ‘I am Roman Catholic, that is my religion’ (he is a strong believer too). Then the preacher says ‘no, but what you don’t understand is that we are all followers of Jesus, Anglicans, Protestants etc- we are all following the same person- we are united by him.......when I was 18 I was a big drug addict, my life was ruined....but then I found Jesus....he changed my life....I now have drug rehab centres etc etc ‘. I won’t continue. I can’t stand people like that guy- marginalising people’s religions. He earnestly pulled out his ‘business card’ and attempted to hand it to me. I just gave him the dead pan look and said ‘I don’t want it’. Awkward silence. 

Anyway, the day got heaps heaps better after that. Alec has the most beautiful farm that I have ever seen. All his family have different farms in and around his land, cattle, soyabean, grain, maize....everything. All the family’s houses connect together through a central road. 

First he took me to see the horses that were being broken in for the first time (they are being trained to play polo). Here in the photos and video is Ricardo- one of the trainers. He is just teaching the horse different manouveres and trying to build up the strength of the hind legs. 

 

 

Check out the chicks at this place. Makes me hungry for KFC.

Day 13: I went to a Boca Juniors football game.....Almost!

Sunday was yet another day in which I would walk into a restaurant, use my developing charade skills to signal that I would like a menu, get given the menu, realise that the only thing I could read on the menu was ‘Coca Cola’, order 1 Coca Cola and then point to something else on the menu and hope for the best that something nice came out. It was good. Another successful spin of food roulette. However this blind selection is good in the way that I am trying lots of different meals.

Anyway, the day started pretty well. I got my Uni results- passed everything and now I have graduated. Then I had a ticket to see the Boca Juniors football team play. To give you an idea of how big a deal Sunday was- Boca Juniors are the most popular team in Argentina, they haven’t won a title for 3 years, on Sunday, if they won or drew then they would have accumulated enough points to win the season outright. The Boca Juniors stadium is known as arguably the best stadium in the world to watch a football game because the stands are almost vertical and you are meant to feel about 2 metres from the Pitch. Anyway, combine all of that together- with me lining up for 4 hours with a really rowdy crowd. By this stage I had the T-shirt, the flag and I was ready to rock.

The person who gave me the ticket (which was his membership) was Alec’s nephew. The system operates a lot like the AFL memberships where you can’t transfer the card to anyone (however no-one ever gets checked). I did. The man at the gate says something in Spanish, I respond with my token ‘Jo no habla espanyol, ingles porfavor’ (I don’t speak Spanish, in English please). The guy looks at me as if to say ‘yeah bullshit’, then he mutters something and he put the term ‘100 US dollars’ in the middle’ (which I assume was some sort of fine). Then the little weasel takes my card and starts walking away. I was considering running up and just grabbing the membership card from this little card thief- however- there was 12 SWAT police behind him with batons with were, I kid you not, 1 metre long. I could have taken 2 maybe 3 of them, but definitely not all 12. 

So things don’t always turn out and I missed a pretty cool football match. Believe it or not though, the 4 hours wait in the crowd was pretty fun though because everyone was really rowdy. So I came back home and decided that I would head out to the nearest bar (which was pretty hard to find actually) to watch the game. I walked into this bar, sat down, and would you believe it, it was an American bar. On the biggest football day this year in Argentina, the Americans were there watching grid iron. I admitted defeat, ordered a beer and watched a game which I did not understand. The beer was nice. 

But meh- I passed uni and I saw this awesomely dressed dog....today was overall a good day.

Day 12: Polo

After about 10 days in Rosario I thought it would be good to head off and see a bit more of the country (as most of the football there has stopped now). So I took a bus to Buenos Aires and a family friend has now given me his apartment for the next month. Awesome. The only negative part about the whole movement thing is that I met some really cool guys in Rosario. They invited me out to their houses for dinner, then took me to ‘de Disco’ on Thursday night. Argentines are really nice people and super welcoming. Have a look at the size of the meal my friend Juan is cooking here. It was delicious (muy rico). Going to de Disco was good fun too. Everyone here stays out until like 7 or 8 in the morning every time you go out! Generally what people do is have a few drinks at about 8 with some friends, then eat dinner around 11pm, go to a pub about 12- then de disco at around 2-7am. 

On Friday I took a bus back to Buenos Aires. I had dinner with my family friend Alec and then took it pretty easy for the rest of the night as I had only slept about 2 hours the night before. On Saturday Alec invited me to come and watch a match of Polo. I had never even seen Polo played before. Unbeknownst to me- I was seeing one of the best games of the year. Four out of the five best players in the world were playing (the best of which ‘Cambiaso’ is Alec’s nephew). For all you plebs out there, this is how Polo works. Firstly you need an insane amount of money and well manicured field to play. Fun fact- each player on the field requires 6 horses for themselves. Anyway the game is 4 v 4, and the objective is to use your mallet to hit this wooden ball between two posts to make a goal. If you hit the ball in front of you , nobody can cross that line between where the ball lands and where you are- however aggressive nudging is tolerated. There is heaps of other rules, but I can’t be bothered explaining them/i am sure you don’t want to hear them/ I don’t know all of them. Anyway, have a look at the video. It’s amazing how they can manoeuvre all the horses in such a way. And for all you people who think that Polo is a friendly ‘gentlemen’s game’- it’s not, it’s pretty vicious and pretty dangerous with all the mallets, hooves and wooden balls involved!

After the Polo I went to this five a side football pitched where I had organised a game to play for the day. Everyone playing there was from all around the world and all pretty friendly. 

Later that night I went to a Hostel to meet a few people. There was a small party happening there and I met some cool Canadian guys. Then everyone from the hostel went out to this absolutely massive nightclub next to the ocean. There was about 5 different rooms (sort of like massive bungalows) pumping out different types of music. It was a great night, however, drinks were mega expensive! Everyone was partying on until about 8 in the morning and by this stage the sun was up. I am now insanely tired.   

Day 7: Steaks and Mistakes:

You know that you are in the right steakhouse when every waiter walking around the restaurant looks like this. There was about 15 of these big boys sweating around the restaurant. I personally believe that the waiters at this restaurant are all like this for one reason and one reason alone, a bad metabolism. Just kidding, but seriously, look at the steaks you get given at this place. Ridiculous. I think that they are given the leftover entitlements  and during their breaks I think they just gobble up this delicious beef. I can tell you, it was a solid one hour of eating, and then about 7 hours of meat sweats. 

 Getting to the restaurant was not a great experience. I met this guy David at the Hostel- he is an Argentinean who lives around the town that I am in, Rosario. On the weekend he had to go to wedding about 800km from Rosario and decided to crash a night in the hostel because he was very tired. Anyway, he thought he would take me out to this restaurant so that I would get to try the famous Argentinean steak. Ok, so we were driving along and I hear this massive ‘THUMP’. I asked David what it was- he just turned to me calmly and said ‘oh..no problem..just dog’. Just a dog? David THEN went on to say that during his 800km ‘i hit with a cat and 
  and oink oink’. David is awesome.

Day 5: Wedding Crasher

If you thought that I was bad at dancing in Australia, then you cannot even imagine how badly polarised my dancing skills were here. On Saturday night we had a wedding at the house that I am staying at. It was my host sister’s wedding, Paulina. She and her new husband Gonzalo met on facebook exactly one year ago to the day- so they thought it would be appropriate to have a wedding on the same today. Pretty cool eh? I’ve always thought that people get involved in the online dating scene as being a bit strange/white and lanky. However, here they were, both two very normal and attractive people. Gonzalo actually gave his new wife a really nice present, it was a print out of all the conversations that they had together from the day that they met on facebook. She bought him some tickets to Indonesia (he is a surf teacher), so he was insanely happy when he got given them.

Anyway, so we spent most of Saturday getting ready for the wedding. This just involved preparing the food, setting up furniture and chairs etc. The wedding kicked off at about 8.30pm. Everyone arrived at the wedding and nobody was eating or drinking until the ceremony took place. To be honest, it was probably the best ceremony I have seen (though I have only seen 3). It started with a bit of Reggae music, where the bride and groom walked into the back garden. Then in front of all 140 people that were there, a small table with a desk lamp had been set up. They sat down with the accompanying witnesses and with the person officiating the wedding (not a priest- I forget the name). Anyway, they read out some stuff in Spanish and then after about 10 minutes, it was fiesta time. Short, sweet and to the point. 

I felt like it wasn’t actually a wedding, but rather a get together of professional dancers. They all had their special Argentinian dance moves and I had my well....my fist pumping....anyway, it was good fun. The dancing actually lasted until about 6am- so it was a pretty big night. Somewhere through the night, at around 3.am. everyone stopped and a guy stood up and sung for everyone. I don’t know what he was saying, but it sounded good and everybody loved it. Then probably about 4.am the bride and groom both jumped in the pool.

I am still massively struggling on the Spanish frontier, despite really making a good effort to learn some Spanish. It’s a pretty annoying feeling to go up to someone, hoping to have a conversation with them and then hearing a ‘jo no hable ingles’. It’s a pretty sad thought to know that because you don’t speak their language, you will never really get to meet that person. That said, a guy who didn’t speak English invited me to go out with him and his friends on Tuesday. Should be interesting.....

So overall, the wedding was really fun, the food was awesome and to give you an idea of how tired I was after a solid 9 hours of dancing (badly), well i slept for 19 of the next 24 hours.