hello! i write to you from mendoza, argentina. when we last spoke about a week ago, we were just beginning our love affair with buenos aires. i can now say without a doubt that it is one of my favorite cities in the whole world. it most resembles a rundown southern european city, with colonial architecture, tree lines streets, and sidewalk cafes, albeit with a distinctly south american bent. its definitely a metropolis, with lots of first world things like pilates studios and upscale nail salons, but it also has some things that arent tolerated in the united states and europe, like tons and tons of large scale graffiti, most of it very cool, and pockets of run down buildings that wouldnt pass any inspection, but are beautiful nonetheless. we spent over a week in buenos aires, mostly just walking and walking and walking around. the city is HUGE. i always thought new york city was the best test of a good pair of shoes, ie ones that look cool but allow you to walk 6 miles a day every day on uneven pavement without pain. turns out buenos aires is also good for testing shoes, and my ecuadorian jellies didnt pass. oh well.
the main reason we jetted down south so fast (instead of doing the quilotoa loop and surfing along the northern coast of peru as planned) is because we didnt realize how deep into late (southern hemisphere) summer we had gotten! we wanted to experience the south before it gets fallish down here, and then go back up slowly. this new plan also puts us in bolivia (which i am jaaaaazzed for) in may, the nicest time of the year there. while all of you up north im sure cant wait for spring, spring for you means fall for us, so im feeling the opposite way about the changing of the seasons. actually it´s good for us, because we get to participate in the harvest season! we heard back from a farm while we were in BA, which told us we could come participate in the apple harvest, which goes through march and into early april. they also have other vegetables, and make cider and vinegar, and have various natural construction projects. we are VERY excited to get out into nature and do some good work!
here is the website, its in spanish but you could probably google translate. try to ignore the comic sans.
http://www.elperegrinorganico.com/espa%F1ol.html
anyways. we had to leave BA to get to the farm in time for the harvest. we spent a couple days in cordoba, which was pretty meh. as someone who is sensitive to horrible graphic design, the boulevards lined with HUGE shitty looking signs above every store really bugged me. is that snobbish? im sorry. im actually not that sorry. why would you cover your beautiful old spanish architecture with a 15 foot wide hideous sign in hot pink and yellow ms curlz advertising crappy imported clothes from china? street after street of ugly signage and lots of traffic. bleh. not that cordoba as all aesthetic wasteland, there was a beautiful canal cutting through the city and we made some really lovely friends in the hostel. our last day there we went to a river an hour out of town called cuesta blanca, where we hiked along the banks scrambling over rocks until we found our own little empty patch of sand on the calm little river. we spent the day with a new friend, listening to brazilian music on our crappy speakers, eating peaches (totally ripe and perfectly in season here, i know youre jealous) sunning ourselves and swimming.
we are now in mendoza, a town that i already love! so leafy! so pretty! sidewalk cafes, wine! mountains! looking for sleeping bags and a tent (i think we are going to start camping a whole lot, mostly for economical reasons, but also for freedom reasons) before we skip out to the farm. we should have internet access there, and we will try to upload photos from the last month and maybe some from the farm too.
xoxox
zoe
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