What do we do when we fall off the horse?

My last few days in Buenos Aires were great. My sister arrived in BA last Sunday morning after an overnight flight from Honduras to Panama to BA. We spent all Sunday and Saturday seeing all of the touristy things that I had already seen last year when I was there. Sunday we first went to the Plaza de Mayo, where we saw the cathedral and Casa Rosada (Argentina’s White House). We then visited the market in San Telmo, before making our way to Recoleta for tea at the famous La Biela café. After that we visited the famous Recoleta cemetery, where all of the Buenos Aires elite have been buried in enormous and elaborate mausoleums, the most famous of which belongs to the beloved Evita Peron. Finally, we stopped be a really cool bookstore called El Ateneo that used to be a theater. Sunday night we had an incredible dinner at the best parilla en Buenos Aires, Cabaña Las Lilas, in the neighborhood of Puerto Madero.

Monday, we were at it again, making our way to El Caminito en La Boca before lunch at Buenos Aires’s most famous café, Café Tortoni. Monday night, my roommates and Sarah and I celebrated my despedida (going-away party) by hitting up a few bars and then a club in Palermo Soho.

Tuesday, we took a tour of the Teatro Colon, the city’s enormous and very Parisian opera house and did a really cool wine tasting that my roommates had given me as a birthday present. Tuesday night, we got dinner at a parilla with most of my roommates and Catherine. After dinner, I had to say goodbye to everyone before Sarah and I headed to the bus station to catch an overnight bus to Cordoba. It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone but I was excited to have Sarah there and to start traveling.

Despite being in a so-called “suite,” in which our seat reclined until flat, the bus-ride was absolutely miserable for me. I slept very little and by the time we arrived in Cordoba, I was not feeling very well. I initially thought it was because of the bus ride, but it turned out that I was really sick. Among other unpleasant symptoms, I was exhausted and uncontrollably cold, which was unfortunate because the heating in our hostel was really bad.

That day, we toured the city seeing some cool churches and a market. Cordoba was founded by the Jesuits and has a lot of interesting religious history. That evening, I still was really cold, staying in my bed fully clothed with a jacket on and two extra blankets just to stay warm. At that point I decided to call a doctor and for a mere $5, one came to the hostel, diagnosed me with some sort of bacterial infection and wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic (which cost another $8). At that point, I was really thankful that my Spanish was good enough to properly communicate with the doctor. Over the next few days I got better, though I was still very tired.

The next day, Sarah and I did a tour of a famous Jesuit university in Cordoba before making a day trip to Alta Gracia, a small town about an hour away. There we toured a disappointing Jesuit estancia and saw the house where Che Guevara grew up. They had turned it into a museum/shrine to the Che, who is a hero in Argentina. In fact, they use “Che” in spoken language like we say “Man” in English.

Since I was still struggling just to walk around, we decided that a 6-hour hike through Cordoba’s beautiful national park was not a great idea, so instead we decided to relax a little. We ended up wandering to a park in the city, which turned out to have a zoo. Somehow, we ended up spending a few hours checking out the animals. My favorite was definitely the hippos. It was kinda ridiculous. Later that day we went to the mall in Cordoba, where we ended up doing “Space Bowling,” which was again, ridiculous. That evening, we headed to the bus station for another fun overnight bus, this time to Mendoza.

After getting a solid hour of sleep, we arrived in Mendoza around 7:00 AM. Fortunately, our room at the hostel was open and they let us in. After a solid 5-hour “nap” we did a wine tour, where we visited two bodegas and an olive oil maker. The first bodega was actually one I had visited last year. It was large and somewhat industrial and the wines were really mediocre. The second bodega was a smaller family-run organic bodega, which I enjoyed a lot more.

The next day, we did an afternoon horseback ride tour through the Andes. That was the first time I had ridden a horse in a very long time, but it wasn’t too difficult. The ride was beautiful and a lot of fun until the very end. Following the gaucho leader, our horses started moving at a full gallop. At this point, my horse somehow managed to lose its footing, falling to the ground and throwing me off of it, and then somehow it managed to land on my leg. Fortunately, I was mostly fine, just a little banged up. So, I got back on, even though I’m not a gymnast (see Zoolander quotes).

Today, we were supposed to leave Mendoza and head for Valparaiso, Chile. Unfortunately, the passage through the mountains to Chile is currently closed due to snow, so we are temporarily stuck in Mendoza. Today, we made the trip to some Hot Springs, which were a huge disappointment. Most of what we saw in the brochure was dry and closed (maybe because it’s winter), so we spent a few hours in a few different pools, that were indoors. It was pretty boring. From what we’ve heard, the pass is still closed, so we might be stuck in Argentina longer. We’ll see what happens.

For an alternate account of the same stuff, check out my sister’s blog: http://slannerstravels.blogspot.com