Pictures

Roof patio of our hostel

una ciudad muy linda^^

Wir sind die coolsten, sind die coolsten,
wenn wir durch die City cruisen ;)

barrio "La Boca" en BsAs - is famous for its very
colorful houses

"La Bomba" - awesome every-week-drum-show

Theater "Colon"

Colonia in Uruguay

Montevideo - really nice city with nice beaches ;)

 

Christmas in Buenos Aires with 35 degrees

The time in our hostel "Lime house" was really fun. It is located in the middle of the center on one of the main streets! We mostly spent our time in the hostel when it was too hot to go outside. We talked to people from all over the world, made friends with them, chilled in the lounge or on the roof patio or played pool! We also went out a couple of nights...at 12pm on Christmas Eve the whole hostel got together in the lounge/bar area and got a free drink. At 2am about twelve of us started to get ready to go to one of the most popular christmas parties in BsAs. The entrance was surprisingly very cheap, considering that everyone warned me before that going out in BsAs is really expensive^^
We could have even got in for free as we found out when we got there. We only had to tell them that we were friends with some guy (forgot his name) and the next minute we were in! Since we were still pretty early-for argentinien standards-the club was not very crowded. Still, the four different areas plus the terrasse right by the water got very busy after one hour. The party was awesome! It didn't feel like christmas at all though. We danced the whole night until seven o'clock in the morning, saw the sun rising while standing on the terrasse and met really nice people. Some of them I will probably see again in Australia or NZ ;)
After getting home we waited until the breakfast was done and decided after eating to just not sleep and instead cycle around the city with our rented bycicles. We got a special offer over the holiday weekend and got two days and a half for the price of one :)
Well, that was my very different Christmas 2011!!
More from BsAs later, hopefully this time told by pictures ;)
Un abrazo a todos que quieren :-P
Nina

Buenos Aires!!

Martha and me couchsurfed the first three days with Jorge, who lived with two friends in a house 20 minutes outside the city center, in a quiet and nice neighboorhood. After picking us up from the train station, he had to leave for his work. Thats how fast you get to a house of your own in BsAs ;) Pretty amazing how trustful the people on Couchsrufing are...
Since we didn't sleep in the night, we were really tired and slept the whole afternoon. The guys came home in evening and we talked a little with them. They seemed really nice, realxed and satisfied with their lives. They all played instruments and had this hippy-thing to be all relaxed about everything^^ Even after Jorge almost broke his butt while playing football (at work!!), he didn't complain and busied himself with playing on the guitar.
In the night a friend of him picked us up and took us to a Club/Bar/Restaurant, where we listened to live-music and drank something. Really nice night with good music.
The next day we went into the city and explored a little bit of the city center of BsAs. Its very green with lots of nice buildings. I really like the architecture of the buildings. Not like in Santiago, where most buildings got destroyed by earthquakes, some of the builings in BsAs are pretty old but really good taken care of.
The "teatro Colón" for example is one of the oldest theaters in Argentinia and looks amazing from the out-and inside. We even bought tickets for 10 Ar.$, which are like 2€, for a ballet on our last evening in BsAs. We only had standing places but it was amazing anyways...
Back to our couchsurfng experience again...Jorge and his housemates, which all work in the same place, took us to their office and Nico (the chef of the work) made us some nice food. By the way, their office is awesome!! Its a villa, located in a nice neighboorhood near their house, with a pool, a huge nice kitchen and a fire place in their huge garden. They all have a key for it and are allowed to go there whenever they want! Best work I have ever seen ;)
Teh next day it was raining so we spent our time helping Nico (Jorges housemate) cooking 120 Empanadas for his family christmas dinner and of course got some to eat in return. Sooo good!!
I the evening we packed and went to our hostel, which we had booked over christmas...

Stay with Justo in Rosario

Justo lives together with his sister in an apartment a few blocks away from the big river. It's really nice there...Rosario in general is nice to stay in for a few days. There is this huge river, a little beach a little bit outside the center and a good shopping area.
The first day Justo showed us around the city and left us in the afternoon to study, since he had a big test a few days later...
Martha and me discovered a bit more of the city the next days, went out with Justo and got to know some of his friends, had a nice afternoon in the pool of his cousins apartment and went with him to the beach the last day.
All in all a very realxing and nice stay in Rosario.

Thank you Justo :)

Getting from A to B takes a while in Argentinia

A very short post about the trip from Rio Gallegos to Rosario --> where Justo lives. For everyone who doesn't know him: In 2009 he was the exchange student from my best friends family for almost a year!

1. Bus from Rio Gallegos to Trelew, 12 hours
Arriving in Trelew we left our luggage in the terminal and took a bus to Gaimann, which is a small welsh town. People there still now a few words in welsh, there are typical welsh houses and you can visit some typical tea-houses. It was interesting for Martha to go there since she was born in Wales...it was pretty quiet but also kinda cute. All in all a nice way to kill time until your next overnight-bus leaves ;)

2. Bus from Trelew to Bahia Blanca, 14 hours
We stayed in Bahia Blanca for one night. After two days of sleeping-or at least trying to-in the bus it was really really nice sleeping in real bed again! The city is nice but one day is enough to see everything, so it worked out pretty well for us, since we bought our ticket to Buenos Aires (BsAs) that same night.

3. Train -yes, they do have trains in Argentinia- from Bahia Blanca to BsAs, 16 hours
The train was a lot better than we thought and were told! Everyone kept telling us we shouldn't take the train, because it would be too dangerous and uncomfortable but we really wanted to try it...so we bought the ticket, which was actually three times LESS expensive than the bus would have been. The only thing that is a little annoying is that the train takes a lot more time to get from A to B. Planned were 14 hours, but like always we got there two hours later. In BsAs we had to get from one Trainstation to the other one to buy our ticket to Rosario...the subway is pretty crowded and after being only in little cities the weeks before, we had to get used to the big city again.

4. Train from BsAs to Rosario, 7-8 hours
We were sooo bored, because this time it wasn't a night train and we didn't have anything to do...at the end we didn't die off it and made it to Rosario.
We had the address of Justos house and a map of Rosario so we walked there and were welcomed by Justo, who was actually looking for us at the station before ;)

That's how we got from A to B

See you later

Ushuaia - el fin del mundo

Very spontaneously Martha and me decided to take the chance and go with Gabriel and his Rugby team to Ushuaia, where the Rugby-fin del mundo-tournament took place.
We left Calafate at noon to take a bus to Rio Gallego, where we met up with the rest of the team. I knew from the first moment I saw them, that it's going to be a really fun long weekend...
Every guy of the team had a special nickname: there was "Gordo"(which means pretty much "Fatty"), another one was called "Negro" or "Samoha", and another one was called "Dreamer" (he liked day-dreaming a lot :-P ). I'm not going to tell you all of them, some of them are a little mean ;)
In total we took about ten hours to get to Ushuaia, which means also ten hours with a crazy Rugby team and no escaping. Martha and me knew they were talking about us but they talked to fast to understand everything, so we decided to talk about them in english and fight a little bit back. haha! It actually worked...they were really curious about what we were talking about.
We arrived in Ushuaia at 5am and got droped off (from our personal driver for the weekend) at the youthhostel we could stay for free. Since Martha and me were the only women, we had the whole women section for ourselfs. After getting a little bit of sleep, we went to the initiation into the Rugby tournament. Martha and me were far and wide the blondest girls there and accordingly got a lot of attention. Well, we are pretty used to it but it was a little different because we weren't only the only blond but also almost the only women :D
We spent the whole day until late afternoon there, watching our guys playing, taking photos and eating lunch with them. They succesfully lost every game that day :D but were still in a pretty good mood...so we went into the city, with our stinky guys, who hadn't even showered yet, and had a coffe. In the evening we had dinner with them and fled from them for a few hours to walk around the city a little bit ;)
The next morning we went back to the rugby field with the team (half of the them were still drunk from going out the day before) where they even more succesfully lost their last games :D poor guys! The team had a free pass for the national park, so we went there to see the official end of the world, where the roads end. Didn't look like the end of the world though...but it was beautiful anyways ;)
In the evening we all went to the goodbyeparty of the tournament, got home at 4:30am, packed our stuff and left immediatly.
The way back we had problems with our bus and got stuck in the middle of nowhere, where some guy had to  take us until the border where we could take a different bus to get back to Rio Gallegos...I don't know why this always happens to Martha and me but that was the third time a car broke down while we were sitting in it!  Jajaja!
Well, that's all about the trip to Ushuaia.

See you hopefully soon. Don't know when I will have the chance to write again.

Saludos,
Nina

more pictures...

Tango class (Gabriel and me, Martha and ?)

our Rugby-team

Ushuaia-el fin de mundo

Party-marty with our Rugby players ;)

Yo en el fin de mundo - where the road ends

Parking skills in Ushuaia (probably too much Heineken;)

Pictures from El Calafate

Gabriel´s sister dancing traditional argentinian

 dances

 

 

Glacier "Perito Moreno" (the last growing glacier in the world)

awesome galcier bar

Gabriel with Martha in our cool special clothes