tours! tangerias! tattoos!

this is our last night here in argentina. it's been so full, we haven't had time to blog. tomorrow morning, we will be flying out to santiago, chile.

we spent the day today at what i can only describe as tattoo heaven. it was like a shopping mall with no joke, approximately 25 tattoo shops. it was purely dedicated to tattoos, style and art. lela, sunday and i all got inked and rachel got her first henna tattoo as well.

last night we went to the tangeria to watch a tango show. we accomplished the amazing feat of buying dresses, shoes, a shirt and jacket and getting all done up in a matter of two hours. it was incredible! the show was beautiful and quite an unforgetable experience.

we took a tour of the city and i think we all agree that our favorite thing we saw was the cathedral. never before have i seen a more beautiful building. you couldn't help but feel peaceful as you walked though it. i wouldn't mind spending a few hours just sitting and watching as people come to visit and pray.

i think the meal of choice in buenos aires has been steak. not terribly adventurous, but, oh man is it good. i think my day was made when we found the one and only starbucks in buenos aires, just 5 blocks from the hotel.

we made a few new friends. the first day here, we met johnny. he's from the states, so it was nice to speak to someone we understood. we had a fun couple days hanging out with him before he returned home. we also made a friend in one of the front desk girls at the hotel. her name is sol. she is an absolute sweet heart and fell in love with conrad. she actually hung out with him last night while we went to the tangeria.

the best part of traveling is making friends all over the place and while it's hard to leave them, i think we're all ready to head on to chile tomorrow for new adventures.

fiesta!

little dude playing the beats

heating up the drum heads to tune them

in colonial

in colonial

the posse

argentina

Wow so much to tell since the last post, just yesterday we left from montevideo and continued on west in uruguay. We had the father of our previous tour guide for a guide and he was awesome, he has been a guide for 27 years - his name is ceasar. He took us to colonia yesterday and we stayed there last night, we spent easter going through their little shops and taking in their view of the ocean. We had dinner at a lovely eatery and just as we were finishing we heard the sound of drums. We headed out into the street and there was a group of roughly 20 people with large drums and ahead of them people dancing and to lead the whole group were two people each having a flag, not a small flag but a huge huge flag - about twenty feet in length. It was windy and the flags were going all up and down with the wind like crazy as well as being twisted and turned by the people. It was an incredible celebration, we of course joined in and danced behind, beside and sometimes in front of the drummers - the crowd was large some people were walking but most were dancing right along. There was a precious little boy walking behind the drummers with a drum of his own, too adorable. This morning we left colonia and ventured on to buenos aires argentina. we rode the ferry here, nothing like anything i have seen before it was enormous! we got through customs without a hitch, i think it took us about ten minutes - boarded the boat and were in argentina in less than an hour. It was such a gorgeous trip. when we arrived in argentina, there was another set of customs agents but when they saw our cart of six bags they just waved us on and out the door. We found a very helpful taxi driver and loaded up, this part of the travel was not quite wonderful, all of us crammed into a tiny little cab and mr taxi driver had me hold conj's car seat/stroller on my lap, couldnt breathe and couldnt move and pretty sure I injured some internal organs :) but i made it, we got all checked in at the hotel and are ready to take in the sights and cultures of argentina. the plan is to be stationed here for 3 days. i will get abbie to post some pics - love to you all..... off to find a tattoo parlor :)
Lela

lela getting inked in montevideo

our favorite restaurant, san rafael

the mercado up the street from our hotel

me at the rio de la plata in montevideo, uruguay

sunday, lela, rachel and conj eating hamburguesas in the square.

rio de la plata montevideo, uruguay

elvis is not dead...he´s been found here in uruguay!

but seriously...

today, rachel and decided to walk to the hamburger stand, sit on a bench in the square, people watch and eat lunch. as we are sitting, relaxing in the sunshine and light breeze, i look up to see what appears to be latin american elvis approaching- his leather pants, lace up shirt, 60-something skinny frame, jet black chops and hair glistening in the sun. after telling him repeatedly that we don´t understand spanish, he proceeds to continue speaking and even breaking into serenades TWICE! he asked if we were sisters and when i told him i was rachel´s aunt he asked how old we were. he told rachel ¨no kissing boys¨ then turns to me. i managed to pick out the very few words i know in spanish which basically consisted of ¨i´m single. you are single. let´s have coffee. oh, no coffee? ok i´ll buy you a beer¨. while the thought of sharing a cervesa with elvis, who is clearly NOT dead, is tempting, i was quickly overcome by the thought that all the beer in the world would not ease the pain of sitting through a date with a man old enough to be my grandpa, and let´s just be honest...it gives new meaning to you don´t speak my language.

doomed from the start. situation averted.

i´m sorry uruguayan elvis...it´s not you, it´s me. no...it´s definitely you.

easter in south america

So we have had a change of plans, (not that we had any plans) we have decided to stay in montevideo, uruguay until tomorrow. Many things are shut down for the holiday and many people are traveling so it is extremely difficult to get rooms. Yesterday we hired a van and driver and toured the countryside, we were gone from the hotel from 10 to 10 and in the van most of that time. We went to Periapolis and also Punta del Esta (bridge of the east) the second town is the beverly hills of uruguay, it was quite spectacular - the homes and such were crazy big and the view of the ocean from the town was awesome! I find it very strange to have a town such as that only miles from villages that are so far behind. We had lunch in Punta del Esta and a restaurant right on the ocean, it was beautiful! As we have said before Conrad is a perfect traveler, but he has recently gotten some type of restaurant phobia - he cant sit still for the life of him and has to throw very large fits from the time we enter the restaurant until we leave. It has been trying :) But I figure if that is his only down fall in all this traveling then we can deal with it, we have just been taking turns and walking with him during all the ordering and waiting and then crossing our fingers that he will eat nicely when the food arrives. Yesterday, we also visited a museum of a world renowned artist´s home, the museum is called "casapueblo", I cant even give it justice with words so perhaps if you are interested you could google it and check it out, or wait for us to return with pics. Abbie and I worked for hours the other day and finally did figure out how to get the pics on the computer here at the hotel but it was taking forever for them to download on the blog so we had to stop, we had tried for over 30 minutes and still nothing had downloaded??? We have hired the van and driver again for tomorrow and will be heading west, we will be staying at buenos aires argentina tomorrow night and then from there to paraguay. We made friends with a lady that runs the hardware store here, she is from new york and has been here for 27 years, she has given us some pointers in our travels. She also taught us the art of the yerba mate, we got our supplies from her and our in the process of curing our cup, but we are getting it figured out and as soon as we do we will fit in better here in uruguay - cause everyone is walking around with their yerba mate and thermos. I hope this post finds you all well, love to all - Lela

Hola Familia y Amigos!

This is Lela posting, can you believe this is my first post to a blog I think ever, and on a uruguayian keyboard to boot :) Well so far things have been awesome, last night we actually taught that word to our waiter, we told him it meant muy bueno over and over again. I must admit I was worried to travel this far and so long with Conj but he has truly been amazing, last night he even just swallowed his malaria pill without any bit of fuss at all. He has been enjoying all of the new foods and especially all of their special trick or treats, he has completely destroyed every outfit he has worn so far. Speaking of outfits, we just finished our first load of laundry by hand, it wasnt that bad with the three of us girls helping out.... abbie got in the bathtub and washed and rachel and i took turns rinsing and hanging - so right now we have clothes hanging all over the hotel room. One thing that is really different here is how they collect their trash, it is by horse drawn cart and the garbage boys or men get off the cart and actually unload the dumpsters by hand into the cart. Yesterday, there was a garbage man and what appeared to be his son collecting trash and oh my did he have a crush on rachel - she completely denied looking whatsoever in his direction but I saw her, he was after all one of the beautiful uruguayian (not particularly sure that is a word) people. Overall, rachel has been awesome too, she is such a good traveler and can really just go with the flow, she is working on her spanish and branching out to speak with people when she can. Sunday and I went out last night after dinner and had our first experience at a casino in another country, we could not read the machines and had no idea what we were doing but we still won! I hit the bonus round on a lephrechan game and couldnt figure out what to do cause the instructions were all in spanish, the lady next to me got very excited and told me how good it was then walked me through the bonus round til I won 1400! well that is in reales - so about seventy bucks, not bad for fifteen minutes at the casino, and they exchanged our cash too, so it was a two for one trip. I did get a tatoo today and that was interesting, I had been wanting to for a while and figured this was the best setting to have my tatoo really be memory making, it didnt really hurt and yes dad I did have them show me their autoclave equipment before I let them tatoo me. So now I think I will get one in each country but not sure what I will get. Would love to hear from any of you when you can and we are working furiously to figure out how to download photos, we sure have some good ones. Love you all! Lela

PS Arthur, kassandra, kadance and kayma if you are reading this dad and I miss you tons! Love you and hope your week is going wonderfully

happy birthday, kamee!

yesterday´s tour was good. we got to see alot of montevideo. i´m bummed that the whole photo thing hasn´t come together yet.

we´ve noticed it is definitely a vampire culture here. nothing opens until about 9 am and come about 9 pm, the city is hopping and the streets are busy. they really have mastered the structure of north american culture with the laid back apeal of south american culture.

lela got a tattoo today. she got "sunday" on the inside of her right wrist. she plans on getting one in each country we visit. it was an adventure to be sure when your tattoo artist can speak maybe 5 words in english and you´re just hoping he understands your vision.

i´m still looking for my "souvenier" a.k.a. hot latin man. ha! sunday made the observation that even the ugly people here are beautiful. it´s true. the people are all very friendly and helpful in teaching us little bits of spanish...or at least not laughing too hard as i geek out with my translation dictionary. :) oh man, just now i looked out the window of the hotel to see a man chasing sunday down the side walk to return his phone he apparently left somewhere! very nice people.

tomorrow we are renting a van to take our own tour and check out more of the country outside the city. apparently the city shuts down on fridays for the sabbath, so we will use that opportunity to explore more without feeling like we´re missing out here. i think we will be taking our packs and possibly not returning to the hotel embajador where we´ve been staying. new adentures await!

rachel has been enjoying every bit of her first international travel experience...other than seeing her first roach at dinner last night. :) she´s been soaking it all in.


i hope this isn´t boring to read without pictures. i´m not sure what to really write about cause there is so much to take in, so if you have any specific questions, just ask.