Chile

This first part was written in May 2010:
So another semester has passed and I am just now getting around to finishing my blog from South America. Surprised? Yeah, I'm not either. I wish that I had finished it while I still remembered what all happened, but I'll just have to do the best I can, I ended a few days before we left for our free travel week. I did actually start a post starting to tell about free travel, so here is what I had and i'll add on at the end:

In the few days that I didn't blog before leaving for free travel not a whole lot happened. Just normal classes, and packing. We had lots of homework and tests that week. Went to aerobics and fight class and what not.



Thursday after class we finished packing, said our goodbyes and headed to Tres Cruces. Bused to Colonia, and got on the Buquebus which took us to BA. We stayed the night in Hostel Colonia, all eight of us in one room. It had the smallest showers I have ever seen, and the room was extrmely hot but it was fairly cheap and it was only one night.



Friday October 30:



We woke up, ate breakfast, and went to the ATM to get money, and came back to check out. We had to be out by 11 and our bus didn't leave until 3 so they held our stuff in the hostel and we went to waste time so we could get on our way to Mendoza. We walked down Florida street and stopped to look at and buy some jewelry at the street market. It's almost lunch time so we stop at a huge Burger King that has three stories. We order food and end up sitting on the 3rd floor, in an area where it is just the 8 of us. We eat and play some cards until a security guard comes in and tells us we cannot play cards. So we begin to play Never Have I Ever. We play a full two rounds and still have some time. Ben goes to put his cards back in his backpack and his backpack is gone. He looks at us like what did y'all do with my backpack, thinking we were playing a joke on him. He is rather fun to mess with but for once we had nothing to do with this. There were only a few other people who entered the room while we were in there and none of them got that close to us. It still mystifies us how someone got a backpack out of the site of eight people. Ridiculous, but it happened. His backpack had his ACU i-phone, camera, passport, wallet, and his tennis shoes in it. We went back to the hostel to figure out what to do.



We ended up sending Dara, Taylor, Abel, and Rachel on to the bus station with their luggage and told them to get on our original bus, and to see if they could switch the rest of our tickets. Kate, Ben, Joyce, and I stayed in BA to get Ben a new passport. We went to Citibank, they were not helpful at all, we went back to BK, again no help. We luckily found a Kodak store to get new passport pictures taken, which was funny cause they guy made us push ben's hair back. We hopped in a cab to get to the embassy, when we went inside the embassy, they didn't even ask to see the rest of our passports, we go through the metal detector and that was it. Very different from the Montevideo Embassy. We go inside another building and the guy sitting at the desk doesn't even speak english inside the American Embassy in BA. We go in, sit and finally get an new emergency passport for Ben, but then we find out that we need to make a police report so that he can get the stamp to get out of Argentina. We get word from the other group that our new bus leaves at 8. We end up going to 3 police stations, and there is a waiting list to make police reports. We get on the list and go back to the hostel to cancel his cards and get our luggage. We need to be to the bus station by 7 to get our new tickets. We don't get called to give the report until 6:30, finally finish at 6:45 about. None of the taxi's want to pick us up with our luggage so we walk to the Buquebus station. From there was finally get a taxi at 7:05 but we had to overpay. We finally arrive at the bus station at 7:20. The first window we go to the lady tells us we cannot change our tickets. She goes ahead and calls another window and tells us there are 3 tickets for us at window 33, "but there are 4 of us." We go to the window and the guy has our new tickets printed with our names on them. The rest of our group is amazing, they went ahead and changed them for us, we just had to pay a bit to change them. We had 20 spare minutes to grab some food and get on the bus. It felt so good to be on that bus. There was nothing but the grace of God that got us through that day and on the bus. If we had done one thing in a different order we would not have made it. God is so amazing!



Saturday October 31:



Our bus arrived in Mendoza only 2 1/2 hours after the orginal bus. So we ended up getting the better end of that deal. The other group was surprised to see us so early. They had planned on meeting us. We all showered and went to lunch at a restaurant called coffee's. Dara and I split the lasagna and a pizza, both had ham. :/ After lunch Taylor, Dara, Rachel, and I went back to the hostel to nap. The other four went to buy Ben some new shoes since all he had left were flip-flops. Around 8 we went out to find dinner but nothing was open yet so we ended up sitting down and waiting. I got bored and got up to walk around and Taylor accompanied me. When we got back the rest of the group was sitting at the Mexican Restaurant, which did not hurt my feelings at all. I got a bean burrito, not the same as in the US because it had black beans but it was still really good. We went back to the hostel and hung out until we went to bed.



Sunday November 1:



We woke up and ate breakfast at the hostel and took a van to Argentina Rafting. It took about an hour to get there and then we had to wait a while but we finally got our wetsuits, put them on and loaded up in a bus with our rafts and headed to our starting point. There were only 6 to a raft so we ended up being split between the three rafts. Dara, Taylor, Joyce, and I were together with an Austrian couple. Our guides name was Diego, and we had a guide in training named Hermann. The river was only rated from 1's to 3's but it was still pretty fun. The water was freezing and it was so brown that i looked like chocolate milk running down the mountain. When we got back to the site we ate lunch then everyone but Joyce, Rachel, and I went canopying. Most of us got sunburned. We went back to our hostel, cleaned up and went to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ate at a place called La Casa Usher then went to bed.


Monday November 2:


We woke up, at breakfast, checked out, and walked back to the bus station. Our bus left at 10 but did not arrive in Vina until 2 hours after our tickets said, probably because customs took forever, and at one point I wasn't quite sure ben was gonna make it into Chile. Once we arrived at the bus station we ended up taking a van to our hostel because it was too far to walk. We stuffed all 8 of us plus our luggage into about 10 seats. Dara, Taylor, and I were in the very back and didn't even have room to put our feet down. We checked into our hostel which was pretty nice, the five of us girls were suppose to have a room to ourselves, but apparently there was a mix up and we were in a room with 3 stangers. Woo hoo! We went to dinner at a little Italian place called Pepe's and I had what was very similar to linguinie with alfredo sauce which was really good except that it had ham in it. Have I mentioned that I was starting to get a little tired of ham by this point in the semester? After dinner we went down to the beach, this one was on the Pacific Ocean, and the water was freaking cold!


Tuesday November 3:


After breakfast we headed out to find a cambio, which took freaking forever, then we went back to the beach to soak up some sun before another bus ride. The water was still freezing, but the beach was gorgeous, deep blue water, tan sand, and a city line to the left. We went and grabbed some lunch, we found a place to get hotdogs that came with guacamole, mayonaisse, lettuce, and tomato on top. pretty funky. We hopped on a bus for about an hour and a half and were in Santiago by 4. We were supposed to meet our ride out to Lo Valdez at 4:30 across town. So to the subway it was. About 10 stops later and we made it off the subway to meet the guy 4:30 on the dot. What a relief. We were in a van again but this time our luggage was on the roof so we were actually able to ride comfortably. We sang half of the way there and finally arrived up in the Andes around 7:30. We ordered dinner, I had some amazing spaghetti, we chilled for a while, played some idiot and went to bed early.


Wednesday November 4:


Woke up and had another very tasty meal and we headed out to hike up to the hot springs. After about an hour Dara, Kate, and I stopped and sat on a rock for about an 1 1/2 drinking mate and talking. We headed back to the hostel, ate lunch, and hiked around the refugio for awhile just enjoying God's amazing creations, breathing in the mountain air. After awhile the others went to nap and I was trying to finish journaling. Around 4 ben showed up which is crazy that he was able to make it back so fast. The others came back about half an hour later. We did some chilling, then ate dinner and drank leche con chocolate. After dinner we went out and sat on a rock and watched the sun go down over the mountains while singing. It was an absolutely amazing night sitting in the beauty that God made. Once the sun was gone so was the warmth, so we went back inside and played some games before heading to bed.


Thursday November 5:


After breakfast we packed up our stuff and hung around the refugio waiting for our ride back to Santiago. Rachel and I met an old man while sitting outside. He was chilean but spoke perfect english and even a little german. He was really nice and asked us lots of questions. Back in Santiago we checked into our hostel and went to find a cambio/atm and do a little shopping, then we spent the rest of the afternoon playing pool and hanging out. We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant across the street that had a skeleton outside wearing a bright blue dress. After dinner we watched Motorcycle diaries in Spanish and then went to bed.


Friday November 6:

I never finished my journaling for the rest of the trip at this point so this is what I can remember.

We woke up and ate breakfast which was really picked over and not real great but other than that the hostel was pretty nice. We got really lucky with all of our hostels, yes some were nicer than others but they all had really nice people and were fairly clean. Anyway we left the hostel and headed downtown to ride the funicular. The funicular is like a trolley that goes up a big hill in the middle of Santiago, halfway up is the Santiago Zoo, and at the top there are some shops and an awesome view of the city. After taking a ton of pictures we came down and started more shopping. Almost all of us bought panchos, and we even bought a hat that said Chile but had the texas shape on it for Wimon but ended up leaving it at the hostel. :/ We ate lunch at a KFC, and yes I do mean Kountry Fried Chicken. Did some more shopping for the rest of the afternoon. We went back to the hostel and Dara, Taylor, and I went to find somewhere fun to eat dinner. We found a restaurant called Happy Mosaic and our whole meal was half price because we ordered before 9. We had good food and enjoyed our last night in Chile. We went back to the hostel and packed and went to bed to get ready to get up early to catch our bus.


Saturday November 7:


We got up early and got on the bus and spent the next 27 hours on that bus..oh fun. It actually wasn't that bad, it passed by pretty quickly. We played some games, listened to music, and watched some movies including a bootleg copy of x-men origins: wolverine where all of the action scenes were grey, and also there was a movie I believe it was called Rudy that was a German movie with Spanish subtitles about two kids and their pig that runs away and saves them. We also kept getting these really funky alfajores that none of us liked except for ben so he got like 10 of them. Dinner was interesting as well. Yum, bus food! And sleeping with random people on a bus is always my favorite. We arrived back in Montevideo late Sunday morning. And i'm not real sure what I did, prolly some homework and just relaxing, glad to be back at home after our very eventful free travel week. We had our normal 9 o'clock service in the man loft and went to get our regular la cigale afterwards followed by bed being that we once again had to get up early for class the next morning. We had a truly amazing week, I can't even describe all we went through that week. We had lots of laughs and fun times, but then we had the times where we could have easily given into the chaos. We pulled together as a team and brothers and sisters in christ and with his help we made it through a week we will never forget. He is truly an awesome God!

Brazil

Friday & Saturday October 9 & 10:

We left at 4:00 pm on Friday for our 20 hour bus ride. We played lots of games, almost all of us had our own seats on the way there, so sleeping was better than on a normal bus. The time passed fairly quickly. On Saturday before leaving Argentina we went and visited the Jesuit Ruins and Horacio Quiroga's House. We finally arrived at our hotel in Brazil our rooms were rather small but we were never in them for that long. It felt really good to shower. We ate dinner then just hung out, watched a little soccer on tv, and people hung out in our room. Kate and Matt had a INTS book duel, it was rather funny. I fell asleep while everyone was still in our room. I was so tired.

Sunday October 11:

First we went to the bird park that is pretty much across the street from the National Park. There are over 150 species of birds there. They are all either endangered or were injured and could not survive on their own in the wild. We were able to walk through some of the cages and get right up next to the birds, the toucans in particular were very friendly. Next we walked over to the falls. The line to get in was epicly long, you could not see the entrance from the end of the line but we did make it eventually. Because there was a chance of rain later in the afternoon we went ahead and went on the boat ride as soon as we got there. It included a short safari ride, a little hike to see a hidden waterfall, and then into the boat where we got to go through the mist of one of the falls, we got soaked, it was so fun. There was so much mist that we could only see that one little set of falls..we all thought it was amazing, yet we had seen nothing yet. There was so much more to see. We went and changed out of our wet clothes and walked the trail to see the rest of the falls. The most amazing thing I have ever seen. You can truely see the power of God when you look at how much water is pouring out in any given second. There are not even words to describe! Pictures too are nothing! They are pretty but are nothing compared to the real thing. After we got back almost our whole group got in the pool and we played volleyball. Afterwards we went to dinner, then had our own worship service, during which it started pouring rain! When we finished Taylor and I went and stood in the rain, it felt so good to stand and smell the rain. Then several of us went and played mow and Uruguayan BS until time for bed.

Monday October 12:

This was the day that we were suppose to go to the Argentina side of the falls but due to the rain we switched our days. So we went to the Itaipu Dam instead and we went on the Dam Tour. The Itaipu Dam is one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World. lol. On our way back we stopped in Cuidad del Este, Paraguay. Before we went this town was explained to us as Wal-Mart on crack that exploded into the street, and that is basically what it looked like. We ate in the Mona Lisa building, which is like a 7 story department store. They have the nicest public bathroom in the town. Afterwards we went shopping and most of us bought cheap jerseys. Once we got back to the hotel all of the Biochem majors videod an experiment for Chemistry Circus. It's on youtube and if you have not seen it you should go watch it. It is hilarious. It can be found under ACU Chemistry Circus :). We played some more volleyball in the pool. This became pretty much a nightly thing. Then we all showered and got ready to go to a dinner show. It showed the different types of dances throughout South America. They even invited Amber up on stage for a little bit. It was rather entertaining. We all went to bed after this.

Tuesday October 13:

This was when we got to go back to the falls on the Argentine side. Unfortunately we found out upon arriving that it had rained so much everywhere else in Brazil that the rivers had filled up and there was about 3.5 times more water than usual. This meant that the devil's throat was closed. We were all kind of bummed at first, but it ended up being okay. The point of seeing the devil's throat is the power of the water rushing over it. This day we were seeing that in all of the falls. It was like nothing I have ever seen before. We went on both lower trail and as far as we could go safely on the upper trail. It got to one point where it was blocked off cause you could see the water gushing over the walkway. We got to go stand and take pictures in some of the mist. I was glad we had gotten to see the Devil's Throat from the Brazil side. We stopped at an Artisan Market on our way back to the hotel. Once at the hotel we played more volleyball in the pool. Went to dinner at a place called Bottega, but this time we did not stay for their show. We played mow in Alli and Karaline's room and then went to bed.

Wednesday October 14:

This was our last day in Brazil. We started out the day by visiting a Guarani Village just over the border in Argentina. We saw different traps they set for animals, some of the children sang for us, and we bought handmade souvenirs they had made. We ate lunch at Pizza Hut for Amanda's birthday, it was so good to eat American style pizza. The pizza here is really good, but it is not the same. After lunch, Amanda, Jaimie, Dara, Josh, Lauren, and I went shopping on one of the main streets. Once we were done we took a bus back to the hotel but we ended up getting off way early so we start walking down the highway towards our hotel. We got a good walk and all was good until it started raining on us! It made a good memory though. When we got back to the hotel 15 of us went to Autumn's room to watch the futbol game on tv. Uruguay vs. Argentina for the 4th and 5th spots. There was 16 people in a tiny room in Brazil cheering for Uruguay. Who unfortuantely lost and now much play Costa Rica for a chance to go to the world cup in the spring. We ate dinner after the game and we had a cake for Amanda. Talked to people on the computer and went to bed.

Thursday morning we loaded up and spent the next 20 hours on the bus back to Montevideo. Again I spent the entire time in the back of the bus playing games, we played the marriage game and came up with a family tree. I didn't sleep quite as well on the bus this time cause I didn't get my own seat, but it was terrible, we had a foot rest. :P