I mentioned before that we were staying here in Tancacha with a local family. What an adventure that has turned out to be. We ended up meeting most of the town these last couple days. Everyone wants to have us over for supper and/or put us up for the night. So we keep doing just that. Tonight we got into a little trouble. We double booked ourselves for supper. We had supper at the place of some people we met at a church today then the other family called us just when we were finishing and were super mad that we forgot about them. We played dumb and pretended we didn't eat. So we went back to the other family's place and pretended to be super hungry when we were stuffed already. I still have no idea how Kevin and I downed two more platefuls of food (wait, now I'm feeling it). A couple guys drove us away from the city this morning and we went on a great hike and then went to the meat shop and got some stuff for a barbecue (pretty routine around here). I must have mentioned before that South America is filled with far too many stray dogs. It was funny - when everyone but Kevin was filled with meat, I got this picture of Kevin eating at a picnic table surrounded by hungry dogs.

Lets see, what else, oh I got into an intense game of scrabble with a 9 year old yesterday and he beat me pretty bad. Granted, everything was in Spanish but it still hurts you know. I mentioned that we met some people at church. Turns out that the family we stayed with goes to a Spanish church. It was really fun and really interesting to see the culture. There was one thing that was kind of unusual. A couple guys in the church found it very comfortable to stand 1 inch away from my face and talk to me. I could feel every word and if I stepped back, they just smiled and stepped right towards me again.

-steve

We had the greatest day today. Kev and I finally hooked up with a friend, Mariana in Cordoba province. We are getting our culture, language, and everything lesson constantly. We are staying with her family and she is the most hospitable ever. Staying with a local family is quite the eye opener. Yep, things are a little different here! Tonight is going to be the first shower and bed in 5 days. We are having the biggest barbecue party too. We went all over town today tasting different foods and asking a millions about everything. We are getting treated pretty well so we might just stay put for a few days. Those Andes mountains are beckoning though.. we'll see what happens.

-steve

Kevin and I finally buckled under the pressure today... That is right we finally decked ourselves out with the complete mate equipment (pronounced ma-tay). Actually we got everything (filter straw, cup, thermos) excluding the leather carrying sack. Seriously, even a week in this culture is enough. It is not just tea, it is not just a drink... it is a lifestyle! Google 'yerba mate' or 'bombillia' for some info and pictures about people drinking mate. Basically it is like strong tea and you just keep adding hot water... so you need to walk around with a thermos. Finally, no more stares.. we fit right into the South American culture. It is great! Other than that we haven't been doing a lot. We traveled along the north side of Uruguay and we are now in a border town with Argentina.

Next it looks like we are going to go to Cordoba where a friend, Mariana, lives. Hopefully she'll hook us up with some good adventures and maybe a place to stay. Alright, back to mate and fresh pasta!

-steve

Well, there we were, standing beside the open pampas (prairies) of Uruguay. It was bitter sweet though.. I thought leaving Saskatchewan, Canada and flying across the world I could find somewhere other than prairies but conquering a new confluence was worth it. The adventure started in Treinty y Tres, a small town near the confluence. Kevin and I were were waiting for our meal to come with only 15 minutes until we had to catch the bus past the confluence. The food came with 10 mins left and we ate the 4 plates of food in 3 minutes. We made it on the bus and were on our way.

The next thing that happened was absolutely hilarious. We asked to jump off in the middle of nowhere. The locals thought it was hilarious, but they finally agreed to let us off by the open fields. They shook their heads, laughed and the the bus drove away.

As it turns out, these fields weren't that easy to cross. We had to trek over many varieties of prickly grass and plants in our sandals. And then there were the random lakes everywhere to go around. There were also vast fields of strange mounds. The inhabitants seemed to be ants or termites or something. Anyway, these guys build these mounds up to 3 feet high and make fields of them. See the picture on the right.

Finally we made it to the confluence and to our delight it was in the middle of a sheep field. For the victory celebration, we spent a substantial amount of time chasing and trying to ride sheep. We really wanted to mount some of these ostrich type birds but they were just too fast.

-steve

I don't even know where to start. It has been way too long since I have found an internet cafe that I can't remember all we have done these last few days. We left Montevideo a few days ago after renting bikes and scouting out the city in between eating fresh pasta. Actually that's about all we have been doing in the last 5 days. Doing things in between eating fresh pasta. We keep finding places and that's all we order. Except yesterday we found a barbecue place called Jesus so we had to eat there. So after Montevideo we continued to work our way along the coast of Uruguay. The place is mostly dead right now cause it is winter. Supposedly the population bloats in the summer as Argentinians come over to enjoy the beaches. The beaches are really fantastic by the way. No swimming though... we just camp on them. Actually we have camped more nights than stayed in hostel. It is so much more cost effective. We usually just find a patch of trees in some park or the outskirts of town and set up camp (discreetly). And mom if you are reading this I will spell check it later.. just lay off ok.

I think our best day yet was a couple days ago where we almost killed ourselves hiking. This one place called Piriapolis didn't have much going on but it did have 3 sizable mountains. We started about noon and hiked up the first 2 no problem. The third took forever to get to because we had to go through death bushes to get to it. There were so many kinds of thorns and my legs and arms were got all bloody. That was after walking through an area that had caught on fire. So we were pretty black and red and we started up this last mountain. It had the biggest cross ever on it so we had to get up and take some pics. The stupid thing was that we started at dusk and had to run up this thing as fast as we could. We got up to the top and it was great but really dark. So the real adventure started after dark, doing the crab-walk down these slopes. It was probably pretty funny and it took forever. After that we were quite tired and really hungry. Of course we still had to walk the 5k back to town. Lots of fresh pasta waiting for us though.

I feel pretty ashamed to write this next part but I'll lay it out anyway ok. On that long walk back we realized that we had left our travel guide on the top of the mountain by the cross. By the way this cross was so big you could climb up a spiral staircase inside 10 floors or so and then sit on benches in the horizontal parts of the cross. Great view!! Anyway, we started to make excuses. Ahh we didn't need that stupid lonely planet anyway. We were experienced travelers and we could find our own adventures. And it was way too late and we had to push on to the next city. So we took a bus back to a city we were tenting at. The next day we took a bus all the way back and wasted most of the day climbing all the way back up to get the stupid book. ahh!!! Then we were like.. my precious... sorry about those things we said about you last night...

Yesterday we were in a Brazil-Uruguay border town called Chuy. That's where the Parrillada Jesus was. Man they had good barbecue chicken (and fresh pasta of course). The locals had blocked off the street and were having motor bike races so we watched that most of the day.

Oh by the way, I meant today was the best day ever. Kevin and I went confluence hunting!!! (www.confluence.org). We conquered 33S 54W and no one had ever been there. Unfortunately it was located in the prairies - we had to supplement the adventure by trying to ride sheep and wild ostrich type things. Yikes.. got to run and get some fresh pasta before our overnight bus!

-steve

Yesterday was probably our cheapest day ever. Kevin and I were in the delta above Buenos Aires all day and it was pretty quiet and peaceful. There were no roads up there - just small creeks where boats would go up and down. All the shops, restaurants, etc.. just have docks out into the water and everyone just scoots around. This would be a good time for a pic but I don't think that is going to be possible. We wised up and realized that we have been paying $5 a night for either a campsite or a hostel so we asked someone if we could camp on his grass. The guy didn't mind at all so I think we may have stumbled upon the cheapest accommodation yet!

Kevin and I spent most of the day on random boats and buses but when the sun finally went down we found ourselves in the Uruguayan capital (Montevideo). At first glance Uruguay is pretty much the same as Argentina. Their flag is even the same with the sun in the corner instead of the middle, see? As we are walking around more, we are seeing differences now. Everyone is walking around with this little pot and a filter straw thing. Finally we asked someone what the deal was and they said it was "mate" or something. We tried it and it was kind of like strong tea... could have easily been drugs though. Either way.. I need to find my own mate pot and straw. Anyway, we found a cheap hostel and there is this place close by that has tango dancing at 11:30. I'll shoot for it but Kevin works on about the same time table as me... as soon as 10:00 hits, the brain stops working and its sleep time.

-steve

Kevin and I just finished our little trip into Argentina to wait for our Brazil visas to be processed. It was a little tense cause the whole time we were unsure whether or not we would be accepted for Brazil visas. They wanted extensive information and documentation which we weren't prepared for. Anyway, we had a good couple of days waiting. We just took a train ride back from a small town called Sierra de la Ventanna. We did a little bit of hiking and took an overnight bus to get there and an overnight train ride to get back to Buenos Aires. The train ride was especially interesting. Of course we opted for the cheapest tickets ever which meant 12 hours of sit up bench seats. Fortunately we used our charm to befriend the ticket guy at the train station. He was a coin collector without Canadian coins. Instant friendship. As we got on the train he worked it so that we could sit up front in first class, so instead of getting the hard seats we paid for, we just took those.

Everything was going great. We got to sleep and it was the most comfortable and needed rest yet. 3 or 4 hours into our sleep everything changed. People filled the train and someone happened to have tickets for our seat. So we were kicked out and were left with no seat at all. The train was packed - there were people sleeping everywhere - under seats, on the floor, in the bathroom, on the sinks, etc... Thus started the greatest 6 hours of our lives playing a game we now refer to as "dabum". Basically it involves adapting to any dirty environment to try to get some sleep. We would sleep anywhere until we got kicked out. We finally found a train car with the lights burnt out. While people were sleeping we crawled up into the luggage compartments in the roof and slept intertwined around baggage. It was awesome! We were the happiest, dirtiest street bums ever! Completely filthy but well rested. So we got back to Buneos Aires completely tired this morning.

Luckily for our sanity, everything went awesome today. We got our Brazil visas! We found out we don't need a visa for Uruguay! We found a step down converter and battery charger after I blew up mine by sticking it into the wall. We just indulged in a meal fit for kings and we decided to get a bed tonight rather than camping in some restricted area. But, tomorrow it's back to cheapest ever traveling.

-steve

Kevin and I are still having the best time ever. We are in a city south of Buenos Aires on the atlantic coast called Mar del Plata. Yesterday we sauntered into the pescadoria (fish store) and bought a sizable fish. The store owners gave us the craziest looks cause they had never seen any backpackers walk in and get a fish before - especially without wanting it cut up or gutted (I nievely thought I could cook it somewhere cause we wanted to camp that night).

After three hours of walking out of the city, taking random busses, and turning down expensive camping facilities, we found a place to put up our tent. A sign outside the fence we jumped over said something along the lines of "private property, no camping, fires prohibited". Unfortunately it had to do cause we were tired. We set the tent up under a canopy of trees and then went to make a fire somewhere else (really scared of being caught). We had to because we payed almost two dollars for the dumb fish. Without walking too far we found a hole in the ground with a grill beside it! How good is that?! So one of us grilled while the other was on the lookout just in case we needed to bolt and hide. We squeezed a couple lemons over the fish (best meal yet!!).

Today Kevin and I taunted sea lions we found on the beach most of the morning. Then we tossed the disc around and explored the city. The rest of the day we sat and ate cause the food is unique, inexpensive, and amazing. We are learning more spanish everyday and making a lot of local friends. This one guy, Jorje, fed us for three meals cause we kept coming back and he wouldn't stop telling us about these chicas that he wanted to hook us up with.

Tonight we are off to some mountains on an over-night bus. They are about 8 hours west!

-steve

Well, it's finally here!! (it took me forever to find the ' on this Spanish keyboard!!). Kevin and I met up in Dallas and had a three hour layover which was great - we had a million things to talk about! And a few hours later, we are finally here in Buenos Aires (Argentina Capital). We are having the greatest time. The culture is great here. It is like nothing I have ever seen. If I had to describe it in a sentence, I would say that it is a bunch of white people who look like they should be speaking English but don't speak a word, thrown in a big city with "Asian" rules and European architecture. We are loving it here cause there is psycho driving, street food, and lots of potential for adventure. The only downside is that things are kind of expensive so we may end up camping a lot. The weather is not too bad. It gets down to about 5 degrees at night but it will only get warmer from here on as we head north. Today we explored the city for 14 hours straight, applied for Brazil visas (major hastling), and spent way too much on all this great food we had to try. We are going to head out for a camping / hiking trip somewhere for the weekend while we get our visa's processed for Brazil. That's about it all! Oh, I also had a huge rush tonight and razored all the hair above my neck.

-steve