Hello from Mexico!

Hola amigos!  I decided I needed to blog because I love reading all of y'all's blogs SO much, that when you don't post, I go crazy.  I really do, no sarcasm in the ethernet here.  Yet I'm usually even MORE guilty of never posting, so here you go.

I am on a month-long assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, doing tourist visa interviews as they're a few officers short.  Mike is busy running the American Citizen Services section in BA, so he couldn't come with -- he'll join me for a few days at the end.  I'm not sure he's going to enjoy it.  He's going to want to see the sights, and I'm going to want to show him all the dorky little things I've been doing for a month, like walking around the mall next door eating frozen yogurt and watching awesome 90's music videos at the take-out sushi place while I wait for my order. Though I DO think he'll let me take him to my favorite tiny hole-in-the-wall lunch place for tacos, pan de elote, and horchata. 

Now you've got me talking about Mike -- I really love working in the same office as him because when I get any little case that I find interesting, I can tell him all about it.  Or, if I see some cool clouds outside or something, I can show him (I don't think I've actually done this, I'm just trying to think of examples).  You know, the little things.  I probably drive him crazy.  But now that I talk to him just once a day, I can't cram in all the little things I've been thinking to tell him all day (I had this problem when we were doing long distance back a couple years ago).  Our conversations now go like this:

Mike: "Well?"
Me:  "I had at least 40 things to tell you and now I can't remember any of them."
Mike: "OK......."


I have told him how beautiful Monterrey is and how great the food is.  Though that almost goes without saying; I'm in MEXICO. 

And here is a random picture I took to prove I've been here.  More later.

Ruins and Wetlands!

Hi everyone, I'm back!  So, in April I got to take a trip to Utah to be present for my brother's college graduation!  It was great to see family (I had 5 cousins and cousin-in-laws graduate too, and between their parents and my aunts and uncles already in UT, I got to see so many relatives!).  It was also great to stomp around my old stomping grounds with my parents, see my sister's apartment, and especially to watch my brother graduate knowing how hard he's worked! 

Misiones and Esteros de Ibera

Well, this blog entry is to tell you a little about a less-well-known Argentina destination: the wetlands. (Check out the link to our pictures above).
We combined the trip with a little hop over the Paraguayan border to see 2 abandoned Jesuit missions.  If you've ever seen the movie The Mission, this was it!  The Jesuits built several missions in this area (Posadas, Argentina and Encarnacion, Paraguay) in the 1700's.  They taught the gospel to the locals, but the locals taught them too.  On the walls of the ruins, you can see a fascinating mixture of indigenous and Catholic motifs (our guides called it "mestizo" art).  In the 1760's, the Jesuits were expelled from this area.  The Spanish and Portuguese governments perceived them as a political threat (and felt they were harboring the natives, who they wanted to enslave).  The papacy also apparently thought that they were getting too sympathetic with the natives.  Now all that is left are the beautiful churches and homes built to teach and shelter the Guarani natives (and a province of Argentina called "Misiones").

We then headed southeast to Corrientes province to see the second largest wetlands in the world, the esteros de ibera.  Incredible.  We went on two boat rides through the wetlands and one "night walk."  We saw howler monkey parents and baby, armadillos, capybaras (which are much bigger than you would think, and they BARK!), some kind of large chinchilla, caimanes (smaller than alligators), 20 baby caimanes with their mom, a black, white, and red stork (that eats baby caimanes, though we didn't catch him in action), egrets, herons, chajas (really loud, scruffy grey birds), kingfishers, hawks, vultures, swallows, butterflies, lightning bugs, cardinals, woodpeckers, marsh deer, smaller deer, bats, and.......lots more animals I can't remember.

A couple trip highlights (besides the incredible safari-ing):

The Paraguayan border official took awhile trying to figure out our passports and visas (don't get a lot of gringos there), but when he finally did and stamped our passports, he gave us a thumbs up!  Then, 2 hours later as we were leaving Paraguay, he ran around to the other side of the street to tell the exit immigration official what to do, and gave another thumbs up!

Quotes from our taxi driver that took us to Paraguay:  "Brazilians retire at 40 and don't give their money to their kids; they buy Harleys."

"Oooooh, Paraguay."  when the signs to the ruins weren't there anymore.

"The reason they make their food spicy in Mexico is because they're poor, and your body stops wanting food after eating something spicy."  (They don't really like spicy food here, and we didn't try to convince him that Mexicans can eat A LOT of spicy food without a problem, and so can we :)

My Small Tribute

I am writing this blog post for two reasons: 1) I want my family and friends in the U.S. to know how much we value our work and how much we value each other and 2) I want my "Caracas Crew" to know how much I've been thinking of all of you.  Looking at pictures and remembering good times with Anne brings back so many memories of spending time with all of you.  You were my family in Caracas; it was my first time living overseas, and you all were the best friends I could have asked for.  I hope in telling a few of my memories, you all will say "Oh yeah, that reminds me of when....." and have more memories of your own to treasure.  They're just little things, but they mean a lot to me.

I volunteered through the embassy to sponsor a new officer arriving at post.  They assigned me to sponsor Anne.  I sent her an e-mail, and we friended each other on Facebook.  I had just added some pictures of a recent trip to Angel Falls, and she was so excited to get there and see the country.  I remember seeing on Facebook that she had graduated in 2005.  I couldn't believe it, she was my little brother's age!  I was really worried that I was going to have to keep a constant eye on her and watch out for her, in such a dangerous city (yeah, because I was so much older, 24 :).  But I was amazed at her maturity when we finally met.  She just really had her act together.  I offered to get a ticket to the Marine Ball for her before she came, so she could go with the rest of us.  Not only did she go, but she somehow got a gorgeous ball gown down to Caracas before the rest of her stuff arrived.  She spent several months in the Tamanaco hotel, waiting for her housing assignment, and finally she moved into my building!  I remember running into her in the garage in the mornings or after work, and she always had her great aviator glasses on, driving her gray Pontiac.  

The rest of my memories are at work, house parties, and birthday dinners.  I remember seeing her catch a ride in the evenings to play soccer.  It sounds not-as-significant after reading it in the news so many times, but I will repeat it because it is true: she always had a smile and something funny to say to me, she always made me feel welcome, like I was one of her closest friends even though we had just met.  For the next year and a half, I knew I could call my neighbor Anne anytime if I needed something.  At work (where there was plenty of tough work to go around) she never shied away from it.  And for those of us who were exhausted by all the hard work we were putting in, and were thinking about how we needed a break, she was signing up to go to Afghanistan.  Anne didn't join the Foreign Service to live in nice apartments and serve in cushy assignments.  She came to work.  And since she wasn't able to finish her work, I will try (and I know each of us will) every day to make a little bit more of a difference in what I do.  Put in a little more effort, give a few more smiles.  Mike said it best when he wrote on her Facebook page: "Anne -- We all know how excited you were to do work that would change the world. Know that you changed us all for the better."

Ushuaia and Calafate

Hi everyone! We took a 5-day trip this weekend to southern Patagonia. Our first stop was the city of Ushuaia in the province of Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia is considered the southernmost city in the world, and has a population of 56,000. It is the gateway to Antarctica, and a very important port for ships going there, or cruise ships going around Cape Horn.

We are heading into fall here in the Southern Hemisphere, and while highs in BA are probably in the 80's, temperatures in Ushuaia have been in the 40's (not including the ever present windchill. Glad we came in the summer!

Our first day in town we took a boat tour of the Beagle Channel. The Beagle Channel was one of the three navigable passages between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (before the Panama Canal came along in 1914, these were your only options). The Strait of Magellan lies just to the north, and the Drake Passage to the south (pretty much the open water between South America and Antarctica, very treacherous). It was named after the HMS Beagle, which explored it and the surrounding waters in the late 1820's, and which had a young amateur naturalist on board named Charles Darwin. We observed some natural activity ourselves: Sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks and blue-eyed cormorants trying to keep seagulls from eating their eggs.

The next day's activity was visiting Tierra del Fuego National Park, Picture 1 (the southernmost national park in the world! Gotta love that new adjective: "Southernmost"). The park is mostly sub-polar forest, and has (surprisingly to me) hardly any pine trees. Instead, there are three types of deciduous beeches that grow there. It was raining during most of our 3-hour trek through the forest, but we were by ourselves almost the entire time, and we kept thinking we were going to run into Tolkein elves or dwarves around every corner.

Well, we did run into something...Mike shouts "Hey! I think that's a wolf!" It was a HUGE Andean fox, at least 25 pounds, and it walked right in front of Mike with a catch in its mouth (looking quite pleased with itself, really). It was kind of crazy, luckily it just kept walking by, not even stopping to stare at us (though Mike said he was definitely looking at him).

The next day we caught a flight an hour north to El Calafate, a city like Ushuaia that runs off of tourism, but much smaller -- only 18,000 residents (warmer temperatures though, in the 50's and 60's). They didn't even have an airport until 2001, and have only really started developing since then. El Chalten to the north (a jumping-off point for Mt. Fitz Roy hikers) wasn't even a city till 1980's. It is the newest city in all of Argentina.

Our Calafate tour guide pointed out that when people hear "Patagonia," they picture ice and glaciers, when in fact 95% of Patagonia is actually a very arid steppe, with no trees and hardly any water. And -- Patagonia is a huge swath of land, filling the latitude equivalent between Boston and the Labrador Strait. Maybe a bit more.

But don't worry, we saw the glaciers! I tried to get a picture of the steppe too, Picture 4, but every time we drive though it I fall asleep, so the "arid" picture you see below has way too much water and too many green bushes.

The "mother glacier" that feeds the glacier we saw (and dozens of others) is actually called an ice shield, and forms in the mountains. Picture 2 and 3 below are of the Perito Moreno glacier. As the glacier grows at the base of the mountain (snow and rain collect and compact), the ice is pushed forward and on the end crashes into the lake. We actually saw several pieces of the glacier crash into the lake during our 2 hours there, which shocked me; that glacier really is moving! Since the glacier is continually breaking off, but regrowing in the mountains from the snow, it hasn't really seen effects of global warming, as do other glaciers around the world. But we took lots of pictures just in case.

The snow and ice in the glacier is under so much pressure, that the air bubbles are squeezed out, and pure, clear ice remains. All the other colors at the red end of the spectrum are absorbed, and we are left with a deep blue/purple (which doesn't show up on film nearly as incredibly as it did in real life!).

Speaking of (if you've actually read this WHOLE thing)......who's coming to visit? Southern Patagonia is only a few hours' flight from BA, and there are activities for all ages and skill levels! From riding in a boat to hiking one of the most difficult mountains in this hemisphere! Come on down! But probably wait until next "summer." I don't fancy my chances down here in July.

Mendoza: Day 3

Great last day in Mendoza. The weather has been perfect, sunny with a nice breeze. We rented some bicycles and rode from vineyard to vineyard, in a small town outside of Mendoza called Maipu ( yes, it's pronounced how you would guess). The scenery was incredible, with the Andes in the background.

If you don't do the wine tasting, the tour of the vineyard is free! And we got to eat the grapes right off the vine, they were the sweetest and juiciest I've ever had, but the skin was pretty tough (I guess that's typical of wine grapes).

They also have a lot of olive trees here - the climate is right, and since they have leaves year-round, they act as a windbreak for the grapes, and provide much-needed shade. At lunch we got to taste some local olives (yum), and at dinner the other night we dipped our bread in some very strong local olive oil. Amazing.

All in all, it's been a great trip. The people here are really friendly and really proud of what their region has to offer.

We're trying to get back to the hotel and then the airport now, to go back to BA, and there is not a cab to be found...ah, Carnaval.

Mendoza: Day 2

Some of you are probably wondering what a Mormon does in Mendoza, when 99.99% of people who visit here come for the wine. In fact, our tour guide on the bus this morning said "El que vino a Mendoza y no tomó vino, porque vino?". It's a play on words in Spanish, but it means "He that came to Mendoza and didn't drink wine, why did he come?"

Well. I am loving this trip. It's beautiful out here, it reminds me of the western United States, and the mountains are breathtaking.

Fun fact the tour guide just told us: Mendoza produces more garlic than anyone in the world except for the Chinese.

Also, the guide just said "We want to thank our bus driver Jorge today - he doesn't have a drivers license and he doesn't suffer from alcoholism, he enjoys it". Love the sense of humor (I'm fairly sure it was just a joke :)

Mendoza also hosts the tallest mountain in the entire Western and Sourhern hemispheres, Aconcagua (22,837 feet) but the road to the base was out due to mudslides. We did see the second tallest in the area, Tupungato (21,555 feet). It's a volcano!

Since we couldn't go see Aconcagua, the tour company took us south to Valle Grande. The three hour drive reminded me even more of the American west. There are "oases" where the major rivers are (Mendoza, Tupungato, San Rafael, where all the major vineyards are), and in between it is very arid. Our destination was a canyon, which we drove through, and saw a series of hydroelectric and irrigation dams, which they're very proud of. We took a boat ride on one of the man-made reservoirs, and I swear we could have been on Strawberry Reservoir in Utah.

It was pretty crowded in the canyon - people were zip-lining, rafting, kayaking, swimming, and drinking lots of mate. It seems this is definitely a hot spot for Argentines to come over Carnaval, a bit like Memorial Day.

More tomorrow!

Mendoza! Day 1

We are spending the weekend in Mendoza, and we are having a great time. We arrived yesterday on an overnight bus, which is how most Argentines travel around Argentina. The terminal in BA was PACKED (it's a holiday weekend here, Carnaval).

Mendoza is a 12 hour drive from BA. It's famous for being the wine-growing region of Argentina. It is about 2500 feet above sea level, dry but still fairly green, and at the foot of the Andes, near the border with Chile. Mendoza is a much smaller city than BA, and you can tell that most of life here probably revolves around the vineyards (and other agro industries like olive oil and chocolate making). When the bus crossed the provincial (state) line into Mendoza, there were dozens of signs and checkpoints for agricultural control. One sign said something like "Mendoza: the province free of pestilences," and other said "Roll up your windows and prepare for insecticide spray-down."

One fun connection I have with Mendoza is that one of my cousins is serving his LDS church mission here. I thought "how is he going to get anyone in Mendoza to want to be Mormon when their whole life revokes around wine?!" But he loves it here, and loves the people and culture. One thing he wrote home to his family about was "siesta" time. This doesn't happen in BA, but I guess out in the provinces the towns completely shut down for several hours each day. I tried to catch this in a picture yesterday: there was no one on the streets, it was eerily quiet. We actually aren't sure if it was siesta time, or because it was a Saturday or Carnaval, but every single little shop was closed. I could sure go for a siesta every day (though the Argentines actually need it because they don't even usually eat dinner until 10).

I also took a picture from our hotel window of "the Andes.". Funny thing: those are actually just tiny foothills, the real Andes are behind them, and even though the Andes are extraordinarily tall, when you're right up against something else, you can't see them!

Today we've just started out on a driving tour of the region, and I should get some good pictures of the real Andes.

More to come!