Vacations

Hola a todos,
AK speaking! :)

We've been on the road lately, and therefore we now have a lot to tell you!

We've spent some days in Uruguay, passed through Colonia and Montevideo
and ended up in Cabo Polonio which is a peninsula with great beaches, no electricity,
and rarely running water. Thanks to helpful advice from the tourist-information lady at the bus-station in Montevideo we left believing that we'd be able to pay with credit cards at the
restaurants in Cabo Polonio...we were not. Thanks lady. The same lady told us that there were no restaurants close to the bus-station...as we got out we saw more than 3 in the closest street.

Cabo Polonio is about 5 hours from Montevideo along the coast towards the east and in order to get there you have to (after the 5h. busride) take a 4x4 truck to get to the town because you will be driving over sand mountains and beaches. Lovely.
I have never seen so many stars on the sky.

We knew we had to pick up the keys to the 24m2 house we were renting (for 4 people) from a guy called Leo in a blue house close to the lighthouse. However, when we got to Cabo Polonio..it was dark and we had no idea where the blue house was. Neither did we know which house we had rented. This could have gotten tricky, but thanks to a very helpful man who came with the same truck we did (who walked us to Leo's blue house, and then to the house we rented with a flashlight) everything was ok.

During our stay we got to see sea lions (both alive and dead), a huge number of stray dogs,
some cute puppies, got to shower outside in water from the well, and finally managed to scrape together enough money to eat at on of the restaurants (we chose to do so in the dark, as then we would not notice that it was quite dirty). Oh yes...and some of us might have gotten a bit sunburned as well.

From there we went back to BsAs, but just for 1 night, and then we got on a bus to Cordoba.
Cordoba seems like a much smaller city (of course) than BsAs, and also it looks a lot cheaper (of course). It also has an awesome "Museum of memory" for the Dirty War (la guerra sucia)
which I recommend to anyone passing through the city.

The people of Cordoba are also very helpful (whenever you pull up a map 5 people come running to help you figure out where to go) and a special thanks should go out to the 2 old men who stopped me and Kjersti from walking on the "bad side" of the river ("you can't walk there with a purse!").

Ida & Simon stayed in Cordoba and explored the area around, while Kjersti & me took a bus to Salta. At the busstation we met a guy from the Netherlands, Thys, and decided to rent a car and drive from Salta to La Poma through the spectacular scenery with lots of mountains, colors, and kind of crappy roads. We found a very small restaurant there (the town is TINY) and I got to read children's stories to the chef's incredibly cute daugther. From there we went to Catchi where we spent 1 night, and then to Cafayate a lot further south where we took a guided walk to Rio Colorado, a beautiful waterfall where we took a swim. Luckily we opted for going there with a guide, although the Lonely Planet book mentioned nothing of this need, because we suddenly found ourself climbing up 10meters on rocks with a rise of almost 90degrees.

We drove back to Salta for a night, and then up past Jujuy and to Purmamarca, where I might have gone sligthly berserk buying souvenirs. This is also where you'll find the mountains with 7 colors (very pretty!) not to mention countless police controls as it is relatively close to the boarder of Bolivia. We drove back to Salta and spent the last night there, and checked out the Inca Museum and the view over Salta before we said goodbye to Thys and got on a plane back to BsAs.

Salta and the area around definitely has a different feel to it than BsAs, obviously the cities are smaller, but the people also look different, supposedly because of a lot of immigration from Bolivia. And most people are extremely helpful whenever you pull up a map here too.

Today it's Saturday, yesterday we got back from our adventure, and this morning at 6.30 I picked up (read: ambushed) Alejandro at the airport in BsAs, and now we will spend 2 weeks exploring BsAs and enjoying the Easter vacations.

Happy Easter!!!!!!!! :)