Chavo?z

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

I’m sitting in NY. Yes! in NY. At my mother’s PC and dreading the last few posts that I’m sort off supposed to write to document the end of our South American experience.

I left you in Manaus, at the end of our five day journey up the Amazon, but what came after that completely and utterly frustrated me with this continent and even though the next few weeks included an awesome six day hike to a table top mountain, Sloth (the animal, not the sin), and petting river dolphins, the troubles that intertwined leave me here, back in the States, if only for two weeks, tired, angry, and with burning desire to reeducate some South Americans on the current events in the Middle East.

Tags: festival
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Trucking Along

Friday, July 14th, 2006

The reason for the next four days was this quote “… on epic 4WD-journey to Parque Nacional dos Lencois Maranhenses you’ll roll past sand dunes and splash through creeks, ducking palms as the untouched landscape unfolds around you.” “The best part is getting there,” Shurik was very excited about this. I went along. I would be lying if I said I was completely uninterested how this will turn out.

Tags: architecture, festival
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Salvador

Sunday, July 2nd, 2006

We flew here. It’s not like we got sick of buses, I actually almost miss the crippling pain in my back and the smell of the portable lavatory, but it was simply cheaper to fly then to take the bus. The whole plane thing, though, actually threw us off. In a night we went back to being wide eyed tourists who fall for all those little tricks the local come up with to get their money. In Salvador, it’s these colorful ribbons. I think in actuality they are supposed to be worn by believers of a religious strain, but the local beggars use them as conversation starters. “A gift. For you,” they say, and go on to explain how this is very spiritual and unique to their culture. How life here is difficult and for us might be dangerous so we should not walk down that street over there and he himself, by the way, is living on the street and has a baby, and the baby has AIDS, so could he please have some money to buy some milk for the baby. Now, what do you say to that? “I gave money to a foundation that helps kids with AIDS.” I actually just did, not even two days ago and have the pin to prove it, but my comment was met with a bank stare. Like this is going to help him even if he has the baby. I gave him the change in my pocket, and he simply turned around and left. You’re welcome. After a few incidents like this, Shurik and I decided we spoke no other language than Russian. Communicating only meant being asked for money, and it’s a shame – Salvador is very rich with African culture that we so wanted to explore and now were reluctant to. Keeping to ourselves, we still managed to see a lot. The local Capoeira artists swinging and jumping around each other in circles of clapping to the beat onlookers; the Berimbau – a musical instrument I’d never seen before; and the Baianas – women in their traditional enormous skirts.

Tags: culture, festival
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Resistence is futile

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

Just our luck. Coming in to town we find out that every hotel room in town is booked due to some Evangelistic convention, some sport championship, and another event we don’t even remember. We came to the town of Resistencia to see for ourselves at least a small portion of the some three hundred sculptures scattered in the area. I was really excited about this place, so we stored our backpacks with a very nice hotel manager and for about five hours roamed the streets.

What we found was very interesting, but it wasn’t only statues. It was the day of 25th of May, and we should have guessed there will be a celebration in every town in Argentina on this date, as pretty much every city, town, and village, we’ve visited so far had a “twenty fifth of May” plaza. It was something like the Argentinean Independence Day, the history of which I’m going to spare you. The streets were full of people, and the children were dressed in national costumes. Also was there a parade featuring about everyone in town, almost to the point that we were wondering who were the people watching this thing if all the schools, clubs, and organizations in town were in the parade with all their members.

Tags: art, festival
Posted in Places»South America»Argentina | No Comments »