Happy Birthday Lago Argentina

Last night (this morning?) I met my new favorite subculture: break dancers! Justine and Aly and I made friends with a nice girl in Buenos Aires named Belen and after taking us to an art show, she (by some mysterious means) got us free VIP passes at this hip hop club that otherwise had a super long line to get in. After an hour watching people spin on their heads and bounce on their hands, I realized it was a damn good thing I already had a plane ticket out of Buenos Aires, or I might never leave the hip hop club. It turns out that I, too, have some break dancing kicks (but no spins yet). And Justine and I can definitely get a circle to form around us when we´re dancing together. Does SF have a hip hop scene? I need to work on my break dancing!

From the club, I got a cab to the apartment, ran in to get my bag, then took the cab to the airport... still eager for action and fancying more dancing. I made a couple friends in the airport and now I have a temporary travel buddy (but I forget his name... it´s an Israeli name). We arrived in El Calafate, and my temporary travel buddy and I went on the search for hostels, but it turns out that a nine-day-long birthday party for the lake, Lago Argentina, just started today so there was little space. We did get beds in an Israeli hostel, which is quite cheap compared to everywhere else, but all the signs are written in hebrew.

The airport landing strip goes just next to Lago Argentina (happy birthday Lago Argentina! ...how does a lake get a birthday?) and landing is a surreal experience. It feels something like landing in the black rock desert, but next to a sapphire blue lake. And the mountains surrounding here are made of shapes that I didn´t know mountains could be made of. Everything that isn´t lake or jagged mountain kind of looks like Nevada -- lots of sage brush.

El Calafate is a town that exists only because of mountain tourism. It´s kind of like being in a ski resort town. I´ll probably go over to Chalten soon (4 hrs away) because that´s closer to the mountains and it´s where the trekking starts out of.

Err... some retrospective tidbits about Buenos Aires:

Almost everyone thinks I´m from Brazil (except for a few people who thought I was Peruvian, ha ha). The girls and I visited a place that boasted it was the Argentine equivalent to the FBI. An ¨FBI agent¨ (for lack of a more accurate word) gave us a tour and he kept thinking I was porteña (aka from Buenos Aires) so he kept asking me to back him up with info about the city to tell Aly and Justine, and then he thought I was daft for not knowing anything. Then later he told me ¨me gustaria verte peinada¨ (I would like to see you combed) and I stared down his bald spot and responded ¨me gustaria verte con pelo¨ (I would like to see you with hair).

BA is big, but easy to navigate. In all, I felt very comfortable there, except for the occasional water dripping on my head from people´s air conditioners. That part was not so comfortable. My favorite part of the city is definitely the graffiti, although the empanadas are pretty sweet too.

Aly taught me to spin fire, which is also something I´d like to do more of.

In Cuzco several months ago, Aly, Justine, and I became friends with an Australian boy named Marty. Then lo and behold, our Australian friend Marty is passing through Buenos Aires for a few days, so we met up with him last night and lived it up like the old times.

I´m pretty tired from not sleeping last night--if I want to be awake to celebrate Lago Argentina´s birthday with all of El Calafate tonight, I probably ought to take a nap. Or... I might go see the flamingos. I can´t wait to be up in the mountains!!!

-Ana