Buenos Aires bound

After almost two weeks in Rio, Chris and I are off the Buenos Aires... Argentina (for those of you who didn't pay attention in Geography class). We wanted to leave earlier, but the plane tickets were too expensive, and the bus tickets were sold out until Tuesday. Mara and Rodrigo were nice enough to let us stay even longer so that was great. It was so invaluable to have them to take us around and translate for us and tell us where to go and where not to go... and that was just in the bus station. We're going to be screwed in Buenos Aires.

Our bus tickets to Buenos Aires were 230 reais (about $140) and that gets us a 42 (!!!!!) hour bus ride. Forty two hours! But our seats recline all the way and once we get into Argentina, they feed us. But not until then, which is weird. I think they're punishing their people for leaving the country and rewarding them for returning, plus I hear they kinda hate Brazilians.

We have hostel booked for our first night in BA. When we get there, we want to get a bus ticket ASAP to the southernmost tip of Argentina, to a town called Ushuia. There, we hope to get a last minute cruise to Antarctica on the cheap. Apparently, it's the high season down to southern Argentina right now, so getting a bus ticket to Ushuia might be difficult. But we'll do our best.

Now I just need to switch gears in my head and stop spitting out sentence fragments in Portuguese and spit out fragments in Spanish. Good times. There is much packing to be done and we're leaving behind a bunch of stuff at Mara's place as we totally overpacked.

Chris also needs to stop fighting me and get out and buy a sunga before we go. A sunga is the tiny teeny bathing suit worn by all the men here, it's like a speedo without the bikini cut. When Rodrigo's brother Rafeal had lunch with us a few days ago he was shocked to find out that that type of bathing suit is considered a bit gay in the USA. He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that in some countries, tiny bits of lycra stretched over a dude isn't considered masculine. He was seriously upset. Anyway, we have things to get to, wish us luck on the 42 hours in a bus. Yikes!