We´re back. Woot.

Yes! We’re alive, we made it. I’m sorry this blog/website hasn’t been updated this week, but our wireless connection in the hostel has been down since we arrived to Buenos Aires. When we do have access to the internet, we’ve been frantically trying to book bus tickets, hostels, and plane tickets. So here’s the summary:

We left Rio on Tuesday, February 12th for our 42 hour bus ride. It actually turned into a 46 hour bus ride as our air conditioning broke, there was some traffic, one wicked accident involving a bridge and a beat up car with some blood, and some idiots on our bus from Israel couldn’t figure out how to work customs leaving Brazil. It was a loooong trip, but it was OK. The seats reclined almost all of the way down and it was definitely better spending that much time on a bus instead of a plane. They played movies but kept the volume low and the subtitles were in Spanish so missed out on that, but really, King Arthur with Clive Owen is a crap movie anyway. We would stop at random times and play the guessing game as to whether or not we were stopping for food, a bathroom break, or gas… no one ever seemed to say anything so there were a lot of questions to the people who could speak Portuguese and English or Spanish and English. There was never a last call to get on the bus so it was important to know exactly when you needed to be on the bus or they would leave you. We went through the interior of Brazil and Argentina and parts looked like Florida to me, and some parts like California. It was pretty. So far, it seems like Argentina is a lot cleaner than Brazil, and I’ve seen a lot less poverty.

Chris and I want to get to Ushuia as soon as possible. It’s the southernmost city in the world and that’s where some cruises for Antarctica leave. We want to get there and see if we can hop on a last minute cruise. But this is the high season and flights and buses have been booked for months and combine that with limited internet access, Chris and I have spent a lot of time walking to airline offices and bus stations throughout Buenos Aires. The best we could do was to get a bus ticket to Rio Gallegos which is about 250K from Ushuia. It’s a 36 (!!!!) hour trip and we will arrive this Thursday. After that, we will take a plane to Ushuia on Friday night. We have a hostel booked in Rio Gallegos and that’s as far as we’ve gotten. But it’s a start.

As for Buenos Aires, I really enjoy the city. We haven’t gone to the tango shows yet or done a ton of sightseeing, but it’s easy to get around (I love their subway system), it’s a lot easier to communicate via Spanish, and it’s a lot cheaper than Rio. Today Chris and I went to a part of town called Recoleta, and it houses a cemetery where all of the fancy pants people are buried. Allegedly, Evita is buried there but we couldn’t find her. I will post some pics soon. Tonight we’re doing a Buenos Aires pub crawl. It’s in a part of town called San Telmo that houses all of the artists and bohemian crowd. I’m sure it will be all Australians and English kids from hostels but it will be good to meet some other people. I need to get ready so I’ll write more soon!