Northward Bound

From exploring the northern Patagonia region with snow-capped, jagged peaked mountains, to one of the most vibrant exciting cities, to the Northern desert,  I've been pleased with what I've seen here in Argentina. However, there are some things I haven't quite gotten used to.  To begin with (especially in Buenos Aires) their schedule for things are not too compatible with my body's schedule. The people in B.A. eat dinner at 10pm (this didn't work too well, the night we treated ourselves to the most delicious steak dinner, and the place didn't even open until 8pm).  They stay up until 8 in the morning and eat lunch at 3 in the afternoon.  It was impossible to get in this routine, and I hated being the girl making the noise in the hostel at 11am to get into my stuff.  But really,  I actually didn't care, THEY needed to get in a normal routine. Get up! haha/jajaja. I met my Peace Corps friend Lilah.  We seem to be on the same level with certain things when it comes to traveling and what we want to get out of our traveling experience.  I'm glad we had the same mind set for certain things like... We would rather not spend all our money on going out, and staying up until 8am. We'd rather get up at 8am so we have daylight to see all the great architecture and sights Buenos Aires has to offer.  We saw the colorful buildings in La Boca, the beautiful green parks in Palermo, the famous cemetery in Recoleta (where Evita is buried), and artists' fairs. We really just enjoyed walking around the city admiring the architecture.

Another thing that we found a bit odd was that no one has change (not even for a $20... err, actually sometimes not even for a dollar)  Lilah, instead of getting her dollar change, a sales-lady gave her 50 cents with 2 pieces of wrapped candy.

After B.A., we took a 22 hour bus ride to northern Argentina and stayed the night in San Salvador de Jujuy (a word I just couldn' t get in Spanish). Anyway, from the moment we got there we didn't really enjoy it. It appeared a little dangerous,  and somewhat like a warzone. A guy at the terminal told us the robbers will cut our backpacks and steal them (not true).  Another guy told us "Careful" (in English), after giving us directions for the grocery store. After finding the grocery store, we soon realized he wasn't speaking English, nor telling us to be careful... the grocery store is actually called Carre Four. We got a good laugh.

After roaming aroud this city searching for our hostel, Yok Wahi, looking ridiculous with our giant backpacks on the back and front of our bodies, we finally found it ... except we didn't.  It was mismarked and our travel book had the wrong address.  We back tracked about a block and finally arrived at Hostel and Bar Yok Wahi.  However, after trying to find the hostel & wandering around looking for the grocery store, we weren't impressed with the town and were ready to move up into the mountains early the next day.