Can't stop talking about food!

While in Buenos Aires we watched some tango in the street and then Cailin and Alia gave it a try...More practice, perhaps!

Yes, more on food and such!
I must say, as one who loves her carbohydrates, I am even getting a bit tired of bread. The South American day starts out with bread, sometimes toasted, a side of croissants and a cup of coffee or tea. Basically, it has been a 5 week carbo-load! It doesn't help that when we go to the market, we buy more bread since it has been made fresh, travels well and needs no refrigeration. On one of our overnight bus rides, we were served breakfast and it consited of 2 croissants and a scone. Bread, bread, bread...
After the huge meals at 10 or 11 o'clock at night, we can see why the breakfasts are small and simple, (read: Duncan is starving) but really, where is the cereal or fruit, not to mention proteins? A few of the nicer joints we've stayed in have had ham slices and/or yogurt as well, but that brings me to a different point. Ham is everywhere in this country, yet we haven't seen a single pig (we've seen a lot of different ones, but no pig). Hamburgers, empanadas, pizzas, steak sandwiches all come with 'jamon' (ham) in or on top. I even got a burger once time with beef, ham, cheese and a fried egg on top. It definitely countered my carbo-overload!
All the above, minus any exercise to speak of, really doesn't bode well for this last week on the beach!

The one other food comment I have is on coffee. While walking about town this morning, not yet having had a cup, I was missing the paper 'to-go' cups we see all over in the states. Then, I went into a cafe to get me a cup of cafe con leche while Dunc and the girls bought sand toys. When you get coffee, it is an experience here, not just a fix. They bring out coffee with frothed milk, a shot glass of water (not sure why, except the coffee is usually scalding hot so it is nice) and always some bite of something--a cookie, chocolate, bread. That is just what a coffee is. Pretty nice to slow down, sip and think, rather than sip and run!
We are now at our quasi-final destination, San Bernardo, which is on the coast of Argentina, about 300km south of Buenos Aires. It will be nice to spend 5 nights in one place—the longest anywhere yet. We do have to go back to BA for 2 nights before flying out, and even tried hard to cut that out and stay here, but apparently the other 13 million Argentines in the area want to beach it too so there are no rooms available.
Today, I dropped off most of our clothes at a laundry place and we get them back tomorrow night—a bit longer than I expected, but they will be clean! Now that is something to be excited about! We've only washed our own in the tub and they are a bit stretched out from the wringing and hang drying. I am so excited to have the clothes dried and hopefully shrunk back into shape—although, stretched out clothing did help for the above mentioned reasons! Just got interrupted typing this as a huge firework show just happened on the beach across the street from our place. It was akin to what Ivar's does on the 4th, yet, here it is, January 11, a Monday, at 9:30pm so we have no idea why!? Perhaps it is a holiday? Perhaps this will be a nightly event? Who really knows! We have come a long way with the language, but there is much that still escapes us!
Alia did recover from the stomach flu and other than Cailin and I feeling queasy for 24 hours, no one else was plagued. It was not a fun cab ride, wait in the airport, fight, other cab ride to Iguazu with Alia—who did manage to throw up in each of those locations. We were very relieved to find our hostel did have AC and was decent. It was so hot and humid in the jungle and with not being able to drink the water, it was not an ideal place to be sick.
Cailin and I went to see the falls (look up Iguazu falls on the internet for some amazing pictures—one of the top 1000 places to see before you die and is trying to be voted in as one of the new 7 wonders of the world.). Duncan stayed back with Alia who still didn't feel well enough to go. Cailin and I, and then Duncan and Alia the next day, all were amazed by the size and amount of water of those falls. They were enormous! One of the highlights, was taking a boat ride in which you got up close to 2 different sides of the falls and then had a 'baptisma' under some of the falls. It was a thorough drenching, as in wring out your clothes, but it was a blast! We all decided swim goggles would have been great as it was hard to keep your eyes open under such torrents of water. In the park were more butterflies than I have ever seen. It was like you were in the butterfly house, but couldn't leave! Not Alia's favorite part, so she sweated through with her windbreaker on! Cailin couldn't hold enough of them. There were also large lizzards, tons of birds (Derek, took a few pictures for you to i.d.) and coati, a cousin to the racoon. The coati came out in the later afternoon and had obviously been fed and were a bit eager to swarm you, but still pretty cute.
We were in Iguazu for two and a half days and were all so sticky and grimy with the heat and red clay that we were ready to leave when the time came. It was a long day of travel with our flight getting into BA at 7 and our bus didn't leave for the coast until 12:45 am. We all agreed that the airport was much nicer and cleaner then the Buenos Aires bus station so we hung out there as long as we could. Neither is in a neighborhood that you'd want to be out wandering about in. Alia was wiped out from being sick and pretty much slept through all the waiting, as you can see.

The girls have really been great travelers and seem to have no problem with long bus rides and long waits. Perhaps all those drives to Bend and Spokane have really done them some good! We use the wait time to do homework and catch up on our journals. Both girls went through the books we brought for them more quickly than we anticipated, but we did find one English book store in BA and they have been listening to the Narnia series thanks to my sister, Amy!

This might be my last blog--unless something really exciting happens! :) Thanks to all our friends and family who have read along with us--it really helped up all feel connected to you while out here! We loved reading your comments (Ben, we never went so far south that it stayed light all night--sorry!). We will be back next week!

If ever the chance to do something like this comes your way--grab it! It has been absolutely great!!

Adios!