Mar del Plata
2013 October 15
So, Buenos Aires is the place near the top with all the word clutter that also says, “Buenos Aires,” while Mar del Plata is a little bit further below on this map. This weekend, I traveled the line between those two dots.
The first thing we did when arriving to Mar del Plata was of course…
get groceries and pretend like we live there. But really, it made sense. Despite possibly missing out on a restaurant or two, we all saved money on dinner and lunch. And, as it has been described to me before, Mar del Plata is basically Buenos Aires except that it has a beach. I brought 4 swimsuits to Argentina so the very first opportunity came…
…after day 1. The wind was freezing when we went to the beach (hence my 3 layers of clothing in this picture). But it was nice to be on a beach and check out the nice views.
After a night of hanging out at the hostel (which is, as the owner told us, the 2nd oldest hostel in Argentina), we went back to the beach where the forecast said there would be nice weather. We were in denial of reality so we decided to wear our swimsuits anyway.
Moments before a huge mistake.
We’re not smiling. Our teeth are chattering.
Maybe it was because of this coldness that I didn’t realize how strong the sun actually was. I got a little bit of a burn (though not a bad one). Maybe if I take more opportunities to go outside this month it will be for the better. I can’t go back to the states pasty-faced and say, “yeah, I just got done living in South America for 3.5 months,” when it really looks like I went to London. To be fair though, Mar del Plata is 38 degrees south of the equator, and Sioux City is 42 degrees north. That’s not a lot of difference.
Mar del Plata was clean compared to la capital federal, but boring. Do boring and cleanliness always have to have this inverse relationship?… Actually, now that I think about it, yes. The answer is always “yes”.
Here I am messing around with the panorama function on my phone again. If you ignore the border problems (like the US and Mexico, right guys?), this is a pretty good picture. Left to right: me, Jessica, Hayley, JJ, and Reilly.
El hostel.
After another relaxing night, it was time for me to go home. Except it was just Reilly and I heading back to Buenos Aires on Sunday and the other 3 headed back on Monday.
After getting to the bus station and buying my ticket for a 10:30 time at around 10:10, Reilly realized she read her ticket wrong and her bus had already left at 10:00. Whoops. Fortunately, the ticket vendor called her bus and they were kind enough to wait for a taxi to take her to them and disembark since they hadn’t completely left town yet. Unfortunately, this led to lonely, 6-hour bus rides for the both of us.
I had a lot to think about, and since I didn’t sleep on the way back to Bs As as I did on the way to Mar del Plata, it became excruciatingly boring. However, I noticed that the scenery looked somewhat familiar…
Remind me why I came to… um… South America?… again. This is probably the most Iowa-looking place I’ve ever seen outside of Nebraska, Illinois, Missouri, South Dakota, my worst nightmares, and Minnesota. And it makes sense too, with all that latitude stuff I mentioned earlier.
Most surreal moment: listening to the song North by Phoenix while heading north on a bus thinking about the land further up north that will soon again be my home.
http://home/spencer/dontcryformeusa.com/public.youtube.com/watch?v=-BV4uU2g_QE
And on the way, I sketched a couple advertisements that I’ll probably refine on the computer when I return to the states.
And I just realized as I was uploading this, “minimal” on the Spanish version should be “mínimo”. If you can’t tell, I plan on tutoring when I return to the states to make a little extra money. If any of you devout readers back home are learning Spanish or know someone else who is, feel free to email me (or call when I return November 9th) and I’ll be happy to help.
Sunday night, I watched the beginning of Tropic Thunder.
And went to Matteo’s for another asado. And today was probably the 2nd most boring day I’ve had in Argentina. I have a lot of work to do this week in my classes, so I’m enjoying being lazy while I can. In fact, I’m ending this post here so I can go to sleep and get up early(ish) tomorrow and start my day all gung ho and Spongebob-like.
http://home/spencer/dontcryformeusa.com/public.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSfEL15h1E
Chao.
Also, I started reading The Power of Habit. I recommend it. Even if it hasn’t cured my procrastination habit yet, at least now I know why it exists. Ironically, I usually end up reading The Power of Habit when I want to procrastinate doing my homework. But today I ended up updating my blog to procrastinate instead.