After Buenos Aires

we took a nightbus to Cordoba, the second largest city of the country. Everybody had told us it would be very beautiful, but maybe because we saw already so many beautiful European cities it didn' t really impress us.We stayed at a hostel, where we met other travellers and heard all kind of stories about robbery. (If someone spits at you, just keep walking.....)
From Cordoba we went up north, to Taffi del Valle (yes, another nightbus), a place that most international travellers don' t stop at, which made it more interesting as here we started to meet Argentinian travellers. My Spanish is slowly getting better, can understand most of it, but still miss a lot.. We made some really beautiful walks in the mountains, meeting horses and cows.Most of the tourists are from Buenos Aires, around our age.They're very open, and it's easy to join them, as excursions are more interesting to do them in a group. For us this is very convenient, as they do all the bargaining and discussions...
We went with them to Amaicha, a village in the north with no hardened roads, a lot of dust, from where we visited the Quilmes ruins (The Quilmes were a native tribe who lived in the surroundings of Tucuman. In the 17th century, after a bloody indigenous revolt against the Spanish settlers, the Quilmes were forced to settle in a restricted colony (reducción) near Buenos Aires, where the authorities could control them. The 1,000 km journey from Tucumán was made on foot, causing hundreds of Quilmes to die in the process) and the museum of the Pachamama (Mother Earth). They had very beautiful statues. In the north of Argentina there are mainly indigenous people living.
From there we went up north, to Cafayate, to Salta (the last city in the north), to Purmamarca, Tilcara and at last Humahuaca where we are now.
This whole region has very beautiful mountains with all kinds of colours (red, brown gray, black, white) very beautiful. We went up to 4000 meters!
We also visited the salinas grandes (a salt lake, very impressive, everything white....).

Very funny is also that we keep jumping into the same people as we met in other places.

Today we hang out with Silvina and Sebastian from Buenos Aires, we already met twice before in different places by accident. We went to a remote village, Iruya, (3 hours on a unpaved road, and 3 hours to go back), finding donkeys and sheep on our road. We also saw wild vicunas, a kind of lama.

More impressive things are coming, as.....we are planning to go Bolivia, to Uyuni, the biggest salt lakes in the world!!!!!

Here we are in Argentina!

Country of matè (strong tea), coca leaves and Maxima!
It took some time to adapt to this new country, life, travelling, language, everything, that´s why I´m writing only now.
Everything is going very well, visiting many places, meeting new people every day and.. my Spanish is getting better every day!
A lot of impressions, experiences...I'll try to give you a summary...

Let´s start with the start: Buenos Aires.
As we arrived, the first thing which stroke me, was the traffic.
Argentinians drive like crazy and you see cars from all times. Buenos Aires is a huge city, very busy, loads of traffic, but also very European. It has European architecture, but unfortunately you can also see it had known much better times.Very nice buildings, but often not taken care off, or you just forget they are there because of the surrounding buildings. The people mostly look European, as many are descendants of Spanish or Italian immigrants, so we didn' t really stand out.Through a friend of mine we met David, who gave us an inside in Buenos Aires life (working very hard, but also enjoying friends). He made sure we could attend a shabbat at the synagogue (mission impossible if they don´t know you), which was very refreshing (never seen such a swinging service, everybody singing, rabbi with long hair). Argentinian jews are all descendant of Europe, mainly from Ukraine and Poland.
Through my sister we also met other people from Buenos Aires.They were all very nice, taking us around and showing us everything. It was very enriching to hear how their life is, how it changed since the last years, about the past, the meaning of it now..how to adapt to the new situation, all very fascinating people.
The people of Buenos Aires and the history made it all very interesting.
(Muchas Gracias los amigos de Buenos Aires, espero ver ustedes a diciembre!)

HOLA!!!!
After a sleepless night in the plane, here I am in Buenos Aires!
Cannot yet tell a lot about it, because we just arrived, but it seems to be a very interesting place, but will tell you more about that later.
Thanks for the messages,hope you're all doing fine.
Hasta pronto!

The journey has just begun....

Here I'm in New York, the city that never sleeps!
After a very, very very (did I mention very?) long journey we arrived in New York.
A friend of my sister came to pick us up (a typical Brooklyn girl, could have come right from a TV show..) and brought us to another friend of my sister where we would stay the coming days.

On saturday we met for the first time some relatives of ours (a cousin of my mum) and they took us around the whole day. They are lovely and want to show us everything.
They took us everywhere, 5th Avenue, the Moma, Greenwich village, Little Italy, China town, ground zero, a Jazz restaurant....They seemed to have more energy than we had.
Today we went to a brunch with my sisters friends where they played some really nice Klezmer music and afterwards we walked around in Harlem, where we went to an African market.
Harlem is supposed to be dangerous, but to me it was all very peacefull and quiet.

It's my first visit to the US, and I have to be honest it looks a lot like on TV!
Yellow cabs, high buildings, endless streets....funny accents....
and everything is big here.... people are very friendly.
Just my feet are somewhat exhausted...

On my way......

Welcome to my blog

This is the start of a big journey.
The coming 4 and half months my sister and me will be travelling through South America, visiting New York, Argentina, Chili and Brazil.
I will try to keep you posted with my new experiences, inspirations, etc.

Feel free to comment, I will be glad to hear from you!
For now my best greetings from New York!