Just a quick post letting everyone know that we will be away for 2 weeks and won’t be posting anything.
You will hear from us again between 9th and 15th of April, then we will let you know where we went and what we did on our vacation.
Happy Easter to everyone 
The days are getting cooler and the Fall, according to Argentinians, started officially 21st of March. This means that during the days the temperatures are between 20-25 celcius but during the nights, it can even drop to 10degrees. For me, the Fall starts when the Autumn colors will show up, but now the trees are still green. Nowadays it’s a bit more comfortable to do outdoor activities than it was a month ago when the temperature was reaching 40.
On Friday we visited a park in the Bosques de Palermo, called El Rosedal. It is a park full of roses, inaugurated in the year 1914. The park has 15,000 different rose bushes and 1,189 species of roses in every color of the rainbow. The entrance was free and I really enjoyed the park! El Rosedal is the park for people who love roses.
Today, on Sunday, we visited Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires, the Zoo located in Palermo. It is a really old Zoo, that was inaugurated in the year 1888. The entrance pass was 40pesos per person (6.90e), which was not bad price at all: We spent 3hours walking around the park, seeing monkeys, parrots, giraffes, a polar bear, a lion and many other animals! At the park there was also a possibility to buy Animal food to feed animals, but we didn’t choose that option.
My favorite animal was a small Meerkat (in Spanish: Suricata):
I also liked a lot of rabbit-like animals that were running free in the Buenos Aires Zoo. We found out, that the animal is called Mara and it is related to guinea pigs. They weren’t so afraid of people and one of them even had courage to come closer to our camera:
Julius’ favorite was Hamadryas baboon’s: Those are monkeys that have pink bottoms. Especially the baby monkey was really cute
The weather forecast says that it is going to rain tonight so we will spend our evening in our apartment watching movies.
Yes, You read right: Horses.
So this Sunday we had planned to extend our weekend with horses and go to Hipodromo Argentino de Palermo to see real horse racing (not the one you can see in Finland, but the kind that they race in the USA). Maria met a woman called Wendy when she was an Au pair in the states. She’s from Belgium, but now she moved to Buenos Aires. We asked her if she wanted to join us at Hipodromo, but instead she offered to cook us a Sunday brunch and then go see the racing.
First we dressed for the occasion, because horse racing is taken very seriously in this part of the world we thought that I should at least wear long pants. Then we took a bus to Wendy’s place and had a great Sunday brunch there. After few hours of catching up we left for the Hipodromo. Horse betting is very popular here, there was a race every 30 minutes for the whole day from 3 pm all the way until the last race at 9 pm. For every race people were shouting the name of the horse or the jockey and after every race 30 % of the people were cheering and the rest were shouting something we didn’t understand, but perhaps its better that way.
All in all, yet another great day outside with little clouds in the sky, Unlike tonight. When I started to write this, the sky was clear and the sun was shining. When I got to the middle part, it started to hail. These huge chunks of ice fell from the sky and everyone was running on the street. You could hear cars being hit with these big balls of ice and people honking so they may get out of the way to a garage. Gratefully we weren’t outside during this time and we didn’t get hurt, but I’m sure someone did.
I ran outside to grab couple from the street and took a “reference picture” of them
Today we had an awesome day! Julius had found a website of a place, that offers western-style horseback riding near Buenos Aires. (http://www.caballos-alapar.com) At first, he was thinking that I should try it, but I suggested that maybe we should do this together and he agreed to join me.
At 3pm in the afternoon we were at the intersection of Av.San Juan and Lima. There we met Miriam, a woman who gave us a ride 30minutes south from BA. We were a bit surprised because she spoke English so well. (She is originally from Holland)
She drove us to a place where she and his business partner Adrian had a stable of horses. We had some maté together and then we jumped on to saddles. We rode across the Parque Provincial Pereyra Iraola. It’s a UNESCO natural park, because of it’s unique biodiversity. We rode in the woods around 3hours: old trees, bambu -jungles and palm-trees were just so indescribably beautiful.
I had a really nice horse called Pintado: It wasn’t too lazy and it loved cantering! Julius did cantering with his horse too: even though it was his first time on the horse, he enjoyed it. Miriam and Adrian were surprised on how good first-timer Julius was Western-style of riding is a bit different from the English -style that I’ve used to, but after getting used to it, it feels so comfortable and easy way to ride the horse.
The day was quickly over, way too quickly! I would have wanted to last it forever! When we were returning back to the stables it was already sunset. On the field we cantered for the last time. Our guide Miriam took nice photos and couple of videos, here is one of them (Works also as a proof of Julius’ riding skills):
At the stables, we went inside to have some pastries and a hot drink. We got some feedback from our riding techniques and tips on how to improve, before Miriam drove us back to Buenos Aires. When we got back home around 9pm, we were so tired, but today we truly had a blast!
The past Friday we took a trip with UADE to Fray Bentos, Uruguay. UPM has a pulp factory there and the purpose of our trip was to have lunch at the UPM premises and then take a guided factory tour. We decided to take a long weekend from school and to extend our Uruguayan trip to Montevideo and Colonia del Sacramento.
On Friday morning we began our journey from UADE at around 8 AM. We traveled all the way to Uruguay by bus. Stopping twice for gas & snacks. Our initial plan was to arrive at UPM at around 12 PM, but due to the traffic and the strict customs check we arrived at around 3 PM. By this time everyone was starving. We had lunch and started our tour around the facilities. The tour itself wasn’t more than 1 hour, which was for us very disappointing. The round trip, including the tour and lunch at UPM costed us 80 euros per person. Personally I would have expected to see more of the factory, I would have liked to hear step by step how the wood turns into pulp. We left the factory at around 6pm and thanks to UADE we got a lift to the town of Fray Bentos.
At first glance we were shocked. The part of town we drove through was a huge slum area. Luckily it was just the outskirts of the town. We arrived to the bus station or “center”, it is a town with 23 thousand habitats so center is “center” for us. Everyone in the bus was laughing at us and wishing us “good luck”; We stepped out of the bus and started our journey to the unknown. We had only 2 things in our minds: How are we going to get Uruguayan pesos here? Which bus company goes to Montevideo, do they have free places and when does it leave? Firstly we decided to find the bus tickets. We went to a desk, which we had checked from the internet in Buenos Aires, that sold tickets between Fray Bentos and Montevideo. We asked for tickets and the man behind the counter showed us a seat map, with 3 seats free. We bought 2 and were very lucky to get them. After that we went to ask around for an ATM. We asked this very kind lady who didn’t know, but she was kind enough to go in a nearby store and ask from there. We got some cash and were on our way out of Fray Bentos during the same day.
We arrived to Montevideo in the middle of the night. It was quite scary at the Montevideo Bus station in the middle of the night, but we managed to get away without being robbed. We had printed a map from the internet, where it showed the way from the bus station to the hostel we had booked. What we didn’t know was the fact that Googlemaps wanted to show the way from an old bus station that hasn’t been used for over 20 years, not the new one. So we ended up walking 4.5 kilometers in the Uruguayan night.
The next day started with a breakfast at the hostel. Shortly we were on our way to explore the city. One thing to note about Montevideo and Uruguay in general is the Maté. Even though in Buenos aires we have been told that we should try mate, you don’t really see it that much in Buenos Aires. Maté is everywhere in Uruguay. Maté is their national drink, its a kind of herbal tea with mateine (same as caffeine but a bit different), we didn’t try it yet, but we bought our own maté and bombilla (a thing that you drink it with). After awhile we found a a nearby tourist information and got a map and directions to see the parliament house. We took his advice and headed there. On the way we discovered that Montevideo is a shopper’s dream. The shops are quite cheap comparing to European prices and the people are so nice. In one store the shop clerks were dancing to the music, which for us was strange but still very cool. Both of us bought shoes for a fairly cheap price. Afterwards we found the parliament house and it was very big and beautiful for such a small country with only 3-4 million habitats. A short trek back to the hostel, we got our backpack and were on our way back to Tres Cruces -station to catch a bus to Colonia.
The bus stopped at Colonia just after 10pm (this was saturday) and this time it was only half a kilometer walk to the hotel we had booked. Our plan for Colonia was simple: On Sunday we wanted to see the beaches and on Monday we wanted to see the old town of Colonia. After a good night’s rest we had a very delicious and local breakfast of medialunas and facturas and were on our way to find the perfect beach. The day was sunny without a single cloud in the sky. It was somewhere between 25 and 35 degrees. Simply put: A perfect day out at the beach. We had Googled for a place called Playa Ferrando and that’s where we went. On our way back we found a small, but also the only, shopping center in Colonia. It had around 10 stores, it was still open so we decided to see what it offered. We bought some ice cream and we headed back to the hotel to cure our mediocre sunburns.
The next day we woke up, feeling a bit sad that we had to go to Buenos Aires in the evening. The breakfast was awesome again and it was time for the second task: The old town. The old town was quite pretty, with the price of 2 euros per person to enter a museum or an old house, it felt like a tourist trap. A couple of tourist groups wandering around the area each speaking a different language felt like nothing compared to our amazing guide called “Maria Pietilä with a free pamphlet from the tourist agency” (see the picture below). After few hours of touring around the town, we had lunch and headed to the ferry that would take us back to Buenos Aires. 1 hour prior to our departure, there was a massive storm, but luckily it calmed so the ship could leave. The ship was quite nice, but you shouldn’t even try to compare it with the big cruise ships that operate between Finland and Sweden. The “Sea-bus” as I would call it, arrived in Buenos Aires at around 10 pm.
Buenos Aires felt like home after such a long trip, even though the air feels so much polluted here than the beach and even though the people are not as nice here as they were in Uruguay. Now its time to try the maté and relax.
