Ilyana Erika Duran-Contreras, porteña provisional

Rule Number Seven: If going to Colonia, make sure to rent your golf cart early.

If I ever wanted to become an expat and live in argentina, I could do so very easily, and illegally. I went to Colonia, Uruguay yesterday, an amazing little town outside of Buenos Aires. To get there is simple, call the Buquebus(bus/boat in Uruguayan) to reserve tickets, y ya. It takes an hour, depending on how much you pay for your ticket (spend 8 dollars more and you don’t have to take the very slow 8 hr boat). Then you’re there. Simple. Easy. Beautiful.

I did a project on Colonia at the beginning of the semester when I had to do an oral presentation on Uruguay. Its a colonial town, full name Colonia del Sacramento. Its on a peninsula, where a wealthy Portuguese man grew all different species of trees not native to the area. For years it was smuggling town, built by the portuguese in hopes that they would be able to steal some of Buenos Aires’ success. Now, it is a popular day trip for porteños.

So, We got up early, very early (6:30) for our 8:45 boat, slept for like an hour while on the buque, and then arrived in sunny perfect Colonia. The weather was a particular treat, in BA it had been cold and cloudy when we left, but by the time we arrived in Colonia it was 75 and sunny, with a nice “ocean” breeze. It felt like home. Colonia is a small town, and depending on the street you can see the river on both sides of you, in its chocolate-y brown goodness.

Colonia is a resort type town, without all of the commercial name brand aspects of living in a place like santa monica. Yet, aside from the weather, it has its similarities. Homeless people! On this first beach that we came across there were two guys and a dog camped out. Something like this shouldn’t be so comforting to me, but it is.

We spent the day wandering around basically moving around from food place to food place. More or less all of the museums and stores were closed because it was labor day, and by the time we decided that we wanted to go rent mopeds, every single one at all of the rental places were gone. But, we had great time. The city was calm, and old and beautiful.

Also for some reason there was an old car show going on, so Colonia looked like Havana. And, the best part of the whole day was:

I hadn’t seen a sunset in who knows how long. The buildings in Buenos Aires are all tall enough for me to have not seen a sunset (or sunrise) in 3 months.

Oooh! And I actually took all of these pictures from my new replacement camera. I love my mother.

3 years ago |

Rule Number Six:Make sure to have someone take pictures of you if you are doing important things.

“Ilyana, this version is much more polished and yet still retains the spirit of the original which was evocative and almost philosophical yet also concrete, sensorial, nature-based. I love it. It will read wonderfully at the Book Fair.
This is a great piece, striking and original on a difficult topic – congratulations. ”

Oh why thank you Anna Kazumi Stahl.

I am soaked through and through. Every inch of my body has been covered in water, glacier water, and water from the sky above. I have just spent the past four hours on what could have been another planet. Not a single sign of life, except the explorers in yellow raincoats, astronauts in their own right. My passport, once in pristine condition now has ink bleeding from its pages. Ireland and Italy, have melted together into an fading brown blob, and the fresh Chilean stamp that was once red and black is now dripped into the pockets of my formerly white North Face vest. Kleenex have gone soggy under five layers, and my toes are swimming in glacier water. The glacier wins.

It started with one. It had to. First one unsuspecting snowflake. There it was free falling from the perfect climate, moist, cold, high up. On this day the planets aligned, the stars were just right, and the temperature in the sky above was less than 32 degrees. And then, a Snowflake was born. Crystallized at birth, tumbled from a cloud rolled over and over and out of its nest, floats to the earth, in so much dark, yet luminous. Little flecks of heaven, born to melt into the planet. It is a transitory dancer, on the windowpanes of time. It is perfect, young, fresh, new. There never has been, nor will there ever be another snowflake just like this.

It has fallen, and along with it come other perfect, young, fresh, new snowflakes.

They arrive, one by one, until there are tens, and then twenties, and then hundreds. Hundred quickly turn to thousands, and those thousand multiply. They multiply, and grow, and increase. Soon the floor has turned to white. And that white turns to more white, What first looked like a sprinkling of flour now looks like mountains. Mountain of flour. Perfect for baking. But no one comes for the flour, and soon it stops snowing. Here, each and every snowflake is content. They stay, and soon more come and call this place home. With time the snowflakes mature. They have hardened, gaining both knowledge and experience. And during this epoch the snowflakes have melted, and reformed, the young ideals they once held have been replaced. It takes a while – years, many years until they have become more than just mountains of flour.

They are now inseparable. The collective snowflake. Tiny frames of dimensional glass. Together they are a force, they can crush, they can kill, beautiful. Their grandeur is unmatched by most. With this grandeur something is lost.. What once made each and every one unique is gone. Each delicate spindle of ice has melded to form a giant’s ice cube Now, it is the unity, and ubiquity of the collective snowflake that gives this body of white and blue its power. There is power in numbers. If one were to veer from this path nothing would happen. It is just one. The I is nothing without the We.

I am standing on what was once one snowflake. On this day rain pours from the grey above. The water pelts the surface of the ice. Drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. It comes and keeps on coming, there is no hope of sun in the sky, merely the grey of the clouds that has followed us from Ushuaia, through Chile, and finally to here, Perito Moreno, the collective snowflake. The rain has permeated the white fortress, just as it has permeated the five layers of clothing. It has soaked through the surface, through the smallest of spaces in the glacier, just as it has through my clothes and into my passport. And slowly, you can see it. Water is washing away the collective snowflake. Drop by drop it is carrying away snowflake after snowflake, washing them away into el Lago Argentino, where it will be drank by birds, scooped into my water bottle, to be drunk at a later time. Maybe the glacier has not won after all.

3 years ago |

On a completely separate note…

Tomorrow I will be reading at the Buenos Aires Book Fair. Its going to be at the US embassy stand, and I’ll get to use a microphone and feel all fancy and important and stuff.

When the piece I wrote for it is 100 percent fine tuned, I’ll post it on here, but until then, wish me some luck.

http://www.el-libro.org.ar/

And for the record this book fair is considered one of the top five in the worlddddddd.

3 years ago |

Rule Number Five: Don’t leave your camera in the exterior pocket of your checked luggage, it will get stolen.

Thus far only two of the photos I’ve put on here have been my own. I had grandiose dreams about the snapshot videos I would make of my daily 30 minute walk to school, so that my Mother could see would I would see every day, and the twenty five facebook albums that would come up after spring break.

None of this has happened, and will never happen. The first project with the walk to school never even began because I was always forgetting to take my camera with me to school. The second never happened because the moment we unpacked all of our things in Ushuaia (on the first day of spring break) my camera was nowhere to be found.

Welcome to Spring Break 2009

This was a 10 day excursion taking me as far south as is humanly possible (without leaving land, and without going to Antarctica), up through the south of Chile, and back into Argentina. Being in Buenos Aires for the semester left me with a few options as to where I could go. A)Chile, to the beaches and Santiago, with a pit stop in mendoza. B)Brazil, to Rio or Sao Paulo, with a stop at Iguazu. C) Peru, to see Machu Picchu D) Stay in Buenos Aires. And finally E) Road trip through patagonia.

I have already been to Mendoza, which is listed in A; Iguazu listed in B; basically all of C; and I live in D.  So, Spring Break 2009 was planned to be an epic road trip around the southern end of South America. Planned being the key word.

Only a week or so before our adventure did we realize that only one of the four of us drove stick. This is a problem seeing as it would be like 500 US dollars a day to rent an automatic. This ended up being a giant fail. So instead of the Uber cool mental images of us with the windows down, aviators on, perfect roadtrip playlist blasting, a good portion of our time would be asleep on 15 hour bus rides. Sweet.

Days One-Three, Ushuaia:

This is one of the more beautiful sunrises I have seen in my life, it was us getting on the airplane in Buenos Aires at like 6 in the morning. Our flight wasn’t direct, it first stopped in El Calafate, which we would return to at the end of our trip. We ended up in Ushuaia around noon. Flying into the city was exciting. When our plane broke through the thick cloud cover we were greeted with intense blue choppy waters, and snow capped peaks. A taxi took us to our hostel, and this is where I discovered my camera to be missing. (Welcome to the end of the world!) After discussing with our hostel man about our options for the day, we headed into town, took care of some logistic thingys, and headed off.

Welcome to the HMS Beagle. Or its reincarnate rather, the Moreno Jr. It was the catamaran that we boarded on our trip around the bay of Ushuaia, and the surrounding,  famous, Beagle Channel. We saw Comerants, Sea Lions, Seals, a lighthouse or two and the windblown trees of Ushuaia.

Because of bus complications (Ushuaia is on a set of Islands known as Tierra Del Fuego, and its hard to find buses going from here to Chile, especially on a saturday) we ended up spending an extra day in Ushuaia.

So day two was a leisurely and enjoyable one. We bummed around town, collecting more bus tickets and picking up lunch at the grocery store. From here we boarded a minivan type bus, and drove the thirty minutes or so to Parque Nacional Tierra Del Fuego.

I think this was my favorite day of break. We did a three hour costal hike, at lunch on the beach(which was an incredible slate blue), saw bunnies(lots and lots of bunnies) and ran into some other nyu kids on the trail. We spent the day laughing, and strolling leisurely around some of the most beautiful scenery I have yet encountered in my life. At the end of the day, we went out to dinner in the nicest restaurant in Ushuaia, I wasn’t particularly impressed.

Our third and final day in Ushuaia was actually a giant disney ride. I’m pretty convinced.

We were picked up at our hostel in a 4x4 Land Rover, by Sebastian, our guide(whose presence only confirmed the fact that I am going to name my son, if I have a son, Sebastian.) and the driver, whose name escapes me, but I know he looked like a total bad ass. We went and picked up more people, three more actually, and then took off. First stop was a dog sledding place. During the winter, when the entire valley is covered in snow the company that runs our off roading excursion does dog sledding here. If you look in the picture of the dog, you’ll notice the slightly yellowed grass behind it. This in fact is not grass, but instead peat moss, whose depth goes down to I think thirty feet. Its squishy, and when you walk around on it, you bounce.

I was in that car. It was enthralling, to say the least.

This is our driver(whose name I still cannot recall) pretending that he didn’t mean to do that, and jumping out of the car in panic. He was actually a pretty hilarious dude, we didn’t realize the entire four hours of driving was an act, and that this guy could drive this in his sleep. (Half the time we were gripping anything we could get our hands on because the car was stuck at a 45 degree angle, and our faces were two inches from the mud outside of our window).

This was theme park ride number one, as half the time we felt exactly like we were on the indiana jones ride at disneyland, and even broke into song on several occasions.

After the 4x4 excursion, we had a nice asado with a bunch of other people that were on the day trip, they were mainly just other college students down in Ushuaia for the weekend.

The day finished off with canoeing, just as if we were on that river that surrounds tom sawyers island. Except, we weren’t on any sort of track, and were in danger of capsizing at any moment in to the nearly frozen icy blue lake. Adventurous to say the least.

At the end of the day we were exhausted, and had to get to bed early because our bus into Chile was leaving at like 7 in the morning, so we went out to dinner, did some grocery shopping, and went to bed.

These posts are taking a long time to write, but next time:

• The straight of magellan
• Puerto Natales
• More Passport stamps!
• Delicious Pizza
• Campingggggg
• glaciers and what not

3 years ago |

Rule Number 5: When you find yourself in a rut, chop all of your hair off.

This is Cafe Tortoni, the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires. Its famous for having held many of argentinas greatest writers, including Borges. I had coffee there on friday, it wasn’t anything spectacular, and if anything the ambiance made me want to enjoy a really really really delicious banana split, which unfortunately was not on the menu.

There is a new restaurant that has been brought to our attention while here in BA.

http://www.natural-deli.com/

It’s pretty delicious, you can check the website, and judge based off of that. However, its familiarity to home is what I think is at the root of its appeal. If you order it, you can be served giant glasses of gingery lemonade (with ice!), a bagel with lox and cream cheese, and a chocolate muffin! Interestingly enough, the place has been held up like 5 times in the last month. I think something like 3 kids at NYU have been robbed there already. This however, has not stopped me from going.

Today over lunch me at two friends were discussing our qualms about the semester. We have no real complaints, aside from the tertiary things that I have written about before. Instead, todays conversation was more introspective. Yes, we have done some pretty incredible things while in Argentina, but we are at that point in the semester where we have become incredibly comfortable with out surroundings. Comfortable to a fault. Routines are fine and great and extremely useful, however, being in a foreign country with little to no responsibility should not equate to a routine. 

Coming back from spring break, it was a general resolution that we were going to take back Buenos Aires, and I did. Kinda. Sorta. My stomach did mostly, and for that I paid a pretty penny. (Thanks mom and dad for all the delicious food you paid for last week!) I enjoyed my evenings as well, went to this lounge-y place on the river front on friday. Saturday though, was going to be my cultural excursion. I was supposed to go to the MALBA to check out the Manuel Alvarez Bravo exhibit, and the National Bank of Mexico’s collection as well. What actually ended up happening was me getting up and going for Burritos with my roommate (A new chipotle style restaurant called, California Burrito Company). After burritos, we stopped by this store, where I ended up picking up presents for people, and buying this really gorgeous notebook that cost way too much money looking back on it. By four pm we had ended up back at our room to nap for awhile before going to the museum, but it actually turned into 4 days of napping, because a cold bit me in the ass right as I fell asleep.

What started as a successful reexamination of this city, ended in me not leaving my room for approximately four days. Yippee! 

Something worth noting, I’m reading at the Buenos Aires book fair in about a week, at the US Embassy stand.

3 years ago |

Things I will be thankful for when I get home

• Agua de la canilla gratis
• Functioning internet
• Giant cups of coffee
• DIET coke, none of this Coca light they got going on
• fast restaurant service

I think im going to start keeping a running list.

3 years ago |

Rule Number Four: When in Rome, do as the Romans, or when in Buenos Aires, do as the Porteños.

Because at this point I am really forcing myself to update this thing, I am going to try and distract with photos. Really, all I can think about at this very second is my few days back in New York before I head home. I want to go to the West Village and eat some cupcakes, or banana pudding, and relive final day in NY May 08 all over again.

Anywho, I have not been faithful to this, there are many things that have been happening, that should be documented. I went to Mendoza last weekend.

In order to get to this point in my adventure, we were picked up from our hostel from two people we had never met, and asked to get into their humvee type vehicle. Looking back on it, this probably wasn’t a good idea. We were driven out of Mendoza, and to this little shack type ranch, were there were horses and dogs running around. There were some ranchero/gaucho men sitting at a table grilling some asado over an open fire. Our guide came out to meet us, and he was a gaucho if I had ever seen one, long hair, fabio type build, accompanied by the proper billowing white shirt. We sat around for awhile, he made us some mate, Mendoza style(Mate, Thyme, and Sugar - its delicious).  We then went out on our two hour excursion. It was beautiful, and the sky was a blue that I had never seen before.

The next day we went wine tasting, and biked from vineyard to vineyard.

Beautiful, is it not? This was our final stop at a Chocolate/Liqueur factory(not really an industrial factory, but store didn’t seem like the proper word).

We came back sunday afternoon, school monday, tuesday was a national holiday, so naturally I went to a RADIOHEAD concert. I have been waiting to see Thom Yorke and company for over a year now, and every time im in LA, they’re in New York, and every time im in New York, they’re in LA or San Francisco. It was a problem. A giant problem until I was informed that they would be in Buenos Aires when I was in Buenos Aires. Now imagine that.  

QUILMES Rock, sans the Quilmes for some inexplicable reason. 40,000 people in a rugby stadium. I was on my feet for literally 11 hours, and I could never say that it wasn’t worth it. This concert was epic. EPIC. Epic. I’m glad I waited to see them, and I’m glad that when I finally did, it was in a place that they had never been to either. OK Computer and Kid A were well represented, and there was lots of In Rainbows. They closed with  Creep. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Well, except for some breathing room. Argentines love mobs, and I experienced that in full effect, being as close to the stage as I was. I do indeed have to thank my trusty concert partner, sam, for my life. After the concert, we had to walk for a solid hour as we and 40,000 other people tried to find cabs. Good times. Great Times.

BAFICI started on thursday, so I dragged a few people to Buenos Aires’ own international film festival to enjoy none other than Wes Anderson’s masterpiece, Rushmore. We paid a whole 6 pesos (like 1.65 us). They enjoyed it, which is good because I don’t think I could be friends with people that didn’t appreciate the humor that is Wes Anderson.

Yesterday was also equally enjoyable, Argentina v. Venezuela World Cup Qualifiers. Soooooooo good.

You couldn’t ask for a better South American Experience. Or maybe you could, in fact, yes I think you can, and I’m going to do it. This week. Patagonia. Here I come. Penguins, and Glaciers, and hiking, and camping. Im going to the end of the world.

3 years ago |

Rule Number Three: If your blog post deletes, try, try again.

I think this was my slump week. And, in order to remedy that I turned to food. American food, comfort food, fatty food, unhealthy food. Its all cheap, and its all delicious, and my plan was working out until friday when the food turned on me, and when it turned on me it turned soooo hard. Complete 180. I don’t think I have much of an appetite anymore, and when I do eat, im eating chocolate easter bunnies (as I am presently doing), or McDonalds (because it tastes the same) or quesadillas (because they easy to make, cheap, and taste the same the same even here in argentina). We went for Armenian, food so some delicious hummus, and falafel and such, but seeing as the wait was to be so long, we went and had some picadas at another restaurant. Screw picadas, and screw any type of food that rids me of my appetite aqui, en este pais. So, there went my friday night and saturday, and a little but of sunday, me being generally uncomfortable and nauseous.  Saturday though, we went to a play. “Venimos de Muy Lejos”  is a work that has been performed for over 15 years, and while it is presented in a really cool way, trying to comprehend a mix of spanish and italian, simply isnt conducive to understanding. So yeah, minor failure on that front.

That night I noticed something. The play was in Boca, right next to a river, so when we got there it was windy (and smelly). We were cold, legit cold. And we took this with a grain of salt, we assumed it was because of our location. Not true. The weather is changing, I wore a sweater today. And jeans. together, at once. Fall is cominggggggg. I certainly didn’t bring enough clothes for the cooler weather. We’ll see how this goes.

Also, incase my five readers have not noticed, I find it difficult to keep my blog updated. The photo, from the beginning of this post is in homage to the entry that I wrote two weeks ago, that was lengthy, and accidentally deleted off of my computer. That killed the writing fervor for awhile. So, update, things worth mentioning in my life en este momento. I went to the Iguazú falls. Hands down the most breathtaking site I have ever seen. Not even photos will do it justice, so I will not begin to attempt to describe the majestic beauty. What I can mention though, was the 15 hour bus ride there, and the 17 hour bus ride back. We were served coffee, and cookies, and then a meal, and then champagne, and then another meal, and then more coffee. Fabulous. And so comfortable. And we watched movies, and damn, best way I have ever traveled. The way back though, was longer, involved South American soldiers, and I just think we were generally disillusioned and tired. Hotel also, ohhh our hotel. We stayed at the Sheraton, which is right in the National Park, so we didnt have to trek back and forth 30 min each of the two days we were there. It was glorious. When we weren’t off exploring, we lounging by the pool, being this close to the equator paired with my easily tanned skin made the weekend a success.

The weekend after this, I went to La Bomba de Tiempo, whose photo is featured above. Check their music on itunes, I havent finished downloading the album yet, so I cant speak to the power of the music when its not live, but damn. Hands down the best concert experience of my life. And because I have seen them them twice, it was the best concert going experience x2.

Next weekend should also be pretty incredible. Im going to Mendoza, its the harvest festival and there will be wine tasting. Im looking forward to it muchisimo.

3 years ago |