Argentina

Happy New Year! It is amazing how much things can change in a year. The last couple of months have been hectic, busy and amazing. I spent New Years in Cape Town. Cape Town definitely lived up to the hype for me and I quickly fell in love with it. It is my favorite city to date. I left Africa a week ago and it felt like leaving home. I became very comfortable in Africa and I felt the same anxiety leaving as I felt leaving the US five months ago. Weird, huh? I will be back one day. I have missed Malawi since the day I left two months ago. I stopped in Madrid for three days staying with a friend from home before to Buenos Aires. It is an amazing city and I would like to visit the city when it is not freezing cold and rainy. Don’t ask me why I had to go to Madrid first, but my travel agent said it was cheaper. I have decided to let her go and book the rest if my flights on my own. It was very liberating to mail back the rest of my plane tickets. I now have no timeline for the rest of my trip. It is a wonderful feeling!

I am now in Argentina, a country famous for its beef. The first thing I did upon arrival was go straight to a steakhouse and have the biggest T-bone they had. It was amazing, totally different than any beef I have ever eaten. I have had a couple of bad ones since then but the beef here is still excellent.

Buenos Aires is also a great city. I definitely think I am getting spoiled travelling from Cape Town to Madrid and then to Buenos Aires. All three are amazing cities and are among the best in the world. After walking around the BA for a couple of days I headed to Mar del Plata through a connection I made through W&L (my university- Washington and Lee). It has been great to see some friendly faces and tell college stories again. I am staying on a farm called Santa Isabel with the Estrada family. Mr Estrada, his daughter Carol and Wes McCrae are all W&L grads and even though I have only met everyone in passing before, we were able to connect immediately through our common experiences at W&L. It has been great and it brings back good memories.

They have a major rabbit problem on the farm and I was able to help alleviate that problem last night when we went rabbit hunting. These rabits are not the nice little rabbits like we have at home. They are huge, being almost two feet long when stretched out. They are big suckers.

My plans are up in the air right now. I have some plans to work on a couple different farms in Argentina for the next month but after that I may venture into Chile, Bolivia or Brazil. I don’t know yet.