Sunday, August 31, 2008

Happy but Hawjawnhada


Riding the bus back to our hostel from the airport after dropping off the boys, we met an author named Carlos... He was a funny character who had brought his son to the airport three hours away just to check and see how everything looked to prepare his nerves for his first flight ever the following week. He writes about all the lingering effects of the guerilla-dictator wars throughout South America in the past half century. I would detail more of it, but I´m only on page 3 of the book he gave me since he uses a lot of Argentinian slang in his writing.

Anyway, when we finally arrived back in our hostel, Tango City, there was a very heavy stillness. We then realized that it was the first time we had been truly alone for the whole trip (our first two weeks were with Wes and Jenny, and the next five were with Kiwi and Gyu). It was a good feeling romantically, considering that it is our honeymoon, but at the same time there was an emptiness. I had been especially touched by Kiwi´s final words at the airport- normally a fairly unemotional guy, he had teared up and said, ¨Daniel, I respect you a lot... take good care of my sister.¨

There´s a Korean word, hawjawnhada, that perfectly describes the feeling of having someone leave while their footprint remains on your heart. I think it hit me then that the two boys weren´t just friends, but are now my family, and will be for the rest of my life.

In honor of them, I thought it would be appropriate to show some highlight photos from their journeys with us from Gyu´s camera (I burned them onto a CD the day he left). Here are the pictures of them with their respective mothers (the first one is Kiwi with my mother-in-law)


Gyu´s look before he became a weathered traveller...

Gyu, in Heaven, after finishing off his first Inca Kola (bubble gummy CocaCola specialty of Peru)

Me giving Kiwi his first travel tattoo...

Kiwi´s first appearance as ¨Inca Man¨on his trek in the Amazon...



Peru´s healthy dish to go with the Inca Kola, salchipapas (cut up hot dogs, french fries, lots of grease and condiments)

The effects of too many night buses...

Balgan yangmal (red socks) takes Kiwi down in a wrestling match (I think he may have been sleeping though so it probably didn´t count)

Kiwi reflecting over Ollantaytambo ruins in Peru...

The boys´trip to Machu Picchu...



The night dance on Lake Titicaca´s shores...

A typical South American fruit market in Arequipa, Peru

Gyu finishes every last drop of his sundaekuk (stuffed pig intestines) in the pseudo-Koreatown of Buenos Aires...

Kiwi´s final night in South America, out pondering the journey on our balcony in Buenos Aires...

And the overall summary of our 6 weeks together... a chart of every town-city we went to and our combined ratings of several categories.

Since it may be hard to read on your computer, the top five were Amantani, Peru (147), Arequipa, Peru (144), Ollantaytambo, Peru (144), Buenos Aires, Argentina (141), and Cordoba, Argentina (131) and the last place by far was Puno, Peru with a resounding 63. Ironic that our very lowest and very highest were a mere 3 hours away from each other by boat.

A few people had asked me how it was to have multiple people along on the honeymoon, when it is traditionally a two person event. It was honestly wonderful. I really enjoyed the time getting to know the two guys more, and was very sad to see them go. On our first meal that we cooked after they left, we had way too much rice left over because we were so used to cooking for four. And when we moved on to our next destination, I kept thinking of things around us that they would like to eat, see, do, etc. Backpacking with someone brings you very close in a short time and virtually guarantees a sense of hawjawnhada.

On the day after they left, JooYeon and I made another attempt at Koreatown and this time found it (the REAL it) within a block from a nearby subway stop. The real Koreatown was quite large - maybe 5 blocks by 3 blocks - but had a very eerie feel to it, almost like a ghosttown. At first we thought something was wrong because all the doors were closed and almost no one was in the streets. But it turns out that it´s a more dangerous section of Buenos Aires and the Koreans are known as the rich people of the area, so I think that sets up a situation where there is a fair amount of theft, attempted theft, and mistrust.

But we didn´t come for socializing, we came for some key Korean groceries and for another good Korean meal, both of which we found easily. We even stumbled accross a HUGE Korean Internet room which allowed JooYeon to type Korean characters for the first time in two months, an important step because she could finally write her family and also signed us up to start translating again as we travel (we had taken some time off while the boys were with us). The following pictures are humorous and interesting, but only for our Korean counterparts, so sorry about that...




As we were leaving Koreatown, I noticed that several cars had jugs of wiperfluid, coolant, etc. on top of them...

I asked a nearby local, who told me that this was the sign that something was for sale. So I took my waterbottle and put up a nice new car for sale myself...

After filling our stomachs and grocery bags with mashitnun food, we spent one more night in Buenos Aires, and then packed our drastically heavier bags and headed across the river to Uruguay, but that shall be detailed in the next episode...

Friday, August 29, 2008

Our Final Days Together in Buenos Aires


Feeling that night buses gave us a little more flex in our evertightening budget, and dearly hoping for no more snoring senores, we took a bus from Cordoba to the illustrious Buenos Aires. Now, we had both read and heard that portenos (residents of Buenos Aires) were infamous for their sour disposition and pessimism. This turned out to be, at least in our experience, completely false. Nearly everyone we talked with bent over backwards to help us, converse for awhile, offer us suggestions, and basically continued the same stream of almost unbelievable friendliness that we had experienced in Cordoba.


But of course, this was little consolation to poor Kiwi, who was now dearly regretting he had ever said anything in our family conference about not experiencing enough "real" travelling. I asked him if he was nervous as we pulled into the huge station in Buenos Aires, and he said, trembling, that he was not nervous but excited. If you missed the last entry, I felt Kiwi would benefit in the long run from having just a little taste of travelling alone, which was a pretty big step for him. Keep in mind this is a city of 13 million people, this was his first ever international adventure alone, he didn't speak Spanish and his English was limited, AND I had kept the guidebook so he didn't even have any kind of map or idea of where to stay (perhaps I went a little far on that last one, but I felt it would eventually give him a greater sense of confidence). Nevertheless, he bravely stood there looking small, while the rest of us grabbed our bags and walked away, turning back often to wave and give him the thumbs up.

The initial navigations of Buenos Aires were simplified greatly by the cheap and quite interesting subway. Line A, for example, was built 95 years ago and has a wooden interior with doors that you have to pry open and which only slam shut from momentum awhile after the subway is in motion (leaving little comfort for those standing next to the doors!)

Settling in a rather gloomy dim-lit hotel (it´s always hard to find a good place to stay for the first night in a town because the heavy backpacks lead to rather quick decisions), we went straight for the main pedestrian street, Avenida Florida where we sampled some fine Buenos Airean cuisine... McDonalds! Though I had repeatedly censored such a move several times earlier in the trip, I had to admit that their breakfast sandwiches were more appealing after a long night bus than the standard Argentinian breakfast of simple bread. In any case, the two story, plant-filled, couch-decored McDonalds was a cultural experience in itself.

Another unavoidable cultural point is the tango. It is everywhere - in the music, the signs, and of course the occasional live street show...

(Just for the record, I´m not sure what dance the second picture portrays with the ladies balancing jars on their heads, but it´s probably not tango.)

On our second day in BA, we went to the huge Plaza de la Republica monument at precisely noon to meet our long lost traveler, Sir Kiwi. The only problem was, he wasn´t there. Joo, who had been a bit worried all night long (it didn´t help we had watched a full-length special on sexual predators in Spanish), started to fidget and I began to wonder if it had been such a great idea to push him out on his own...


But he finally did show up (thankfully). As it turned out, the actual navigations of the city were slightly challenging for him, but the real issue was simply figuring out what to do when you are travelling by yourself. Unless you´re able (or willing) to talk to others, it tends to get REALLY boring REALLY fast. It brought back flashes of my first independent adventures in the Netherlands where I wondered around looking for my hotel in what turned out to be the completely wrong city.

So Kiwi survived, and he reunited the foursome in time for us to do some serious shopping for mates, yerba mate, and various other Argentinian specialties. We then turned our interests towards an elusive target, the Koreatown of Buenos Aires. In trying to figure out how to actually get there, we asked several locals (none of them knew) and read up on the internet (where I mostly only found stories of people who had unsuccessfully searched for the mystical barrio). We finally picked one internet tale and decided to follow it. After a couple subway rides, an attempted bus journey, and a zigzagging walk of about 50 city blocks, we did indeed arrive in an area where we found a few Koreans and even a couple Korean restaurants. As an explanation for this picture, non-Korean speakers might be interested to know that the Korean text translates into ¨Joo Yeon¨who apparently has a hair parlor named after her!


On the boys´final day in South America, we took a trip towards Palermo - an older, wealthier district of Bueno Aires. Our first stop was Cat Park where we played a game as to who could spot the most cats (JooYeon was winning at 7 cats until we stopped playing because there were suddenly too many all around us)...



I had planned our final meal for a couple weeks... an extravagant steak dinner at one of the best steakhouses in Argentina, La Cabrera. Ironically, that morning Chris Longenecker, king of cuisine, wrote me knowing that I was in Buenos Aires, and told me I HAD to go to La Cabrera some time. And we were not at all disappointed! The opening salad itself almost didn´t fit on the table, and once the steaks came, I thought I was back in Korea with all the little accompanying cubiertos (side dishes)!


So as not to establish habits of overly elegant eating styles, as soon as we were back in the room, I indulged in our favorite new product... a carbonated water bottle with a pressurized spray top...


Both of the boys were a bit sad to leave South America, as were we to see them go... I´ll give a more complete summary on their share of the trip in the next blog entry... until then... ciao!

Argentina... the Land of the Friendly Mate


Sorry for the delay in entries... computers have been plentiful and cheap in Argentina, but many of them seem to block me from uploading pictures. Anyway, from the Atacama desert of Chile, we rode a bus through sandy roads filled with llamas, vicunas (cousins of the llamas), salt lakes, and even through the clouds (shown below... it was fun to get closer and closer to the clouds and finally plunge straight in!). After 10 hours, we arrived in Jujuy, Argentina and Joo jumped off to get a drink to quench her dry throat (after all it was a desert bus).

Getting money wasn't too bad, although I was surprised to find that the ATM shelled out bills that were so old they had been taped, torn, and retaped. In India when that happened, I would politely but firmly give it back to the person and demand a newer bill, but when an ATM gives them to you??? Finding a bus to transfer on was a bit more of a challenge unless we were willing to pay premium dinero or wait around five hours until 2 am (neither of which were appealing to any of us). Teamwork turned out to be the key... Gyu found an information desk, I talked to the guy who told me a busline that could go soon, Joo found the busline, and Kiwi... well, his laidback spirit helped ease some of the fastpaced tensions going on.

So 10 minutes later we were on yet another 12 hour bus ride, this time through countryside that looked very much like home. In the next seat over was a man who had the most explosive snores I've ever heard which made for 12 hours of sleepily gazing out the windows of the bus at the Argentinian countryside which looked remarkably similar to back home in Ohio.

In the morning, we pulled into Cordoba, Argentina. It was INCREDIBLE. Not so much the architecture, which itself was a beautiful blend of European stonework and South American flavor...
...nor even the delicious carnivorecentric cuisine consisting of lots of beef and milk (Our first meal was a set of 4 super panchos (hot dogs) smothered in sauces like bleu cheese, garlic, dill mayonaise, mushrooms, etc. and our second was a pair of couple ice cream cones)...

...or the romance of the flowery trees, the flavor of tango all around and the horsedrawn carriages side by side with the cars...

But the PEOPLE! My word! Of course, the perception of citizens of any country has a great deal to do with the weather, the specific locale, and most importantly the attitude of the perceiver. But even after factoring all of that in, I can't believe how friendly the Argentinians are that we've met so far! That's not to say there was anything wrong with Peruvians or Chileans, both of which were mostly very wonderful and hospitable. But it seems like Argentians are little walking conversation time bombs just ready to explode in a funfilled but sincere dialogue! The people of Cordoba were especially interested in my three travel companions as apparently Koreans were quite rare. They were asked to translate Korean songs, give Korean equivalents of Spanish words, and one guy in a candy shop even had Gyu draw him a tatoo for his shoulder.

And I suppose I shouldn't be discriminative... to be fair, even the animals of Argentina were particularly friendly, especially to Gyu...

I also found their antismoking campaign funny... every cigarette pack was plastered with not only words about how smoking kills, but also the most disgusting picture of nicotene teeth...
And yet, not to be outdone, I designed my own version with an even more drastic and creative picture, should they ever choose to use it...

But who would possibly have any desire to smoke in Argentina when they have MATE!!! That final e should have an accent over it to avoid any confusion with ¨mate¨which would be a lover or companion. But both lovers and companions can enjoy mates together in Argentina. The mate is the name of the gourd itself, which is dried out, decorated, and then filled with yerba mate, the name of the tea which goes inside. The lucky owner then drinks it with a bombilla which is a metal straw filled with holes to siphon out the yerba mate. There´s the solitary mate style, where you cup it in your hand and sip as you take a walk. And then there´s the community mate where you sit around together and continually fill it and drink it together. I was introduced to the whole concept by my mother a few years ago and have been in love with it ever since, but unfortunately my only mate came to a mysterious end soon after I used the final leaves of yerba mate last year... so... coming to Argentina and diving into the actual mate culture has been one of my big anticipations of the last few weeks. WOOHOO mate!!!



Our time in Cordoba was a nice comfortable stop as our time with the boys slowly came to an end. We spent most of our time just walking the historical streets (according to the Lonely Planet, Cordoba was recently named the cultural capital of North and South America), talking to people (and animals), trying all the new foods, and diving into Argentinian culture (and of course, taking showers... that was a significant highlight after the waterless hotel in the desert).

We had a little conversation reflecting on our six weeks together and it sounded like everyone had had a great time filled with lots of memories. However, I also sensed a bit of lament in Kiwi´s sharing that, because Joo and I had done most of the planning, he hadn´t experienced as much of the true core of what it means to travel. After reflecting on his words for a night, I came up with a little challenge for him. Upon arriving in Buenos Aires, he would immediately have to go his separate way and survive for a day on our tight budget (the boys´mothers had wired me money and I had been controlling it up until that point). After 24 hours, we would meet up at a predetermined location.

At first, Kiwi looked at me like I was crazy and even drew me a picture on his napkin apologizing for what he had said the night before (just for the record, it wasn´t a punishment, but I knew he wouldn´t step out on his own unless I pushed him a bit.) But, slowly he warmed up to the idea and became quite excited (and stressed) as he prepared by reading the Lonely Planet...

Our final taxi ride to the bus station was steered by a friendly driver originally from Colombia who had travelled all around South America and finally settled in Argentina because of the people... I don´t blame him one bit. Yeah Mate! Yeah Argentinians! Yeah Argentina!