The travel Gods have not smiled down upon me in this day

Today I was supposed to go to bolivia. I hardly slept last night because I didn´t want to oversleep because I had to leave the hostal at 4:30. I was pretty impressed that I woke myself up with out an alarm clock at 4. But my bus was late which made me miss my connecting bus to Bolivia. Luckily the second bus company was willing to move my ticket to tomorrow but I had to come back to Jujuy (two hours bus ride) to get my ticket changed. So tomorrow I am going to try to go a little earlier, which means leaving at 3 in the morning. So this afternoon I took a nap in preperation. At least I will be able to sleep on the bus. Is Bolivia worth it? Before they told me I was going to have to return to Jujuy to get my ticket changed I was considering staying in the little town (Guemes, don´t bother looking for it on a map), which would have been interesting because the only hotel they have is currently under contruction. I hadn´t yet slept in a bus terminal but I was considering how those wooden benches would feel all night.

Jujuy

From Salta I have moved on to Jujuy. The province sandwiched in between Salta and Bolvia. A very pretty place, somewhat reminds me of Eastern Oregon with high mountain valleys. Yesterday I took a two hour bus ride to a couple of pueblos. The first one, Purmamarca, has a national tourist sight, El cerro de Siete colores. The hill has seven different types of rocks each of different colors. So there is a crimson red, a purple, orange, gray, and some other colors. Then I went exploring, the trails around the pueble offered some beautiful sights. The pueblos I visited are very old and anciently formed part of the Incan trail. The second place I visited, Tilcara, had some Incan ruins on top of a hill that used to be a fortress. The natives that lived there held out for 50 years against the spanish, and was one of the last groups to be conquered. The position was vital to the route the Spanish wanted to establish in between Lima, Peru and Buenos Aires. The site has been partially restored to show what it was like in Incan times, very interesting (photos are pending). Tomorrow I will be off to Bolivia where I am planning on meeting a friend from BYU who will be my traveling buddy to Cuzco and Macchu Pichu.

On the Gondola in Salta heading up the hill. On top there are some really good views of Salta. All in all, Salta is a pretty city, a lot of colonial type architecture and fairly clean.

Here is a video I took in Asuncion of a local soccer mathc. All of the dirt was really red, must be a disaster to wash clothes. My old mission companion and his brother are on the blue team. I was staying in his house which was just up the road from the pitch.

Paraguay, Paraguay

Hey, Hey,

I have arrived to Asuncion, Paraguay. Supposedly I was supposed to get a visa before coming here. But I was unaware. The guy at the checkpoint coming across the border told me I needed the visa and that I would have to pay 200 pesos. I told him I only had 40 pesos. I thought they were just trying to get money out of me (I looked it up on the state department website, and I guess I really do need the visa). I told him I didn´t have any more money (even though I did). They told me I was going to have to go back to Argentina, which I really didn´t want to do. I thought they would take the 40 pesos and let me through. They made me wait while he went to talk to his co worker. Then he came back and told me it would be very difficult to give me the visa for less than 100 pesos. I held firm and they let me in but without stamping my passport, so I guess I am illegal here and told me I would have to pay a fine on the way out of the country. I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it. I hope Asuncion is good. Everyone speaks in Guarani and I don´t understand anything.

Rosario

First of all I would like to send a shout out to my most loyal commenters on my blog, Pete and Adrea. For Andrea I will keep putting up videos and for Pete, I took a hot shower today and it felt very, very good. Yesterday I arrived in Rosario which is about 300 kilometers north west of Buenos Aires. I woke up early monday morning to be able to catch the bus in Buenos Aires. I was lucky to get to Rosario with out any problems (if you have been following Argentine news, farmers have been cutting off transit on the highways because they are mad at the government over increasing the export tarriffs). Luckily, the farmers were only stopping the grain trucks (even though the truck drivers last week launched a counter strike by stopping everyone, saying if we can´t transport, no one can use the highways). Last night I went with two mission buddies to a protest at the ¨Flag Monument¨in the center of Rosario were they were having a massive protest, everyone beating pots and pans and honking horns. I got some on video so I will put it up soon. Today we went around Rosario and looked at some of the touristy things they have hear. Rosario is on the Rio Parana and there are some pretty cool views of the river (fotos also coming soon). I´ll be here in Rosario for a couple of days and from here I will be going to either Paraguay or Brazil. My last day in Buenos Aires was spent in bed with intermintant trips to the bathroom. At first I thought it was food poisioning but I now think it was just a Flu virus that was going around. I am mostly recovered but still not 100%.

Another clip from the Lanus Stadium.

We went to a soccer game. Lanus was playing Talleres de Remedios de Escalada. Maradona played in the game. The game was a benifit game because Talleres is going bankrupt. For those who don´t understand Argentine Soccer, it would be like Northern Wichita State playing BYU with Joe Montana quarterbacking one half each for both teams. In this clip, Maradona is kicking a penalty kick, but I think he must have paid the goalie because there wasn´t a whole lot of effort on his part.

The Salamanca in La Plata. A place German took me where there was a live band and people danced the traditional dances of North Western Argentina, the Chacarera. The place also had excellent pizza and empanadas.

This is me in the Museum at the Boca Juniors Soccer Stadium. I did the whole tour of the stadium which explained the history. Supposedy the teams colors are Blue and Yellow because when the founded the team they decided their colors would be taken from the next ship to sail into the port. The next ship was a Swedish vessel so, bam, blue and yellow. Yesterday I went into capital to see the Congressional District which I had heard good things about. The congressional building was pretty cool. You can see photos of it down below. I also went to see Caminito, which is a street, one block long, which is world famous as the birth place of Tango. Tomorrow there is a chance that I will get to go to a soccer game between Lanus and Talleres. It is just a friendly match but Maradona is supposed to play in it. So there might not be any tickets left. I am going with a person I taught while on my mission. Hopefully it works out.

This is the stadium of Boca. Pretty big stadium and home of Maradona.

New Photos (big sized down below), Zoo

Today I took a break from visiting people I know here in Buenos Aires and went to the Zoo in Buenos Aires. The zoo was pretty cool. They had all of the animals that you would expect in a zoo. Some of the animals are a little antisocial and didn´t come out to let me look at them though. They had a white tiger which would probably be my first option for a pet, I wonder where they sell them. The zoo is right by the American Embassy. The embassy wasn´t as cool as I thought it would be, in fact I wouldn´t have been able to recognize it as the embassy if it weren´t for the American flag on top. I was expecting something more like in the movies, oh well. Hope everyone enjoys the videos I uploaded, they took some work. Also, I have put a bunch more photos down below, check them out.

This is the 9 de Julio, the widest street in the World which runs through Buenos Aires from Constitucion to Retiro. In the middle is the Obelisco (kind of like the Washington Monument). I turned the camara sideways to get a better view of it, forgetting that it probably wouldn´t turn out to well in the video. Oh well.

German and I walking around Plaza Moreno, the central Plaza in La Plata. On one end is the municipality and on the other end is the Cathedral. The Cathedral is the second largest in Argentina and one of the largest in South America.

One of the most impressive sights I have ever seen in my life. Taken from the Argentine side of the Devil´s Throat.

This picture was taken on Leland and Natasha´s last night in Argentina. The Asado was great and it was a very nice treat from Hermano Alfonos.