The Adventure Begins!

Initial thoughts when I wake up: "It can't be August 16th already!" "I still have another month of summer left!" "I'm not ready" "I still don't know what to expect from this trip."

So after some sad goodbyes, we are off! I am feeling much better now that the goodbyes are behind me and I only have the trip to look forward to. At the airport we are given some time to go off and eat by ourselves but we are not told where and when to meet up. After eating for a while, three of my friends and I notice that we don't see anyone from our group around. We have to stand in a long line to go through security and we still don't see anybody.  This is a great way to start off the trip! We were late to our first test! But we were able to take it without a problem and it was easier than I expected. The 12 hour plane ride to Peru was long but there were no problems. I got to know a fellow traveler, Jessica, better so that was good :) Then after our hour long layover in Lima, Peru we began to experience our first setbacks as a group. We were just miles away from Buenos Aires when we were informed by our captain (who was an inexperienced english speaker) that the weather conditions in Buenos Aires were not adecquate for landing. And so the adventure begins! We circled around Buenos Aires five times before he decided to fly the plane to Uruguay. That is three countries in one day! So we sat in the airplane in Uruguay for two hours before we were allowed to enter Argentina. It seemed like forever, but we were finally getting off an airplane for at least 2 weeks!!

After this, we discovered another little damper on our plans. Apparentally, the American government charges citizens of Argentina $140 to enter America so the Argentinian government charged the same reciprocal fee. This was unexpected but at least this fee is good for 10 years in case I want to come back! Once we got all of our luggage out and figured out the ride situation we were feeling a little bit better. I still didn't feel like I was in Buenos Aires; though, because it didn't look any different from Los Angeles. My viewpoint changed; however, after we got closer to the heart of Buenos Aires. We could see slums on the left side of the freeway and beautiful architecture on the right. We also saw the Water Palace and the Congress building.

Slums in Buenos Aires

Water Palace

Congress building



It was finally time for us to check into Hostel Milonga...and it was even cuter than the pictures online! We roamed around looking at each others' rooms and going on the roof looking at the view. After that excitement was over, our hunger kicked in so we ventured down the street in search of some food. We found this little restaurant right next to our hostel that served the best empanadas!! It was interesting because, at first, I was the most fluent in Spanish amongst the people in our small group. It was an adventure and an experience and I could tell the bored guys working there got a kick out of my attempt at their language. We were glad we got our point across; however, because the food was muy delicioso!!

Hostel Milonga

Delicious empanadas