One Big Happy Family

Less than a week after Melissa’s departure, the rest of the Cunningham crew (aka my parents) came down for a South American visit. Although I wasn’t overwhelmed by Buenos Aires when I went in November, I was back again. Unfortunately, this trip to the city was even less whelming. In general, we found that the porteños (people from BA) were not friendly or helpful, the city is dirty with poorly maintained streets, and ironically that the air in Buenos Aires is not so bueno. We walked down Florida Street, the main tourist street with all kinds of street vendors and leather stores, where my mom proceeded to get her camera pickpocketed. We struggled to get on the single worst city tour bus ever encountered due to the company’s disorganization. The hop-on-hop-off-ness of it was utterly false because you actually had to wait hours in line before you could get on. Once on, the headphone information was the most boring thing ever and far from entertaining. Frustrated, we focused the rest of our stay in BA on fine dining. Even that had its moments of awfulness. We went to a restaurant (recommended by the New York Times) where my dad ordered a glass of wine only to find that there were over 20 little flies floating in it. The workers didn’t even apologize for it. Guakala! (Guaraní for gross!) (The food at that restaurant wasn’t very good either.) After that failure though, we were in for a lot of delicious food. It was a big step up from the yogurt and oranges I had been eating with Greg.

  

  (This was my favorite dish: homemade pasta with fresh corn cream sauce. Riquiiiiisimo!)
  

Another plus to traveling with the parental units was staying in a nice hotel. It’s quite nice to not have to wear sandals in the shower or use a sheet liner. But mostly it was good to just see them again. Even though we weren’t fond of BA, we had a great time together in the hotel room catching up and playing Words With Friends with each other (I have been in severe withdrawals for the past 5 months, but don’t worry, I still have the touch).

  (Player 2 let lespt2 win in the 3^rd one down just for the record.)

     

  

The best thing to do in Buenos Aires: leave to go to Colonia, Uruguay. It is a 1-hour ferry ride across the Rio de la Plata. There we rented a moped and a golf cart and putted around the coast. It’s a very cute little town and a great escape from the city. At the beach, the water was warm and you could walk out at least 100 yards without going in past your knees. All was going well until I had a little accident… I had parked the moped on a little sand bank and when I tried to take it out for another spin, it was stuck. I revved the engine, but it wouldn’t move. I revved harder, didn’t budge. So I revved even harder and suddenly it sped off the sand into a tree. Luckily, I had been standing to the side of the scooter, not seated on it so I came out of the incident with only bruised knees from it jerking me to the ground; and luckily no one was around to witness this embarrassing hullabaloo. Unfortunately, the scooter didn’t have my same luck. It crashed into the tree hard enough to jam the brakes so that it no longer functioned. I had to walk back to where my parents were and shamefully explain my little incident. Thank god for insurance though. No major harm done. And it didn’t deter my newfound love for motorcycles. We stayed in Colonia and watched a gorgeous sunset on the beach before catching the 11:30pm ferry back to BA.

 

Next on the itinerary was Mendoza. Being in Mendoza with my parents, like Buenos Aires, was a very different experience than with Greg. We hired a private driver to take us around the wineries of Mendoza… a step or two above biking. We stopped at 4 wineries in the Lujan Valley, doing official wine tastings complete with tours of the facilities. We drank wine straight from the barrel, rode horse-drawn carriages through vineyards, and even had a smelling test in aroma room. Just because we were classier, though, didn’t mean that I was impervious to the wrath of wine. I was again promptly malbeckoned to bed after our excursion (with my new wine knowledge I now blame the tannins for my drowsiness). Unfortunately, we only had 1 full day in Mendoza before heading off to Chile (had we planned better we would have spent less time in BA and more time in Mendoza).

 ( Please note how my father has assumed the role of tour guide. Our real guide was a young girl from Nashville who had just started working there a month before. She was great, but he stepped right up when she didn’t know the answer to a question. Hilarious.)

   

We took a bus from Mendoza to Santiago traveling through the Andes on the exact route that I had done on the Alta Montaña tour from my previous visit to Mendoza. Only this time I was sitting next to my mother who happened to take 200+ photos during the 7- hour ride (in her defense, we had the best seats in the house/bus and it was quite scenic).

 

In Santiago, we had arranged for the first organized travel tour of our lives. We came into it with few expectations and were surprised to find out that we weren’t in a big bus group but rather had a private tour guide (Guillermo) all to ourselves. To kick things off before the tour started, we enjoyed the January summer heat by walking along the not-so-scenic river, eating delicious odd flavors of ice cream, and spending some time at the pool. Then Guillermo took us on a city tour of Santiago where we saw the government buildings, the rich neighborhoods, and the main plazas and cathedrals. I particularly enjoyed the historic buildings that were literally only a front wall façade and had modern skyscrapers build within them

 (Note: The brown stuff in the background is the river.)

 

As we drove around, we noticed that Chile is extremely reminiscent of California. They are both small strips along the Pacific coast with similar climates and thus similar vegetation and crops. The highways and signs look the same, as do the wineries, beaches, and mountains, making me feel right at home (although they also have “coffee shops” that double as strip clubs). It was even more California-esque when we got to Valparaiso, a coastal town that was basically their version of San Francisco. For me, Valparaiso was the highlight of the trip. I love, love, loved the vibe there with all of the colorful houses, graffiti, hills, and views. It made La Boca look like a shameful tourist trap. It is on my definite “to-go-back-to” list.

 

The next day we took off for a wine tour in the Colchagua Valley of Chile. We went to 3 more wineries and I am now a wine expert and could tell you about all kinds of grapes and barrels or about maceration and malolactic fermentation... Though my palate is still horrible and I still would have difficulty distinguishing a “good” wine from Two Buck Chuck.

 

Back in Santiago, my mom and I went for a walk where we discovered gym parks. It’s official, my mom and I are huge PT dorks. They were awesome stations set up all along the river where you can do stretches and exercises. Our new mission is to set these up in the US. We returned to an awesome open patio/plaza for dinner that was alive and popping with a great atmosphere. In general we found that Chile was much better than Argentina: nicer people, better food, still hot but not humid, cleaner, prettier, better sights, and did I mention nicer people?

 

Now for our final destination: Asuncion, Paraguay. I finally got to introduce my American family to my Paraguayan family. Let me tell you, they all got along wonderfully (by the end my host sisters wanted me to take the flight back to the US and have my parents stay here with them). We went to Tio Victor and Tia Rosa’s country club for dinner the first night where a traditional Paraguayan band was playing. It was a good taste of the high class Paraguayan culture with plenty of the typical meat, beer, and dancing.

 

The next day we showed my parents the very Americanized malls, the preschool where I work, and the grocery stores. We had a family lunch (rice, meat, and juice per usual) at our house where I served as translator between the two families. It was the biggest test of my Spanish skills to date, and although much was lost in translation, we managed to get along pretty well. Later, my faithful tour guide, Jose, picked us up to go on a tour of downtown Asuncion. We stopped at the few famous sights and government buildings that the city has to offer. We went to a museum that is just above a shantytown that is known for its crime, drugs, and overall shadiness. Jose had just warned us about the theft in the area when a teenage boy grabbed my dad’s cell phone from his waist and ran off into the neighborhood below. There was nothing the police or we could do about it. The boy will sell the used phone at the local market without any problems. My dad looks very “Yankee” and thus was easily targeted as a tourist. It’s nice to have some Chinese in my blood so I blend in more. :)

This experience really showed the other side of Paraguay though. This is a country filled with contrast. There are country clubs and shantytowns, there are lots of people obsessed with plastic surgery and lots of handicapped homeless people who need corrective surgery, and there are BMWs driving next to horse-drawn carts. It is a strange contradiction that’s hard to fully comprehend and get used to.

 

We had a big family barbecue at our house for dinner. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and boyfriends came over for the feast of more cow-blood sausages, chicken hearts, cow tongue, sopa Paraguaya, meat, meat, and more meat. These foods are no longer such a novelty for me, more just a staple. But they were new adventures for my parents to tackle. One was much more creeped out by the foods than the others. I’ll let you guess whom…

 

One of the things that I specially requested that my parents bring down for me was red cups. They are not sold down here but everyone sees them in the American movies about college so my host sisters and cousins couldn’t have been more excited about such a simple thing. I fulfilled my American duty of spreading quality American traditions to the world by teaching them American drinking games. (It was also a learning experience for me because my vocabulary now includes “to bounce”, “in a row,” and “catching up.” Who says these things aren’t educational??) It turns out my host family is very competitive (I guess it runs in the blood of all of my families). We played beer pong and flip cup until 4 am and had a ton of fun (my mom’s age is starting to show…she couldn’t hang with us til the very end).

 

We had some more family time at the house the final day which included my mom getting some tattoos from Jose. On her face. (They were make-up ones, but it sounds cooler to say face tats.) When the sad parting moment came, the whole family drove to airport to see my mom and dad off. Everyone was quite depressed to have them leave and they continue to ask about how they’re doing on a daily basis. Their visit to Paraguay was the highlight of my parent’s South America experience and the highlight of my host family’s experience since I’ve arrived.