Brazil

Hola everybody,
As you all know we are now trying our luck in Brazil.
After being at "Foz do Iguazu" we took a 18 hours bus ride to "Floreanapolis". It is a resort city located on a huge island with many beautiful beaches. Apparently we got there in the middle of the tourist season and almost every hotel and hostel were completely full, except the ones on the remote beaches. After taking 2 buses to get to our hostel, we discovered that the owner confused us with someone else and gave away our room. So, there we were, stuck on a beach in the middle of nowhere, boiling in the sun with our mochilas- definitely one of the worst days on this trip. To our luck the hostel owner felt a bit guilty and asked her painter friend if we could crash in her studio. The studio was a wooden cabin on a mountain, surrounded by tropical trees. It had great view but because nobody had actually lived there before- was filthy, smelly and full of all kinds of bugs...and we slept on dusty mattresses on the floor. But over time we really started to like the place... once it was cleaner...

We spend the next days lying on the beach like lazy sea lions. Alon has actually finished the sixth Harry Potter book and started the seventh...I am so proud! Half of the time he is trying to unmask Dumbeldore as a pedophile and the other half pointing out every moment in which Harry Potter could have used a shotgun to get the hole mess over with... indeed I have married a literal genius...
We are now in Rio de Janeiro. The bus ride here was HORRIBLE!! There weren't any seats together so I had to sit near a weired lady who read a book about the death of Jesus threw the hole ride and kept giving me strange looks... Alon got sunburns the day before,so he was etching the hole ride...scaring the poor ladies around him...at one point he was etching so bad that he took off his shirt and started scratching himself with it like some crazy person...
Anyway, Rio is a beautiful city, mainly because its built on a beautiful spot on a rocky coastline.
Some days its raining cats and dogs here and the humidity is a killer... (my hair looks like an Afro...) but in general we are having a lot of fun..there are beautiful beaches here (like the famous Copacabana and Ipanema) and the place has got a happy atmosphere to it.
The Brazilians are turning out to be really nice folks, although our communication with them is minimum due to our non existing knowledge of Portuguese.

We are planing to stay here until the end of the carnival which starts at the end of next week.
miss u all

Dina & Loni

The Iguazu Falls

Hola people,
We are now in Brazil or should I say Brauziel... it is very hot here and the humidity is killing us!!!!!! its like breathing water.... we are in a city called "Foz do Iguazu" and planing to take a bus to Floreanapolis soon. We crossed the border from the city "Puerto Iguazu" in Argentina. with our luck we took the wrong bus and got stuck for hours on the border... but now for the important stuff... The Iguazu falls are located as you probably understood on the border between Argentina and Brazil. They are the meeting point of more than 30 rivers and are 4 times wider than the Niagara. We first visited the Argentina side of the reservation and the day after went to the Brazilian side - both look totally BEAUTIFUL....of course we took photos like crazy...

In the reservations themselves are also a lot of colorful parrots, tucans, butterflies, lizards and raccoons.


Alon was very sad to leave Argentina and its meat. we decided to celebrate in an expensive restaurant where the waiter looked at us with an admiring look and seemed to be having an orgasmic reaction to every word that came out of our mouth...I was worried that he might accompany Loni to the bathroom to offer some assistance... but the food was very good...or in the waiters words - "perfecto!!!!"...

By the way when they tell you there is a TV in your hotel room make sure it doesn´t look something like this!!!


Bye Bye
Dina & Loni

Salta

Hola Everybody,
We have left BA and took a 20 hours bus to Salta at the North West of Argentina.
Salta is a very lovely city(470,000 citizens) and has a really fun atmosphere and a great night life.

Except of the valleys, most of the mountain area is very desert like and dry(although surprisingly green at some places!!!). It rains here only for about a week once in a year and of course you can guess what happened a day after we arrived.... yes, it started raining.....
We rented a car for 2 days and went to some near towns around the area (Cafayate, Cachi, San Carlos.Santa Rosa...). The road was really beautiful - a combination between "Mitzpe Ramon" and the "Rocky mountains". We found ourselves taking dozens photos of rocks...

and the really cool thing were the giant cactus. Their insides are a hollow wooden trunk filled with water and they make a lot of the furniture from it in Salta and the villages around.

Most of the villages we visited are really poor and relay totally on their flock and crops. They have no running water, no gas or electricity and the people live in a mud like shacks built from the red rocks from the area. Although its Argentina, because it is near the Bolivian border - the people here look much like Bolivians and you can see a lot of Bolivian influence.

Anyway, it was really tricky driving back to Salta because the roads were blocked due to the floods caused by the rain. The local authorities sent out people with sweepers and it was a really funny thing to watch, as they stood there with water flowing up to their knees trying to sweep it out of the way.
The next day, after our challenging driving experience, instead of driving 580 km in a rented car to the "Salinas" near the city of Jujuy, we decided to take an organized tour.
The "Salinas" are big lakes covered with a 30cm layer of crystallized volcanic salt.
It was very beautiful and very bright, although a bit scary when our driver started driving like crazy on the lake....

There also was a restaurant there, made completely out of salt....including the tables and the chairs....really cool!!! However the geniuses that build it didn´t quite think about bringing water to the place... so it has never been open... (I bet its the same guy who thinks you can wipe 30cm of rain water with a broomstick...)

Anyhow, we are off to the Iguassu falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil... its a 20 hour bus ride and unfortunately we couldn´t get tickets to a good bus, so its gonna be a very long 20 hours for us...
hope you are all doing well and enjoying the winter (it´s 37º here and we miss the freezing Patagonia)
keep in touch...miss you...

Dina & Loni

Ushuaia, Buenos Aires & the New Year

Hello everyone,
We are now in the city of Buenos Aires... we took a flight here from Ushuaia- the most southerly town in the world, however there is an island more in the south called "Port Whiliams" with an army base on it. Surprisingly Ushuaia wasn´t a complete hole and turned out to be a pretty nice and lovely looking town.

We were able to find an open flight to on Christmas. It was actually very lucky because people reserve them month ahead. After being in a small towns for over a month it was a big change to suddenly get to a huge city(12 million people). We flew above it at night and it was amazing... like a huge carpet of lights that doesn´t seem to end...
The city itself is much like a regular European city in its architecture and atmosphere. It is weired to suddenly be in a city all the time.. we keep expecting glaciers to pop out in the middle of the street.

We have a nice hotel in the center, ran by a very old couple(of man...) and Alon is counting on their sudden departure before we check out so we wouldn´t have to pay :)

We couldn´t find any Israeli´s to exchange books with, so now am a proud owner of the sixth Harry Potter book(its the only book they had in English besides the adventures of Tom Soyer).
Besides, I am not the one carrying the 600 pages book.... more exercise for Alon...
However the more important news is that somebody has finished a book of his own!!!!!!!!!!

Then he off course announced, he is now taking unlimited time off reading to recuperate from the strain. I took advantage of his weakness and pushed him into a barber´s shop closing the door behind him and leaving him at the mercy of the elderly smelly hairdresser.

We spent the new years at a Tango restaurant which was much similar to Russian restaurants.
We took a picture with the dancers and though the hot half naked dancer hugged Alon and put her leg on him (brrrr...), because I managed to spill some wine on his pants before, it looks in the picture as if she is raising her leg and peeing on him like a dog...so i was pretty pleased with the result...
off course what we didin´t know is, they moved the clock the day before, although it seemed a bit odd that the taxi driver came to take us 45 minutes early... we only realized what happened when at 23:00 there was a big bang and everyone started kissing and dancing like crazy...
besides that the party itself was really fun!!!

We spent the rest of the night chasing a cockroach in our hotel room...(actually Alon was jumping around with a towel screaming and cursing while I hid in the shower threatening to sleep there in my sleeping bag if the damn bug isn´t dead).

so...HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!!! Have a great 2008!!!!!
hope you had fun...

dina & loni