My Blog
The Best and The Worst of Chile and
Argentina
(and a little
bit of Brazil)
By Ella Stainwright
During
the months of February and March we spent our time in Chile and Argentina. We did lots of fun and exciting activities
there, along with boring walks. We went
to many great places and stayed in many large cities which was a wonderful
experience. With all the experiences I
had, both good and bad I had a great time and learnt loads.
Tango
Of all
the exciting things we did, the tango was by far my favourite. The dance lesson and show were both fantastic
and very exciting. The tango lesson was
the first dance lesson I had had for a long time so as you can guess I was very
excited. It was cool to dance with
Mummy, Daddy and Kaelie the simple and fun steps we learnt that night. We danced for an hour but it felt like five
minutes. The show was easy enough for us
to understand as we had studied what it was about - the history of tango. That night was one of the best nights we ever
had.
We also
went to a street of colourful houses and markets called Camino La Boca. It was a bright place with statues leaning
and waving from balconies. The markets
sold cool things like statues made of chalk and matches, hair decorations,
handbags food and much more. We bought a
hair decoration each and it looked beautiful in our hair. While we ate some brownies and ice chocolates
we were entertained by men and women dressed as tango dancers to try and get
people to take a picture with them. It
was so cool to watch.
City
tours
In Santiago,
we did a city tour and we had a good guide. She took us to so many cool places,
such as the presidential palace, the park and the GAM. The GAM is a big social
centre, named after a woman who won the Olympics for Chile. It was built a long
time ago and had a lot of popularity until the dictator took over. Then it lost
all its popularity and it took a while to earn it back. In the park, we learned
about how couples go there to date and kiss, because at home mum and dad are
there. The presidential palace was probably my favourite place. We learned
about the dictator and how he bombed the presidential palace to become president. We also learnt about the torture and killing
he did. He tortured people to show how powerful he was and to scare people. It
was really interesting.
We did
other tours as well. Two in Buenos
Aires, one in a huge cemetery and one around the city.
We did
the cemetery one first and visited lots of huge mausoleums (a large building
that has coffins in it). Quite a few had
stories and I had lots of favourites. As
I can't tell you all the stories I will tell you my favourites. One man worried he would be buried alive so
to prevent that happening he created a way for his mausoleum door open. However, he needed to test it so he went all
the way to the authorities, asked for the keys and chose a day of when he would
enter. Can you guess what day? Friday the 13th, maybe? No, he chose his birthday and did it the same
date for fourteen years until he died.
He was properly dead.
This man
had had to have gotten the idea of being buried alive from somewhere. He did get it from somewhere. Another one of my favourite stories as luck
would have it. There was a girl who was
buried in a mausoleum when thought dead, however she only had had a
concussion. They now say she had a
concussion because she found out her mother was dating her boyfriend.
Another
story in the cemetery was about a man who committed suicide to live in a mausoleum. He worked in the cemetery, guarding mausoleums
and wanted one of his own. He could not
afford it so asked a friend to buy it for him.
When it was built, the man who owned it realised something was
missing. HIM! He poisoned himself to be buried in his mausoleum
but on his death certificate it says he died of brain concussion because you
can't be put in the mausoleum if you commit suicide.
Our
guide had his own personal story about his great great great grandparents. They were rich or at least his great great
great grandfather was. I am going to
call his great great great grandmother Mary so I don't have to keep writing so
many G words. His great great great
grandfather will be called John. Mary
spent a lot of John's money saying that what she bought he would pay for. One day John found out and wrote in the
papers that he would pay what he owed but his wife would pay the rest. After that they only talked to each other
through their children. One day John
died and when the news was caught to his wife all she said was "can I have
the money now?" Once Mary had the money
she spent it on a mausoleum, mansion and lots off parties.
The city
tour in Buenos Aires was much like the one in Santiago. Outer guide took us to places with history
and funny stories behind them. There was
a lady who was asked to build a fountain and she excepted the job. However, she was working in pants so other
workers built a wall around her but when she was finished and they took it down
there stood a fountain of naked men and women.
Another story we listened to was the story of a house with three
different sections. These sections were
hell, purgatory (the middle of hell and heaven) and heaven. The bottom levels were hell, the middle
levels purgatory and the top levels heaven.
The man who designed this house wanted to make sure you went through
hell and purgatory before reaching heaven so there were three different elevators,
one through each part of the building.
There was one throughout all of hell then you got out walked a few metres
to get the elevator throughout purgatory, then, if you were staying on heaven
you would get the elevator throughout heaven.
We also,
on this tour went to the presidential palace and learned about the dictator in
Argentina. He did many things both the best
and the worst but mainly, in my opinion for the worst.
For one
thing, he caused the entire city to break their friendship with one
another. If you supported the dictator,
you would only buy from markets that were owned by other people who supported the
dictator, even if the food and other things for sale were terrible. It was the same for people who didn't support
the dictator. That wasn't the only
terrible thing he did. He did something
that can never be forgiven. He kidnapped
pregnant women, forced them to give birth away from everything they loved,
killed them and adopted their babies into an illegal adoption. This angered the grandparents of the new born
babies to no end so they did something they were sure they couldn't get in
trouble for. They cleaned their baby’s
diapers and wore them on their heads walking around in a circle together. They were wrong, thinking that they wouldn't
get in trouble, of course. They were
kidnapped, drugged, talked up in a helicopter above the water and dropped out
to drown. This was called the flight of
death.
Bariloche
– the “chocolate capital”
In
Argentina we also went to Bariloche the chocolate capital. There were chocolate shops and factories
everywhere, at least three per block.
Each shop looked yummier than the next but we bought chocolates and ice
creams at only the best shops. In a
chocolate shop I bought a chocolate teddy bear with caramel in the middle and a
chocolate mint sandwich. We bought ice
creams and visited chocolate shops and had a very chocolatey time.
Palermo
(a huge park)
We went
to a huge park in Argentina that went by the name of Palermo. It was made up of lots of smaller parks, each
with a different 'personality'. We had
walked a long way to get there so we were tired and sat down to eat
something. However, we were rudely interrupted
by geese that decided they wanted our food.
How Rude! After we escaped the
cruel geese, we went paddle boating which is not paddling the usual way. No, we peddled to move and used a lever to turn. I paddled the most, though did not turn and I
had a great time. At the end, we walked
to the other side and found a play park where we played for half an hour.
Iguazu
Falls
We saw
many amazing things in Chile and Argentina but we saw no waterfalls until we
went to Iguazu. There we saw amazing
animals and beautiful waterfalls. There
were two sides. The Argentinean side and
the Brazilian side which were both beautiful.
The Brazilian side was my favourite though the Argentinean side was cool
as well. The Brazilian side had a
magnificent view of all the waterfalls and the other landscape together not one
at a time. We saw many animals on the
Brazilian side such as Coatis (a fierce raccoon like animal), butterflies and
beautiful birds. On the Argentinean side,
we were standing on top of the water falls and we could feel how powerful they
are. There weren't as many land or sky
animals on the Argentinean side, more water animals like turtles and caimans
but it was still cool.
I have
told you about the best in Chile and Argentina.
Are you ready to hear the worst?
The
walks. The walks were the worst.
Walks
We did
three walks. Well, three long
walks. The first and hardest one we did
was 18km. This one was called
"Mirador de los Torre". The second
and longest was 22km. This was called
"The Grey Glacier". The final,
third and easiest was 19km and was called "Fitzroy".
You
would expect the shortest walk to be finished first, but for us, it took just
as long or longer than it took us the walk 22km. Mirador de los Torre took us longer because
of the last kilometre. It was 300m
upwards in one kilometre and it was scrambling over and around huge boulders. The view was amazing - no one could deny it,
and it was good to rest. If you want to
know what the view was like, here is how I will describe it. Imagine, a beautiful light blue bit of paper
with mountains drawn all over it. Then
imagine, right in the middle of the page, are three huge rock towers
drawn. That is what we saw that day.
The Grey
Glacier walk was a bit easier but it was long and still very hard. By the time we had made it to the end all I
wanted to do was sit down, but no, time to go back and so we kept on walking. The view wasn't as good as the first walk,
but it was still good. We saw a Glacier
that looked blue in the sun and it did occur to me that it looked a bit
lonely. It was surrounded by smaller
icebergs that all looked like the tops of blue snow cones in the sun.
Fitzroy,
the last walk was the easiest and took the least amount of time. At the end, we got to see more mountains, a
Glacier and a lake with little icebergs floating on it. We picked up a few of the smaller icebergs
and held them. It froze our hands and
was very heavy but it was a cool experience.
While eating we threw rocks in the lake, trying to hit the
icebergs. It was lots of fun.
During
our time in Chile and Argentina we had so many moments, both good and bad and I
remember them all. Our time in these two
beautiful countries taught me a lot and things that I would never have learnt
if we had decided to go to other places.
This trip has been an amazing experience and it is just the
beginning. I hope you liked my blog
about the Best and The Worst of Chile And Argentina!
