Buenos Aires: Day 2

I am back in the states now, but figured I would finish up the details from my Argentina adventure!

On Saturday, we got up in the morning and headed to Recoleta, one of the richer barrios in Buenos Aires. There is a huge cemetery in Recoleta that is huge and free, so we decided to check it out. We got to the cemetery and there was a tour group walking around so we hopped on, and then realized it was actually a group of tourism students from a university who were practicing giving tours! We followed them around for a while and then decided to wander our own way through the cemetery. There were an insane number of people buried in there, and each one of the mausoleums were different. Some of them were from the 1800's, and there were also some newer ones from the 2000s. I am not quite sure how they put the newer ones in there, but maybe they had their spots reserved in advance.

After the cemetery, we headed to La Boca, one of Paul's favorite places in Argentina. It is a very poor barrio in Buenos Aires, but has become a very popular tourist area because all of the houses and buildings are painted bright colors and there is a unique culture there. There is a lot of tango there and a lot of vendors and cute little shops. We walked through La Boca exploring and then grabbed some lunch at a cute little cafe. We stuck around in La Boca until the start of the Copa América Final between Argentina and Chile! Paul and I were on opposite sides of the game, obviously, but we for sure wanted to go watch it. There are not a lot of bars in La Boca, but we found one and settled in to watch the game. After the first half was done, we decided to head back to our B&B so that we would be closer to the center of Buenos Aires when the game finished and we could go out and see the giant celebration in the plaza when Argentina won. Or so we thought....

The game ended in a tie, and after two overtime periods, it was still tied! The teams ended up going into a shootout, and Chile won the shootout 4-1! I was super excited on the inside because Chile won!!! But I was also slightly sad because I was in Argentina, not Chile with all my friends, and now there would be no giant celebration at the Obelisk! Ha. However, when I returned to Chile on Sunday they were all still celebrating about it.

That night we were both exhausted and decided to just stay in and hang out at our B&B and make plans for the next day. Neither of us could believe that Argentina actually lost!

The stereotypical La Boca tourist picture

We had to break out the selfie sticks and show off our South American flags

CHILE WINS!

Buenos Aires: Day 1

My plane landed at around 2pm on Friday afternoon and I got to our B&B at around 3:30pm. If you have never used Airbnb when traveling, I highly recommend checking it out! I have used it multiple times on this trip and it has been so great. Instead of staying in a hostel or hotel, you stay at a person's apartment that they rent out on the regular. It is nice to have your own space and they are usually in great locations and have great views. 

Paul came from work and met me about a half hour later and we began our adventures! Since we still had a few hours of daylight, we went to downtown Buenos Aires and saw the typical touristy things: Casa Rosada, El Obelisco, Puente de la Mujer, Plaza de Mayo, Teatro Colon, etc. It was very nice because Paul works in Buenos Aires so he knows the city and the public transportation well, so we were able to efficiently cover a lot of space in a short amount of time! It was a beautiful night out and we were walking through the city just catching up about life and comparing things between Chile and Argentina. It was super interesting to me how different the people and the city were, even though I was still in South America! As we were walking back to our metro stop, we passed by the cathedral and Paul was super excited because it was actually open! He had never seen it open before so we went inside and it was AMAZING. The church was huge and beautiful and filled with exquisite details. Definitely a lucky find! We explored there for a while and then headed back to our B&B to buy some food and get ready for the night. 

After that, we went to a restaurant across BA that Paul really wanted to check out. It was a Milanesa restaurant, which is a very typical dish in Argentina that Paul LOVES. It was my first milanesa and I instantly loved it as well. It is basically a big slab of breaded meat and then can have different sauces, spices, vegetables, etc. on top to give it a unique flavor. Check it out!

That was definitely a great start to Buenos Aires! We hung out at the restaurant for a while having some drinks and just chatting, and then decided to head to the Palermo neighborhood and go out for the night. We covered a TON of ground on Friday, and I ended the day with over 30,000 steps on my fitbit! I can't believe we did all the things we did in those few hours we had on Friday. Got all the touristy stuff out of the way! Paul was loving it too because he tries not to be touristy most of the time because he lives there, but he got the chance to take some pictures and do touristy things that are weird to do when he's alone, which I totally understand because I have the same issue here! I will be walking along and see something really cool, but I feel so stupid stopping to take a picture when I am all by myself walking to work! Ha.

Here are a few pics from Day 1!

Plaza de Mayo and La Casa Rosada

Puente de la Mujer

Inside the Cathedral

El Obelisco/Capital

It was so fun exploring the city at night when all the buildings were lit up! I love exploring big cities, and it was fun because I live in a city here in Chile, but BA is WAY bigger.

The End

I can't believe my departure date is right around the corner! I have said the words "I leave in the middle of July" so many times, but now here we are in the middle of July. 

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately and still haven't done anything from Buenos Aires. I've been running like crazy trying to see people and squeeze all the last minute things in to my last few days. I will try to write one or two this weekend! It is supposed to be rainy and icky which is sad for my last weekend here, but probably good too because I haven't even started packing at all! Ha.

Today was my last day of work! I'm so thankful for the opportunities I had at COMIN and for everything I learned. I really enjoyed getting to work with the patients because they are Chile. The people here are what make Chile so unique and special and I learned so much about the culture and life here from them and their stories. So many of them gave me little goodbye gifts or brought me treats and it was so cute. 

Wednesday night I had a goodbye dinner with Mati and the two other interns at a really good pizza place here, and then I said goodbye to Mati yesterday after work because he is in Santiago taking exams for the weekend! So I was working with a different PT today, but it was fun for me to be so independent and really look back and realize all I have learned. Last night I grabbed coffee and brownies with Karina, my professor from here. She's so cute and sweet and is actually coming to Minnesota in a couple of weeks so I hope I'll be able to see her again then. 

My roommates left early this morning for a weekend trip, so I've said goodbye to them too! Katie is sticking around this weekend, so I'll be spending my last few days here with her and some of my Chilean friends! I hope the weather is somewhat cooperative. 

It is so weird to be making plans with people from back home! America seems so far away right now, like a dream or something, but before I know it I'm going to be in Atlanta surrounded by English speakers. I'm not at all ready to leave, but hopefully when I'm back in the states I'll appreciate life in the U.S. even more than I did before I left. Sunday is my travel day and I'll land in the states on Monday! 

Internship Update

I made it back to Viña after my adventurous weekend in Buenos Aires! I have almost 300 pictures to sort through, but I thought I would write a post updating you on my internship!

Rodrigo and Fernando have both finished their DUOC internships, so now it is just Mati and me at the clinic! Today was the first day with just us two. My internship is going very well. We get new patients almost every day, and I am learning new things and catching on to old things. I can't believe I only have a few days left! I am not at all ready to leave yet, but that's life!

Like I said before, I work at COMIN Centro Medico in Villa Alemana! I have finally taken a few photos at work to share.

Here is a photo of the rehabilitation room we have! It is pretty small, but gets the job done! To the left there are 3 exam beds/rooms as well. The equipment may not be as high tech as it is in the US, but it still works and accomplishes the same goals.

I take the metro to work every day, so here is a snapshot of that!! It runs both underground and above ground. This is at the Villa Alemana station, which is above ground obviously. It is very modern, comfortable, and safe.

Sneak peek at the inside of the metro. It is very empty like this when I ride in the mornings, but it is PACKED in the afternoons.

Here is the metro station in Viña! It is underground at this point on the line.

Look! I am actually working, not just traveling. Haha. I am a master at bicep stretching, which you can see here. We have a lot of rotator cuff patients, and I have learned a lot about their treatment plans and stretching. 

I am also getting very good with ultrasounds! I know the different settings for various muscles and depths and locations of application. One of my patients was SO cute the other day. It was her first day of therapy and I came in with the machine and said I was going to do an ultrasound and her eyes got big and she goes, "Oh no, I am positive I am not pregnant!" SO PRECIOUS.

The patients here are SO cute and sweet. I am so glad I have gotten to work with them, and I think that being able to work with the Chilean people has really given me a good insight into their culture because they are all different and come from different backgrounds. One thing they have in common though is how kind and welcoming they are. They say the cutest things to me and love to bring homemade sweets and goodies. Today one of our patients brought some homemade bread and pebre, seen above! SO DELICIOUS. Those little old ladies make the best food. I am really going to miss the warm hearts of all the Chileans. Even random people I meet on the street are so kind and genuine. There is something very special about their culture.

Another fun thing I get to do at work a lot is look at radiography! I love to look at the images and see if I can find faults or abnormalities before looking at the informe from the radiologist. I snap pictures of the clear, interesting ones once in a while! Most of them are old school and on actual x-ray paper, but some of them come on CD's as well.

So there's a little inside look at what I do every day! I love it so much and it makes me excited to know that this is for sure what I want to do for the rest of my life. I am definitely going to miss the staff and patients at COMIN!

Argentina Bound

Hello hello! 

I'm currently at the Santiago airport waiting for my flight, so I thought I'd give you an update! I'm heading to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the weekend to visit my friend Paul, from UND, who is doing an internship there this summer. 

I'll only have a weekend there which is so short, but I'm still so excited to see Buenos Aires and have the chance to explore! I left my house at 5:35am this morning to catch a city bus to the bus terminal, then took a big bus to Santiago, and then had to switch buses at one of the Santiago terminals to an airport bus! I was so proud I made it all by myself with no confusion! This is actually great because now I know exactly what I need to do next weekend as far as buses and the airport when I am flying home. I also learned that I needed to keep the little receipt I got when I first entered Chile! Ha. When they stamped my passport when I came in May, the PDI printed out a little receipt and stamped that too but I just throughly it was for my own keeping. But then when I tried to go through passport control today he wouldn't let me through without it! I have it, but at my house in Viña. Haha. Luckily he told me where I can get a new one and I got it all figured out. My Spanish skills are fabulous right now and I'm very thankful for that. Now I am at the gate area just waiting! My previous roommates told me there isn't wifi in the airport, but there is at the Starbucks in the airport. So I walked all across the gate area to get to Starbucks and use the wifi. Haha. 

I'm super excited for this weekend and hope I can get my blog posts done soon after! I'm also super excited because Saturday is the Copa América final and it's between Chile and Argentina! I'm so sad I won't be in Chile for it, but being in Buenos Aires and experiencing it from that side of things will be a neat experience too! I'll have to keep my Chilean pride to myself if I don't want to get murdered. Ha. 

Ciao for now! Have a great weekend 😊

Valle del Elqui & Mamalluca Observatory

Saturday we once again left La Serena! Haha. We slept in until about 8:30 since we were exhausted from the day before, and then got ready and caught a bus out about one hour east of La Serena to Vicuña. Vicuña is one of the major cities in Valle del Elqui, a beautiful, beautiful area on the edge of the Andes. This area is known for their pisco, their clear skies, and beautiful mountain views. I have some beautiful panorama photos on my phone I cannot upload yet but if I get access to them I will share them. They are gorgeous.

We started off the day with a tour of the Capel Pisco Distillery. The really big Mistral distillery is in another town in the valley, Pisco Elqui, but that is about another hour from Vicuña and we did not really have time to go out there and spend much time before we would have to return, so we chose to visit one of the ones in Vicuña. Pisco is such a popular alcohol here, so I was excited to see how it is made and how it is similar/different to wine.

We got to walk through the factory and learn all about the steps and processes involved with making pisco! They use special grapes to make the white wine that eventually becomes pisco, and they are very sweet grapes, similar to Moscatel because they need to sugar to ferment into more alcohol. They go through the same processing and fermenting as grapes do to make wine, and actually are made into a white wine! It only ferments for 20 days though, so the sugar concentration is still very high. Then that wine goes through the distilling process, which is how they turn it into basically straight alcohol which is used for pisco. It is at about an 80% concentration, and then they add water to dilute it down to the normal pisco concentrations, which vary between 30-50% alcohol depending on the brand and the grade of the pisco. Our guide also explained the differences between the different types of pisco which was interesting and definitely nice to know! It was also interesting to me that they store it in barrels like wine, and the wood of the barrel has an impact on the color of the pisco and the flavor! That explains why some pisco is more yellow, while some is basically clear. (The clear pisco never actually touches a barrel!)

The distillery was super cool and we got to do some taste testing at the end. They make so many different types of pisco. They also had a really cool museum there of historical stuff and they old hand machines they used to use to process the grapes and make the pisco. Another cool part was looking at how the bottles have changed throughout the years!

Here are a few pictures from the tour.

The distilling tanks!

The bottling room! So cool. Only 5 employees actually work in there, because most of it is done mechanically.

The view around the distillery was okay I guess... :)

After the tour we walked back to the center of Vicuña and grabbed lunch at a cute little homestyle restaurant. Then we decided to just walk around the town and explore! It was so small and so cute. We came across a cool bug museum for like $1 so we decided to check it out! It was really interesting and also slightly disturbing. Seeing the giant spiders and strange insects bothered me. They look like something out of a movie, so it is crazy to think that those actually exist and a lot of them are living in South America. Remind me not to go hiking in the jungle YUCK. 

Here are a few pictures from that! They also had some taxidermized animals and some super cool fossils.

The size of these spiders is actually horrifying.

Super cool fossilized bird/dinosaur thing! I can't remember its name haha.

After the museum we just walked around the outskirts of Vicuña to kill time before our observatory tour. Eventually we found a park and just sat and relaxed, taking in the beautiful views. At around 8pm our tour guide came and picked us up for the observatory! There are tons of observatories in this region of Chile, and we got to go to the Mamalluca Observatory right outside of Vicuña. 

Our guide asked if we wanted English or Spanish tickets, and we said we didn't care, so he chose English ones because he said the group would probably be smaller. Thank goodness he did! Our English group was about 11 people, compared to the giant Spanish group which was probably like 75 people and then split into two groups. There was a mom and daughter from Iowa in our group which I thought was fun! The daughter is around my age and is teaching English in Santiago for a year, and her mom had come down to visit for a week. There were also two Chilean couples in our group, whose English wasn't great, but they wanted to do the smaller group, and the guide was good about speaking some Spanish for them too. 

We started out in the big observatory dome looking at various planets and stars! It is really cool because the telescope is super intense and actually GPS run. He would just input whatever we wanted to look at and it would automatically move and focus to find it. Check it out!

Through the telescope we got to look at Venus, Jupiter and 4 of its moons, Saturn and some of its moons, and our moon super zoomed in. It was SO cool. We could see Saturn's rings and the swirling atmosphere of Venus. The moon was pretty big that night so the sky was kind of bright, but we still saw a lot. It was clear and beautiful. We also looked at some stars, which is so deceiving. We see one dull star from earth, but in the telescope that one dull star is actually a huge group of stars.

Then we went outside to check out some constellations and hear their history. Our guide was telling us some interesting stories about how the constellations are different depending on the history. The Greeks had different names for the same constellation than the Incas did, and so on. Super interesting how they saw different things. It was also so weird because we are on the southern hemisphere so all the constellations we could see were upside down! And we couldn't see the North Star or the Big Dipper or anything because those are clearly on the north side. Then we looked at some stuff in an outdoor telescope and got to take some moon pictures through the scope! I was glad because I really wanted to be able to show people the amazing views we had!

Crystal clear and gorgeous!

Check out those sweet craters!

Then we went inside and our guide showed us a cool astronomical software program their computer has and was giving us some history. It was such a fun night and I am so glad we did it. Chile is the best place in the world for astronomy, and currently has 50% of the world's giant telescopes and research stuff. In a few years, the guide said Chile will have 75%. The reason it is so good is because they only have about 20 cloudy days per year! Also, the mountain area is at a higher altitude so the atmosphere is better for it as well. You can actually visually see the Milky Way in the sky which is the coolest thing I have ever seen! There is a super GIANT telescope that is in the process of being built right now that will be eventually placed in Chile. 

We left Mamalluca and got back to our hostel in La Serena at about 12:30am and went promptly to bed. Another successful day of our weekend vacation! :)

Punta de Choros

Hola!! My phone is being stupid and I cannot sync any of my photos or get them off my phone onto the computer, but I do have my pictures from my camera and luckily I used that a lot this weekend!

We left Friday evening after work for La Serena and arrived at about 1:00am. We checked into our hostel, went right to sleep, and had to be up early to begin our tour on Saturday morning to Punta de Choros. Our original plans were to have all 6 of us interns go together: Me, Katie, Natalie, Mahathi, Dakota, and Madelyn. However, Madelyn ended up having to work and Natalie ended up having an emergency surgery, so Dakota stayed back to take care of her and just Katie, Mahathi, and I went.

Punta de Choros is a beach pueblo about an hour north of La Serena with a population of 1,000 people, most of them fisherman. The drive up there was so rural and on dirt roads, a lot of it through the mountains. It felt so normal to me, like life back home! (Minus the mountains). The reason a lot of people go visit Punta de Choros is because there are two islands off the coast that are home to the Humboldt National Penguin Reserve!

The tour guide picked us up at our hostel at 8:30am and we headed up north. The rest of the group consisted of various Chileans from different parts of the country, and one Indian. We were about 15 in total. We arrived at Punta de Choros and got life jackets and everything set up to go out on a boat! Our boat tour consisted of a boat ride out to Isla Choros, where the penguins actually live, and to Isla Damas, the neighboring island where we got to disembark for an hour and explore. The third island in this triangle is further north off the shore near the Atacama desert.

Here is our trusty boat, Doncan Aaron!

It was a cloudy, gray day which was kind of sad, but the water and the islands were still so beautiful. The water was absolutely gorgeous! A bright aqua color I've never seen before. I am sure it shimmers when the sun is actually shining.

We headed out to Isla Damas and got close to the edge, but we cannot disembark because the penguins are very scared of humans. As we got closer to the island, we saw a couple of sea otters and a lot of birds. Finally, we saw a penguin! They are SO hard to see though, because they have great camouflauge. Can you find the penguin in the photo below? Points to you if you can. He is tricky.

We actually only saw two penguins on the island which was sad, but it is their nesting season right now so they stay high up on the island to protect themselves and their babies from predators and humans. It makes sense. However, we did get to see a ton of other birds, sea otters, a whole pile of sea lions, and best of all, dolphins!! The Chileans say you have to get lucky to see the dolphins because it doesn't happen very often, but we got to see a whole pile of them! My best dolphin pics and videos are on my phone, but I do have this one to share!

It was so fun! They came up close to the boat and were swimming and splashing around. They even started to jump out of the water and do some tricks in the air. They sure like to entertain, and these are wild dolphins! 

Here are some of the tons of sea lions we saw! It is crazy to me that their fins are strong enough to allow them to climb on top of big rocks like that. But in these cold waters, it's necessary so that they don't get too cold and contract tuberculosis.

Then we headed to Isla Damas to explore. It was such a picturesque island. White sand, aqua water, beautiful scenery. I can only imagine how amazing it is in the sunshine!

It is a very small island so we were able to walk across it and see the ocean on both sides which was really cool. I picked up a bunch of shells on the beach and Katie and I explored the island. It was such a cool experience. I have never really been out in the middle of the ocean before!

Then we headed back toward Punta de Choros. I was getting splashed like crazy on the way back, and the water was SO COLD. No wonder penguins are able to live there even though it is in the northern part of Chile. We got back to the shore and then our tour group stopped at a cool olive farm restaurant for lunch! I have never seen an olive tree before, so that was cool, and they made us delicious homemade Chilean food. It was so great. I chatted with a young couple that was on the trip with us and they were super nice. We actually ended up running into them in Vicuña the following day!

There was also a swing at the olive farm. Obviously irresistable to college grads. 

We headed back to La Serena and I think all 3 of us fell asleep in the van. I know I did! We got back around 7pm, and walked to the supermarket to get some food to make for dinner at the hostel. We were exhausted. We ate, showered, and went to bed at around 10pm. It was a full, busy day after a long night of traveling!

There's a brief recap of Day 1 in La Serena! (Even though it was spent in Punta de Choros).

Giant whale pelvis! Haha 

It's like being on Survivor.