La Boca: Tango with the Boca Juniors Trophies
Vibrant colored homes are everywhere in La Boca, making it a perfect place for a day-trip stroll. As we walked down Caminito street, a pedestrian street rich in artists selling their paintings, tango performances, and restaurants we managed to stop and take a couple pictures.
Read MoreThe streets are on fire in Montevideo
Leah and I went out for a walk down the main street of Montevideo, Uruguay which was full of food and magazine stands, clothes shops, fancy old buildings and vibrant parks. It was a great end to a day of sightseeing. And to top everything off, we saw an amazing street preformance! Three girls were playing with fire. They had torches, fireballs on strings, fans, and hula-hoops! It was really amazing. One girl was twirlling a hula-hoop of fire with one leg! She was doing a one arm handstand, and had a ring of fire hula-hoop on one leg and then on the single arm that held her up another ring of fire! what? All that and they never burned their armpit hair. Blahht. Here is an amazing picture of their performance. My favorite picture from our trip...
Read MoreTrials of the Yoga Park…
The first night in the tree house was tranquil. Having arrived late the night before, we had a dinner and went to bed with a full stomach. The yoga park was silent and dark, a huge change from the bustling city. It was warm enough we didn’t need any blankets…. We got up early had an amazing breakfast: banana cake, oranges, oatmeal and apples.Here is a picture!! We headed into the garden to work for our 4 and 1/2 hours. The sunrise was gorgeous as we hoed, shoveled, and weeded in the garden with our new friend Maria. Maria is from Bolivia and lives right down the street from the Yoga Park. She isn’t Hare Krishna and doesn’t do yoga. She manages the organic garden to help support her 3 children. She speaks little english, but that didn’t stop her from having a good time with all the volunteers in the garden. Just like Yoga classes in the states, the yoga park was mostly women. They were looking to detox after eating unhealthily while traveling. Maria liked having a guy in the garden. Which meant I got to do all the fun jobs like tilling the land with a shovel or chopping down small shrubs and bamboo with a machete. We had a great time working and talking in the garden will all of the fellow volunteers. There were about 12 of us volunteering at the park, along with 4 or 5 non-volunteer guests there just for a weekend get-away from Buenos Aires. The non-volunteer guests spent the mornings reading or relaxing around the park. In exchange for our help, we were given a discount at the park. (for us the total was $12 each per day, for them $40 or $50). Lunch was fantastic! Very colorful, flavorful, and delicious. It was great to have some fresh vegetables after eating some unhealthy meals while on the road. Each meal was served with a hot tea made from fresh fruits and mint from the garden. We were loving the yoga park. After lunch we relaxed a bit in the hammocks, read, practiced our spanish, went to a yoga class,watched a movie in the cinema, and then went to bed early. Sunday was great! No work, all play. We relaxed a lot! Took in the sun and enjoyed our day off. To be honest, I was a little sore from working in the garden. My hands were blistered and my back was a little achy. It was good to have a day off. We got our blankets and went to bed… when I woke up Monday morning, I realized I was allergic to the blankets! What?!? yes, completely and totally allergic. My eye had swollen completely shut in the night. It looked like I had been in a fight We thought it was pretty funny, and I got some Allegra D from the pharmacy (prescription strength) and tried that the next night. Nope, that didn’t work, and the nights keep getting cooler. I tried various methods of keeping warm… Here is Leah’s favorite, where I look like some kind of war prisoner wrapped up in my sheet and wearing a bandana over my eyes for protection from the evil blankets. (and as a hat) We had a lot of fun with it for a couple of nights. But it kept getting colder! And as the week progressed, there were no longer any “regular” guests… and our meals started to get less and less appealing. We had squash. Lots and lots of squash and zucchini. Maria was taking full advantage of...
Read MoreLife in a Tree House – memoirs of a 2-week vegetarian
I had been surfing the internet, looking for a volunteer opportunity that would allow us to stay in Buenos Aires for a couple weeks. We thought it would be good to get our hands dirty again, stay in a place for a while, and meet some fantastic people. We were right! We saw the website http://www.ecoyogapark.com/ and thought we’d give it a try. From the name, it was a little risky, here are my immediate, unfiltered thoughts: eco – will we have warm showers? Will we be allowed to wash our clothes with detergent, are we going to be surrounded by pot smoking hippies Yoga – sounds good, we spend a lot of time on the bus it will be nice to stretch out a bit. I’m with Leah, so I won’t be the creepster at the back of the class. Park – Park like i need to bring a tent and we are camping in Yellowstone? Or park like there will be a water fountain, pigeons, and a slide? A world away from Buenos Aires, nestled in a small farming community is the yoga eco park. Our taxi drove a mile down a dirt/mud road to bring us to our yoga sanctuary. It was pretty late by the time we arrived, so the guy who ran the place Thankur. (ta – coor) ta like ta-da i pulled a rabbit out my hat and coor like coors light. He is extremely friendly, and proud of the eco yoga park he has been managing and building for 6 years. We got to our treehouse late Friday night, took a shower, climbed up our ladder, and were instantly relaxed and excited at the same time. Relaxed to be away from the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires and excited to see what was in store for us the next two weeks. We got up early, 7:30am and went to the restaurant to see if we could help. Instead, Thankur took us on a tour of the property. There was our tree house, 6 other dormitory houses were other guests could stay, a restaurant, a cinema, a huge organic garden watched over by 2 more completed tree houses and 2 under construction, and a temple. Wait what? A temple? Don’t worry no kool-aid, no Nike shoes, and no sermons =) This yoga park, and many others like it, are operated around the globe by people of the Hare Kirshna faith. They are basically a fact of Hindu that got lots of publicity from the Beatles. You can read more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Krishna But the core beliefs will squander most of your wandering minds thinking we joined some crazy cult for 2 weeks: No illicit sex No eating of meat, fish or eggs No gambling No intoxication (including alcohol, caffeine, tobacco and other recreational drugs) So those are the basics of it, and the basics of why I didn’t convert, too many no’s. They had philosophy classes a couple of times a week, and hare kirshna music playing in the kitchen all the time, but that was as far as they went. We stayed for a total of two weeks. Each morning we worked roughly from 8:30am to 1pm. The evenings were open for yoga classes, field trips to the nearby town, and relaxing. There were animals everywhere! Dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and ducks. We had a great two weeks at the park, and I’ll follow-up this post with a couple additional stories about the...
Read MoreWhat we do with all this time!
I get the same question whenever I talk with anyone from home… what do you do all day? Without working, commuting, cleaning, running errands, what to do all day? Well, here it goes =) Brace yourself. lol We still get up early. Around 8 am every morning. What?!? We don’t have jobs and we get up at 8am?!? are we crazy? Yeah. Why? Well there’s a lot to do! Time is like money, you never have enough of it. And when you get more, then you find a way to spend it. Traveling takes a lot more time then I expected. There are lots of things to research, to plan, and to decide. We spend a lot of time looking over the internet for interesting / must see things in our current city. Over breakfast we take out maps and plan our assault. Then we pack our day pack (books, umbrella, sunscreen, snacks, notebooks, kindles, camera) and make our way into the city. Traveling on a budget means a lot of walking. We walk around most of the day, trying to find things, discovering simple things along the way (markets, street art, stores, and people). We spend a good chunk of time trying foods in markets, looking for a great place to catch a cheap lunch, and maybe reading / practicing spanish. In the evenings we spend a lot of time planning our route, discussing changes to our plan. I’m beinging to question what a plan really is, if it changes everyday is it a plan? Looking for volunteer organizations, researching and bookings buses, trains, flights, hostels and excursions is time consuming. Then we organize all the pictures we’ve taken throughout the day, and sketch together rough drafts of blogs. I’m working on a new retirement plan. Those of you who’ve worked with me are well aware of my various retirement plan ideas. This next one is good. Without all my energy being spent at the office, I have superflous amounts channeled into retirement plans. So thats about it for our activites. Not all days are exciting, and rainy days could have the potential to be boring. But being with Leah, spending time laughing, playing games, and looking over pictures, every moment is cherished. Life is great. ...
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