My apologies to the many gracious followers of our blog for the many mornings and nights you had to suffer between posts. In all fairness, I'd rather be an underblogger than an overblogger. This blog post will be part 1 of 2 of our winter vacation travels. Enjoy!
My parents flew in on a Monday morning and we spent the first couple of days touring Santiago. We took them to the basic sites in Santiago which I won’t bore our diligent blog followers with. On Tuesday, the Chilean national team played the Peruvian national team as part of the Copa America. Peru and Chile have had a little bit of a rivalry every since Chile forcefully took the northern region of what is now Northern Chile from Peru. Even though this game was only the opening round of the Copa America, I warned my parents that if Chile won, Santiago would go absolutely wild.
Chile ended up scoring a goal in the 92nd minute to break a 0-0 tie and to win the game. I knew Santiago was about to go crazy and we were only moments from the epicenter of craziness, Plaza Italia. Not thinking my dad would want to venture out to see this celebration first-hand, I asked him with a sarcastic undertone if he wanted to go see the madness. He had been talking about how he used to protest in the 60’s/70’s well before his arrival in Santiago, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he was up for it. Off to Plaza Italia we went to witness the euphoric state that winning an opening round game against a long-time rival can bring a city. We weren’t disappointed. We set up our post in a corner of the Plaza right in front of a line of Carabineros (Police) and watched as more than 5,000 Chileans gathered to celebrate. We looked on at the excited Chileans for probably around 45 minutes or so and then things started to get a little dicey. Katie and I went to our apartment and my parents went to their hotel where they just made it inside the gates before the mayhem started. Up in their hotel room, they looked down at the street where they just were to Chilean soccer fans throwing glass bottles among other things at the Carabineros. Even in times of victories, the celebrations here always seem to take a turn for the worst.
Kip wearing a Chilean hat that some kid put on his head
Plaza Italia
The water trucks(Guanacas) that are preparing to shoot at people
The Carabineros arrresting someone
Katie in front of the Ninja Turtles
We flew to Buenos Aires about mid-day on the Thursday the 14th. We were only spending about a 1 ½ days here so we had to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. We landed safely in Buenos Aires and we were on our way to the hotel. It was about that time when Katie realized she had left her phone on the airplane. The years of making sure I had everything finally took its’ toll on Katie and she was now without a phone, and in turn without emoticons.
We got settled into our hotel, had a little bit of downtime, and were off to see the city and also to try the world renowned selections of meat. We first stopped by Argentina’s famous National Cemetery to see the immense mausoleums as well as the tomb of Eva Peron. As we walked by the huge, sprawling mausoleums on the way to Eva’s tomb, we developed some Texas-sized expectations. We were somewhat disappointed as her tomb was surprisingly small and ordinary and I think there would only be enough room to find Nemo if you cracked it open. Nevertheless, the cemetery was very impressive and made me want to die in Buenos Aires.
Next up, we walked towards the president’s house and along the way saw many important, nondescript buildings. In a plaza in front of the president’s house, we decided to take a seat on a bench. Sitting there taking in all of the government buildings around us, there was a group of school children about to pass us. Trying to blend into the bench didn’t work as one of the school children noticed the pasty, Anglo-Americans, then two, three, four, and then we were engulfed in a crowd of about 30 school children. I had to pinch myself, we weren’t in Asia, but the undeserved adoration just because we had blond hair and light skin gave me a flashback...........
The year was 1994 and I was on a family vacation at the Grand Canyon. I was standing about 4’10, blond hair in the form of a chili bowl, no facial hair yet, but you could tell I was a man. Sporting a Michael Jordan jersey with my Fabio hair, I made myself prey, vulnerable to the many predators in the form of Asian photographers that were lurking. I let my guard down and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a group of Asian tourists who wanted a picture with “Michael Jordan”. This was somewhat surreal as it was the first time I had been referred to as “Michael Jordan” outside of the basketball court. I posed with the excited tourists for several shots and then I carried on not appreciating the Grand Canyon because I was too young at the time.
Flash forward to the mob of kids that were enthralled with us because of our U.S. citizenship. After the kids asked a couple of innocent questions about soccer and life in the U.S., their true motives surfaced. They wanted a U.S. dollar to which my dad supplied them, but only after quizzing them as to if they knew who George Washington was. None of them did, but my soft-hearted father, lugubriously parted with his hard-earned dollar. The school children then excitedly cheered and were on their way. Cheap entertainment…
The rest of the day was spent touring a port, Puerto Madera, and an eclectic part of the city, Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood. Dodging the dog poop on the street was tricky. It lined the street like land mines and just when you started to feel like you were developing a rhythm for the GPS location of the scatological placement of these grotesque land mines, you realized the pattern was completely random. Unfortunately, being hard-headed, I thought I could find a pattern but eventually fell victim to one of these mines. Damage was minimal, but damage had been done.
We ate at some really good restaurants at our time in Buenos Aires, meat capital of the world. I probably had the best sausage that I’ve ever had there. I have to say that the steak that I had wasn’t any better than a steak you would get at a good steak restaurant in The States. The difference was price. An appetizer, a big, succulent steak with healthy helpings of sides included, and a couple of glasses of wine were probably around $20/person. We had a good time in the “Paris of South America”, as Buenos Aires is billed, but I believe we were all even more excited about our next destination, Iguazu Falls.
Upon setting eyes on Iguazu Falls (The Falls) for the first time, Eleanor Roosevelt once reportedly exclaimed “Poor Niagara!”Now, I’ve never been to Niagara, but it would take something utterly amazing to top what we witnessed during our 3-day stay in The Falls. We arrived in the late afternoon the first day which left us enough time to take a short jaunt out to The Falls. In the hour and a half that we had left before the park closed, we got to see several of the individual waterfalls as well as the bigger ones. It basically felt like we were living inside a National Geographic.
The next day we woke up to rain, which wasn’t really surprising as we had been woken up by thunder all night. Maybe that was Katie snoring, I’ll have to ask her though as I’m sure she would never freely fess up to it if she didn’t have to. Looking at the weather report for that day, one thing was for certain, and that was rain…all day. We ponchoed up and ventured out to see The Falls in somewhat inclement weather. I will let the pictures do most of the writing, but there are a couple of events that I feel the need to go into detail about.
One of these events involved my wife, Katie, who I get along great with and she always listens to my advice with the utmost sincerity. For paths at Iguazu, they have these metal-grated catwalks that become somewhat slippery when rain is applied. I have a big heart. Saying that, I was overly concerned that Katie may slip on these grates and so I was overly persistent in reminding her to ‘Be Careful’. Katie was visibly and audibly becoming annoyed, as you could tell with her cries of frustration, “Gawwwwwd”, and her mockingly saying to me, “Okay Dad” and "I thought I came to Argentina with Stephen, not Steve (Katie's Dad)". We were approaching some metal-grated steps, and so being the leader of the pack, I made sure and gave Katie plenty of fair warning of what lied ahead. I think I remember her shaking her head in complete annoyance.
As I gracefully walked down the stairs, perhapstoo gracefully as it made the descent look too easy, I looked back to make sure that the pack was following. I turned back to see both of my parents at eye level, but I had to resort to my ground level vision to see where Katie had ended up. Katie, fully confident in her ability to walk over the slippery terrain, had taken a spill on the very first stair she had stepped foot on. This kind of slap-stick humor, especially at the expense of a condescending spouse in this instance, gave me my comedy fix for a while. Again, cheap entertainment…
Katie reenacting her fall the next day in the same spot where it occured
That night, we fell asleep to the unrelenting rain but woke up to sunshine and good weather. My parents woke up to a similar scenario with the exception of a banana peel on their balcony. Right away, my mother had this disgraceful act pinned on a neighbor. My soft-hearted Dad wasn’t so quick to pin it on his Fellow Man. Rather, he was putting his money on an unlikely but more interesting source, a monkey. I say unlikely because at that time we hadn’t seen any monkeys. Without a forensic kit though, it was going to be very difficult to build up a strong case against either potentially guilty party. The potential suspects were just going to have to get caught in the act for this vigilante case to be solved. Until then, you know how people who have been married for a long time are about being right…
We made our way out to the rain forest after a big breakfast in preparation for a big day. We were on our way to La Garganta del Diablo, or in our native tongue, The Devil’s Throat. You had to cross a catwalk that spanned about a mile over the water to reach The Devil’s Throat. On our way across this catwalk, an elderly man was being wheeled the other way of apparent heat exhaustion. I hope this elderly gentleman was alright, but I can confidently say that after viewing The Devil’s Throat, it would have been one helluva way to go. Again though, I will let the pictures do the writing.
Later that day, Katie, my mom, and I went on a boat ride that took you right up to the falls and underneath them. We got completely soaked, but it really was one of the best parts of the trip.
This is a video on the boat ride.
Right after the boat ride
On our jungle hike
Later that day, we stopped in at a café that was in the middle of the rain forest. About half way through, we were alerted that there were some monkeys in the trees above the café. I’m not sure, but I would almost bet that one of the first thoughts that went through my dad’s head was that this incident would only strengthen his case with the mysterious banana peel on the balcony. We finished our meal and then made our way back to the hotel and caught the last part of Argentina losing in the Copa America much to the dismay of all of the Argentineans watching.
We got back to Santiago later that night after a great trip to Argentina. The next couple of days were composed of doing more touring around the city, hiking up the big hill in the center of the city, and making a 30-minute trip outside of Santiago to the world’s 2nd largest winery, Concha y Toro. In between all of this, my mom had developed an affinity for scarves. So, Katie and her found the perfect window to do some scarf shopping, I had a private class for two business students and Kip was off doing push-ups or napping, one of the two.
After my private lesson, during which I probably advised my students to buy stock in a company I was already invested in, I came back to our apartment expecting to see Katie and my mom wrapped up in scarves of every hue celebrating with wine after their big purchases. They had scarves and they were drinking wine, but not in celebration, but rather to cope. When Katie and my mom were coming out of the artisan fair after buying a copious amount of scarves, my mom was robbed. The flaite, which is what scum is referred to as here, had came up behind my mom and ripped the necklace right off her neck. Katie heard her scream and turned around to see the flaite starting to run. Katie grabbed the flaite’s hood, but quickly realized that that was a bad idea. She watched as the flaite disappeared across 8 lanes of traffic, his partner closely following him. Both were shaken by what happened, but my mom got the last laugh...sort of. While disrobing later in the night, my mom discovered half of the chain had fallen into her under garments. So, the flaite made off with half a broken chain and I would seriously doubt he made off with the pendant as well considering it's small size.
My parents left the next day and I think it’s safe to say that they had an eventful experience. Soccer riot, theft, amazing waterfalls, and a little poo on the shoe to top it off.
Also, we want to mention the new addition to The Balsley Family. Below is our first niece Katilyn Rose. She was born yesterday. Congratulations Dan and Nicki!!!
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