Melbourne

Melbourne- a city of tons of art, tons of rain, and the worst hostel ever. We arrived last monday after a shit greyhound busride of tossing and turning which i wont use anymore because apparently tossing in british talk means masturbating. So Tosser means like Jack off, So don't say tossing and turning aroung british folks. Anyways, so Melbourne is really cool, trams are the main form of transport and you can tram it all over town, and we went to some really cool museums with lots of aboriginal art and modern australian art and fashion, and cool exhibits of the human mind and body and i even saw a huge blue whale skeleton. And a performance art exhibit that was crazy and hillarious and weird at the same time. And we found a rad hare krishna veggie lunch place for 5$ all you can eat. which is awesome here because its super expensive for food, and i've been pretty much eating ramen. The ramen issue is twofold however because our shithouse hostel has the world's smallest kitchen with about two burners for like 200 people, and its so small that 4 people standing in it feels cramped, so i'm trying to minimize my time in the kitchen. So one night I got my ramen all ready and went to sit down and spilled boiling water all over my stupid hand and now have a burn that looks like a tyler durden kiss from fight club. It's healing quite nicely however.

And our hostel. Nomads Industry. The WORST. EVER. Shit service. Broken lift. Small Kitchen. Shitty Sheets. Short, broken Sinks, broken toilets, no free brekkie or dinner like they said, roommates having sex in the rooms, loud noisy shit bar downstairs, no common room(other than sed bar), retarded front desk girls(save one),smelly rooms with boys, changing rooms everyday, overcharged for internet, fake fire alarm necessitating an evacuation when it's pouring rain out. etc.
It sucks, and if anyone reading this ever goes to Melbourne, do NOT stay at nomads. it is total shit and it should really have a fire and burn to the ground.
luckily, tonight is our last night and we're off to Adelaide tomorrow.
And what else, well it's very much like San Francisco with all the street art everywhere and the trams and all the shit weather and rain and all the art/artists everywhere which is really cool. And the Queen Victorian Market is near to the worst hostel ever and Jules and I have been frequenting it for goodies such as wasabi peas, dried apples, cheese, feta filled peppers, tabouli, sunglasses, and delicously warm and crunchy sugary doughnuts filled with strawberry jam from the doughnut van.

All in all we've made the best of what we've got in Melbourne and I think we've done pretty good, although I almost lost it in the middle there when the weather was shit and we had to switch rooms everyday and my body was rejecting all the shitty food that i'd been eating and I was missing berger really bad. But we've pushed through, and Adelaide for a week and then WWOOFing for another few days and then back to Sydney to meet up with jan and MOM AND JACK! yay!

Sydney, Australia

Syndey Australia, what Seattle should be.

I have to say upon arriving in Sydney I was initally quite impressed, smells good, like palos verdes, good public transit, awesome public toilets. Then the culture shock set in. Oh shit. I'm in a westernized country and everyone is shopping all the time, and it looks like the set of the O.C. ahhhhh! It was quite a change from gritty, south american, over the top Buenos Aires. And it did take a bit, but Sydney is comin around. Slowly, and expensively she's a comin around. Beaches everywhere. We stayed at a hostel right near the beach for the first 4 days, at Cronulla. And lets see I've wandered to the Sydney Opera House, over the Harbour Bridge, into Luna Park, hopped a ferry to Manly Beach, went to the Contemporary Art Museum, visited the Rocks, where the first settlement was and checked out that musuem, ran on the beach, and lay on the beach. It's weird but everyone is all pumped up for Christmas which I can't belive because for one, its only november, and for two, it's hot outside.


In a few days we're hopping a bus down to Melbourne to check it out and do some wwoofing, which btw here is sooo much smoother than in Argentina, here it's like a max of 5hrs work per day for room/board, not 10hours of hardcore barro. I'm into that. Anyways, things here are good and unfortunately it is very easy to get accustomed to english speaking and grocery stores with peanut butter. Love to All, more soon!--Liz

Buenos Aires Revisited

Well Buenos Aires seems a million miles away, but quickly it was much much better the second time around, granted it was 33 degrees c in the city and hot as a mothah, but it is beautiful, bustling and ohh i miss Argentina so. We went to the Plaza de Mayo and saw the Casa Rosada, or government palace, and we went to the Puerto Madero and looked at all the ships, and we napped in various plazas and ate delicious helado de frutilla y limon from a tiny little heladeria near our hostel i think every day we were there. The empanadas were superb, the pizza dripping with flavor and generally we ate our way all over Argentina. Don't cry for me, I'll be back

Mar Del Plata

Mar del Plata is a sunny, metropolitan, Argentinean adventure. The first image that comes to mind is Leonardo de Caprio brooding beachside in Romeo and Juliet. Da da dow dow( you know the song) Traditionally this place is famous for its vast beaches packed with porteños and scarcely a spot for a towel on any beach. Luckily Juli and I are just a little early for the summer season and have managed to score the good weather, beach space and spare the billions of people. That said there are people everywhere tanning, and jogging, and generally looking good. Except the ones that dont and are totally something about mary´ing all over the beach, and street, and plazas for that matter.


The weather has been sunny and windy, sunny and perfect, and windy and torrential downpour, in that order. We explored the vast beaches and perfectly blooming purple flowers and aloe that flank them the first day. And yesterday we traipsed on over to the port so that Juli could get cat called at like no other, fisherman and sailors, and juli..... interesting combo. Anyways at the port are tons of cutesy seafood restaurants and millions of souveniers, literally-- owls made of sea shells and peg leg pirates galore. And SEA LIONS! Big ass beasties slothily lazing about their selected area of repose. There are about 80 or so males that hang out past the puerto to nap in the sun and mouth fight, and lay in the water with their heads reaching up to the sky smiling. The only problem is their smell. Like rotting flesh that has been picked at and the pus has been left out in the scorching sun for months and then right before i got there, someone peed on it. DISGUSTING! But we did happen to catch a couple belly flopping gracefully into the water off of their pier, and a few even found a good tanning spot on the end of some rusty ship wreckage.

And we did have some interesting Argentinean roommates, one of which tried to climb into Juli´s bed twice, sin success, and kept whispering psst Julia... Tienes un novio? Psst. Julia, no puedo dormir! Quite hillarious.


Also, here we have been eating. A lot. Helado de pistachio y dulce de leche granizado y mente granizado y coco, y mucho mucho! And churros rellenos with dulce de leche and chocolate and crema tambien! And the best empañada place that is only a few blocks from the hostel that even has a chart of all the empañadas that they make that you get with your comida para llevar to desipher which type you are about to enjoy! It is magical!

And we went to the Museo del Mar today which houses one man´s collection of something like 30,000 seashells. From every beach and island and country that ever could have seashells. Tiny purple cones and bright orange shells and enormous ariel style ones and intricately designed artsy ones and seashells for everyone pretty much.

Today we also went to a super busy beach to enjoy the sun and as soon as we sat down. Clouds. Rain. INSANE RAIN. So we had to go and get more churros and café con crema to wait it out. oh well. Tomorrow we bus it back to Buenos Aires and are going to explore San Telmo and perhaps pop into Uruguay for a day, and then on thursday...Australia... stay tuned!