Thursday, April 17, 2008

Home, Home on the Range

So this entry is a little tardy…well, really tardy. As in it slept through class, but better late than never, eh? Experiencing culture vicariously through a sporadically writing 20 year old is so fun, isn’t it?
On March 29th, about 3 weeks ago, we took a group trip to an estancia, or a working ranch, about a 2 hour drive into the interior of Uruguay. We were planning to have a lot of fun with ample free time to do whatever we wanted to get out of the city and relax in some fresh air and sunshine. We rode bikes around some dirt roads. Branson and I even found some single track through a glade of trees: Mountain Bike Uruguay! Yeah! Then we could take either row boats or canoes into the lake on the property. Cody Veteto and I took a canoe around and had fun singing “Kiss de Girl” to the other row boats, attempting to draw a comparison between their row boats and the one in Disney’s Little Mermaid. Sadly, our amazing humor seemed to be lost on the ears of our compañeros. Later we had a lunch of really good food with grilled beef and chicken and all types of salad. After lunch, a smaller group of us went out horse back riding and talked our guide into letting us run the horses. He, the guide, took us around the lake and ran us through a narrow strip of trees giving me the feeling of chasing deer or elk through the woods. What a rush! I’ve never loped on a horse for that long of stretch. It was an amazing feeling. Back at the main casa, we swam in the pool and took turns being crazy and throwing each other into the pool. Adding to the entertainment, Hansen Penya, our program director’s 6 year old son, kept wanting us to throw him into the air. Naturally, we Core-Four tried endlessly to get him to flip in the air. We never got it, but he was a good sport! :) At 4:00 we had a Merienda, a type of high tea, with more tasty food. When we were completely stuffed, we boarded the bus back to Montevideo.
Upon returning, several of us climbers went to a Rock Climbing BBQ that we had been invited to. It was a fun time socializing (in our broken Spanish) with our friends outside of a climbing context. Climbers have to be some of the funnest people I’ve ever made friends with… Although we had eaten all day long, or so it seemed, we ate a lot of food at the barbeque. This included trying some more “exotic” entres: kidney, intestine, and blood sausage. Mrs. McAlister, my 9th grade history teacher, would be so proud of me. None of us cared much for the texture of the kidney or the taste of the intestine, but both were deemed mediocre by those present who had had it before, so I will never know if it actually would be something I’d like or not.
Some future things with the rock climbing club: we have a climbing trip to Minas next weekend and I’ll try to take some pictures of the gym we’ve been going to in order to post them here.
Hey look! It's a "Watch-Frog"!!!

1 comment:

U.Craig said...

Loco Colter, Que tal!? Dude, you're having more fun in a day than I've had all year! I've been reading your blogs all morning, what an incredible adventure. Life has taken a busy turn for me, I did save your blog to my favorites, but never got a chance to keep up with your exploits til now. Wow! Drop me a quick line at cshansen@spt.com.