Thursday, December 13, 2012

Food Stuffs

I have been putting off writing a blog for awhile now, I know.  And now that I´m here, I am still dragging my feet on writing.  Mostly because I have to pause every 5 seconds to karate chop the 80 flies that are buzzing around this place.  Does no one around here care about all the flies?!!?  HH is sitting next to me, muttering about all the flies, occasionally spazzing out with his fly anger.  Hey man, I feel ya.  It´s not that they bite or sting, they are just freaking annoying.  And they also breed in garbage and poop, so there´s that. 

Ok we actually changed internet cafes, and this one has significantly less flies, so I can get on with my life.  Let´s talk about food.  As most of you know, I am a picky eater.  On our last trip to Asia, I dropped about 12 pounds in the first 6 weeks in China.  My family had a money pool on how many weeks I would last before I either starved or came home.  But!  I persevered, I ate butter cookies and HH dragged me around since I had no energy, and I made it to Thailand where I ate pad thai til I pooped only noodles.  (If you can´t handle poo jokes get out now!)  This time around, I really didn´t know what to expect.  I didn´t want to know what to expect.  I just expected to be slightly hungry all the time for the 2 months we travel.  Lo and behold, the food has been edible!  We found sushi, various buffets, corn flakes and even pizza here in South America.  They love their pizza.  I don´t love their pizza, but they love their pizza. 

There have been a few meals that I would rather forget.  HH took me to a buffet in Salta, Argentina.  At first glance, it looked ok.  But as I grabbed my plate and looked for things I would want to try, I cam up empty.  Everything looked like it had been sitting there no less than a year.  Most of the food left was just the dregs, and the staff didn´t look too keen on replacing anything.  HH was happy as a clam, taking a bit of everything, exclaiming how good it all was.  Bull shiiiiiiiii..  you know.  I went to the bathroom, which had the ripe smell of #1 AND #2, so I am almost left screaming.  When I went to wash my hands, there was no soap.  Sooooo, everyone who went to the bathroom at this place has pee and poo on their hands and then they proceed to go eat and touch everything in the buffet.  What an appetizing thought.  The last straw was when a couple of cockroaches scrambled across the floor in my direction.  I immediately got up and stared HH down until he asked if I wanted to leave.  Dis. Gust. Ing.  On top of all that it wasn´t even cheap.  I think I ate 3 bites for 10 bucks. 

We are up in the Andes mountains now, and HH is loving the local cuisine.  Unfortunately, the local cuisine consists of adorable animals like rabbit and llama.  He´s all about the rabbit stew and llama steak.  I try to describe the adorable looking creatures as he shreds the meat and stuffs bites in his mouth, but I have no effect.  I think my descriptions make him like it even more.  My missions now is to find a llama so HH can look it directly in it´s giant, disney-esque eyes.  I know once he sees that he won´t be able to eat them anymore.  Myself, I´m sticking to chicken.  Cuz chickens are ugly.  Oh and ice cream.  I pretty much eat ice cream twice a day.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

The Bug Blog

We've been traveling at breakneck speed.  I haven't had a moment to sit still and blog..  until now.  Apparently things in Buenos Aires don't get going until at least midnight, and HH says I can't nap the whoooole time, so here I am.  I am going to blog about things that happened in Brazil, even thought we've moved on to Argentina.  For details, go read HH's blog at mytb.org/gabanie

Spoiler alert: things are awesome.

But let's talk about things that are not awesome.  Bugs.  As some of you may know, I am terrified of bugs.  I'm not really discriminating either.  I pretty much hate all bugs.  I guess spiders terrify me more often, since most of my nightmares seem to be about spiders, but I definitely loathe mostly all bugs.  HH knows this.  He has to deal.  I scream for him if there is a bug in the house, because I need my knight in shining armor to come save me from the deadly ant that has crawled into my tub.  Deadly!

We were on a lovely hike in Floripa, on some cliffs with some greenery, when the trail took a dangerous turn.  It led right into the jungle, with trees and everything!  HH passed through just fine, but as I stepped in to the tunnel of trees, it suddenly got darker.  Then there was hissing, then all of a sudden something flew at me, right at my eye, intent on blinding me with whatever stinger or biting mechanism it had.  I turned around and ran screaming.  HH came back through the tunnel and was like, "Are you coming?"  Hellllll nah I'm not coming.  They can smell my fear and they have my scent in their antennae.  That was the end of that hike.

On another day, we were up on the cliffs (different cliffs of course.  You think I would go back there??) watching dolphins flip and surf the waves.  We had climbed up some rocks to get there, but HH, of course needing more adventure in his life, wanted to go back a different way.  This new way included crawling up another rock to get on some greenery.  i couldn't make the climb myself, so HH went first and decided to pull me up.  I had my hand on the rock and and GIANT red ant bit me!  I screamed (of course) and the shock of it made my eyes water.  I wanted out of there quick, so HH grabbed me and hefted me up.  Only, I didn't make it all the way up.  I sort of fell over onto the ground, which happened to be where the GIANT ants were all hanging out.  I start screaming again and HH helps me up and rips off my coat in case there are ants on it and I'm jumping around, hitting myself to get all the ants off that probably weren't even there.  It took me awhile to settle down after that, because I basically almost died.  I saw hunger in the ants' eyes, they already had a taste of my sweet blood!  I skirted death though, and that was the end of that hike.

One night, we decided to leave the window open a crack because it was hot in our room.  It was seriously like the tiniest of cracks ever.  I went to sleep and had a strange dream, where HH and I were standing on the banks of a very fast moving river.  All of a sudden a guy flies by in the river, drowning and yelling.  aaaAAAaaa  and then he was gone.  I woke up and was thinking that was a strange dream, when all of a sudden I hear that sound again..  aaaAAAaaa  Mosquitos!  Those little suckers were dive bombing my ear.  I wake HH up and convince him we have a problem.  He thinks there are only a couple, but admits he has been buzzed too.  So we turn on the lights.  OMG THERE ARE LIKE 50 MOSQUITOS.  We shut our window and we immediately go into killing mode.  The first one I kill, I kill it by clapping it between my hands.  I open my hands and there's bright red blood on them.  He just fed!  I kill another against the wall; blood smears.  HH is getting the same results.  Bright red blood each time one is killed.  All of these mosquitos just fed!  And we had a really bad feeling about who they had just fed on.  We hunted all of them, and the aftermath was bloody.  Smears of blood on the walls and floors, the killing fields.  We checked our bodies, but we couldn't feel any new bites..  yet.  The next day HH woke up scratching his arms violently.  He has about 20 new bites in a 2 inch radius.  I got away with 3 new bites.  I thank my lucky stars that they chose him over me.  Haha!


Oh and I just turned 30!  Feels good man.