So in Cordoba, I wondered off when we got to a river, swam for at least an hour, it felt so extremely peaceful, till I reached the mountains. At one point you have nothing to look at but the mountains in front of you, and the water starts getting chilly. The streets of Cordoba are swamped with street artists, singing, dancing, painting, men on stilts, clowns and puppeteers.
Heading back from Cordoba, I have exactly a day and a half to change my wardrobe from beach wear to winter wear. NOT EASY. Once I reach South Argentina, everything starts getting a lot more beautiful and well, expensive. Stay with another family in Neuquen for 3 days who are also hosting an exchange student from China. So it was nice to have company in the family!
And this is when my trip to Perito Monero starts. We were 42 exchange students, 1 from India (me) , 2 from US, and 38 from different countries from Europe. What I really liked it that you don't make a friends and stick to him, every meal, every outing, you talk to different people. Different people from different countries and different cultures and it's amazing how different they are. But at the same time you make friends who you can't let go at the end of 2 weeks.Once we reached Calafate, the scenery was unbelievable. Snow covered mountains all around you. We then went to the National Park where we could look at the glacier which was about 2 hours away. The entire national park had one dustbin at the entrance. To preserve that one glacier, people could use the bathroom, the dustbin, or could smoke at the entrance of the park of thousands of miles. Amazing really!
The glacier is called Perito Monero and is the 3rd largest sweet water reserve in the world. So you can imagine how enormous it was! Standing there and looking at the glacier for hours is really fun when you have the most fun friends screaming at the glacier to start cracking. At one point after ages of waiting, we heard this loud rumbling noise and masses of the glacier collapsed. It was just amazing to watch. We then walked took a catamaran to a close by mountain and put on these special shoes to walk on ice, SO uncomfortable! Anyway trekking on the glacier was such an experience! Once we were almost back to the mountain, the guides crushed some ice off the glaciers and put in glasses and poured us some whiskey as he congrajulated us for finishing the trek .
What is sad about all of this is that you never know when you'll see all these friends again. Alot of them were fascinated at the fact that I'm from India and they've all watched movies on Indian weddings. So we made a pact that if and when I get married, they're all invited!
Thanks for reading this incredibly long post!
