Rainy Day Reads

Challenges:   Read the World, South America This is the story of Irene, a young woman living in Chile under the military dictatorship. She is from the upper classes and while her mother struggles to keep up facades after Irene’s father has left them, Irene herself doesn’t really notice all the bad things going on around her.  Francisco is a young man brought up by immigrant parents who fled Franco’s Spain and are struggling to keep up their preferred way of life in Chile. Unlike Irene he knows exactly what is going on out in the real world and he does his best to try and help people. When the two get entangled in the fate of one young girl named Evangelina Irene’s naiveté is crushed and replaced by a desire to do something. What she does, with the help of Francisco, has farreaching consequences however.  This book started off pretty slow for me. I wasn’t really enjoying it because I felt like there was a lot of background story about pretty inconseque...

In Argentina you absolutely have to experience the life of the gaucho (South American cowboy). Well, it probably won’t resemble the actual life of an actual gaucho that much, but it will smack of it. I went to Argentina in 2014 on a group tour, and during this trip we stayed on an estancia (farm) for 2 nights. During the day we went horseback riding in the mountains and in the evening we had a barbecue dinner. The last night the estancia crew cooked a traditional asado (barbecue buffet) for us, complete with local wine.   Appetizer. The meal was very much meat based... Manning the barbecue The Beast The area we stayed in was pretty hilly. I don’t know if it was actual mountains or it just seemed that way for a flatlander like me! I had expected flat prairie-like surroundings for riding, but it was proper off-road trekking, if you can call it that. I am an absolute beginner when it comes to riding horses, and seeing the terrain, I was a little bit c...