Last month, I crossed another country off of my bucket list. My family and I went down to South America to see Argentina. For the past 11 and 1/2 years, I have been doing a martial arts called Taekwondo. I am a second-degree black belt, and my 11-year-old brother is a red belt. Every year for the past 3 years, we have gone to a South American country to compete in the Pan-American Games. The first year we found out about this competition was from my instructor who lives in Salt Lake. When she told us about this competition, we jumped at the opportunity because what better excuse to see a new country than something you know your parents will support and agree to? Currently, my brother, Connor, is in his seventh year in the Spanish Dual Immersion at Ecker Hill Middle School, and I am in AP Spanish Language at Park City High School, so these trips to South America are a great way to use our Spanish.
With all that in mind, we decided to ask our parents. My dad has always been a fan of South American food, and he likes to think that he can speak Spanish, so he was on board with the idea. My mom is the better planner in my family, so she was very excited with the idea, but she needed to make sure that we were completely willing to train and study to be able to make the trip worth its while. My brother and I were prepared to work as hard as we needed to be able to go on our trip.
This is how our South America trips started, and as I said before, we have gone for the past three years. Uruguay was our first competition location in 2016, then we went to Peru the next year, and last month, we went to Argentina. Being able to go to Argentina was surreal. Everything was so incredible, from the food, to the buildings, to the history, to the people. We went to Buenos Aires which was like a South American version of Paris. The architecture there was beautiful, and there was history around every corner. My favorite part of the city was definitely the food. One of the places we stayed had a huge Argentinian buffet, and there was an area for every kind of food. There were cheeses imported every morning and steaks and porks and fish. They also had a pasta bar where they would cook handmade pasta and create custom sauces. The gnocchi there was the most incredible pasta I have had in my life. From the nation's capital, we went to Iguazu Falls which was unbelievable. The falls were huge and they extended for almost a mile. They went into Brazil, too.
We ended our trip in a small town called Corrientes. We stayed there because our taekwondo competition was in the next town over, Resistencia, however, there were no hotels there. Once, we went to the airport to go from Iguazu Falls to Corrientes, there was an international communication error, and our flight got delayed 6 hours. We decided that it was going to take too long to wait for our plane, and we needed to get to Corrientes in time for the competition the next day, so we got a taxi driver to drive us 7 hours without internet to Corrientes. It turns out, that drive was better than expected because I was able to admire the Argentinian countryside with my family.
Finally, my brother and I had our tournament, and I got 4th place in all of North and South America for my event. My brother got 6 medals in his 6 events. Simply put, Argentina is an incredible country with amazing people and amazing food and amazing culture. I would definitely go back and recommend to anyone of any age to visit it.
