Buenos Aires (Round 2) and Iguazu Falls

Steph's classic self-portrait fron Iguazu Falls...makes me thirsty for a Coopers Sparkling!

After a fun time hopping around Uruguay, we took an extremely uncomfortable overnight bus back to Buenos Aires (Semi-cama class is SOOOO far away from Cama class, yet only a few dollars cheaper), arriving the morning of Easter Sunday. Neither of us slept more than a few winks all night!

We managed to struggle over to the barrio (neighbourhood) of San Telmo and checked into our hostel, built inside one of the many "terrace mansions" in the area. San Telmo is famous for Tango shows and is also close to the barrio of "La Boca", a poorer neighbourhood famous for Tango and football - the Boca Juniors football club has one of the most popular teams in Argentina.

Outside the Boca Juniors stadium

Despite our lack of sleep, we toughened up and headed out to the main square where there were markets and performers and all sorts of things going on for the Easter weekend.

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We caught a quick lunch, had a siesta in the afternoon and then thought it would be good to catch a movie. We ended up seeing a new movie with Richard Gere and Terence Howard called "The Hunting Party", set in post-war Serbia about journalists trying to track down a war criminal. Interesting movie and based on a true story.

After the movie, we ended up having dinner at an all-you-can-eat dodgy Chinese buffet. Very tasty and, luckily, both of us were completely OK the next day!

The next morning, we caught up on some internet then headed into La Boca for the area known as The Camanito. Famous as an artist's enclave and it's brightly coloured and painted houses.

The area was packed - probably due to it still being the Easter long weekend, and there were lots of restaurants. We stopped at one (of the thousands) that was also having a tango show! Argentinians are absolutely passionate about this dance and it really is beautiful to watch the professionals do it. Looking at the trickiness of the steps, and going on my previous salsa experience, I was convinced that there was a snowflake's chance in hell of me being able to ever get my head (and feet) around the Tango!

We were thinking about heading out to a "touristy" Tango show that night, however baulked at the price: 150-180 pesos (US$50-60) for a show each. We ended up having a quiet one, bought some empanadas at the square and had them with soup in the hostel.

The next day, our final day before we got on the bus for Iguazu that night, we thought we'd explore the affluent barrio of Palermo. We visited the botanic gardens, and then on to the Japanese gardens.

One of the professional dog walkers in Palermo - how do they all get along?

We had more fun there than we should have, watching the Koi carp and finding some great photo opps.

After we left the gardens, we trekked across the whole of Palermo to an Indian restaurant that had a good write up in Lonely Planet, however when we got there and it was only open for dinner! We ended up having a fantastic Menu del Dia at another place and then a pint of Irish Red at "Dubliners" before heading back to the hostel.

After our bus ride from Paysandu, we wanted to make sure that we travelled in comfort and, as such, booked our first "Super-cama/Tutto Leto" bus tickets, about 40 pesos more than Cama, but supposed to be a superior bus-ride!

The bus ended up being beyond our expectations, with hot meals served, beer, wine and champagne as well as fully reclining, flat bed seats. The bus even had Wi-fi, which we discovered when I had to quickly re-confirm our reservation with our hostel in Puerto Iguazu. It was a fantastic night's ride up!

The Tutto Leto flat bed experience!

The Iguazu falls are a spectacular series of waterfalls, located at the nexus of three countries' borders: Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. They can be viewed from both the Argentinian side as well as the Brazilian side and we were hoping that the two days we had allocated was enough time to do both.

The first thing that greeted us when we got to the town of Puerto Iguazu was the heat. Very tropical and humid! However, the second thing that greeted us was getting out of the cab from the bus station and seeing an enormous swimming pool at our hostel. It looked more like a resort!

The Hostel-Inn Iguazu Falls - more resort than hostel

The Hostel-Inn in Puerto Iguazu has been described as Argentina's best hostel, with large and clean rooms, regular events, good food and the swimming pool.

We also met some great people here: Diane, a Canadian lady travelling solo through South America; Katherine and Dave, an Australian couple returning to Sydney via South America after spending three years in Holland; and Dave and Brayden, a couple from Portland, Oregan.

Wednesday night is "asado night" at the hostel, with a huge salad bar and heaps of BBQ'd meat for 25 pesos each (about US$8). There was also a Brazilian samba show (we keep striking these at hostels we stay at) which had plenty of crowd participation. It was a lot of fun.

Steph trying to do the Samba!

The next day we headed out with Katherine and Dave to the Argentinian side of the falls.

We had booked in a boat trip that got you up close and personal to the bottom of the falls! We were warned about getting very wet on this boat ride and were given waterproof bags for our cameras, as the boat goes right under the falls, giving everybody a soaking!

Boat heading up to the "Garganta de Diablo", the largest of the falls at Iguazu


The boats going under the falls - very wet!

We spent the day exploring the falls, with many lookout points, as well as a handy "Disneyland-esque" train that gets you from point to point.

There are a lot of theories around about waterfalls, and how the crashing water generates "negative ions" which have a positive impact on people's health and well-being. After seeing Iguazu, both Steph and I subscribe to this theory as we left the site with an overall feeling of wellbeing and happiness.

Steph taking her self-portrait at the Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat)

Dave and Katherine, leaning out over the falls to get a better shot

Some "coatis" - unfortunately they've learned how to beg for food from tourists

Alligator - hanging out and hoping for stumbling tourists

Butterfly close-up

After a long, hot day wandering round the falls, we returned to our hostel, eager to cool off in the pool and have a couple of beers.

On Friday, Steph and I ambitiously planned to visit the Brazilian side of the falls in the half day that we had before having to catch our plane back to Buenos Aires, we reckoned we had to be back at the hostel by 1:15pm at the latest.

We came to term this day as our "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" day, as the day unfolded as follows:

• 8:30am Public bus to town
• 9:00am Shuttle from Puerto Iguazu to the border
  
• 9:20am Cross the Brazilian border
  
• 9:40am 1km walk on the highway to bus stop
  
• 10:10am Catch public bus to Parque Nacional do Iguaçu
  
• 10:20am Catch internal park bus to Cascada (waterfall) trail
  
• 10:45am Commence half-jog down the trail to Falls site, also starts to rain
  
• 11:00am Arrive at main viewing platform of the falls, still raining
  
• 11:30am Leave to catch park bus back to entrance
  
• 11:50am Arrive at park entrance (stops raining now)
  
• 12:10pm Catch public bus back to road to border, 1km walk back to border crossing
  
• 12:30pm Bus back to Puerto Iguazu
  
• 1:00pm Catch cab back to hostel
  
• 1:10pm Arrive back at hostel to catch cab to the airport

The walk down the highway from the border crossing to the bus stop

The lookout from the Brazilian side of the falls


View back across to the Argentinian side of the falls

As you can see, we made the trip and the border crossing, paid the entrance fees and bus fares to have a total of about half an hour's viewing of the falls, in the pouring rain.

However, there are two things that we can conclude. 1) the Brazilian side of the falls is smaller, but has better viewing of the main falls; and 2) we would definitely want to do this again someday, with at least a whole day to spend!

Our flight back to Buenos Aires passed without incident and, upon arrival, we said farewell to Dave and Katherine and caught a taxi out to Ezeiza airport, all the way on the other side of BA through Friday afternoon traffic. This was our last day in Argentina and we were looking forward to our adventures in Bolivia!

Maté Nation - Uruguay

¡Hola from Uruguay!

After a few brief days in Buenos Aires, we decided to take the ferry from Tigre (a suburb of Buenos Aires) across the delta of the Rio de la Plata towards Uruguay. If there was any particular day that we felt like we were starring in "Planes, Trains & Automibiles", this was it! We took a subway train from downtown Buenos Aires, to the bus/train station in Retiro where we caught a normal train to Tigre. In Tigre, we walked for about 15 minutes to locate the ferry terminal, where we had to clear customs and jump on the very modern ferry to Uruguay for 2 hours, arriving into Carmelo.

The view of Buenos Aires from the delta.

One of the beautiful buildings along the shore, near the Tigre town centre.

One of the buildings not so near town centre...

Someone doing their morning commute.

In Carmelo, we had to haul our butts through town to find the next bus to Colonia. We were lucky enough to have found one that leaves in just 5 minutes, but they only accepted Uruguanyo Pesos. Shit!! So, Kyle ran to find the nearest ATM while I was fully prepared to do whatever necessary to stall the bus. Luckily we made it, and only 8 short hours from when we left the hostel, we arrived at our destination - Colonia del Sacramento.

Colonia del Sacramento was originally a port town founded by the Portuguese in 1680 to smuggle goods from Brazil, a Portuguese colony, across the river to Buenos Aires, then a Spanish colony. It was subjected to many power struggles, however today is a very cute little town with cobblestone streets, old lampposts and historic buildings, all overlooking the Rio del Plata (which is, still being part of the delta, very brown). It's a kind of tourist haven as it's so cute, however we enjoyed walking around and exploring the old streets for the one day that we were staying.

This is the lighthouse that we hauled ourselves up on the hottest day. By the time we reached the top, we took 2 pictures and were ready to go back down and find some shade.

Calle Suspiros is a touristy little street in town, mainly because it's all original buildings and very quaint. Now, of course, it is filled with expensive galleries that the locals would never think of going into.

The Thrifty Rental Agency with their fleet - scooters, golf carts & dune buggies! (No cars available, sorry!)

The unfortunate thing for us is that we arrived into a tiny little town on what else? St. Patrick's Day! We were ready to find the nearest Irish pub and drink green beer with the locals, but it was not meant to be. In the spirit of things, I directed us on our own makeshift pub crawl and embarassed Kyle by singing "Wild Rover" at every one, to his somewhat repetitive reminders that I'm not even Irish!! Come one Kyle, EVERYONE is Irish on St. Paddy's Day.. haha. ;)

The first stop on Steph's Official St. Paddy's Day Pub Crawl.

Pouring the first beer of the day.

Kyle's reaction every time I started singing "Wild Rover" again. Of course, I only know about 4 lines, but that didn't stop me from singing them.

This one is for Les... On our tour, we appeared to be following around 3 guys that appeared to be touring the country (or the continent) on their "full-loaded" Harleys. They had all the accessories!

Another scene from the pub crawl...

...and the cute cafe across the street.

After a good amount of wandering (and pub crawling), we made our way to a restaurant called "El Drugstore." So authentic sounding, I know, but the food was fantastic and we even had a little flamenco show with 2 amazing guitarists and a drummer playing. It was a nice cafe style restaurant with tables set up in the street, and they even had an Model T Ford with a table inside that you could eat at!

Looking up the street at El Drugstore and the church.

That's a pretty unique place to eat!

The next afternoon, we moved on to the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo. Montevideo is a city of about approx 1.3 million people, is filled with beautiful 19th century neoclassical buildings and is a really nice city.

Before I go any further, I must explain a little about "Maté Nation."

While it's not the only interesting thing about Uruguay, we were fascinated by how many people drink maté (pronounced Ma-tay, a type of herb tea, drunk out of a gourd with a metal straw) here.

The reason why I nicknamed Uruguay "Maté Nation" is that everyone, and I mean everyone, drinks maté here all day long. The other odd thing is that, within a group of people, usually there is just one gourd of maté, and it's passed from person to person amongst the group, all day long.

How to Drink Maté

1. Obtain a hollowed out, leather-covered gourd from one of thousands of roadside stands around the country.
2. Also buy a maté straw, usually at the same roadside stand.
   
3. Pack the yerba maté (tea leaves) into it and around the straw - obtained in the yerba aisle of any "tienda" (corner store).
   
4. Add hot water to the gourd, usually from a thermos carried in your armpit. Thermoses can be refilled at the coin operated hot water heaters at gas stations, newsagents and vending machines.
5. Sip the bitter tea through the straw without burning your lips.
6. If bitter taste makes your face screw up and it's in the morning, add copious amounts of sugar. If it's afternoon or evening, toughen the hell up.
   

The first time I saw this was in Chile and I thought people were smoking pot out of a very interesting looking bong. Hah, guess not. BUT they do say that maté has 10 times the amount of caffeine (maybe even more) of coffee. I don't know how they sleep when they drink it constantly from dawn 'til bedtime. Crazy!

Anyways, back to the town... our hostel, Che Largarto, was right on the main plaza, Plaza Independencia, and we even had a big balcony overlooking the square... Great view! Montevideo is a nice city with lots of things to see, but seems just a little empty. Must be because of Semana Santa (Easter Week when basically everything is closed for more than a week. Just a little excessive, don't ya think?)

The view from our balcony.

I got so excited when I saw this building. The windows were covered with beautiful Indian textiles, the sign had an "Ohm" on it (like my tattoo) and I was ready for some Indian food. Needless to say, I was SO disappointed to discover that it was a clothing store that didn't seem to have anything remotely Indian in it.

We walked around town all day, one of the highlights being our visit to the port and the Museo de Carnaval. Montevideo has a very long and proud Carnaval tradition.

This was one of my favorite costumes; not half as over the top as the costumes in Rio, but very impressive.

The other highlight was the Mercado del Puerto. This is no regular mercado with hundreds of stalls filled with fruit and veggies, this one is absolutely filled to the brim with asados (grills). Well, at least we knew where to have lunch that day! We had a big feed of meat, roasted provolone and red wine. Covered all the food groups worth bothering about.

Looking down the street toward El Mercado.

The view inside the Mercado...

A look at one of the impressive grills.

Our lunch! ;)

Petting one of the restaurant's mascots. Don't know why you would want a weasel outside the restaurant scaring everyone though!

Full of meat and sleepy, we intended to take a short little rest and then head out to the festival that we came all the way here for: "Semana Criolla" (Creole Week). Unfortunately our short nap turned into a marathon 3 hour siesta! Oh well, there's always tomorrow. So we made some soup and the tasty empanadas (little meat, cheese and veggie pastry parcels) that we picked up at the market.

While we were making dinner, we were chatting with a few others at the hostel and met a guy from Berlin that had been traveling for 4 years continuously! Now THAT makes our year off seem like nothing. Maybe we should extend to 2... ;)

The next day we had a bit more motivation and finally got on the right bus (by accident, I think) out to the Prado where Semana Criolla was being held. It was absolutely chockers!! I'm guessing that big festivals are a bit of a novelty here and bring everyone out of the woodwork. Once we pushed through the crowds, we made it to ring side.... and the gauchos. Gauchos are the cowboys of South America.

We were pretty excited as this was our first rodeo! The comptition started off with riding bronco bareback. These guys have some serious cojones to get on those horses... they were mental! Once released from the pole that they were tied onto, the horse would buck and throw themselves around, and sometimes even do somersaults to get the rider off. We were actually a bit surprised to see only one rider taken away by ambulance.

A look at the crowd as we approached one of the main market buildings in el Prado.

A rider getting secured onto his bronco...

...and he's off!

It's hard to imagine how they even stay on sometimes!

Gives you the impression that these horses REALLY don't want anything on their backs!

A compilation of one of the gauchos, from getting onto the horse to being rescued from it.

Only gaucho had to be taken away by the ambos. Unbelievable that it was only one really!

This was a fiesty one! It's hard to believe that this gaucho stayed on!



Some more fun shots...

Another gaucho taking a well-deserved bow.

The next contest actually involved putting saddles on the horses.. boring. And the last contest was one in which a guy laid down on a huge rawhide and then was dragged around the ring behind a horse going full speed. Fun!

The next morning found us in a cab to the station to catch a bus for Paysandu. Incidentally, our cab driver was drinking mate and rolling his own cigarette while he was driving, but I digress...

Hmm, Paysandu, you say? Never heard of it? Yeah, no kidding. There is usually a pretty good resason for that, but some bum backpacker with Lonely Planet must have stumbled across it somehow during the 1 week a year when anything at all happens there, Semana de la Cerveza. That's right... translation: Beer Week. It doesn't take much imagination to realize when Kyle read that, our plans for a couple days lounging on a beach in Puerto del Diablo were nixed.

Well, I've gotta let the man win sometimes, so before I knew it, we were on a 5 hour bus to the middle of nowhere, i.e. Paysandu. Just before we left the bus station, we realized that in our haste, we forgot to get the address or even the name of the hotel that it took me 3 days and several very frustrating phone calls from Argentina to book. Hmm, this should be interesting. So we did what you do when you're frustrated, hungry and about to get on a long bus trip to nowhere... got McDonald's. Yeah, we both felt like garbage after, but I'm pleased to say that it was the first time we had Mackers since we started traveling. Not bad.

Once we arrived into Paysandu, I had to convince a guy (in choppy Spanish) to let me use the internet for free to find our hostel as we had no small change (and no way to change money), while Kyle worked on the most important task of all... how we were going to get the hell out of there. It was a damn good thing that Kyle thought of looking into the bus times to Buenos Aires before leaving the bus station, because we were in for a big surprise.

With Semana Santa, everything was closed down or on limited service, including the buses. There was a bus just after midnight the next day (about 31 hours away) or not another for 4 days. Hmm, haven't walked out of the bus terminal yet, but know for sure that staying here for 5 days is not what we want to do. We booked the midnight bus to BA for the next night.

After that near debacle, we managed to find our hotel. I think it's actually the first town that we've been to that doesn't actually have hostels, (READ not set up for backpackers or budget tourism). Our hotel did have a TV though (which was kind of exciting for us). We quickly discovered the drawback to this hotel though.... location. Seems like it was ok, but the Beer Festival is a little out of the way... a 40 minute walk with no cabs or buses to be found.

Kurt's dream - a barbie with hundreds of chorizo!

Sunset over the lake

By the time we reached the Beer Festival grounds, we were severely parched and in need of a beer, let me tell you. Afraid that it was going to be a repeat of the Wine Festival in Mendoza, we started scouting for beer tents. Now, I must admit that we were worried that there wasn't acttualy any beer at the Beer Festival, but we did manage to find some beer tents. As we found out later, basically every tent carried the same beer, Patricia, but I guess beggers can't be choosers.

We were just happy that we had our new favorite thing to eat -- choripan!! Yummy. They also had a "Pieroshkeria", which I am fairly certain is the Uruguayano version of pierogies. As they were deep-fried, they were probably even worse for you, but they were still very tasty.



And since this festival was a bit like a country fair with all the carnival rides, we had to jump on at least one. We chose "The Vomitron". One of those crazy rides that I went on all the time as a kid, but haven't been on since I started to come to my senses, and now I know why. While definitely a thrill, I did feel a little nauseous from shaking up all the beer and choripan, and once I looked in a mirrom, I noticed that I had quite a few broken blood vessels on my face and in my eyes. Nice. My eyeballs nearly fell out on the ride. Maybe that will be the first and last time on the "Vomitron".

"The Vomitron" in action!

Their carnival had a few other interesting adventures in store.... a tattoo & piercing booth (very sanitary, I'm sure) and, my personal favorite -- the "Crash Test Dummy" ride. Basically people were lining up to get on a metal slide that they strapped you into (I was kind of thinking that it was actually a seatbelt testing device?), then they release you down so that you can have whiplash in no time. Why, why would you want to do this? I am quite sure that at least half of them got off injured. Well, to each his own.

"The Crash Test Dummy Carnival Experiment"

In the evening, they also had shows in the Amfiteatro, the first of which was a folk band. But the second one was an "uruguayano boy band". Kyle's first "boy band" concert ever.... how exciting. Now, I can't say the same for myself as I drifted through adolescence during the craze of The New Kids on the Block. "Step by step. ooh baby, gonna get to you gi-ir-ir-iirl..." Haha. Come to think of it, it wasn't all that long ago that Kyle and I were playing trivia downstairs at our local, and I won us a free beer during the "Coaster Run" by my quick recollection of all of their names. Yes, I am proud...

The "boy band"

The next day, we signed up for a bit more of the same. Unfortunately, Saturday afternoon doesn't seem to be a popular time at the festival. None of the rides were open, none of the market stalls were open, only a couple of beer stalls. Hmm, apparently it's not very hopping on the weekend. We still managed to find a way to spend the entire day... drinking a few brews, watching all the locals drink mate, and eating some choripan before heading back the hotel to prepare for our 00:40 bus back to Buenos Aires.

Kurt's next best dream - another barbie with hundreds of chorizo

Yummy choripan!

Uruguay was a country that we weren't originally intending to visit, however we were definitely glad we did, discovering a different and more laid back culture than it's close neighbour Argentina, with lots of fiestas and people that enjoy life...as long as there's maté!