Dos Gringos

We have now officially finished our trip, though here are a few stories, useless facts and tips for fellow travellers, we omitted to mention on our previous travel blogs. Resturants. 80% of the time we ordered our meals, the meals never came out as expected. It was nearly always a different dish or side dish, to what we ordered. The bill was the same deal. There were always taxes, tips, and charges added on. The food and bill always made eating out an exciting experience, very much like a lucky dip, as you never knew what to expect. Whilst still on the subject of food, if you love Pizza, you will love South America, it is Pizza heaven. Without exception, every country we visted had so many pizza shops, boasting exotic pizzá and different ways of ... read more

We returned to Buenos Aires with mixed emotions. Dom was really quite excited and looking forward to going home, whereas I couldn't match her enthusiasm as I could have quite easily stayed another couple of weeks. All up we had travelled 9 weeks in South America and realistically had only scratched the surface, as it is such a large and diverse continent. But then again that is my excuse to return and visit all the sights and countries that we never had the opportunity to this time around. We returned to the Pangea Hostel in B.A. as they were so good to us when we stayed there prior to our Salta trip, but also because they had our suitcases. We left them stored at the Pangea so we could travel lightly to Salta. We did the ... read more

We said a temporary goodbye to Buenos Aires as we hopped on our coach and headed for Cordoba. The coaches here are double deckers and the seats recline at 45 degree angles so that you can have a bit of a snooze if the movie they are showing is crap. I was happy that I had my I-pod as the movie was crap so I could just look out the window and admire the scenery with a musical soundtrack. The trip itself was a 10 hour ride and we arrived in Cordoba about 8.00pm, which was just enough time to book into our hostel and head out to grab a bite to eat before crashing out. All that travelling in the heat takes it out of you. It was so warm and humid compared to the ... read more

We have just spent 4 nights back in Buenos Aires after taking a ferry across from Montevideo. We decided to save some cash and stayed at the Pangea Hostel in the Monserrat District. It is a good, clean hostel, though Dom wasn´t too keen on sharing her dorm with 7 big hairy guys who snored. Some people are never happy!!! Actually we had a private room and bathroom for under $40 AUS. The staff were very friendly and helpful, but to be honest we have found this is a common occurrence everywhere we have booked. Without exception I would recommend every location we have stayed in South America based on the quality of staff as well as the accommodation itself. We spent our first day back in B.A just acquainting ourselves with a new part of ... read more

This is purely from my limited warped perspective whilst travelling around South America for the past 8 weeks. 1. The females in Buenos Aires smoke too much and it is not a good look. 2. Argentinian men love wearing their hair long 70´s and 80´s style and that is not a good look either. ( I know because I have seen photos of such styles in books) 3. Ecuadorian taxi drivers (and retaurants too) will invariably change their music from Spanish to English when you enter their taxi (or restaurant for a meal). It is very well meaning though it is nice to hear the local music and rather than hear 80´s and 90´s music. Celine Dion is so last century. 4. The average life expectancy of Bolivian citizens is 62 years. The Bolivian retirement age ... read more

Thankyou for all your emails voicing your concern for my welfare and that of my Duty Free Havianas after my last blog. Fortunately I can share with you that I didnt get mugged in Montevideo, Uruguay, but I certainly received some envious, almost knowing, glances from the locals, which is understandable. That bling I added to the straps looks totally awesome. Does that sound too gay???? :-) The flight from Rio to Monetvideo was safe and uneventful, just how we like it. Although at the Montevideo airport I was impressed with a large ad on one of the walls for a brand of bread named Bimbo. The idea was to get Dom to stand next to the Bimbo brand name so I could take a photo. I looked around for her and there she was inadvertantly ... read more

We made it to Brazil, 16 hours later than expected. It had something to do with us missing our flight from Iguasu to Rio, but thats another story for another day. Rio is one huge city, not quite like the size of La Paz, but it is spread out over a very large area and the climate is so much better too. As soon as we arrived we slipped into something more comfortable as they say in the movies, only for us, that consisted of shorts and singlets. Each day of our 6 day stay, the weather was just perfect, lots of blue skies, minimal breeze and a dry humid heat which generally hovered around 30 degrees celcius. We did all the touristy things, such as visit the Christ the Re-deemer statue and Sugar loaf mountain, ... read more

We headed off to the Iguasu National Park looking forward to spending the day there, as we had heard so many good stories about it. Dom even heard that you can sit in the pools of water just before the water crashes over the edge of the falls. I don´t know where she heard that from or how she even managed to believe it. In the 1930´s you could actually be rowed out to near the edge of the falls on a row boat manned by an employee of the park, that is until he couldn´t fight against the current any more and he, his boat and a load of German tourists crashed over the edge to their deaths. Iguasu is sub tropical, everything is so green, warm and lush. Within the first 5 minutes I ... read more

Our plane landed at Ciudad del Este(CDE) airport, we exited the flight leaving most of our fellow passengers on board continuing on to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Initially I intended to stay the evening at CDE, but a combination of a lack of decent accomodation and some horror stories about the city changed our minds. The new improved plan was to catch a taxi and drive smoothly over the border to Puerto Iguasu, Argentina. Well in theory....... We found a taxi driver happy to drive us, though he told us the fee would be $60.00AUS , which I thought was a bit steep. Fortunately his taxi was not an old clapped out Mercedes, but this time we had the relative comfort of a fairly new looking Toyota sedan. The driver drove it like it was stolen, pretty ... read more