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Published: September 18th 2010
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The Casa Rosada -- the Presidential Palace -- in Buenos Aires
The former first lady Eva Peron made her famous speeches from one of these balconies. Argentina & Uruguay, Aug. 20th -31st, 2010 It’s not just an overused cliché; everything actually does happen for a reason! We arrived at the Auckland airport 4 hours early to catch our flight to Peru, only to find out that our flight was 6 hours delayed. This meant that not only would we be waiting 10 hours, but also miss our connecting flight in Buenos Aires, and spend nearly 24 hours in transit. Like I said, everything happens for a reason and the six hour delay turned into an 11 day stopover in Argentina and a quick visit to Uruguay. Two countries we did not plan on visiting, but are thrilled to have seen. We found fabulous Puerto Limon Hostel in the artsy district of San Telmo, and instantly fell in love with Buenos Aires! It is one of the few capital cities that you could spend days exploring, it has so much character, culture and reminded us of Europe. Several minutes after landing we discovered that it would have been a good idea to learn some Spanish before taking on South America. This is the first place we have visited in nearly 16 months where we had difficulty communicating
Sunday Festival/Market
Every Sunday you can walk through the streets of San Telmo browsing the markets, eating delicious food and watching free tango! because no one spoke English. Fair enough, it is a Spanish speaking continent after all, but it was time to take out the phrase book and get to work!
We spent three days in Buenos Aires walking the streets, browsing the markets, listening to talented street performers, watching free tango in the square and being amazed by people’s creativity when it came to art. After several nights of too much $2 bottles of wine, we decided to take the ferry to Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay. Why not add another country to the list since we were so close? Colonia was a tiny town with lots of old buildings, restaurants and museums - basically there was nothing to do after about 2 hours of walking around. The next day we were on a bus to the capital of Montevideo for one night. We spent the night with the owners of the hostel, jamming on homemade instruments and trying to communicate in broken Spanish/English. It is here that we found out that in Montevideo, and probably most of South America, meals are described as “beautiful”, are washed down with liters of wine, don’t begin until midnight and last for hours!
From the capital we took another bus to Salto and the following day continued back to Argentina via Concordia. Stepping off the ferry was a first on this Journey - we had no idea where we were, which way to go and no clue how to ask for directions. Well actually, we could ask for directions, but could not understand the answer. After 1.5 hours and a lot of pointing we finally arrived at the bus station only to realize we made a huge circle around the entire town. Note to self: must learn the difference between “right, left and straight” nn Español!
After a 15 hour night bus we arrived in Puerto Iguazu to see the world famous Iguazu Falls. We didn’t even plan on coming but after several people told us it was a “must see” we had to make the trip. We certainly were not disappointed as these falls were one of the top natural things we’ve yet to see on the road. We spent 2 days exploring the National Park, seeing all the falls and even taking a very stressful stroll through the Jungle. As expected, the jungle trail was full of critters that
are formed in your worst nightmares, including the largest ants we had ever seen. Luckily there were millions of beautiful butterflies to distract from the uglier creatures and the creepy sounds. Soon we found ourselves on another 18 hour journey back to Buenos Aires. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that Via Bariloche had some of the most comfortable buses we had ever encountered and included services such as dinner, lunch, movies and drinks. Even giants like us could stretch out and have a comfortable 9 hour sleep (wine induced, but sound sleep none the less).
We headed back to the Puerto Limon Hostel and it felt like coming home. As soon as we arrived one of the guys that worked there offered us tickets to a Boca Juniors football game. Not even the football games in London compared to this! The crowd did not stop singing, chanting, or swearing the entire game (this helped teach us some of the more useful phrases used in the Spanish language). The following night we ended up meeting with friends who we met in Labouche, Nepal (one of the smallest towns in the world). They happened to be in BA at the
same time as us, so we took to some drinking, eating and much more drinking. Good times!
Eleven days and many memories later we finally head to Peru, our original destination when leaving Auckland.
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