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Published: March 3rd 2007
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¡No hablo español!
Deep in thought, Heath is bemused at my poor attempt at spanish. Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires. Hmmm. Folks from all over will swear by this place. I've witnessed heated arguments over which of the South American cities is a better place - Bs.As. or Rio De Janeiro. Invariably it comes down to which place you'll get the better quality cocaine... at which point I realise it's an discussion I'm not really interested in, and I think to myself
"Come on lads, get a real problem." The european jewel of South America was certainly a beautiful place, but in the end it was difficult for me to decide whether or not I really liked it. Sure there’s heaps to do, and a lot to see, but when you’re living in a dorm with 8 other blokes, it’s kind of hard to get a real feel for a joint. For most of the week spent in BA, we stayed at a place called Milhouse hostel, an efficiently and precisely run hostel just off the main drag, Avenida 9 de Julio. Milhouse is pretty much a party joint, and every night beers and cocktails are served in the downstairs bar until about 2:00am, at which time, a bus arrives to whisk any takers away to
Oh!
Actually having real breakthroughs was almost as fun as posing for them. a club where the ´real party´ starts. Heath points out the big club "Opera Bay", which, in fairness was fantastic. I think I got a stitch from all the dance-floor action, and it took a couple of days to get back into "day=day, night=night" mode.
My best experience in Buenos Aires was taking a week-long intensive spanish course with Andy and Heath. Not having the most talented students, our tutor Mariana had us speaking some pretty decent
spanglish by the end of the week. The three-hour classes flew by, starting at 5pm, which equates to about lunch-time for Argentinians. Will definitely aim to have more lessons once we get to Central America...
The city itself is pretty cool, like Chile and Argentina, the Spanish heritage is evident in the architecture, public arts and monuments. But after the week or more there, I was pretty keen to get out of the place. Next stop Iguazu Falls, which boarders Argentina and Brazil. Puerto Iguazu, the town on the Argentinian side of the falls, would serve as the gateway of my foray into Brazil, which started a week or so before Heath’s. So while he prepared for his sun-tan
a la Hostel Milhouse
Every night in the downstairs bar at Milhouse would end up like this... Uruguay, I got myself on a 20-hour-plus bus ride to Iguazu. Yippee.
Puerto Iguazu
Iguazu Falls were pretty amazing. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen so much mobile water in my life. The National park itself is really well organised, as good as anything you’ll find back home (not that everything at home is well organised). Most vantage points and look outs offer fantastic views of some huge cascading waterfall. There was a lot of walking involved and I could see that most of the other visitors on the day were struggling with the heat, but the Darwin boy in me was loving it. Humidity that you can see. The water conscious aussie in me was salivating at the amount of water disappearing over the falls at any given moment - literally thousands if not millions of megalitres per second. The most amazing of which was
"La Garganta del Diablo" or
"Devil's Throat", from which water from the swollen floodplains above falls over a hundred metres to the river below. The amount of spray alone would prompt the Peter Beattie government to investigate options of diverting it to central Queensland.
The falls were good enough to
Cocktails
And I would end up like this... justify going go back to a second day (The Argentinian side again). We managed to find a place where you could jump in and have a swim under a non-lethal waterfall. This pool offered some needed respite after the 3km hike which was required to get there (that was in the smallprint, and hey, I know 3km's isn't far but I was wearing thongs). The monsoonal downpour on the walk back was reminicent of a typical wet-season afternoon in Darwin. Four o'clock, on the dot, ya get pissed on. Now this would have been fine on it's own, however, the now-dark dense rainforest, was not as inviting as it had been an hour or so earlier. Oh, and apparently it's inhabited by leopards. On this return trip, which took us considerably shorter that the time taken to walk out there, I learnt that a) as bad as thongs are for
walking along rainforest paths, they really are no good for running through rainforrest mud and b) Telling yourself that "they more afraid of us that we are of them" is not really comforting when it's all you've got.
In the end, Iguazu was fantastic and I'd recommend it to
Dan @ Iguazu
Some victorian feller had a crack at me at the entrance to the park, suggesting that I needn't throw myself off the falls just because I supported Hawthorne. He was a Carlton supporter so I had the last laugh. anyone who ever gets the chance to do it.
So refreshed from the hustle of BA, Andy and I looked forward to the coming weeks in Brazil.
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Katrina
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you're making me home sick
Def looking at your pics and reading you blog makes me home sick for that second home of mine... have done Iguazu 2x and would do it a 3rd and 4th - one of those amazing place I don't think you'd get bored of. Where you off to next? Are you going to get to Central America? Try Guatemala!