Argentina - The real beginning

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Buenos Aires

When we finally arrived in BA, we had a bit of a nightmare with money (the first of many). Neither of us could get money out for some reason, and we didn’t have any Argentinean pesos. Anywhere one problem down, we arrived at .........hostel to find they didn’t have our reservation! They had a room at a place across the road, but All we wanted was a beer at this point...and the hostel bar was right in front of our noses.
The next day was the best day ever, we wandered around town shopping, just proper with the giggles and I bought some cheap cheap cheap Havianas (just leaving my wallet, credit cards and all, laying in the shop as you do in South America...) That night we met a load of really cool people in the hostel bar, a girl that lives right near Lake Grace in Oz and a couple called Fro and Cass, dangerous Dave, who was a comedy genius and loads more we met from the hostel . Everyone was on coke as apparently you needed to walk twice around the hostel and a fella came out and supplied, which was pretty random.
The next day we were so rough though. For some reason I couldn’t get bloody money out of the cash point still. Everything was a bit of a effort, even going for food. The particular restaurant we chose had a Spanish menu and English menu, the English with more expensive prices!! We went to sleep with the intention of waking up and going out to the Casino boat thing, but as it was, we never did! Woke up at 8 in the morning and were the only people around that time that weren’t coming in from a night out. Was good not to be hungover for that day though, we walked to La Boca, which was the kind of Bohemian area and wandered around. We watched some tango over ;lunch and were forced to join in, which Jones couldn’t disguise his discomfort for. We walked back, which to be fair we had been warned against, but ended up, predictably under a flyover, feeling every bit as sketchy as it had been described. Went to, what was going to become our local, an all you can eat steak restaurant and then spent the night in the hostel bar, for a relatively early 2am finish.
The next day was our skydive! Early that morning, the hostel woman told us the people were waiting for us downstairs so we headed down. Now we had expected, you know, a van with company name on it maybe. Or maybe a cringingly overexcited welcome, ready to ‘get us pumped’. What we didn’t expect was a man, with his family car, complete with family (wife and a couple of kids) and not a word of English spoken between them. Could not have been more random. We sat in virtual silence for the hour, starting to realise we were actually fairly hungover and this was possible the most bizarre morning of the trip so far. A couple of botched sign language attempts at small talk later, we arrived at our destination. Which apparently was a deserted airfield. Our new friends deserted us and we were left for another peculiar hour waiting and beginning to wonder what we’d got ourselves into. Anyway, our skydive-guide fella showed up after a while, thankfully welcoming us in English. We were surprisingly not nervous to be honest. He just made you feel so like he was in control and he said to think of it like a taxi ride, with him as the driver. I was first to go and it was as awesome as I’d imagined. To be honest, not as scary as a bungee jump. The photographer jumps off the wing just before you jump so he was beneath me during the freefall. I couldn’t control my face even a little bit, with the G force. A funny time to feel self conscious of how you look, I suppose. Anyway, as soon as the parachute is up, you just float down slowly and its really bizarrely relaxing, but you’re on such an adrenalin high.
Our comedy little taxi-driver-guide drove us back to BA after we’d both done it. It was strange trying to make small talk after all that adrenalin. To be fair, Jones passed out almost immediately snoring loudly as I half-smiled apologetically. W hit the all you can eat steakhouse again...why not, and was ever so over tired and giggly. By the time we got back to the hostel, We started to realise that maybe we were a bit short of time to get on the bus to Iguazu...and it ended up a manic race around the coach park with Cass and Fro, before we finally, and at the last minute possible, boarded our overnight coach to Iguazu.
Now, we’d heard about these coaches being luxurious and they weren’t lying! This had huge, fully reclining seats and meals and drinks bought to you...we felt like VIPs....for the 4 minutes before we crashed out.

Iguazu Falls

Arriving at Iguazu the next morning we felt so bloody refreshed...these buses were just as good as people said! I hadn’t even heard of Iguazu falls before I came here, but they are bigger than Niagara and not nearly as famous. They straddle the border of Brazil and Argentina and we’d decided to visit here before moving on to Bolivia. Once we’d checked into the hostel and had a bit of lunch we thought we probably had enough time to visit the Brazilian side of the falls. Bear in mind, this whole day was a bit spacey...I don’t know why, but it was a bit like we hadn’t fully switched on. Anyway, before we knew it we’d ended up right in Brazil, not just at the falls, right by the Paraguay border. God knows how we’d found ourselves there, but one thing was certain....we were in the wrong bloody country, with the wrong bloody currency and our recently acquired Spanish skills proved useless considering the Portuguese-speaking country we’d ended up in. Anyway, after wandering around aimlessly, neither awake enough to actually panic or construct a productive plan...we finally found a seemingly-good-hearted Chemist, who offered to change some currency for us. What we didn’t realise at the time, was that he took a hearty 50% commission for the good Samaritan deed. Ha. Anyway, by the time we got the bus back to Argentina and our bed for the night, we were over sightseeing and settled in for gin rummy and a few beers.
We did a lot more constructive tourist things though the following day and actually got o see the falls. God, they were amazing. There was a constant rainbow over them too and monkeys everywhere in the trees above. It was the first fantastic sight we’d really done and we were on such a high. Had a quick shower back at the hostel and got on the not-quite-so-luxurious, 20 hour bus to Tucuman, our next destination on route to the Bolivian border. We travelled all the following day on the coach, playing more gin rummy and eating the array of bizarre snacks people kept coming on with. I bought some jelly and immediately regretted it. God only knows what it was, but it certainly wasn’t like any jelly I knew of! We stopped at Tucaman, where to be honest there was minimal going on, had a bit of food and a few cheeky Tia Maria’s in the bus shelter and then hopped straight back on the bus for midnight.

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