Blogs from Mercedes, Corrientes, Argentina, South America

The very posh fast ferry from Colonia gets us back to Buenos Aires in time for lunch. We spend the afternoon stocking up on various supplies before our strike out into the Argentine provinces. We grab a quick but delicious dinner of Mexican tacos (real ones, not Old El Paso...) in Palermo before hopping on the Subte, Buenos Aires' answer to the Underground, to Retiro bus station. Retiro makes Victoria Coach Station look like a village bus stop. In a country as large as Argentina, and where flying is out of reach of most people, bus travel is the way to get from A to B - even when B is very, very far from A, as often is the case here...It's a massive three-storey structure with dozens of bays lined up the middle floor, with ... read more

From the fabulous, remote wetlands of the Esteros de Ibera and the tiny town of Carlos Peligrini, I took the cheapest option out of town and arrived in the small, sweet gaucho town of Mercedes (population 32,000). This was a working, not a tourist, town, so only some of the early 20c buildings had been spruced up while others were in various states of decay. Yet it was clean and graffiti free, something I've come to treasure in this 21st century. Days were warm and in the deliciously cool evenings, townfolk and gauchos filled the leafy plaza. The gauchos were very attractive in their berets or flat, wide-brimmed hats, rather jaunty pleated, blousy pants, and wide colorful or silver-studded belts. The town's claim to fame is the shrine to Gaucho Gil, a popular Robin Hood character ... read more

Vik's bit: Iguaçu, a spectacular mass of overwhelmingly beautiful waterfalls, apparently created by a God in a rage after his betrothed took off with some other bloke in a canoe. Pretty furius, the God spliced the river in half, condemning them to fall forever. Or something like that. We entered first on the Brazilian side, where the 275 separate falls combine into one seeming whole of thundering water. The sound and the spray reach you long before your first - genuinely heart-fluttery, sharp intake of breath - sight of them. Amazing. And the impact, somewhat bizarre; groups of people racing through the footpaths, laughing their socks off for no apparent reason. Or strings of folk marching along in song. All rather odd. But incredible. And after a night in Brazil we headed to see the Argentinian ... read more

We had our first weekend trip with GW to Los Esteros de Ibera, wetlands in the North East of Argentina. Ibera comes from Guarani (an indigenous population in that area of South America) and means "shinning water." The freshwater wetlands are protected in Argentina and are some of the largest in the world. The decision to take a trip to this nature reserve came when it became too risky for us to travel to Salta, in the northwestern region of Argentina, because of dengue. We took a ten hour bus ride over night on Thursday and then a two hour van ride on a dirt road to get from Buenos Aires to the reserve. We stayed at a lodge on the reserve (http://www.posadadelalaguna.com/). It was an incredible trip and I loved getting out of this huge ... read more

So after a very very long bus ride we eventually made it to Buenos Aires. I instantly fell in love with the place. From the stunning architecture, the cat park!, the tango and street music everywhere you turned to the cute boutique shops and busy vibrant atmosphere, it had everything you wanted and so many things to do and see that our 4 days wasnt really enough. They are unsurprisingly quite big on Eva Peron, so the afternoon we arrived, we visited the Eva Peron museum, a place that idealized the woman, she really could do no wrong!! We also went to see the cemetery where she was buried. It was like no cemetery I had seen before, hundreds of elaborate crypts side by side, of such a grand size it was like walking around a ... read more