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Published: February 9th 2012
Buenos Aires
Womens Bridge in Buenos Aires built in 2001We can see by the lack of responses to our blog, that perhaps our blogs are becoming too boring or maybe, you are all just storing up all the news for when we get home... : )
Another boring day in our lives: We flew up to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. We spent a couple of days here, absorbing the atmosphere of a city comprised of 12 million people (that´s over 1/4 of the population of South Africa). The city abounds with old, well maintained buildings, a lot of them built during the 1900s, when people tried to create a mini-Europe and to show off their wealth. We went on a very different walking tour of the city, with a very dramatic tour guide. We also visited Boca, a suburb claiming to be the origin of tango. Colourful houses fill the streets, with heaps of restaurants and of course, tango music and dancers everywhere, not to mention heaps of tourist buses.
We also took a quick trip on the train to the northern suburb of Tigre. Here, rowing clubs are more frequent than ice cream shops. Its a pretty, well kept suburb with a nice canal running
through it. Boat traffic seems to exceed car traffic and we saw a few close calls. 15m barges doing 3 point turns in a 20m channel with oncoming boats made for entertaining viewing.
We decided to have our final Argentinan supper here, as we were not sure what Puerto Iguaçu had to offer on the culinary side. When in Argentina, there is only one original option:the asado. For the uninformed, Argentina consumes huge amounts of meat, mainly beef prepared on the braai (parilla). Veggies are hard to come by. So we headed to a nice restaurant in our area where Marco had a ginormous chunk of meat - bife de chorizo - (it comes just like that - no frilly lettuce, no chips, nothing!) while Phil opted for something a little more tame. It was very good. Of course, no visit to Argentina would be complete without visiting a tango club. We ended up at a very local, very basic place. After about an hour, we were completely surprised as the bar lady, doorman and lighting guy, along with a few other tango dancers, pulled up chairs and turned into a 10 piece band. They played excellent original tango
Buenos Aires
House of Parliament (during the military take over, all of the politicians moved to the building next door, which was a coffee shop) music with accordions, double bass, cello, piano and violins. It was a real treat!
An important stop before we left was The Pink House, where the female president works, or as our tour guide would say: ¨she 'works' here¨. She lives in the shadow of Evita Peron (think ¨Don´t Cry for me Argentina¨...), who seems to be a bit of a demi god here. Evita was a people´s person (the wife of one of the presidents) and fought for women´s right to vote. According to our guide, Christina (the current president) is striving to be loved as much as Evita is. We managed to have a tour of the palace, where we got to stand on the balcony where the presidents (and Evita) addressed the people.
Argentina is doing well considering its history. From 1976 - 1983, the military took over and Argentina had no democracy or constitution whatsoever. It has one of the highest inflation rates in the world (25% each year) which means prices almost double every 3 years. But despite this, it seems to function well.
One very important thing we have forgotten to mention is the mate drinking. Almost every Argentinian carries a
Buenos Aires
The Pink House (believed to be pink because it was originally painted with cow fat and lime. The pink comes from the residual blood in the fat. Now they just use Wall and All) thermos flask, mate cup and silver straw for their mate (tea). Even when hiking on top of a mountain, we came across people sipping mate. Like the coca leaf is an addiction to the Bolivians, Peruvians and Colombian Indians, so is mate with the Argentinians. In hot weather, the hot water in the flask just gets replaced with ice water or juice, which they pour into their mate cup full of what look like dried origanum. We tasted it and it is well worth a skip! Bitter, bitter, bitter!
From BA, we unknowingly took the most expensive bus ever (R1000 pp!) to Puerto Iguaçu, to view the Iguaçu Falls. The bus ride was very luxurious though, with meals, movies and plush seats so the 17 hour trip passed quickly.
The Falls were really impressive. The Falls are made up of 275 waterfalls (not quite sure how they count them though). 1,750,000 litres go over the falls per second! During a flood period in 1982/3, 39,000,000 litres of water went over the falls per second, destroying many walkways (remnants can still be seen today). We spent a whole day walking the walkways, taking in all the falls and having
Buenos Aires
Inside the Pink House a swim in the river.
We left Argentina and made our way to Brazil to start the final leg of our journey. We made an overnight decision to not go to the Pantanal (wrong season and quite similar to the Amazon) and head straight for the southern parts of Brazil. We are currently in Florianopolis, a semi island city filled with pretty beaches. Tomorrow, we hope to do some surfing/body boarding.
Highlight:
Phil - the tango band
Marco - my ginormous steak
Lowlight:
Phil - the other tourists at Iguaçu Falls, littering and feeding the animals
Marco - heaps of tourists at the Falls (if one could consider this a lowlight)
What we miss most:
Phil - not having to rummage through a bag to find my clothes each day!
Marco - a proper towel
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Brigitte
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Critters
More photos of critters please, they do look cute!