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Published: August 30th 2011
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photos from the first post
photos for this post Shortly after I left you last time, I travelled up to the Iguazu waterfalls. After my last day of Spanish school a couple of guys who were also heading to Iguazu but on a different bus came out to grab a quick lunch. Lunch consisted of empanadas, the staple snack of Argentina and (apparently) South America. With either a meat or cheese centre, they are wrapped in pastry and either baked or fried. So I got 4 of these with Emerson and Mari, with an eye on the time as I had about 45 minutes until my bus was due to leave. 15 minutes later we jumped into a cab which turned round the corner into deadlock traffic. For a while I reasoned we would be OK, it was only 10 blocks or so but as we moved along at a tragic pace, I left the guys in the taxi (who had a slightly later bus) and legged it down the street dodging pedestrians and traffic. My water bottle bounced out of my rucksack, bootlaces came undone, but I got to the end of the blockage and jumped into another cab. ¡El terminal autobus muy rapido por favor!
Sprinting down the bus bays at 14:20 there was no sign of it. After some broken conversation I learnt it had departed, but apparently one of the guys reckoned it was possible to catch up. I called up the bus company on this man´s phone and was told that I wasn´t able to use my ticket on another bus, but it could be possible to catch up the original. So I legged it out of the station with this enormous man who was waddling as fast as he could behind. We got into his car and he started driving like someone out of road wars. Deciding I wasn´t ready to die for the cause I got him to calm down a bit, although we were still weaving in and around traffic, hand on the horn. I was relieved when he pointed to the out of town bus terminal 30 minutes in, the road leading up conveniently clogged with traffic. We pulled over to where the bus would rejoin the motorway and waited. About 10 minutes later my large friend got excited so we got out and flapped arms and danced in the air which was fortunately ridiculous enough for the
driver to stop to find out what was going on. I was so relieved to get onto the bus I passed into some sort of post adrenaline coma for the 19 hour journey north.
I managed to meet up with Emerson and Mari when they arrived and we went to the Brazilian and Argentinian side of the falls over the weekend. It was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen, its difficult to verbalise what seeing such a cascade of water is like. I´ll leave it to the photos but even they don´t fully give you the scale of the thing.
Next stop on the list was Cordoba, where I met up with a friend from the hostel in Buenos Aires and saw Che Guevara´s home town. It was a pretty relaxed place, very young with around seven universities there. The colonial buildings were some of the most spectacular I have seen in the country, but I moved on pretty quickly west to Mendoza, where I spent a couple of days exploring the town, and did a day wine touring. Unfortunately due to free tequila the night before I wasn´t my best for a day of tastings. However, we
caught a bus to the town of Maipu, and hired bikes from the fantastic Mr Hugo, who was among the friendliest people I have met here. Off we went to to various wineries were you paid about 3 pounds for a selection of wines to taste and often a tour of their vineyard. Steak back in town helped soak up some of the days work.
After a few days in Mendoza I headed up to Salta. The main thing I did here was a tour to another wine town Cafayate. The road there however, was the highlight of the trip. We drove through a sort of desert valley following a river. It was some 60 million years old and looked a bit like the sort of deserts you see in the Wild West films. Today was spent exploring the town including a cool museum dedicated to three children found buried alive at 6700m in 1999 near the top of Mount Llullaillaco. One of the bodies was on display in a perfect state of preservation, where she was curled into the position she has been in for the last 5 centuries. You were caught between a feeling of pity for the girl and a eerie curiosity to see what could just have been a live person just crouched behind the glass.
Tonight I´m heading off to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile for a few days before into Bolivia. Argentina has been great to visit: some cool sights; delicious steak and beautiful women.
Until next time!
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From home
Lovely to read about your travels and see pictues of the spectacular places you have visited. Keep them coming when you have time. Have forwarded the link and printed it off for GAB. Have fun and keep safe. Love from us all