Argentina & Uruguay

---

We head southeast to Argentina's Lake District, Bariloche. The town sits on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi. Here we take a cable car to a lookout point, Cerro Campanario to see one of the world best views as voted by National Geographic - pity it was cloudy, windy and extremely cold! Bariloche is also renowned for its chocolate and there are huge shops selling hundreds of flavours of chocolate including chocolate covered with chilli powder, pepper and other strange commodities - personally, after sampling a few, I don’t recommend them and chose to purchase sweeter alternatives.
From here we headed to Buenos Aires, where there were great boutique style shopping districts where you could buy gorgeous shoes and dresses. Which was just what we needed for our night out where we took part in a Tango lesson followed by a show and dinner. The next day we visited the huge cemetery with street upon street of tombs and statues including the burial place of Eva Peron.
We cross the Rio de la Plata into Uruguay by ferry to spend a day in the charming colonial city of Colonia del Sacramento before continuing on to Montevideo; the country’s capital. From Montevideo we travel to Tacuarembo and on to the ranch which will be our home for the next couple of nights. Our stay on a local estancia is the real deal as we spend a couple of days experiencing a working farm. The afternoon is spent chilling out around the farm, with no electricity (except between 7 and 10 pm) life is quite basic, so after a good meal and a few beers it’s off to bed ready for the next day. After an early breakfast we are allocated our horses and shown how to saddle them, before setting out on to the vast farmland. We reach a large field full of cattle which we have to herd back to the main ranch - which was easier said than done at times. Once the cattle are in a large pen we help file them down a wooden channel where they are checked for worms and injected with vaccine if necessary and finally returned to their fields. After lunch we take off on the horses, once again, for a tour of the area, crossing rivers, and feeling a bit braver after my last stint on a horse I manage to race my friend around the fields - definitely achieving a gallop - how I stayed on the horse was a different matter entirely - nearly coming a cropper several times - but it was great fun!
The next day we left the farm for Concordia, back in Argentina, to take a 12 hour overnight bus to Iguazu. Arriving in the morning at Puerto Iguazu we take a minivan to Foz de Iguazu crossing the Brazil-Argentina border to visit the Brazilian side of Iguazu waterfalls. At over 2 km long, the falls are a series of cataracts. There are 275 falls in all and, with some reaching up to 80 m in height, they are wider than Victoria Falls and higher than Niagara. Bordering Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, there are many different views of the falls so several of us took a helicopter ride over the falls to see their full extent. The following day we visited the Argentinian side and took a boat trip up to and under the falls, getting extremely wet.
Before heading to Brazil, the next day, we took a short trip to Paraguay to do some shopping - there are no taxes here so things are a lot cheaper, thus I now have a new camera! Whether my pictures improve is another matter entirely....

---

Comments

[Steve W]

What great photos
Really lovin' your photo's Sam...the Tango particular sultry and the waterfall shots are amazing! Agreat travelblog...keep up the good work, its well worthwhile. Best wishes, SteveW