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Published: September 18th 2011
Our first stop in Argentina was Mendoza which was our first introduction to the part of the trip Francis has been looking forward to since we left Ireland; the steaks and red wine of Argentina. And they did not dissapoint in the slightest (he tells me).
One-night we had actually had enough of the steak, so we hit up an Italian restaurant and went for some tortellini with pasta sauce...not a shred of beef in sight...until it arrived....with ground up beef......in the sauce!! There was no escaping it!
From Mendoza we took a night bus to Buenos Aires (BA). The bus left at 8pm and got into BA about 10am the next morning and thanks to 2 rude, loud passengers in front of us, we didn't sleep too well. When we arrived in BA we checked into the hostel and pottered about the city like a pair of zombies. So zombie-like in fact that neither of us noticed someone open the front two pockets on Francis' backpack and had a rummage around. Fortunately they took nothing and didn't get near the good stuff but we learnt our lesson!
BA was amazing, and so much bigger than we expected or
Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires
...if you look closely you might see Madonna singing "Don't Cry for me Argentina" from the Balconygave it credit for. We decided to take a stroll to the water-front after lunch on our second day, and when we hadn't reached there an hour later, well, you can only imagine the levels of crankiness. And I wasn't too happy either.
While in BA we saw Evita's famous blacony at the pink house, her grave, the markets at Recoleta, I-can't-believe-it's-not-the-IFSC, pottered about San Telmo and were treated to some Tango over lunch and whittled away time in outdoor restaurants and cafes soaking up all that BA has to offer.
We've been in South America about 6 weeks at this stage so our Spanish has been steadily improving. So much so that we managed to order a large pizza and 2 drinks with a waitress completely in Spanish without having to resort to the phrase book or hand gestures. Feeling pretty proud of ourselves we sat back in the sunshine and waited on lunch.
A steak sandwich appeared.
No pizza.
Not even one each - one between two!
More.
Steak???
The next stop was Igazu Falls which was a 17 hour bus journey from BA. When we were booking the ticket
with the hostel, we were offered to upgrade our seats to a suite for only about another €10. This bus was magical...wifi, personal tvs, seats that reclined to 180 degrees so you could sleep properly, hot food; there were even rumours among the backpacking community of champagne. You had me at wifi love.
After a 17 hour bus journey, a public bus, 2 trains and a walk I was all set to dislike Igazu falls, but it was absolutely breath-taking. Just phenomal. You could stay there all day and just watch the falls....they are unreal. We've posted a video to the blog as the photos just can't do it justice.
The park surroundings were great also, but while we were sitting down after our lunch a friendly racoon plodded over to see what was on the menu. Oh, this is very cute, Francis get a picture of it!! Why is he circling our table? Why won't he go away? What is he looking at? Cue the racoon launching himself at our table and making away with all it's contents!
Joke is on you racoon, you're about 20 minutes too late; you just stole our rubbish!!
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