Argentina: Part 2 - 5th - 18th June 2011

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The border crossing from Bolivia to Argentina was simple and didn’t take long. We jumped in a taxi that took us to the nearest bus station. Our luck was in, a bus was literally about to leave to the town we wanted to get to – Salta, about 6 hours south of the border. It was rather painful to part with the £18 each for the coach ticket - we paid £2.50 for a similar length journey in Bolivia! We were grateful for the smooth roads and comfortable bus though – a welcome improvement. There was also a drinks machine on board which Dan assumed just provided hot water. So we raid our supplies and found a tea bag stolen from breakfast and he went off to make a drink. He came back with a coffee for him and tea for Laura. Turned out the hot water was actually black sweet coffee which didn’t mix nicely with the tea bag! Unfortunately we had nowhere to pour it away so between us we had to drink the tea-fee, we don’t recommend it! Time being so precious, as it is fast running out, we now spend bus journey doing jobs such as blog writing, job applications and video making – the reality of coming home is fast catching up on us! We pulled into Salta bus terminal after a day of travelling, caught a taxi to the Plaza 9 de Julio and the found a cheap hostel. Argentina being more economically developed meant it was back into dorms we went. The hostel was simple but comfortable and we were pleased to learn that there was only one other person sharing our 6 bed dorm, unfortunately we then met him – a very sleazy big man who snores loudly, pesters females none stop and seemed to think it was appropriate to keep winking at Laura when she was clearly there with her boyfriend!

We woke the next morning and were surprised to learn it was an hour later than we thought – we had forgotten about the time difference. We didn’t do a huge amount during our day in Salta as a large part of it was taken up with re-planning the end of our trip. We wanted to leave Salta and catch a 24 hours bus to Iguazu Falls (the world’s most spectacular waterfalls) on the Argentina Brazil border. We were shocked when a trip back to the bus station revealed that the bus would cost 520 pesos (about £80!) Ouch! And we would then have to fund the next 20 hour journey from Iguazu to Buenos Aires. Our budgets just wouldn’t stretch that far. We looked into flights, hiring a car and even bringing our flights forward to get home sooner, but instead decided we would book an £8 bus to Cafayate 5 hours away for the following day. We were really gutted to cut Iguazu Falls from our itinerary we had heard amazing things about the waterfalls and Lonely Planet states it is a must see before you die, but we decided that we can see them when we come back to South America to travel Brazil instead (maybe in 2014 for the world cup if any one fancies it?!?!) We wandered around the Parque San Martin, looked at the market, both skyped home now we have more reliable internet access and enjoyed a Grido ice cream (turns out they have the chain here as well as Chile much to our delight!) We couldn’t visit any of the museums as once again we had timed it that we arrived on a Monday when everything is shut. Still, it was quite nice to have a chilled day after all our recent activities and travelling on buses. That evening we self catered and enjoyed our new favourite supper – salami, strong blue cheese, fresh rolls, salad and avocado! Delicious! We got up the next morning and checked out to arrive at the bus station in time to catch our 10.30am bus to Cafayate. The scenery along this route is stunning – Dan happily snapped away with the camera whilst Laura napped with her head bobbing and mouth attractively hanging wide open (also captured on camera but you won’t be seeing it here!)

The small town of Cafayate is surrounded by some of Argentina’s best vineyards – hence our decision to come! We arrive at 2pm, followed a friendly local to her cheap hostel where we moved into a 10 bed dorm and set straight off to do some wine tasting! We started at Bodega Domingo where we sampled a cabaret sauvignon and a Torrontes – the local speciality. It was tasty, but we prefer our whites drier than this sweet fruity variety. We also got to try some locally produced goat’s cheese and these were delicious. Next stop was Heladeria Miranda an ice cream shop which sells wine flavoured sorbets. Ice cream and wine together, genius! The cabaret sauvignon was not great but the Torrontes was scrumptious. Our next winery (called Bodega Nanni) offered a tour but this being our 4th wine tasting trip, we decided to skip on the information and focus on the tasting! This was an organic winery and we enjoyed the sweet white so much that we purchased a bottle. We met a Canadian couple Steve and Danni here and headed to our next winery as a group of 4. We enjoyed a quick tasting at El Transito which we decided had the nicest reds (and the price tag reflected this) before setting off us on foot, them on bikes to our final stop Vasija Secreta. We sampled their produce and then explored the cellar. Danni and Steve then invited us back to their hostel where we sat in a pretty courtyard and drank our way through 2 bottles of the day’s purchases. They also kindly shared the garlic goat’s cheese they had brought, delicious. They had some great travelling stories to tell – they are moving around on a motorbike which Steve drove all the way from Canada. When they got to the Peru Bolivia border which was closed due to the protests, they simply decided to go around the blockades and off road it. They narrowly avoided being taken off the bike by hidden trip wires and had locals throwing rocks at them – not a great experience and this made us very glad that we avoided the border all together during the strike. It also turned out that Danni had stayed at the same hostel as us in Salta and had an even worse experience with the creep that was our roommate – he must live there, not a nice man. We chatted away until we had run out of wine and cheese and then decided we would walk to the Plaza 9 de Julio where we went for dinner. It was 8.30pm but the restaurants were all empty still, dinner time in Argentina is about 10pm!! We ordered another bottle of wine to share and all opted for pasta to eat whilst we were entertained by locals tangoing. A very enjoyable evening.

The next day, we were woken to the sound of Laura’s mobile phone ringing – it hadn’t had signal the whole way around South America so this was quite a shock! It was 6am and we had headaches from the wine consumed the day before. It was a London number phoning so Laura answered and was soon chatting to the HR manager at a school she had applied for a job at 6 weeks ago. Apparently they had been trying to get hold of her for ages (have they not heard of email?!) 5 minutes later and they have rung back again, this time Laura is on loud speaker to the head teacher and head of geography having an interview. We were still sat in the dark in our bunk beds; luckily there was no one else in the dorm! Given the hour and lack of preparation, Laura’s answers to the questions asked were not great, in fact they were pretty terrible and then the credit of her mobile phone run out (you pay to receive calls when abroad) so the line went dead. We had a panic to find the credit card and top the phone up before eventually getting back through to the head teacher. The head stated that she wouldn’t drag this out much longer, asked one short question and then offered Laura the job starting in September! Yipppeee!! Even better is that the job comes with responsibility for key stage 3 geography meaning leadership experience and more money. Laura was over the moon! It is pretty rare to get a phone interview for teaching jobs – it normally involves an intensive day and lesson observation, so it was completely unexpected. A very productive morning and it wasn’t even 7am! Once we had calmed down a little and both taken some pain killers to ease the heads, we went back to sleep for a few hours. Later that morning we walked 3km to the goats cheese factory where we got to have a taste and see it being produced, before buying some with oregano and heading back to the hostel to eat it for lunch. We caught a bus out of Cafayate that afternoon to take us to the city of Tucuman 5 hours away.

We arrived at Tucuman bus station and booked straight onto another coach to take us to the capital city Buenos Aires. We had a quick hotdog for dinner (we’ve given up wasting money on trying to have proper meals at bus stations – they are always over priced and a big disappointment). At 8.30pm we bordered the last of the long distance buses we would need to take – sad times. Buses in Argentina are much nicer than anywhere else in South America – really comfortable seats that recline quite far, but we did have to pay 384 pesos for this service (nearly £60 and the cheapest we could find - ouch). We were pretty much fast asleep by 10pm, enjoying the comfort of the bus and smooth roads. We made a stop to pick up more passengers at 11pm, and then to our dismay they decided this would be a good time to put an action film on full volume and serve dinner! We were struggling to get used to this late lifestyle! We still managed to have the best night’s sleep yet on buses or the 15 night buses we have taken in total.

At 11am we pulled into Buenos Aires bus terminal and jumped in a taxi to take us across town to a hostel called The Ritz. It wasn’t as plush as the London Ritz, but it was fairly nice by hostel standards and more importantly they had a low season offer on their dorm rooms – stay 3 nights and pay for 2. The view from our dorm room was of Av 9 de Julio – a road consisting of 16 lanes of traffic – ear plugs were definitely required here! We had a lazy afternoon doing boring jobs like getting car insurance quotes and went for a quick explore of the city which took us down Av Florida, a shopping street with a lovely shopping mall Galerias Pacifico – way out of our budgets. One of our first impressions of Buenos Aires was how many McDonalds does one city need?!? After only a few hours we must have seen at least 12 different restaurants and this in no exaggeration. At one point we stood still and could see 3 different McDonalds from our spot – it’s crazy! That evening we went out for dinner to a restaurant we had been looking forward to visiting for some time! La Cabrera in Palermo is a steak restaurant that comes highly recommended by most people you meet who have been to Buenos Aires! It doesn’t even open until 8.30pm so we snacked on our left over goats cheese to keep us going before catching a public bus over there. We arrived to find lots of people waiting to be seated outside (we been told to expect it to be this busy). We added our names to the list and were then served free champagne and chorizo sausages whilst we waited for our table! An hour and 4 glasses of champers later, we were shown inside – it was about 10.30pm and our appetite was dwindling. The menu was a bit pricier than your average backpackers meal, so we decided to order light and share a steak and a side of potatoes, a very wise move! The steak covered in blue cheese arrived and was huge and came accompanied by no less than 9 different dishes containing all sorts of delicious things from mashed pumpkin to peppercorn sauce and olive pesto. It was mouth-wateringly good! We tucked in and were just starting to wonder how we were going to finish it all when the waiter came over with a tray full of salads and other items to ask if we would like anything else! A brilliant meal that we would highly recommend! Our plan was to catch the bus back, we returned to where we had got off the bus to see that it was actually a one way street. We then had ten fruitless minutes of walking around the block trying to find the bus stop we needed before giving up and getting a taxi to take us back.

Breakfast was included in the dorm price so we filled up before getting a bus over to the poor barrio of La Boca, home to The Boca Juniors football stadium. They were playing their final game of the season on Sunday and we wanted to go. We’d actually pushed our flight back a few days in order to be here for it (good job we did as the flights got cancelled on our original date due to the ash cloud from the Chilean volcano). We found the training ground and waited for a while with the locals who were there with shirts and posters ready to be signed. There was no sign of them so we gave up and went round to the main stadium. We asked in the official shop about buying tickets for forthcoming match, the lady took us back out of the shop and introduced us to a man called Willy – a ticket tout. We arrange to meet Willy at an agreed spot a few hours before the match on Sunday and he told us the standing tickets would be 170 peso each – our hostel was offering a tour package for 400 pesos each so we felt quite pleased about the saving we would be making by doing it ourselves. We then walked to colourful Caminito where we met a Dutch couple who were keen to come to the game with us but were waiting to see when their cancelled flight would be rearranged for. We walked along the pedestrian street which is characterised by the colourful corrugated metal buildings and lots of local artists where selling their work. A really cool vibrant part of town. Matijn – the Dutch guy, later emailed us to say they had managed to get onto a flight for tomorrow so wouldn’t be joining us, but also warning that because it is Roman’s last match and the last game of the season, tickets are like gold dust and are going for silly prices. We didn’t worry too much, we had faith in Willy! Later that night, we got ready for the evening we had planned – a tango show! We booked this through the hostel and were collected in a mini bus and driven to the theatre. We were shown to an upstairs dance studio where about 20 of us had a tango lesson! We both felt a bit uncomfortable about this, but 5 minutes in we were loving it! It was great fun and even Dan found some rhythm which led to us getting a ‘well done England’ from our teacher! We were actually quite disappointed when it ended, we wanted to carry on practicing, but instead we were shown to the grand dining room for a 3 course dinner. We had a choice of 4 options for each course and the food was pretty good. This was accompanied by as many drinks as you liked – which some people took almost too much advantage of (Daniel). Just as we finished dessert, the lights went down and the show begun. It was fantastic -on a par with the standard of a west end show. The band was excellent, the singers great and the dancers were so talented, we sat almost gobsmacked at the speed at which they moved across the stage. We were also entertained by a guy with huge panpipes and then some Spanish drummers who added a comic edge to the evening. And the whole time our poor waitress was working hard to ensure our glasses were never empty! The whole evening was excellent – we even considered booking to do it again for our last night, but unfortunately it’s not a cheap activity.

On the Saturday we had another lazy morning – mainly due to Dan’s sore head, and in the afternoon we headed to one of Buenos Aires prime tourist attraction – the Cementerio de la Recoleta. This huge walled cemetery is like a city inside a city. The whole thing consists of large tombs which look like small buildings. You can see coffins through the windows of many of them. Grave yards aren’t your typical tourist attraction, but this one was full of people doing some dead celebrity spotting and we joined in to find the tomb of Evita (Eva Peron) Argentina’s first leading lady. After we located it and snapped a few photos, we left and explore the weekend market/hippy fair. We were amazed when we saw the size of the giant ombu trees in Plaza Intendente Alvear– so big that their branches were being supported by poles! On the way back we did some window shopping along Av Santa Fe. We self catered that evening (another blue cheese and salami salad) and cracked on with trying to catch up with some more blog writing.

After another free breakfast, we wandered to Plaza del Congreso where we saw the Palacio del Congreso which was modelled on Washington DC’s Capitol Building. There was a Sunday art class going on and some of the pieces were excellent. This marked the end of our 3 nights at ‘The Ritz’. We decided that because we only had three days left before we flew home, we would treat ourselves to the privacy of our own room. These were too expensive at The Ritz so we checked out and walked ten blocks to a cheaper hostel in San Telmo. We dropped our bags and then went out to explore the Sunday antiques market in Plaza Dorrego. There were some interesting bits of sale, but we decided that there is a thin line between antiques fair and car boot sale! We enjoyed cheap chorizo sandwiches before going back to the hostel, donning our Boca shirts (purchased at the market in Lima) and removing anything of value and putting the money belt on. We walked to the stadium amidst a sea of fans wearing blue and yellow. Huge sections of roads had been barricaded off but we eventually managed to get to the spot we had arranged to meet Willy at. True to his word, Willy was there along with his team of ticket touts. He shook our hands and instructed us to wait against a wall with about 20 other people that were doing the same. An hour and a half later, the area had really filled up with people queuing to get into the stadium. We were then all ushered into a corner where Willy went around the group to collect money. We were slightly concerned when we saw others pulling out wads of 100 peso notes, but we naively assumed they were buying seated tickets rather than our standing. Willy took our exact 340 for two tickets and begun shaking his head as he counted it, he handed it back and said it was now 500 a ticket!! We’d brought the exact money we thought we’d need (based on what Willy had said when we first met him on Friday) and weren’t carrying extra for fear of being robbed! There were no ATMs around and we both knew that we couldn’t afford 500 peso each anyway. We were gutted! Turned out the advice we had been given from Martijn was correct, we weren’t able to go to the game, rubbish. We glumly wandered away from the stadium past many excited fans heading the other way. Back on the main road and a large group had formed, singing away with large flags flying high, the atmosphere was great and we stopped to watch for a while. We carried on and could hear what sounded a bit like a riot in the distance – police sirens and bangers and lots of shouting and cheering. We got a bit closer and saw the Boca team bus surrounded by a mass of fans all screaming and singing – it was great to watch but we’re glad we weren’t in the middle of it! We hoped to find a pub showing the game but couldn’t find any in our part of town. Instead we wandered through yet another market and went back to the hostel to eat some dinner and watch a film. We went to bed feeling quite disappointed, such a shame, but never mind.

The next day we continued our sightseeing of Buenos Aires on foot, this time heading to the Plaza de Mayo to admire the 18th century buildings which include the Casa Rosada and the famous balcony where Evita gave speeches from in her heyday in the 1940s. We ate an early dinner of ravioli and secretly drank a bottle of red wine (the hostel was licensed so you are not meant to bring your own drinks in). We were using mugs as our drinking vessels, and Laura decided to take hers into the bathroom whilst she dried her hair in there. In all the excitement of actually being able to use a hairdryer (we’d not seen one since Australia) , Laura managed to knock the mug of red wine off the side of the sink, which then proceeded to land onto the toilet throwing red wine everywhere and smashing a section of the toilet bowl. Somehow the mug survived unscathed! Laura mopped up the wine from the floor and walls and then went to flush the toilet which then flooded the bathroom due to the huge crack in the bowl. Eek!! Feeling very guilty, she had to go down to reception and confess what had happened to the poor guy who didn’t speak much English and was very confused by the whole thing! Luckily they didn’t charge us, a result seeing as the whole toilet had to be replaced to mend the damage! The rest of that evening was a lot more successful... we headed across town to a live music event called La Boca de Tiempo which came highly recommended by other travellers. We paid about £6 each to enter and headed to the bar. Beers came in litres and we stupidly ordered one each. Ten minutes later and the music begun and we were told we couldn’t take our drinks in with us. Obviously, being backpackers we couldn’t just abandon and waste 2 litres of alcohol, so we drank them as quick as possible and entered the main hall feeling rather bloated! La Boca de Tiempo (La Bomba) is a 14 man percussion band and they were incredible! For 2 hours they played, taking it in turns to play conductor – they had loads of hand signals, it was fascinating to watch and the atmosphere was great. At 10pm the show sadly ended and we set off to another bar recommended to us by Rich who we met in Bolivia. We ordered some more beer and some snacks and were surprised when another show started, we hadn’t realised this was also and entertainments venue. We were treated to a cabaret show – a real mix of dance and magicians and actors, it was a bit random but really good fun. An excellent night out to end our time again.

The following day was to be our last and it was spent feeling a little hazy and bleary eyed. We had a lazy morning, and then set off to the shops to buy some last minute presents in the afternoon. We had a complete overhaul of our rucsacs, unpacking everything and discarding lots of well worn items of clothing. We wanted a nice meal for our last supper so set off to the Plaza Dorrego where we had previously spotted some traditional Argentinean restaurants. We went for a set menu deal which seemed to offer the best value. The wine was lovely but the food was a real disappointment, chewy steak and overcooked chips. The meal was rounded off nicely when we asked to pay on card and the waiter replied something along the lines of ‘what about my tip?!’ cheeky man! So we decided we would tip him, all the small coins that we had collected over the past 10 days which totalled about 90p. Ha. That night we felt pretty sad and deflated that our trip was now at its end. We planned to get a public bus to the airport which would take about 2 hours, so our alarms were set for a 7.30am wake up.

We didn’t sleep overly well that night, worrying about sleeping through our alarm and feeling strange about the thought of returning home. We got up early, showered and then went down for our last free breakfast. We saw on the TV scenes of people hanging around the airport and immediately begun to panic. A quick check online confirmed our fears, flights were being disrupted due to the ash from the Chilean volcano and ours had been all together cancelled. We rung our travel agency, who had been excellent up to this point, and they were able to confirm that we would not be flying today, but they could fit us onto another flight for the 1st July – over 2 weeks from now. Fabulous. We really weren’t impressed about this, we had Glastonbury festival tickets for the end of June and there was no way we were missing it! We rung British Airways directly and they were able to fit us onto a slightly earlier flight 6 days from now. Had we been at a beach, in a warm and cheap country, this would have been delightful; however, Argentina is expensive and was currently in the middle of winter. It was very frustrating to learn that all other flights to Europe that day had only been delayed, ours was the only one to be cancelled and it was only because the plane had not flown the day before, grr. After a very stressful morning, we had to leave our private room and move into our third hostel to a 4 bed dorm. The hostel was really nice but we were very conscious of the fact that we were now spending the money we had set aside to spend at Glastonbury. What was really tragic was that we had to go through the bin in our room to take back out the old clothes we’d thrown away so that we would have underwear for our extra days!

Each day during our extended stay in Argentina, we would ring British Airways to see if any seats had become available on an earlier flight. We didn’t hold out much hope as we assumed that everyone else would be doing the same. We were desperate to get home in time to recover from the jet lag before 5 days in a tent (Glastonbury) so worked out that if we got up at 4am to ring when the offices opened we were more likely to get seats as everyone else would call when they woke up. Our luck was in and each day that we rung, we were moved onto a flight one day earlier. We were delayed by 3 days in total, much better than the 2 weeks we were first faced with. There isn’t much to write about in those 3 days, we literally just slept and ate and tried to not spend any money that we didn’t have to. The upside to this was that when Saturday 18th finally arrived, we felt ready to go home and really excited about it! We caught the slow public bus to the airport and checked in – Dan decided to ask if they were looking for anyone to stand down in return for money, it would have had to have been a huge sum for Laura to agree to that, but they weren’t looking anyway. The flight from Buenos Aires to London Heathrow took 13 and a half hours and was pretty painless despite some horrific turbulence. We both had butterflies as we made our way through arrivals and were met by Dans mum Karen, and brother Matt – it felt really great to see familiar happy faces standing there with a big welcome home balloon (luckily it was still inflated after it had been purchased 3 days ago for our planned arrival home.) We even managed to surprise Laura’s family who still believed we were due home on Tuesday – this lead to lots of screaming and was ‘the best father’s day present’.

So that’s it! Back to the real world of flat and job hunting! We have both had the most amazing 9 months. We can’t believe we managed to fit 16 countries into that time, but we did and we love every minute of it. Travelling is certainly a bug that you catch, our list of places we still want to go to is ever increasing and we plan to start saving hard as soon as possible to enable us to visit as much of the world as possible. We’ve had lots of positive reports from our blogs, so thanks for reading and watch this space for when we pack up and head off again...... but for now we are happy to be not living out of bags and enjoying the company of our friends and family in good old England.

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Comments

[John Rayner]

Argentina
I have been checking your blog regularly and finally I've got to the last installment. What am I going to do now? It has been like a regular fix for me and now I've got to go 'cold turkey' until the next trip. Absolutely fabulous stuff. Well done both of you. When Laura gets to teaching geography at least she should be well placed to add some personal memories to the topic. Far better than text book stuff.