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Published: April 29th 2007
Patagonia Argentina, Perito Moreno glacier
Struggled to climb this rock, to get a nice photo of this incredible natural wonder. Day 104 to Day 129 (10.04.07-05.05.07)
To see the photos better, double click on them to view them bigger Argentina ranks as the world's 8th largest country, and was once the 7th richest nation before the 1929 Wall Street Crash, which was the first of a series of big blows, resulting in Argentina falling to a third world power, their past wealth is evident in the streets and styles and within the people themselves. What sets Argentina apart from the rest of South America is its overwhelmingly European population, representing all 4 corners of the old world.
Argentina...had been long since on our minds, and a place much looked forward to after travelling through the culturally and culinarly different countries of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. Fellow travellers had unaminously agreed that it was an incredible country, particularly Buenos Aires! We were sooo excited about drinking some good red wine, eating those worldwide famous juicy steaks, and getting involved in some live tango.
Buenos Aires
Three months in, Buenos Aires was truly and literally a "breath of fresh air"! Buenos Aires, 3rd largest city in Latin America, is famous for its tango,
Boca Fans!
Geting into the spirit of the game (best to appear to be a fan so as to avoid any kindof trouble given the away-fan hatred)!! football, cafes, jazz bars, antique markets and intricate architecture, and is a city one can really feel at home in. We stayed in all 3 weeks, living in 3 different neighbourhoods that were all close to the central streets, San Telmo, the tango and antique district was by far our favourite however, where we had a multitide of fantastic steaks, and red wine in the old fashionned traditional bars.
The first day however was rather a let down, after all the high expectations, we were tired, confused and as usual finding it hard to adjust to the 'new country, currency, navigation etc' and so stayed in a guesthouse our taxi driver kindly took us to (that being a miles of the centre friends house of course) and went off in search of steak...hungry for it like nothing before, but unable to locate all the 'amazing cheap and cheerful with the most incredible jiucy chunks of beef' that we had been told about...we were bitterly dissapointed with a average relatively chewy and almost burnt steak the first night.....we would later find out this was an anomoly...a no-go area and the rest of out time here was "steak-perfect"!!!
Deciding now,
Argentinian Football Fans
the upper row is the away fans - River Plate - who threw anything they could find down on us Boca fans after almost 2months in spanish speaking countries, that it was time we learnt some of the continents language, we enrolled in 'spanish-school', and acheived one week of basic spanish...which has since helped us considerably actually even though we weren't the most dedicated students with so much else going on in the city!! We also did the typically-necessary sightseeing in Buenos Aires, inc the pink palace, famous for political events, the new and ultra modern marina, the recoletta cemetary which holds evita's grave, live tango in the streets, to mention just a few.
Biggest match in Argentinian football - Boca vs Riverplate
After a lot of chasing, we managed to get hold of some 'golddust' tickets to the match of the year in argentinian football. The build up was amazing, the 2 biggest rival teams in Buenos Aires, were to clash at the Boca stadium. Arriving at the stadium, us 4 gringoes, did not understand why there was so many seats free at the front near to the pitch...all became clear fairly soon though, as stones, ice blocks, urine, enflamed clothing and ... 'chairs' came hurtling down from above....we were seated under the away fans!!!! Paying 10times
if not more than the local price, we were less than impressed at the events that followed, looking back however its a good story to tell! The game however, was amazing, despite the distractions, full of action, chanting, and booing, which make the experience of an argentinian football game soo entertaining! Maradonna himself even checked out of hospital early to see the game! Man of the match was Riquelme!
The Valdes Peninsular
It was an ambition of ours to go south once in Argentina, but we had heard it was uber expenisve, but still after 12 days in Buenos Aires, we felt the over whelmingly strong desire to go far far south and see what only a few people in the world will ever see in the cold almost arctic conditions where some of the worlds most amazing wildlife lives!
One of the best things we have done on the trip was when we went far far south.....such a long journey to Patagonia (practically antarctica) about 20hrs south of Buenos Aires with our aquired group. First of all there was 5 of us, 4 english and a swede, first stop was The Valdes Peninisula!
Sea of Sea Lions!
Our diving instructor caught this on film, but we only saw the sea lions swimming on the surface, very cool to swim around them though! We hired a car, a first for our trip so far, with me - an unexperienced driver and Christian - a learner-driver so needless to say we were a little bit nervous, least about being responsible for the lives of others, and second for driving around national park on gravel alone, with wild animals running around wildly. The radio-less old bangor served us well, we drove everywhere we could for 2 days....in a nut shell, we saw sea lions, seals, elephant seals, a few penguins that had got left behind in the southward migration.....and on land we saw andean foxes, armadillo's who crept out from under our car to feast on salted crisps from our hands which was fun, many birds of all sizes inc peasants and eamus...but by far the best thing and the true highlight of our roadtrip was being lucky enough to see killer whales (free willy style) - they were amazing and really rare to see, some people hang around for up to 2 weeks with their binoculars trying to catch a gliimse and we were lucky enough to sit and watch them for hrs after only mins...also the dare devil in me and some of
Ship wreck views
Having a look through the ship's windows our little groupio decided to jump over the protective boundary and try and get a bit closer to see the beast of the sea face to face almost (from the cliff but only 20m away on the beach)...it was amazing and so big and so close....then we got a real bollocking from the ranger who ran after us blowing his whistle and screaming spanish stuff at us and then he confiscated my camera delecting every single pic i had of the killerwhale.....but we avoided a fine by playing it dumb and geez was it worth it!!!
Also.... another unforgettable experience if not for different reasons was when we braved it and dived with seals and cold water fishes in the freezing cold Atlantic waters of Patagonia - a one time thing not needed to be be repeated i assure you - and i seriously thought i had frost bite after nearly an hour in the water and could not feel my entire legs below the knees, it was not pleasant and i was glad to be out of the water but it was worth it to see the huge cold water fish inc the big lipped fishes, millions of
Divers in action!
Getting down to 20 m, in freezing cold waters starfishes and the wierd and crazy lifeforms that lived on the shipwreck!!
Patagonia
Then, aquiring 2 canadians, our group became the 'Magnificent Seven', and we went more south to see one of the worlds most amazing glaciers - Perito Moreno just incase you´ve heard of it, it was incredible, we hired a car so had the freedom of driving around to find a spot where we trekked off the beaten track and risked getting a bollocking once again from the ranger...but we hid behind rock and saw huge chuncks of ice fall from the 55 meter ice block...bits of ice as big as a doubledecker bus dropping off and causing tidal waves down the river...... it is an amazing natural wonder that has you totally awestruck, a fantastic thing to see!!
Next we drove further south....mine and christians driving skills were tested to the limits but now we are able to conquer any boundary and handle any incident... inc late one night when we ran out of gas on a 4 hr journey back to the land of the living, whilst in the cold and dark snowy middle of knowwhere....luckily god intervened and a kind
passer by (the only one in 2 hrs) was a 4wd pickup and even tho he was diesel, he happened to have a carton of petrol in his boot (what are the chances) so we cut up our plastic water bottle, used a few twigs and somehow transferred a few litres of petrol to get us home - one of many examples of the kindness Argentinians showed us during our travels.
Then, further south, we went to the snowy Fitz Roy mountains and trekked in knee deep snow, almost got caught in a blizzard and kept warm with the help of whiskey!! Even though we didn't see the famous mountains themselves because the snow was too bad, we know we were walking around them!
Then it was a 50 hr bus journey back to Buenos aires....from where we popped across to Uruguay for a few days and visited some urugian friends we had met in Peru, they showed us around and it was a really nice time! (see next blog, coming soon)
The Lake District
Named after the english lakedistrict, this area has a rather swiss-feel to it, with wooden lodges and chocolate shops,
Captains quarters
This ship was sunken in the 80's, and had a mass of life already and lots of lakes and trees. We saved this area, untill when we had been in Chile, thus it is our recent travels, because of the geographical distance between places in Argentina, it was closer to where we were in southern Chile, just last week! From Pucon in Chile we took the bus across the border to San Martin de los Andes, Argentina, which was an little mountain village, one of the most beautiful in all of Patagonia. Here we went on some trekks, aound the beautiful lakes which the area is famous for and admired the spectacular views.
Mendoza
The biggest wine producing region in Argentina, whose wine rivals that of Chile, was a must-see attraction for us in Argentina, especially as we'd been enjoying its red wine for about 5 weeks already. We visited 2 vineyards, Lopez vineyard - a large scale industrial production wine factory, which was very good wine and an impressive exhibition, and a small-scale family run wineyard that doesn't sell to the market except from within the wineyeard, so we tasted wine that will never be on sale, and have to say they were generous with the tastings, and so
we bought a couple of bottles to keep us going for the next few weeks, its just so cheap, less than 2pounds for a bottle that would certainly cost more than 15pounds in tesco, oh and its sooo good! Needless to say, we enjoyed our time in Mendoza, drinking wine, testing the varieties is a necessary part of any trip to the area...of course...with the perfect steaks as accompaniments!
To the west of the vineyards, are the highest mountain peaks outside the Himalayas. Aconcaguy, the most famous mountain in this area, is close to 7000m high, and though the photos do not portray it well, is extremely impressive, we went to visit it with our Argentinian friend, Sebastian, in the freezing cold winds one sunny saturday afternoon.
Argentina.... is truly an amazing country, so easy to live in and travel in, it is rather european sometimes due to its history but at the same time very south american in a very likeable way and the food is incredible...one reason alone to go, not forgetting the wine which i think i may have mentionned already..which is soooo good and soooo cheap, we were drinking supermarket cheapest wine,
bottom shelf stuff sometimes.... 2 pessoes a bottle and thats about 35 pence i think...cheaper than a bottle of mineral water!!! We had such a fantastic time here, a real pleasure to travel in with so much to see and do, I think we definitely be back in the future!
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Linda
non-member comment
A doc in my hand is better then 10 in the woods
Hey.. Aww my fave pic of them all is the one when your diving and are holding hand with that star, hehe. Looks funny!!Wonder if it liked the little dance as much as you guys seemed to! Are they really friendly them little creatures??