Blogs from Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America - page 17

And we are home safe and sound. But I have still got the last five days of our journey to tell you about. We start in El Calafate way down in the south of Argentina. From there we had booked two flights to get to Iguazu in the very north of the country. A two hour connection in Buenos Aires was cutting it fine and when the first flight took off late I had a bad feeling. The plane then sat on the tarmac in BA for half an hour before they opened the doors. And when they did, we stepped on to an over full bus to the terminal. When you are in a hurry you probably don’t read all of the signs that you are meant to, and that may be why it took ... read more

Geo: -34.6118, -58.4173We ate breakfast at NH Hotel. We started talking to one couple that were from Spain but originally from England. Graham and Leslie will be on the cruise too.After eating breakfast at the hotel, we walked to the Obelisco to get a 9:30am FREE walking tour. There were 2 other couples that joined us. One couple, Pat and Jim are from Tulsa and will be on the cruise with us.A young 30something gal was our tour guide. She showed us some interesting architecture in the city. I took over 400 pictures today.After the tour, we walked towards Galarias Pacifico Beautiful mall with nice fancy expensive stores in them.Glenn found a tapiceria to repair our small backpack that had torn. He went down to the tunnel to access the Subway system, and there were small ... read more

As you may have heard, general elections just took place in Argentina. Two rounds were needed to elect a new president - in the first round Scioli won with a small difference. Too small, due to which second elections were needed that were won by Macri who will now become the new leader of Argentina. Scioli came from the 'Kirchner team' (also 'Peron team') and would've continued the current policy for the most part. Macri is for change. We'll see. One thing is obvious, this country needs change. Extremely high inflation (people change USD in the street, as you get a better rate than in a bank), high unemployment, high poverty, poor infrastructure, etc. However, even given all this, we still love the place! Another interesting thing about the elections was that from 20:00 the evening ... read more

Bonjour. Bien reposé, me voilà prêt à reprendre la route mais mon bus pour La Banda n'est qu'à 21h donc je libère mon lit puisque j'ai dormi en dortoir et je dépose mon sac à dos à la bagagerie. Je discute un moment avec le réceptionniste qui est Vénézuélien. Très sympa il me fera même goûter à son café, "le meilleur du monde" forcément... Il n'y a pas que les Français qui sont chauvins. Mais c'est vrai qu'il n'était pas mauvais son café. Je zappe le déjeuner et je pars me promener vers Puerto Madero, l'ancienne zone des docks, qui a été reabilité il y a quelques années en zone de cafés, restaurants et autres discothèques et qui s'anime surtout le soir. J'aime bien m'y promener même s'il y a de plus en plus de gratte-ciels, ... read more

'No alarm going off for 6 months' was one of the perks of a sabbatical I thought, but the past week there hasn't been a day without the alarm going off, as both of us had Spanish classes to go to every morning (4 hours a day!). And they have paid off. So much so, that we decided to continue after we get back from Uruguay. But first we're going to see a polo match on Monday. The tickets were actually for Saturday, but apparently the field was still so wet from all the rain (we did have quite a lot of it) they had to move the first 4 matches of the 122th campeonato argentino abierto de polo, world's biggest polo tournament. Just imagine, both futbol and polo being postponed due to bad weather. I ... read more