Like two different worlds or The country that never sleeps

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We arrived to Argentina with the plan to stay a few weeks in Buenos Aires, studying spanish and maybe taking some tango classes in the evenings. After all the travelling around and having to constantly move on from one place to another I was really looking forward to staying in one place for a longer time. We arrived to Argentina in the autumn so it was time to say goodbye to warm weather and that lovely tan of ours that we had been working on for so long!

The start to our trip in Argentina wasn't too great. We arrived to Mendoza after a 7 hour busride and we had slept only two hours the night before. We arrived on a Friday so, obviously, our host German took us out to party... Nooo party again! Apparently you can't go out to a bar before 11 pm and to a night club before 2 pm in this country. That means you won't get back home until 6 or 7 am... Next day we were ridiculously tired and got up at 2 pm. We could barely make it to the bus station and back during the day. Only good thing was, that we discovered the best hangover food ever by mistake: lomo completo, a sandwich with a tender beef steak, tomato, ham, cheese, lettuce, a fried egg and mayonnaise! In the evening we were forced(yes, really, it's unpolite to refuse, when couch surfing) to go to another party, but we took it really easy and left "early", at 2pm. Next evening we left with the night bus for Buenos Aires. And that's the story about how Anna and Helena went to one of the leading wine regions of the world and didn't see anything. Let's not talk about it.

We arrived in Buenos Aires early on Monday morning very, very tired. Grabbed some breakfast, jumped in to a taxi(and got heavily overcharged) and swished off, straight to our spanish course! Before we started our classes we had to take a test. The result was: You know a little bit, but not too much. Very true, but a bit depressing after all those efforts to study.

We studied the whole week 6 hours per day and didn't have time to do much besides studying. Well except on Vappu and First of May, which also happens to be Helenas birthday! We met up with some couch surfers on Vappu and went out to party in a really cool and trendy neighbourhood called Palermo Viejo. This was maybe the first time in my life, that I managed to have some kind of a conversation in spanish! It's so much easier after a pint of beer! I was so proud of myself... Sometime during the evening we lost everyone else and ended up having a night snack at a local pizzeria and discovered, that it would be very useful to know how to be rude in spanish.

First 4 nights in Buenos Aires we stayed with an american guy in Palermo Viejo. On the first of May we had to move to the next couch: the house of Mariano, Hacho and Rafael. We celebrated Helenas birthday by trying a real Argentinian asado (barbeque with only meat and accompanied by fried cheese and a bit of potato salad, heavy stuff!). On Friday we got to experience the legendary Santa Cata Lima - a wine tasting organised by the guys. Hacho studies to be a chef and sommelier, so we got to know the whole wine making process - in spanish. We stayed over the weekend, but on Monday morning we just had to move to a hostel. Going to bed early during weekdays in Argentina means going to bed at 1 pm and during the weekend you're not supposed to get to bed at all. We started to get seriously exhausted from not getting enough sleep! Can't understand how Argentinians survivr this lifestyle.

Next week went by studying more Spanish . It was just so much fun studying a foreign language after all these years of medicine, medicine and more medicine! I felt really motivated and beeing in this spanish speaking environment inspired me even more. Buenos Aires seemed to me as a very european city: the buildings were from the colonial time and most of the people looked spanish and spoke spanish too. So it didn't really feel very exotic. But I still liked the city: there's just so much going on all the time everywhere. The streets are full of people, there's artists performing in the streets, lots and lots of shopping opportunities and an endless amount of bars and restaurants... But this is only the more prosperous areas of the city. There are some neighbourhoods were you just can't go as a gringo, because it's simply too dangerous.

Thursday evening we left Buenos Aires, with the intention of returning a week later to continue our studies. We went to Cordoba, a city north west of Buenos Aires and continued from there to the city of Salta even further north west in the country. Salta turned out to be a really beautiful city with a lot of colonial buildings, a very cosy atmosphere and some nice shops. Our first day there we went hunting for a company, that would offer sand boarding(like snow boarding, but on sand). We had heard it's something you can do in this region and really wanted to try it out since both of us have done a fair deal of snow boarding. In the end we found the only company in Salta, that offers sand boarding and somehow ended up booking a two day multi adventure trip...

The multiadventure trip turned out to be a very good choice. We started the first day by driving north and past the town of Jujuy. Here we drove up on a mountain and did paragliding. The scenery was amazing! I lost paper knife and scissors and so Helena got to try it first. After 20 minutes of paragliding with our instructor Pablo she ended up landing in an industrial area with her ass stuck in a metal hole. She was alright though... Still it didn't give me any more confidence in Pablo's skills. Paragliding was a very strange experience. It felt really absurd to just sit there, try to relax and fly around high in the air while enjoying the scenery. It was good, but it didn't really give me the same kind of adrenalin kick as parashooting.

After paragliding we continued our trip north towards the small mountain village of Iruya, in the northern part of the district of Salta, quite close to the Bolivian border. We drove through the most amazing scenery: colourful mountains and barren landscapes with lots of cardones( we thought they were called cactuses, but learned, that cactuses only grow in North America and they're smaller). On our way we stopped at 4000 meters above sea level. It was pitch dark, freezing and our lovely(and funny) guide Facundo played the guitar and sang to us. We finally arrived to Iruya in the evening, found a hostel and went for dinner in the only restaurant in the village. Next morning I got up and walked out the door and got stunned by the amazing scenery we were surrounded by!

Iruya seemed so far from Buenos Aires and everything else I'd seen in Argentina. Life seemed more simple, the houses were modest, there were donkeys carrying bags on their backs and if you wanted to have a warm shower you had to wait for the water tank to heat up for 20 minutes before each shower. And people looked different: they looked more like they were ascendents from the Indians and wore more traditional clothes. It was obvious, that this part of the country was much poorer and less developed than the places we'd seen before. It was like discovering a whole new world inside the country. How can Buenos Aires be so european and developed and then another part of the country be like from 100 years ago?

We continued or trip to the sand dunes where we were supposed to do the sandboarding and meet up with our sandboarding instructor Pablo. Well obviously they didn't have a lift, like when you do snow boarding, so we had to walk up the hill. We started walking quite briskly and wondered why we got so short-winded so quickly. The answer was very simple: we were at 3600 meters above sea level! So now wonder I almost fainted after trying to run about 10 steps uphill! After that we took 8 steps at a time and had a rest. It took us about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get up the dune. I can't say that the sandboarding was worth it though: the sand was a lot slower to glide on and my other foot kept getting off the board and I didn't really feel like I had any control over the board. But it was worth getting up there for just the sake of it! After sand boarding it was time to return to Salta.

Argentina didn't blow my mind, but I enjoyed our stay a lot. I think it was a really good idea to study a little bit of Spanish at the beginnng of our trip in South America. Knowing the language just makes travelling so much easier and gives you an opportunity to talk to the locals. Even after only 2 weeks of studying I feel like there are some results to show: I can now buy bus tickets all in español, keep up a simple conversation for a few minutes, chat to the taxi driver and write on peoples wall's on Facebook in spanish! I will definitely not be fluent by the time I leave this continent, but I'm determined to get there some day!

The multi adventure experience, the beautiful nature and the life style in the villages in North Western Argentina totally blew my mind! I felt like I couldn't go back to european and not too exciting Buenos Aires and the whole experience convinced me to continue the trip to Bolivia! One more month to go: it's time for a final push of hard core travelling!

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Photos

Me using a payphone
We had to use a pay phone to contact our host German in Mendoza

Partying in Mendoza!
German, me and Helena

Argentinian bbq
Mariano, Helena and Hacho having asado on Helenas birthday!

Santa Cata Lima
These were the wines on this legendary wine tasting

Can I have some more too?
Our sommelier is finishing the wine.

Heeelp!
We're just about to go paragliding!

Trying to act cool
Me in the sexy paragliding outfit just before the big moment.

At 4000 meters above the sea
Facundo is playing the guitar and singing and Helena is trying not to freeze to death.

It's dark and cold
This is how cold it was in Iruya!

Breakfast in Iruya
Can't complain about the scenery!

Roadtripping
This time in in a jeep. Helena, me and our guide Facundo.