Brazilian Buffet Bites Back!

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On arrival to Argentina we ended up spending an unplanned two nights in the city of Buenos Aires. The first night, due to a lack available rooms in the city, in a very posh and expensive hotel - the Argenta Tower. This ended up being quite beneficial however as Vicki picked up a spot of food poisoning in Rio de Janeiro (damn buffets....shouldn't have been so stupid!) and the hotel offered what turned out to be a free doctors service. Unfortunately the doctor didn't speak english so the porter had to translate. From Paul's point of view this was a highly amusing conversational chain! Not sure it was the highlight of the porters day though. Anyway, pills and a diet of rice and water were prescribed for the next few days. On the second night we degraded to a hostel before catching a bus out to Rosario.

Our first impression of Rosario was that the city must be at war! There was glass, rubbish, leaves and branches from trees all over the place. It turned out that a few nights before our arrival, the city had been hit by a hail storm. These hail stones were the size of golf balls and smashed the glass in many properties, left cars covered in dents and took most of the leaves off the trees. Video:

Apart from freak hail storms, Rosario is a fairly unremarkable city. It is very pleasant - there are lots of nice shops, restaurants and cafes but there's not a lot there for us. This coupled with the fact that Vicki was temporary out of order meant there isn't much to say about our stay here. Rosario is the birth place of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Latin American revolutionary leader, so we checked out his first house. Rosario is also home to the National Flag Memorial (Monumento Nacional a la Bandera) which at 70m high gives a good view of the city. At the base of the tower is the crypt of Manuel Belgrano, creator of the Argentine flag. And that's all there is to say about Rosario really.

Our next stop is on our way back to Buenos Aires, San Antonio de Areco - Gaucho country!

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