Buenos Aires to Bariloche and back again..

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Hola peoples! We are back at it again, sorry to keep all you loyal fans waiting at the edge of your seats for over a month, but the wait is over, here is the next chapter! I hope you enjoy…

We spent our first few days in Argentina in Buenos Aires…which is an absolutely beautiful city that we have completely fallen in love with. Actually….we have fallen in love with the whole country…definitely our favourite place and we will be coming back again! We stayed in a lovely part of the city called Palermo…full of charming bars and restaurants, beautiful parks and even dog walkers for the rich! Was pretty impressed by that actually...we saw one guy walking about 15 dogs and he even had one in his backpack!! It is definitely the place to live in Buenos Aires and one of the most beautiful areas of the city, we think. We spent our days in BA exploring the streets, eating good food and watching the people. It is very European…kind of a cross between Paris and London! No wonder we love it! We did have some awful rain while we were there though….the streets were flooded and people were wading in waist deep water! Ben, being the gentleman that he is, even carried me to a taxi so I wouldn’t have to get my feet wet…my hero.

(Sarah’s got writers block, so I will continue…)
Palermo is close to the cities biggest and nicest park where you can hire bikes, rollerblades or peddle boats… or you can just jog, which is free! They have an underground train system here too, the ‘subte’ which is really easy to use, very clean… and cheap, it costs just 90 centavos for a ticket which will take you as far as the train goes, one way. .works out to about 15 pence, very cheap travel indeed! They have a zoo here in the city as well, so we resigned to being typical tourists for one afternoon to make a visit there. We did get to see some Condors up close tho as we didn’t see them in the Colca Canyon back in Peru.. Not quite the same as seeing animals in the wild…it’s cheating a bit!

After 5 days in the city we decided to take the long bus ride down to Bariloche (22hrs), which is located at the top end of Patagonia, in the Argentinean lake disrict. We booked ourselves onto a two week Spanish course and a home stay. It didn’t take long to really appreciate the place we were in after arriving. The town sits at the edge of a beautiful lake, already some 800metres above sea level. The horizon is then filled with Andean mountain peaks and you can even set your eyes on a glacier not far away at 3500m, on Cerro Tronador. This area hosts Argentina’s best ski resorts so you can imagine the busy winter scene here with spectacular snow capped mountains to gaze at all day. This is definitely a place to return to during their ski season, another box to tick! Summer here is just as busy however with numerous outdoor activities to keep you occupied. This place had such a similar identity as Queenstown in NZ.. Which also sits on a large lake already above sea level and with a horizon full of snowy peaks! For the whole two weeks we were here we had typically autumn days full of blue sky and calm breezes, so we were really able to enjoy the beauty of this place. If you have been to Queenstown in NZ then you may understand our excitement!

We arrived on a Sunday in Bariloche and were due to start learning Spanish at Escuela De La Montana the next morning at 9am. It was a strange feeling for both of as we haven’t been at school for a long time! We were even given a few hours homework everyday following our 4 hours classes. But the experience over the two weeks was one of our best so far for the entire trip. Learning to speak a new language is exciting, we also met loads of people that were studying at the school and we lived with other students at the home stay as well. Our brains were frying a bit by the second week as there is a lot to take in, the teacher moves along quickly so we pick up as much as possible in the short time we had. The school was very well run, each class had a maximum of just 4 students and the teachers were very good with us.. Patience was their virtue. The school also arranged free activities every afternoon which was great. Although the first week we really didn’t do much at all as we had too much home work to keep up with and were absolutely exhausted from working our brains so much! Our home stay family were great, Mara (the mum) used to run a restaurant with her ex husband so she was an amazing cook. Sarah and I had our own room which was more like a small studio flat with our en-suite bathroom and kitchen, we were really able to relax here! Mara had four kids but some of them were a little older and worked or studied in Buenos Aires. The youngest, Martin 17yo, lived at home still so we got to know him as well, he spoke a little English so he liked to try it on with us. He was a DJ too so we had lots to talk about, but the language barrier made it difficult so mostly we would just recall the DJs we both liked and would nod in approval or shake our head a little. Mara had pretty much no English and we spoke only Spanish at dinner which is the whole point of the home stay, to improve our Spanish. Dinner proved to be quite difficult for Sarah and I, as the four other girls that were staying with us had reasonably good Spanish so the conversations would quickly steam ahead and we would be left behind looking a little puzzled! However, as the lessons progressed we began to pick up more of what was being said at dinner, you would identify with a few words and try to gather up what the gist of the conversation was. Sometimes you got it but mostly you didn’t.. it was very tiring.

On the second week we caught up with ourselves a bit.. and I had gotten over a bad cold. We were in our routine of early morning starts and brain cooking Spanish lessons, so we started to get active, we were also leaving on the next weekend so we needed to! We visited the local ski resort ‘Cerro Catedral’ which is opened in the summer, you can take the chair lift up to the summit where there is a restaurant and viewing points. The resort was quite impressive with up to 20 modern ski lifts covering a fairly large ski area, and the view from the top was priceless! We sat down outside on sundeck chairs for a few hours to enjoy the view and complete our homework! There are other spots around Bariloche where you can take a chair lift up a mountain to a viewing point/restaurant etc They even have a revolving restaurant at one spot. We did some kayaking, horse riding and mountain biking which is a great way to take in your surroundings, we also did a 28km trek to Laguna Negra (Black Lake) in one day which took us up to 1600m. So we kept pretty active which is a must here with all of the lovely restaurants, cafes and chocolate shops to enjoy when you are not so active! We spent our last night out on the town getting drunk at an Irish Pub with our house mates, we played some Dutch drinking games, did some crazy dancing and some mime singing into beer bottles!! Three of the girls we stayed with were Dutch, Argentina is a very popular place to travel to back in Holland. We really got comfortable here, living with a family was a nice change to hostels and hotels…and the routine of going to school each day in actual fact was great, it was a nice break from travelling if you can make sense of that! So at the end we were quite sad to leave, and leaving with a rife hangover didn’t make the experience any more enjoyable!

Our next stop was Mendoza, back up North at the same latitude as Buenos Aires, but west of the city situated right next to the Andes mountain range. The mountains here are much bigger than in Bariloche, the highest ‘Aconcagua’ reaches almost 7000m, which is damn high, not far off Everest. A lot of world renowned climbers visit the area to tackle this giant. The setting of Mendoza is not quite as spectacular as Bariloche ,which let us down a bit, we were almost ready to get on the next bus back! We were expecting better scenery here, but the mountains are set 60km or so away from the town, so you can only see them in the distance. Anyhow, Mendoza is known for producing the best and most of the wine in Argentina, and some of the best in the world! So we did a wine tour of course which was great…Especially the tasting part! We visited 2 vineyards and an olive oil grove, somehow we booked ourselves on a tour with all Spanish tourists which was unusual as the place is full of international tourists as well. Anyway, we weren’t able to understand most of the Spanish that was given during the tour so everything was repeated to us in English, we felt guilty as everyone else had to stand around listening to gibberish whilst we were getting the info, we were automatically the outcasts! The activities and hiking were not as accessible here so we only lasted two nights which gave us enough time to explore the town and sample some local food. We caught a night bus back to Buenos Aires.

Back in Buenos Aires we splurged a bit and booked some last minute deals at two different, nice, smaller boutique hotels! We had three nights here, we didn’t get up to much really, it was nice just to relax and blend in to the scene. On one night we did actually go to a pretty cool place for dinner, traditional Argentinean food… but they had tango dancers with a live singer that come out to perform throughout the night!

We left Buenos Aires again as we had booked ourselves on an Estancia for two nights, which is like a working ranch/farm. It is a common touristy thing to do in Argentina, they have Estancias all over the country where you can stay and turn in to a Gaucho (Cowboy!) for a few days! We met an Aussie girl in Bariloche who recommended this particular Estancia to us. We are so glad we went here, as it was loads of fun! We kept active with lots of horse riding.. I really mean lots too, I rode like John Wayne by the end of the visit..and Sarah cantered! Which she was very excited about and wanted me to specifically mention. We spent about 6 hours on a horse during the two days so we left with sore behinds and a cowboy walk! The Estancia was called La Isolina and it was run by a lovely older couple, they had just 5 rooms for guests so it was more like a home rather than a hotel. Maria spoke excellent English so communication wasn’t a problem, she also used to be a Spanish teacher so we were able to practice some more with her. Jorge (pronounced ‘horhe’) was the husband, he ran the property with a few other helpers. The Estancia was 1200 acres with 800 cows, some sheep and he had about 20 horses… the property was situated 5 hours south of Buenos Aires by bus in an area called the ‘Pampa’ which basically means flat, it was great for watching the sunset! The house was built in the 1920s by Jorge’s grandfather, it was a beautiful house with amazing gardens surrounding it.. There was loads of character and everything was kept very original with older imported English and French furniture. Jorge’s family are French hence the influence.. He spoke only French and Spanish, no English and his Spanish was very hard to understand as he spoke really fast and mumbled. He took us on the horse rides so the communication was hopeless, we ended up just nodding to most things that he said as he kept trying to communicate something if we didn’t understand, and it was just useless… so we were like, si… si.. ahhhh… si, si etc The place was full the day we arrived but almost everyone left on that day, only one other couple remained for one day, so we pretty much had the run of the place and personal attention from Maria and Jorge. They had kids just a few years older than us so we got on quite well, they were lovely to be around, very genuine people. It was a wonderful experience.

We left the Estancia to head back to Buenos Aires for four more nights. Our two week Patagonia ‘End of the Earth’ tour started on the Saturday in BA. We stayed in Palermo again, back at the same hostel where we were comfortable. Again we enjoyed the cafes, restaurants etc in the area, we ran in the park and just soaked up the atmosphere. We went to see Evita’s grave at ritzy Recoleta Cemetary, which was really interesting. Full of little streets and amazing buildings, it was pretty incredible! On Thursday night we went to see a football match in the South of the City. We watched Boca Juniors, who are one of Argentina’s best and favourite sides, and they played Cola Cola from Chile. There is a big rivalry between these two teams as about 10 years ago in Chile there were riots between the crowds and players over the usual when a police dog bit one of Boca players butts, tearing it apart! Since then the stakes have been high! So it was a good game, lots of goals were scored and the stadium was pretty much full so the atmosphere was awesome. It was a bit scary sitting in our stand, we were at the top behind one of goals and every time the crowd erupted, they stood up and jumped about so much that our stand was actually moving about 6 inches from side to side! It was a close game, Boca came back in the end to win 4-3, an unusually high scoring game.

We also booked ourselves on to a day tour to visit the ‘Tigre Delta’ North of the City. We cruised down small rivers where there are many communities, people live along side the river where the access is only by boat. There are about 4000 people living in these river systems, they have water taxis to get about and floating markets to buy supplies. The rivers all lead back out to the main river ‘Rio Del Plata’ which divides Argentina and Uruguay.

That’s all for now… we’ve started our tour in Patagonia, having an amazing time with a good bunch of people! Yesterday we went ice climbing on a glacier which was very cool indeed…will give more in our next instalment!

Love to you all
Ben and Sarah

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Photos

Buenos Aires
Tango dancers in the street..

Bariloche
hiking to laguna negra..

Bariloche
laguna negra in the background... we made it!

Bariloche
first day at school.. ohh, how cute are they!

Bariloche
kyacking..

Bariloche
the view from Cerro Catedral.. this is ´Tronador´ glacier..

La Isolina Estancia
round ´em up Sarah..

La Isolina Estancia
by the pool..

Bariloche
taking a dip during our bike ride.. bit chilly!

Buenos Aires
happy snap..

La Isolina Estancia
you´re ugly..

Buenos Aires
fans going nuts.. and there is always one that goes too far! almost over the edge..

Buenos Aires
Cemetary for the very wealthy, Evitas grave is here..

Buenos Aires
a born rider..

Bariloche
view from our homestay house..