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Our diet
In Argentina they eat steaks, big ones! Argentina didn't blow my mind, at least not in the beginning. We country seamed too european to me and I didn't get the feeling that I saw anything new at all. I don't know why I expected something more "interesting", cause I did know the history of the country well enough to be able to realize that the culture most be close to what I can find on my own continent. I just didn't think, I guess.
Our travel in Argentina could definitely have had a better start. We took an early bus from Santiago with a bad hangover and even if Carlos had told us that we have to keep awake for the amazing view, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. At least at the beginning. But Anna and I had gotten the last seats in the bus and I was the lucky one to get to sit next to the toilet... Let's just say that it didn't make my hangover any better. But I shouln't complain. At least there was a toilet in the bus and that is luxury after everything we experienced. Let's talk about something else.
Mendoza was our first destination. I guess you
Mendoza
Heavy partying and a lot of fun all know that Mendoza is the leading wineproduceing area in Argentina and in fact 70 percent of the argentinian wine is produced here. What every tourist who comes here does, is visit as many vineyards as possible. What happened when Anna and Helena found this place is a different story. We got to Mendoza on friday evening and what we wanted to do was sleep but our host German had other plans. The first thing I learned about Argentina was that going out at night did in no circumstance mean that you would get back home during the night. You could be happy to get to bed at what I would call late morning. Gladly I passed out at 7 am and got some sleep.. You can guess that we felt worse than ever the next "morning". The lack of sleep and heavy partying two nights in a row did what was to be expected. The only thing we did that day was walk to the buss station and back and I'm amazed that we managed to do that much. Next night I wanted to sleep more then anything but the next thing I learned about Argenitna was that if
More party in Mendoza
German, our host, is trying to hide behind Annas hair you could do something else you wouldn't stay home on a saturday night and sleep. We went to a house party. The next morning we slept till 3 pm and still I felt more tired than ever... My point here is: A lot of party in the night means no vineyards during the day. We left Mendoza on sunday night without seeing anything of the place. I feel ashamed of myself.
Buenos Aires was a small dissapointment. I don't know why I expected so much of the city and in the end it was just another city too big for my taste. We studied spanish for 1,5 weeks and that has been very usefull, we've noticed. I would lie if I would say that I speak spanish, but I know enough to be able to have a simple discussion.
I had my 25th birthday here. It was a fun night out with a bunch of couchsurfers from different parts of the world. But there is still nothing like celebrateing 1 of May in Kajsaniemi and the next day I felt a bit homesick knowing how much fun I could have if I were in Helsinki.. We couchsurfed at
My birthday dinner in Buenos Aires
Me and our wonderful hosts Mariano and Hacho two different places. The first three nights we stayed in a nice area called Palermo Viejo, with a lot of restaurants and bars. The funny thing about this is that Anna and I shared a 90 cm bed without any problem! For the next four nights we moved to Mariano, Hacho and the colombian guy. This was the highlight of my stay in BA. We went out for a birthday dinner together and the guys organised a fantastic winetasteing for us. At least we got to try some Argentinian wine after the unsuccessful visit to Mendoza. But here again we just didn't get enough sleep. Our spanish studies suffered badly and in the end we had to move to a hostel to be able to rest.
I was very happy when we finally packed our backpacks and started traveling up north. I was after all here to travel, not to hang around and waste my time in a big city. I looked forward to get to Salta, a city in the northern part of Argentina. I had read in a magazine that it is possible to do sandbording here and that was something I badly wanted to try! The
Santa Catalima
The wine tasting only problem was that there was no mentioning about sandboarding in our guidebook or in the internet, so I didn't know how to arrange a trip for us. Luckily we found a company called Amazing Mountains and here they promised to take us sandboardning as a part of a multiadventure trip. We just had to do some paragliding and downhill biking too and that was just perfect, we tought! Facundo was our guide on this two day trip and we had a hillarious time with him. We stayed the night in a small town called Iruya. To get there we had to drive along this ridiculously narrow sandroad over a 400 m high mountain. At the top of the montain we stopped (even if it was so cold that my fingers almost fell of) so that Facu could sing couple of his songs to us. That's how amazing he was! In Iruya I fell in love with the mountains and the scenery and decided that I wanted to see more and continue to Bolivia, not return to Buenos Aires as our original plan was.
A bit more about sandboarding, the reason why we went on this trip: it was
In a bus...
Good times in Cordoba a small dissapointment. The sandboards were very simple and to big for my feet. But the tough thing with sandboarding is that there is no lift like in snowboarding and you actually have to walk up along the sand dune first. This was a lot harder than we had ever imagined! It wasn't only that we were walking on loose sand, we were also 3400 m above the sea level and the air was alarmingly thin, at least for us. I took us 1 hour 15 min to walk up the dune and I am so proud that we managed to do it. It was more than once when I wanted to give up!
Paragliding was an interesting experience aswell. Flying around in the sky wasn't as extreme as the sky diving, but the landing was exiting. I don't really know what happened but my pilot missed the landing area and we ended up landing on some kind of factory area instead. We hit a tree and my ass got stuck in a metal ladder! It could had ended badly but we were lucky and what I have left is a funny memory from my first paragliding experience.
Anna and Helena..
..and Salta in the background The best thing with our two-day-multiadventure-tour was after all the scenery. Northern Argentina is beautiful with its mountains and deserts. We enjoyed our time with Facu and we can't wait to see him in Finland where he promised he would be in a year or so.
I didn't get any clear picture about Argentina, only small flashes of what the country has to give. But the country is huge and we didn't have time to travel around enough and I guess that is good. I have a reason to come back one day. Exept for Salta and the area up north I can't say that I liked it that much. But most of the time I felt too tired to be exited about anything and I guess that took the joy out of me. At the same time I felt like I was wasting my time when we got stuck in BA. There wasn't much time left of our travel and I was still looking forward to see new things and experience more in South America. From Salta we took the bus to the border of Bolivia an early and freezing morning. New adventures and experiences were ahead!
Paragliding
Anna is making herself ready
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