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Published: March 26th 2007
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As far as Bahia Blanca
Av & Suzz So, it was Adios Buenos Aires and Hôla to the east coast of Argentina.
Having safely made it to the bus stop and onto the next bus we finally arrived in our next destination, Pinamar, after a 7 hour journey (it was only meant to take 5 hours!)
This is the place where all the trendy Porteños (people from Buenos Aires) go for their summer holidays, however summer is from Jan to Feb so by the time we got there half the town had shut up shop - not a good start. We didn´t have a map of the town either which made finding a place to stay very interesting as the hotel the taxi driver had suggested seemed to be closed - one of the many! After making enquiries at a few places that were way over our price range, we managed to get our hands on a map and made our way to one of the guest houses suggested in our Lonely Planet guide.
It seemed like a nice place, although a bit dated (so completely opposite to the "modern" quote in the guide book), however, the elderly lady who came to the door was
extremely friendly, and gave us a warm welcome and the choice of 2 rooms. It turns out she´s originally from Italy and moved to Argentina 56 years ago!
Having made it to Pinamar, we decided we may as well stay for a couple of nights and have a look around town so the next morning we took a stroll down to the beach to see what all the fuss is about.
Guess the beach cleaners had also packed up for the year as the beach was covered in rubbish. It also looked like there must´ve been an oil spill at sea as the sand was black in places and we came across several dead fish! Yuk!
So, having seen as much as we wanted we decided to take action.......no we didn´t start cleaning the beach up, we headed to the bus station to buy tickets for the first bus out of town the following day!
A 7am start and another 5 hour bus journey took us to our next beach resort, Necochea. Hoping for better luck we arrived to find another quiet town, however a lot more pleasant than Pinamar and at least there were a few
people still around.
Apart from a walk along the beach and being heckled by the bright green parakeets chattering in the trees in a small provincial park there wasn´t much else to do apart from chill out, so we did just that! In the evening we went to a great restaurant, called Taberna Española, where we opted for the seafood tapas - and were fed various dishes of delicious seafood.
Again, like Pinamar, the Town lacked a buzz so we decided that a couple of nights here was more than enough.
So, it´s now Saturday and we take yet another 5 hour bus trip to arrive in a town named Bahia Blanca. It´s not a hugely popular place with travellers (according to Lonely Planet) but it has a port and the biggest naval base in South America. We found a nice hotel right in the centre of town and decided to stop for a few nights, mainly to decide where to go next and also because nearly everything is shut on Sundays.
The guide book mentions a small museum near the port- Ingeneiro White - which has artefacts and displays relating to the various groups of
immigrants that have arrived in the town and each weekend the different nationalities take it in turn to provide visitors with traditional food from their homeland and play traditional music and/or dancing. So we decided to take a look and caught a bus to the museum on the outskirts of town.
Surprise! Surprise! Just guess which group happened to be at the museum this weekend? Yep, it was the Greek immigrants, so Av had a good chat with various members of the community and we ended up buying lots of cake (now there´s another surprise we hear you say!) whilst watching the locals dance the Zorba....Oba!!! It´s a small world!
We had a bit of a panic on leaving the museum as we realised that we had no idea where to catch the bus back to town or whether there was a bus going back to town at 8pm on a Sunday! We walked up and down the road for half an hour trying to find something that resembled a bus stop and got bitten at every step by mosquitos in the meantime. It was also not a great part of town (can´t trust those Greeks!). Fortunately we
saw a policeman standing on a street corner and discovered that he was waiting for the bus so joined him and eventually got back to the hotel.
Monday morning we decided to start off with a visit to the Tourist Info centre so that we could plan our next move. As we got to the municipal building, where the tourist office is located, we discovered a demonstration in progress by the local Cartoñeros with their horse-drawn carts . These are very poor people who rummage through the rubbish in the streets each night, collecting the cardboard, cans, glass and plastic bottles for recycling so as to make a few pesos - they were demonstrating to demand a better future for themselves and their families.
Having managed to get some info from the tourist office we headed to the bus terminal to book tickets for our next destination then returned to the town to spend the rest of the afternoon doing a bit of window shopping.
In the evening we had another parilla (the 33rd?) and then retired to the hotel to prepare to move on to Sierra de la Ventana in the morning.
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Ash
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Hey guys, it looks like you are having a lot of fun, until Av done a Moony and all the people of Argentina ran for the borders!!! Sorry Av, thats the only explanation I can give for the pictures above!!!! have lots of fun and take care XX Ash