Having been advised by numerous people to spend a fair few days in Buenos Aires, we did just that. We spent our time visiting a number of the districts and the sights within them. The first day we took in some of the sights immediately near our hostel. These included the obelisk, presidential palace, congress and the cathedral, which was undergoing some significant renovation! We then treated ourselves to a rather large steak that evening which Em decided she liked!
The next day we took a free tour to Le Boca, the working class district of Buenos. This is the birthplace I he famous Tango dance! The afternoon was spent wandering the more affluent area of Recoleta and its famous cemetery. Following on this theme, we had decided to take in a Tango show at La Ventana. This was a rather posh restaurant which served an exquisite three course meal and followed it with a breathtaking show of music and dance!!
Our final day in Buenos saw us travel to the district of Palermo, which we wandered around an even managed to see some of the Murray vs Vedasco game at a cafe.
From Buenos Aires we decided to head over to Uruguay for a few days. We caught the ferry across to colonia, a very small,quaint, historic town. Our time was spent walking around and taking in the sights such as the lighthouse, old port and the ruins of the old town. On our first night we treated ourselves to a local dish...; Chivito. This large meal for two included a platter of fries, salad and veg, topped with two steaks, cheese, bacon and fried eggs!! We were stuffed afterwards! The next day we were lucky enough to catch some of the Wimbledon semi finals whilst indulging in a local dessert, chaja (a meringue and sponge cake).
After Colonia we visited Montevideo, which was a complete and utter waste of time. There is nothing to do or see and is possibly the worst place we have been on our whole trip!! The most amusing thing about montevideo as the rather inappropriate fallus shaped fence surrounding a children's playground.
We were very happy to return to Buenos Aires. Back here we took a free city tour, where we discovered there was a protest outside the presedential palace. As quoted by our tour guide "it was just a gunshot, you'll be hearing them all day", these gunshots turned out to be fireworks and bangers let off by the truckers unhappy at paying taxes!! That evening we embarked on one of our longest bus journeys to date, the 19hour trip to Salta.
Whilst in Salta we took two day trips. The first was to Cachi, a really pretty, quaint little town with a very European feel to it. We stopped at numerous places along the way to admire the amazing scenery and get gets photos of the local wildlife (condors) and nature (cacti).
Our second tour was slightly more eventful, this was to Salinas Grandes ( the salt planes). Again we stopped on a number of places along the way including the seven coloured mountains and to take photos of the local vinaca and vicuña. Along the way we also encountered another protest which resulted in the road being closed for about 15 minutes. This would have been an amazing day had it not been for the family of four who had two children under the age of five! This was 14hr tour, the majority of which was spent in a bus on winding roads at altitudes up to 4200m. Within an hour the baby was screaming an the other had thrown up, the parents then rationally decided to give them fizzy drinks resulting in more vomiting! Safe to say we weren't a fan of kids at the end of the day!!
Back in Salta we visited the MAAM museum, which displays frozen children discovered in a volcano in 1999. These children were human sacrifices from the Incan times!! Despite the fact there was limited English information it was a pretty interesting museum. We then continued our religious tour of Latin America and visited the cathedral and convent. We also took the opportunity to buy some more souvenirs (as if we didn't have enough) at the market before embarking on another lengthy (24hr) bus journey to Iguazu.
This bus journey was more than a bit interesting. For a start, we had to catch 3 buses and each connection between buses was only 15 minutes. The first bus was relatively comfortable but was running an hour late. At 6am we got off hoping that our connecting bus had waited for us. Having befriended a Dutch couple who were freaking out way more than we were, we eventually discovered our connecting bus was also running late. For our final connection we actually arrived on time, but it turns out the other bus had decided to leave early! This however worked in our favour as we got a free upgrade and got the next bus to Iguazu. 25 hours after leaving Salta we finally arrived and spent the afternoon chilling out.
The following morning we got up early and caught the bus to the falls. This meant we made it into the park before all the tour buses when it was quiet and we basically had most of the place to ourselves. We started with the upper circuit which gave stunning views from the top of the falls. Following this we did the lower trail which provided a different perspective of the falls which was incredible. On this trail we also got up close to one of the waterfalls where we got pretty wet. Unfortunately due to recent flooding, the pathway to the Devils Throat, supposedly the best bit, was closed. We therefore decided to take a boat up to the Deviles Throat and to the San Martin Fall. This again gave a different view of the falls and resulted in us being completely drenched from head to toe. We thoroughly enjoyed our day on the Argentinian side of Iguazu falls and are looking forward to the Brazilian side.
We ended our time in Argentina with some traditional steak!! (Em has in fact eaten more steak in the last few weeks than in all her previous years put together!)
After disposing of our coca leaves we then headed to the Brazilian border, from where our next blog will begin.
Coca leaves are the leaves from which cocaine is derived. In Peru, Bolivia and Argentina the leaves themselves are used to combat the effects of altitude sickness. This is done by chewing them in the mouth do half an hour or so. Having bought some in Salta for our tours, we thought we'd keep the rest as souvenirs. Turn out they're illegal in Brazil as well as the UK. Good job we found this out before attempting to cross the Brazilian as otherwise we would have appeared on an episode "Banged up Abroad" for drug smuggling!!
Much love
X x x
