Argentine Adventures

Things we have discovered about Argentinians in our time here:

- They never have change. Ever

- They love to queue.

- They love Morrissey. A lot.

- They can speak better English than Brazilians, but pretend they can´t

- They don´t want to sell you anything.

- They´re not over the whole Falkands thing. Our bad

- They can`t see that Maradona is, in fact, an overweight, cheating, drug addict, dwarf


We had a really easy border crossing into Argentina (the taxi driver did everything for us - we didn`t even get out of the car!) and we arrived at our next hostel on the outskirts of the town of Puerto Iguazu. The hostel was amazing, more like a resort, with a massive pool out front and a real party atmosphere. We had 4 great days there chilling out, and we also visited the Argentinian side of the waterfalls. You can get a lot closer to the falls on this side, so the experience is more exciting. After Iguazu, we made our way down to Rosario, which is the birthplace of Che Guevara. We were expecting to see quite a bit about him, but the flat he was born in is owned privately and closed to the public (erm, message to the bloke who owns it - sell it for a lot of money!) There is a monument, but it´s way out of the town centre. Rosario itself is a nice city, lots of shops and a few touristy places to visit. When we first got there though, we got completely lost and ended up on the wrong bus in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, thanks to a kind pharmacist, we found our way back to the correct place to get the bus into town.


We were only spending one night there before heading to Buenos Aires, about 4 hours away. BA is massive. As soon as we got there, we realised it was a completely different place to anywhere we´ve been already. Millions of people just everywhere. Again, we got lost and found ourselves at the train station instead of the subway station like we wanted. Luckily the trains stopped at Palermo which is the area we were staying in. Unfortunately, our hostel was pretty shit, and it did put a bit of a downer on our time in BA. They managed to cock up both of the excursions we booked with them (city tour and day trip to Uruguay), and in the latter, it resulted in us almost missing the ferry, and when we had returned from Uruguay, ending up in La Boca which is the roughest part of the city. We thought we were somewhere completely different, and we walked straight into the heart of La Boca into a housing estate named islas malvinas (falklands to the winners). We soon realised that we were somewhere we didn´t really want to be, and after briefly shitting ourselves, quickly found a route out of there! Luckily it was during the day, and no-one really seemed interested in us but it could have been a lot different, and we told the hostel staff how their incompetence almost got us mugged! Even they admitted that they would never walk through that part of the city and they were locals.


Anyway, enough complaining... The highlight of the BA was visiting Boca Juniors football stadium. We managed to get a photo of Rob sticking his fingers up at a statue of Maradona without anyone noticing. We also visited the Evita museum, which was a bit of an eye opener. When she was dying of cancer, people actually held up signs saying 'Long Live Cancer'. Pretty sick. Uruguay was pretty cool to visit, although if we're honest we only really did it to get some more stamps on our passports hehe.

After BA we headed down to Puerto Madryn, in Patagonia which is the gateway town for visiting the Peninsula Valdes. The Peninsula is home to lots of wildlife including sealions, elephant seals and penguins. There are also whales at certain times of the year, but sadly not when we were there. Apparently the area gets 100mm of rain the whole year and 99 of those mm came on our first day. It absolutely pelted down, and it was touch and go whether we would be able to visit the Peninsula as the roads are made of gravel, but we made it - just - thanks to our mental driver. The next day we went down to a penguin colony at Punta Tombo, where there are about half a million penguins. Lucy was in her element, and wanted to take them all home. We also went on a boat trip to see Commserson´s Dolphins, which are only found in this part of the world. They´re quite small and black and white and very cute. There were a few of them just dancing around the boat.

Next we headed west to the town of Bariloche in the Lake District. We both agree that this was our favourite place in Argentina. Its quite a touristy town, but we found it to be really relaxing and chilled. Plus the setting of the town is absolutely beautiful - surrounded by lakes and mountains - there is a real Swiss feel to it (helped by the fact that lots of the buildings are wooden lodge style). Plus the town is renowned for producing the best chocolate and ice cream in Argentina, and after much research into this, Lucy can conclude that this is true... Bariloche is also the centre for activity tourism, and during our time here we went white water rafting (and crossed the border into Chile), and also did a bit of trekking to see some waterfalls and a black glacier. We would have loved to have stayed longer, but this was the one place we were actually organised and bought our bus tickets in advance so we couldn't change them. Typical.

Never mind, it was Mendoza next, the heart of the wine region, for a quick overnight stay. We did a winery tour where we visited two wineries and an olive oil factory, and Lucy realiased that she actually does like red wine after all these years of thinking she didn't. So we bought a bottle from one of the wineries, plus a small bottle of olive oil, and made ourselves a dinner of fresh bread, cheese, olive oil and wine.

Our final stop in Argentina was Salta, in the north west. By the time we got here we were both absolutely knackered, so we just spent a few days chilling out and exploring the city. There are quite a few tours you can do but neither of us were really up for it. After travelling most of the country by bus we just wanted to catch up on some sleep. We chose Salta as it is a good location to travel to Chile - there are regular buses but they get filled up some quickly. We had to buy our tickets acout 3 days in advance which meant we had to stay a couple more nights in Salta.We didn't mind though as our hostel was really cool.On the last night we had a massive bbq (cooked by the hostel legend Victor) with free flowing red wine (making Lucy very happy!) and then at around 2am we all headed to a local bar called Barneys - which was themed around the Simpsons. We decided to bail around 3.30 because our bus to Chile was leaving a 7.30 in the morning and we still had some packing to do. There were 2 Austrian guys, Kristian and Daniel, catching the same bus as us, and when we went downstairs at 7am they had just got in! Needless to say they both suffered on the bus, which was about 10 hours and as we were arriving at the Argentina border, a rather unpleasant smell engulfed the entire bus. The bus conductor ran to the back of the bus shouting in Spanish and banging on the toilet door. Someone had taken a shit. Out emerged a rather sheepish Kristian. The smell was so disgusting but luckily we all had to get off the bus to go through border control. When we got back to the bus there was a bucket of water sitting there - yep they made Kristian clean out his own shit in front of the whole bus. So, rule number one when travelling on buses - don't take a shit!!

Next post coming soon - Chile!!