So we hit the Argentina border running.......

 

After a quick check of financial records, some cost calculations and the realization that travel is so much more difficult without ANY money at all, we reved up our travel engines and rocketed to Buenos Aires in 20 straight hours to try and adjust our flights and shorten our trip. As a result we believe northwestern Argentina is usually framed by a bus window, looks a little blurry and has the back of our feet blocking the view. 

 

Luckily in Buenos Aires we encountered the 2 nicest Argentinian airline workers in the world and within a morning it was all sorted. We were heading back to Aus.....

 

Now, however we only had a couple of weeks to see Argentina and damn it, we were going to make the most of it. Unfortunately a couple of weeks isn't enough to see all of the country so we deceided on BA and the northern parts.

 

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city. We wandered a bit around the waterfront and sang Don't Cry for me Argentina in front of the Casa Rosada or Pink House were Evita made her famous speaches to her adoring public. Spent a lovely afternoon wandering around the historical San Telmo and enjoyed the antique market, street performers and a live tango show. We felt very cultured. We also went out to a bar to watch Argentina play Holland in the Copa Mundial. What an experience!! They were going nuts and within a half hour or so Cheryl and I were singing Argentinian fight songs and really getting into it. Much safer than being a Dutch supporter I think. I ordered a beer (Quilmes) and virtually 2 minutes later a completely plastic woman came over and handed me a scratchy card. I scratched, it said "you won" in spanish of course, and she gave me an Argentinian team jersey and I was having my photo taken with this chicky! Quilmes is apparently the sponser of the Argentinian team and we just wandered into a promotion!!  As it turns out the game was a draw which was enough for Argentina to go through so there was no rioting. Our whole time in BA was really just a caffeine fueled enjoyment of a beautiful city and great food. Just nice.

 

A couple of notes on Argentinians before we continue: they love football, they dress really well and they are the word leaders on canoodleing. You couldn't swing a dead anything in Argentina without hitting some couple intertwined in the form of embrace usually confined to the bedrooms of innocent Canucks or Kiwis. One quickly realizes that parks are prime canoodle locations and after a while you don't even notice swarthy type south american people dry humping in the periphery of your view of some ancient monument. Oh those passionate Latinos.

 

Uruguay is just across the bay from BA so we hopped on a ferry and crossed to the old Portugese colonial town of Colonia del Sacramento. It was originally built by the Portugese to keep an eye on the Spaniards in BA and had changed hands 7 times before Spain took it for good. Very cute little walled seaside town with twisting, narrow streets and nice cafes.

 

After Colonia del Sacramento we spent a day in Uruguays capital, Montevideo and then took a bus up though Uruguay on the way to Iguazu falls in the triborder region where northern Argentina meets Paraguay and Brazil. The falls were fantastic. Larger than Vic falls in Africa or Niagra falls in Canada, Iguazu is stretched out around an escarpment in the jungle. We just hiked around and took thousands of pictures of falling water. As you do.

 

All too soon we were back on a bus heading south to Santa Fe and Rosario, the birthplace of Che Guevera, to test our resistance to buying Che Guevera memorabilia. Then just like that we were bussing back in Buenas Aires to catch our plane to Spain.

 

In a tribute to our stupidity.... the All Blacks were playing the Pumas (the Argentinian national team) really close to the time we were there. So we went to the All Blacks website to find out when the game was because we really wanted to go. It would be so much fun supporting the ABs in BA, or something like that. The website told us that unfortunately the game was on the 25th of June which was a bummer because we flew out that afternoon. Soooooo, on the afternoon of the 24th we wandered around, wasted time on the internet and found a place to go for dinner before heading back to the alojamiento (guesthouse) at around 2000. Once there we flicked on the TV to find live coverage of the Puma/All Black clash!! The AB website gave the date of the game in NZ which is of course the 24th in Argentina!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then, because our flight out of BA with Iberian (the worst airline in the world might I add) was delayed 10 hours the airline put us up in the BA Sheraton for the day-where the all Blacks were staying!! But of course we didn't find this out until we came down to catch the bus back to the airport that night to discover all the team gear in the lobby!!! Cheryl said "lets wait till the last minute to board the bus and maybe we will get to meet some of the boys" I said "we better get on the bus or we'll be standing all the way to the airport".  I won out but we weren't on the bus for 30 seconds before the ABs came down into the lobby just to hang out before slowly wandering off to the bar!!! We weren't allowed off the bus and Cheryl didn't speak nicely to me until Madrid!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid..... Oh well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be on that trip!!!

 

We eventually did get on the plane and left for sunny Spain.

Watch this space.

 

Nos vemos chicos,

Cheryl and Jay