After our exciting border crossing, we spent the next morning on the Argentinian side of the Iguazu Falls visiting the ‘Garganta del Diablo’ (Devil’s Throat), a thundering 80 metre high waterfall, which is both deafening and exhilirating to stand beside. It was great to be able to see the Falls from both the Brazilian and the Argentinian side, as they each have their own special views and wildlife. We then caught a two hour flight to Buenos Aires and checked into our hotel in the Ricoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. It’s a city of 14 million people, so three and a half times bigger than the entire population of New Zealand, but it felt totally different to (and somehow safer than) Rio, despite warnings to the contrary. It was certainly a lot cleaner and more prosperous-looking, although I’m sure there are parts of it that most certainly aren’t.
Buenos Aires is known as the “Paris of South America”, and did feel quite European in lots of ways, due to French, Spanish and Italian influence in the architecture especially. Someone should teach them to speak Spanish properly though, as they have a dialect and pronunciation that is apparently all their own and didn’t equate in any way to my schoolgirl Spanish…
There are two rates of exchange in Argentina, one is the legal one from the bank, the other is the black market dollar, known as the Blue Dollar, for which you can get a much better rate of exchange (nearly double), for your American dollars. Our guide, Leni, herded us all into a back street “shop” where we all shuffled into a little room one by one and handed over our dollars for Argentinian pesos. All very cloak-and-dagger, but I must say the rate of exchange made Argentina a very cheap place to eat out.
We had three nights there and two full days to explore on foot, by metro and by local bus – one day with a guide and one without – and we had a ball. One of the highlights was a night out called “the Argentine Experience” a three course food and wine extravaganza, where you all get given a chef’s hat and apron when you arrive and you make your own empanadas (a bit like a small cornish pastie), which they then bake for you to eat. I won the novelty section – not that I’m bragging – by making an empanada in the shape of a mouse. They also demonstrated the making of a heinous Argentinian/Brazilian “tea” called Mate (pronounced Ma-Tay), which tasted to me like rotting compost with hot water in it…because I’ve drunk a lot of that, let me tell you. But Argentinians and Brazilians drink it by the gallon. The wine was excellent and abundant, the steaks were absolutely magnificent and the company was awesome, so it was a very memorable and fun night.
Amongst other things, we also visited La Boca, which is a very colourfully-painted district of Buenos Aires, the Casa Rosa where Eva Perón made her many speeches to the people and the cemetery where Eva Perón is buried, called El Cementerio de la Recoleta. No visit to Buenos Aires would be complete without seeing some Tango dancers and we weren’t disappointed, as they are everywhere, on street corners and in parks. We also had the most fantastic lunch at the famous Cafe Tortoni, established in the 1920s and full of charm and enormously fattening cakes, and we felt like we’d been suddenly transported to Italy.
One night we went our separate ways, but six of us ended up having dinner together not far from the hotel – it was one of those unplanned gatherings that ended up being a really fun “show and tell evening”, a great way to get to know your fellow travellers. We had to pass a fork around and the person holding the fork had to tell everyone else something startlingly interesting about themselves. Hilarious – we were all snorting with laughter. Bit by bit the rest of the tour group ended up coming into the restaurant too, so naturally it ended up as quite a big night out. Luckily no hangover for me, because I only drink wine on days ending in a ‘y’.
Our next stop is Salta in Northern Argentina, so I hope to upload something on that soon. Internet is sparse and slow in South America, but the main thing is, we’re having such a great adventure and being kept busy day and night, so there isn’t a lot of time to write about it all. But that’s exactly as it should be, isn’t it?
2 Frosty Tops Do South America 