Miss Maps Goes Solo

Everybody complained as we boarded the overnight bus to Iguazu falls from Rio.  Apparently the bus wasn`t up to scratch.  I obviously had low expectations after Peru and Bolivia.  I was just glad not to be stuck next to a family of 4 squeezed into one seat.

The Iguazu falls was one of the few things I knew I wanted to do on this trip before I left home.  It`s a huge cack in the earth with 230 waterfalls cashing into it.  One side is part of Brazil and the other is Argentina.  Paraguay bordes it too.  Foz do Iguazu, the town on the Brazilian side, is about as exciting as Camborne.  The hostel seemed to be a holidlay destination for mosquitoes and fleas.  We were scared to reach out fom under our mozzy nets to grab the mozzy spray!  The falls made up for it though, apparently they make the niagra falls look like a stream.  They seem to go for miles.  The most powerful bit at the top of the crack (called the devil`s throat) is unbelievable.  You can hear it from miles away.  The less poweful ones are more beautiful though, you can see the rocks and bright green moss through the water.  It`s a bit mind blowing to think that`s been thundeing away for thousands of years.  Of course there`s the obligitory legend that someone pissed off a god back in the day and he made the earth split and water fly everywhere.  Loads of pics under the my photos link.

10 minutes over the border into Argentina we were at the town of Puerto Iguazu.  The much nicer Argentine version.  Oh the bliss of Spanish!  Having been mute for the last week in Brazil it was great to talk again.  I was busting to get to Buenos Aires so we booked another overnight bus for that night and headed off to see the falls from another angle.  Actually thee`s only so much staring at gushing water you can do so we decided to go for a more interactive approach.  We stripped to bikinis and boarded the speed boat ready for a soaking.  The boat whipped us around and dunked us underneath a few fairly mild falls, they felt kind of like a power shower, a cold one.  Then we headed for a big thundering torrant and screamed as hundreds of buckets of freezing cold water were dumped on our heads, so much fun.  We then sped off down river, the sun and wind drying us off almost instantly.  A speed boat on Rio Dulce, the Galapagos cruise, white water rafting and now this.  I`ve discovered that I love being on water, maybe I should get a house boat.

This overnight bus was pure luxury, better than any plane I`ve ever been on.  Super comfy seats that recline to horizontal, meals, wine, films, even a pillow and a blanket.  It was a pretty nice 18 hours.

Only just getting over the loss that was leaving Rio, we arrived in Buenos Aires.  I`m so fickle, I`m now also in love with this city!  It feels like Paris, only without the Parisiens.  Huge ornate buildings with little balconies and canopies ove the windows, everyone sitting outside cafes watching everyone else.  It`s totally different to Rio.  It feels very European and more sophisticated and less liberated, more uptight somehow.  The antique shops, art galleries and boutiques ae wonderful.  Bev and I found a hostel in San Telmo, an area known for tango, which is my mission here.  Whilst wandeing around window shopping we bumped into a couple of girls Bev had previously travelled with and we spent most of our time hanging out with them.  That night we went out for a few drinks in some trendy bars.  I tried at sophistication and ordered a strawberry daquari, is that sophisticated?  It was a pretty cool night.

I spent the following morning scowering the streets for tango classes and found a group class fo that night and private classes starting the following day.  It`s been about 8 years since I did Argentine tango but I think I`m a bit bored of salsa so I was keen to try it again.

In the afternoon we visited Recoleta cemetery, it`s a super exclusive place to be buried, full of the famous, rich, politicians and military.  The tombs are more like houses and you can see all of the families` coffins through the doors, quite strange.  A funeral took place while we were there, luckily the cemetery was big enough that we managed to avoid it.  We did take a look at Eva Perron`s grave though, more about her later.

The group tango class turned out to be just me to start with, then 2 others later on.  It was ok, group classes are always a bit slow though.  That night we went to a tango show in Cafe Tortoni, one of the oldest and most famous tango cafes in Buenos Aies.  I was absolutely enthralled.  On a very small stage, in a tiny dark room filled with tables, a singer, double bass player, accordian player, pianist and two dancers entertained us.  It was a great show, lots of super fast leg kicks and over emotional singing, brilliant.

When I arrived here all I knew was that Evita was some chick played by Madonna in a film  I didn`t even know she was the same person as Eva Perron!  I blame the education system.  To get it all straight we went to the Eva Perron museum.  Interesting, quite biased but at least I now know that she was the Prime Minister`s wife and a bit of a feminist and all round do-gooder.  She died when she was 33 and had a 14 day funeral.  I think she was a bit like an Argentinian Princess Di.

Back to tango.  I donned my heels and flouncy skirt for my first private and quite expensive lesson with Ricardo.  He`s surly and a bit scary and an absolutely brilliant teacher.  We just got up and danced, some of it came back to me after all this time.  After an hour I was scooting across the floor, leg flicking and spinning around.  It`s a very intense class, just what I wanted.

I`d heard that shopping in Buenos Aires is excellent and I hit the shops hard.  It felt great to go home with 10 shopping bags and a new haircut.  It`s a funny thing about this place.  It`s the most sophisticated city I`ve ever seen.  It looks and feels rich and expensive but the economy collapsed overnight 5 years ago (how does that happen?) so it`s incredibly cheap.

Tango lesson number 2 was much harder.  A different girl tore apart my technique, I learnt a lot though…bitch.

Bev and Fiona (one of our new travelling buddies) were off to Southern Argentina the following day so we went out on the lash.  We started at about 1am in true Argentinian style and headed for Palermo, the trendy bar district.  We started off well, sitting in a nice bar chatting with two super friendly Argentinian girls.  Then we moved on and Fiona and I hit the bubbly (at 8GBP a bottle we had to).  An extremely posh group of very English people came in.  One of them, Indy, started talking to us.  He was wearing a Hackett shirt, corduroy jacket slung over his shoulder (probably Dickens and Jones) and super expensive jeans…in an attempt to look casual.  We talked for about 10 minutes and covered polo, how many languages him and his father (a Dubai businessman) spoke, a recent visit to the Sheritan hotel in New York, Tokyo and his graduation as a lawyer.  He wandered off and we discussed whether we were being prejudiced and anti-posh or whether he was actually a tosser.  Nevertheless we joined their table.  Thee was another boy, we`ll call him Prince William, and a bunch of girls who were lovely and had really good hair.  They all just became fully qualified lawyers.  At 3am we thought it high time we found a club and jumped into 2 cabs.  Prince William insisted on paying for ours, I began to feel uncomfortable.

Sorry, this long story has nothing to do with Argentina but it was a new experience for me and I have to write it down.

There was a queue outside the club.  Fiona and I started chatting to some locals, not at all fussed about waiting.  Next thing I know Indy herds us to the front of the queue and we walk straight in!  Turns out they told the bouncers how much they were going to spend and bought our way in.  I was mortified.  Prince William then nastily said to a security guy (in Spanish), I`ve paid for a table, I want an f`ing good table.  I went from mortified to livid, who did these people think they were?  Locals were turfed out of their seats to let these arrogant spoilt children and their newly bought friends park their expensively clad arses and order vodka by the bottle.  Surely it`s cringeworthy enough to flaunt cash like that in England, but in Argentina?

I was absolutely jumping, Indy put his arm around me, he never came on to me, he was just shmoosing his new friends.  I had to work hard not to smack him one.  I sat at a seperate table, bought my own drinks and bored this poor local guy stupid as I ranted about them.  Oh dear, I`ll never make it as an it girl.  Ironically, it was a very naff club (they played Vanilla Ice at one point) and within an hour or so thee were loads of spare tables.  It was all so unnecessary.

I think we got home at about 7am.  I hadn`t felt too drunk but the next day told me otherwise.  I was wrecked, a dodgy milanese chicken the night before added to my pain and I didn`t make it to tango, oops!

So now it`s my last day.  I`ve had a couple more tango lessons, seen another show and done even more shopping.  At 7pm I have to get a cab to the airport.  I arrive at about 5pm on Monday afternoon, UK time.  I feel funny.  All apprehensive but excited at the same time.  Wish I could just be there now and skip the whole 17 hour journey bit.

I won`t do a big emotional sum up of the trip and how it`s changed me because I have no idea what to say.  Maybe I won`t know until I get home.  I think it`s pretty obvious from this blog that it`s been a wonderful time though, I`ll leave it at that.

But thanks so much for reading everyone, your comments and emails have really meant a lot.

See most of you on Saturday and if not, very soon.

Maps
xxx

 

Tags: Argentina

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Argentina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.