Nothing’s Familiar

Different day, different country. I suppose I should elaborate on what I did in the last few days in Buenos Aires but there isn´t really too much point. I can and will explain it in about 3 words; Drink, Sleep, visiting-more-dead-people. One of these dead people was actually someone important this time, Evita. I´ll get my mum to explain more about her if you are interested, all I know about her was that Madonna played her in a film and there was that song “Don´t cry for me Argentina” which was either about her, or sang by her. Apparently she was the ex-presidents wife and also had a fling with Che Guevara, but let´s be honest which of us haven´t?

Oh, I also went to the dodgiest part of Buenos Aires to watch a semi-final football match between La boca (Argentinean) and Catoilica (Chile), we were advised to leave everything of value at our hostel and to pay the extra bucks to get more expensive seats. Sadly, we couldn’t afford a days budget to watch a football match so we settled on the cheap “popular” standing. I am glad we did, the atmosphere was absolutely intense! Lots of jumping around and shouting songs to cheer on their side and to put the fear into the other side. People were climbing all over the railings, firing off flares and screaming at the oppositions goalie every time he got near the ball. I suppose it was educational for me to, prior to this I didn’t know any swear words, now I know if someone says “hijo de puta” they are calling someone a son of a bitch and if they say “puto” – they are saying the Chileans goal keepers name, which translates as “Faggot”!

*The score was 2-2 by the way

Anyway back to the travelling bit……….

We set sail across a small splotch of ocean to reach Uruguay in a boat which resembled a fancy floating shopping mall, it took us 3 hours to reach Montevideo (Uruguay’s capital) and costs us about 20 pounds. Another stamp for my passport then a quick and highly expensive taxi ride later (apparently we had to pay for each of our bags as well) we arrived in another hostel, dumped our bags had a quick game of ping-pong, played on their 6 stringed guitars then went to bed.
The reason I decided to go to Uruguay was to basically relax on the beaches all day, it was either this, or travel 40 hours south to Patagonia to look at a Glacier, which is obviously pretty cold.
In total I spent 6 days in Uruguay relaxing on Beaches, trying to beat my Swiss friend at wave riding, cycling around on bikes and generally just getting a lovely tan. 5 of us rented a small car and travelled up the coast to other beaches of greater quality.

I really cant think of much else I have done to be honest, I am back in Buenos Aires now tearing my hair out trying to find an Internet cafe with a CD Writer and USB and a post office with envelopes or small boxes (who said travelling was easy?)

I plan on leaving here tomorrow to travel 18 odd hours to Mendoza where I will drink wine and relax just a little bit more before my flight to New Zealand in 9 days.

Until then,

Rob

Well after my last post I haven´t done a great deal worth mentioning, unless you all want to know the in depths to my new and much appreciated diet, which I will tell you about anyway as it will pad this out a little bit more…

I arrived in Salta (Argentina) and immediately fell in love with the place. Admitably the reason for my positive outlook was the fact I could purchase something other than indigenous clothes, llama meat or 3 stones stuck together to resemble a monkeys face, but – there were also nice women to look at too. So, enjoying the new style of life I stayed in Salta for a while and ate nothing but steak (occasionally with chocolate sauce) ice cream and played ping-pong all day, I also managed to watch England Vs. Argentina in my hostel surrounded by Argentineans.

After 4 days of losing ping-pong to my Scottish buddy I decided it was definatly time to move on, so in the true spirit of budget travelling I jumped on a 28 hour bus trip all the way to Iguazo Falls to avoid him – it was just a shame he sat next to me on the bus, stayed at the same hostel and then continued to beat me at ping-pong for the following 2 days.

In between getting beaten at the-only-sport-Scottish-people-seem-to-be-good-at we visited the mighty Iguazu Falls. The hostel where we stayed was on the Argentinian side of the Falls and if you walk for 10 minutes towards the river you stand at a point where you can see Paraguay and Brasil (and obviously Argentina, if you look at the ground). The waterfalls are shared between Argentina and Brasil so for the first day we ventured into Brasil. We received a few more passport stamps (upside down) in the process of crossing the border and jumped on a few more buses to get to the National Park. Inside the park we walked around for about 4 hours being truely impressed by the waterfalls, the park itself was pretty tacky with hundreds of tourists (bloody tourists!!), adventure trips, and various other things which resembled an amusement park, but the waterfalls made it all the worth while. I also had the pleasure of meeting some Chinese tourists and impressed them with my ability to speak Chinese. I pretended to understand everything they were saying, then just to clarify my fluency I threw in occasional sentences here and there. Impressed, they then grabbed my Scottish mate (he´s called Alasdair) and said something like “You have red t-shirt, me white t-shirt, photo together my English friend”…To which Alasdair replied….”SCOTTISH”. I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the Chinese dudes camera.
I suppose I should mention that I abseiled down a cliff with the waterfalls behind me, but to be honest it was pretty rubbish. It cost over my days budget and I spent most of the time trying to spin myself around to look at the waterfalls behind me.

The next day we walked around the Argentinian side which wasn´t as good (more tourists), but it took us further into the waterfalls. We payed a few pesos to ride a power boat into the waterfall and to ultimately to get drenched. I have hundreds of photos which I am sure will bore the living socks off you, but I will post a few of them on there just to give you an idea of why the waterfalls were so spectacular.

I am now in Buenos Aires after a further 18 hours on a bus, I have carefully selected a Hostel without a ping-pong table and tonight, no doubt, I will get a sample of the Argentinean´s capitals nightlife.

Buenos noches chicos

Rob.

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