Hola Everyone,
Been meaning to update this for ages now and finally got a rainy day! so here we go...
Buenos Aires:
The flight from London was very long landing in just over 14 hours, We landed in the international airport just after half 8 in the morning local time.
As standard we had a lot of waiting in store with baggage collection and customs and the heat in the airport was nice for about 10 minutes!
After clearing without a problem we set about getting a bus into the city and out first attemp at using our suspect Spanish. The lady who w got a tickets from was less than impressed and we ended up speaking broken English and saying 'Si' alot. The bus stopped about 3 miles from our hotel and the walk along a very busy main road in the heat after a long flight was not a nice experience.
About 40 minutes later we finally found our Hotel and got sorted again speaking broken English, the problem is that everytime you attempt to speak in spanish they realise your British and speak to you in English anyway which does not help your confidence! When we had sorted everything out we decided to go exploring and figure things out a bit so naturally the first place we went was an Irish bar accross the road from our hotel, later going to the city Cathedral which is easily the most impressive i have ever seen. The Plaza De Mayo is currently awash with banners and activists about the Falklans Islands, but despite this the place is beautiful and the buildings are very imposing.
There is a gerneral theme in Buenos Aires with most of the old impressive buildings being in such bad disrepair that they have been empty a long time, some are having work done but most simply abandoned which in some areas can give a very ghostly feeling. That night we attempted our first restaurant and could not have drawn a shorter straw, our waiter was so unimpressed by our language skills he didnt even feel like setting our table or serving us, he threw down our knifes and forks and let us sort it out ourselfs although i like to think we impressed him in a last ditch effort by asking for the bill in perfect spanish!
The next day we headed out for a district known as San Telmo, this was full of antique shops and plazas tango dancers and restaurants. San Telmo was quiet and very historic and we had yet to hear an native English speaker. After wandering around the market and watching some tango dancers in the street we decided to head to La Boca a locals neighbourhood in south Buenos Aires, the walk there was very long and very hot but definately worth it! The colouful district is a very impressive place and although it is hypocritical to say it has unfortunately been tainted by tourism. La Boca is definately worth a visit but the very nature of what obviously made this place very popular is now being pushed and exagerated by the locals as it is clearly very profitable to do so. The tin houses are painted in a patchwork of yellow, green, blue and orange and tango dancers pose for pictures it could all be described as a very provocative scene but it was made a bit less poetic by the touts pulling you into cafes and then for me what really put a grey cloud over the visit.... 15 Australians on a cycling tour. After another long walk back to towards town we stopped at an all you can eat grill that was recomended in the guide book, the food was epic but after not eating very much the previous day neither of us had a huge appetite.
After all the walking of the previous day we decided to take it easy on our third day, which failed. We walked a few miles to a Ecological park on the docklands below Plaza De Mayo which we thought would be a nice relaxing day and turned out to be much more walking than planned. It was amazing to see all the make shift parillas (grills) that were along the road in front of the park, the smells were amazing and really created a busy vibe to what would have been a plain area. The park itself was nice and we had a good walk round, although at this point i regretted cutting my hair so short and burnt the top of my head! After the ecological park we visited an old naval boat that has sailed around the world 48 times but never seen combat, the ship had maps and pictures of its voyages and even allowed access to the engine room at the very bottom of the ship. I think this was more of a visit for me than for Stephanie who humoured my attempts to sound like i knew what i was talking about when explaining the obviously very complex engine that girls would not understand...pffft like i knew what i was talking about.
Our last day consisted of a bit of shopping, i purchased a hat to cover my tomato coloured head and some flip flops and in the process managed to loose the key card for our room again massively impressing Steph. We wandered around attempting to find a certain shopping mall which neither of us could remeber the name of as we had forgotten our lonely planet guide. After a few hours we finally came across it and it was quite the delight, the cealing had a huge dome that had religious paintings and gold leaf all around it but i couldnt help feeling that it was a very random place for it although tie rack were loving it! We headed back to our hotel after a quick meal to get packed for our early moring flight.
The 1.30 am alarm went off and we had to force ourself and our very sore feet toget up and get to the airport, the taxi driver phoned up to the room to say...something which meant he was here. Then we went off and climbed in with Argentine Lewis Hamilton at the wheel, he must have broken his personal best at the speed we had been going. Despite the white knuckle ride on the way to the airport we passed a favela at the side of the road it looked exactly how magazines and computer games have painted the image of them and even at twice the speed of sound and in the dark it was a very humbling sight. After arriving Jorge Newbury airport and going again through the airport process we soon took off and the watched the amazing landscape change out of our window.
El Calafate:
It would be impossible for me to describe to you the amazing feeling of getting out of Buenos Aires and arriving at this tiny airport in Patagonia, the views from the plane coming in had given us an idea of what we has ahead of us but in all seriousness El Calafate will be very tough to beat in terms of its wow fator. For me big cities have thier place and they are all very important but to get out into the sticks is always what i look forward too and it doesnt even have to have tractors! I dont think i have ever been more excited for the bus ride into town from the airport, but when we sloped down into the town itself sat between lake Argentina and the mountian range behind it was truly awesome. We had been booked into Che Legarto hostle and it was easily the best in town which was lucky, the staff and the rooms were great.
The first day was very windy but bright and mild, we had asrrived at Che Legarto too early for check in so we stored out bags and headed out for a walk. Steph had to go back to the hostle after feeling ill from the flight but i donned my GoPro for the first time and walked out to the Lake. The mountains that surround the lake are much like what you would find at many lochs in Scotland and it is a postcard picture for sure. In and around the town are heaps of little shops selling all you could want to remeber the place with pens, books, pictures and every trinket going.
The next day was spent chilling out and milling around El Calafate, we had booked a 7 hour boat tour of the Glaciers for the next day and also our two day bus upto bariloche. The 14th saw us rising early to catch the bus to the port and onto a catamaran for our glacier tour. The tour was to take us around 5 differnt glaciers two of which we would get within a mile of the huge wall of ice rising out of the lake. This was the first time i had properly filmed something on my GoPro and i had it running all day taking over 40 mins of footage which im looking forward to watching as soon as i find a computer good enough to run the clips! On route to the glaciers we passed many icebergs which had been ice that had broken off the front of the glaciers, some were much bigger than the boat and they create aura which is hard to explain. The glaciers amazed both of us and i think the pictures will describe them best, the day was great and it was the best option to see them in the short time we had.
The two day bus departed El Calafate at 8 am and to be honest was fairly uneventful, the scenary was exactly the same which made it feel like we were driving in circles. The roads here are not great and the bus took a hell of a battering on day one with 90% of it being gravel. The overnight stop in Puerto Madre was a small family run hotel which had clearly not seen a paintbrush in my lifetime if they wait long enough it will however come back into fashion. The second day bumbling up the RN40 began and we had a new bus which was much better and more comfortable although again there was an Ozzy on board much to eveyones delight, they get everywhere.
The most interesting part of this journy was the food stops, the towns we stopped in hailed back to what i had seen in spaghetti westerns and at any moment i expected Clint Eastward to arrive.
Bariloche:
Im currently sat in the PC room in this Hostle writing this blog after arriving in Bariloche late last night. I would like to tell you about the amazing scenary here but i have not seen it as its been raining non stop since our arrival. We have booked an overnight bus to Mendoza tomorrow which consisted of a fast 6 mile trip to get my passport which i helpfully left back in our hotel.
Well im going to sign off now, i hope this is not too long haha. I think this post rivals my Dissertation for word count!
Take care all.
Jack
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