Argentina and Beyond, part two

Mendoza

Went on a day trip to the Alta Montaña, mainly to see Aconcagua which is the highest mountain in the Americas I think, clocking in at a whopping 6,962m. I don't know how Russ and I manage to do it, but despite the number of English speaking tourists in Mendoza, we end up on a day trip with a guide that doesn't speak hardly any English and nine other people who don't either. Fantastic! And as she had so many other people to talk to she didn't really make much of an effort with us so apart from catching the odd word of what she was saying, we had no idea what was going on for most of the day!! Which was a bit frustrating as we specifically asked if the guide did speak English and were told yes so there are obviously lying bastards over here too who are just out to make some money!!!

But apart from that the day was fantastic! Lots more lovely mountains to look at that were all different colours and got to see Aconcagua from a bit of a distance but was still a good view! Drove up quite high again, to 3,100m, around lots of hairpin bends as we climbed up the mountain side and there were a few hairy moments when we seemed to be driving a bit to close to the edge!!! Also went up a cable car somewhere for some good views of some other mountains too! We were also taken to some random hotel which was supposed to be famous but I have no idea why and it had been shut since 1978 so no idea of its significance!! It's quite an adventure to go on these day trips when you have absolutely no idea what's going on and where you're going next - makes it all a bit more interesting!!!

The next day we went on a tour of some of the MANY wineries around Mendoza, by bike which was fun! And we were finally in a group with 9 other English speaking people which made the day quite a good laugh aswell! After four tours of the wineries we all pretty much became experts in how wine was made, and although it was quite interesting they did all same pretty much the same thing!! The tasting was much more fun, although they were a bit tight on the measures they handed out! We all got into the idea of 'liberating the flavours' by swilling it around the glass, then had to sniff the wine to get the flavours before we could finally taste it, although you have to hold it in your mouth for 5 seconds first before swallowing so your tastebuds can pick up all the different flavours...

We had a couple of different wines in each place, red is the main one they do but there are a few whites knocking around (although they're not Pinot Grigio!!) and a rosé aswell which was quite drinkable! Malbec's seemed to be the nicest red wine which I haven't ever seen in England but I would definitely recommend it!!! We also visited an olive oil place, a liquor place where they had Dulce de Leche liquor which was lovely (dulche de leche is like condensed milk, very sweet, and is very popular over here and tastes sooo good!!) - it was quite hard to cycle in a straight line after a few shots of that stuff!!, and then lastly to a chocolate factory where they had some very yummy chocolate and a huge vat of the stuff you just wanted to jump into!!! All in all a very successful day! It was nice to do some exercise aswell rather than just sitting in a bus all day, although it did mean that I missed out on my afternoon siesta!!!

Mendoza has this huge park that the guide books rave about so thought we may aswell check it out whilst we are here! Although it's conveniently located at the complete other end of town to our hostel so walking for nearly an hour in the hot sun just to get to the front gates was almost a day out in itself!! The park is huge and the first day we went there we made the mistake of trying to walk places which took forever and we kept getting lost! The next time we went back we hired bikes which was great as we could pootle around everywhere a lot quicker. Only problem was that we still kept getting lost, so apart from seeing the lake and cycling past the football stadium we didn't get to see much else as we kept going in the wrong direction!!!

Mendoza to Buenos Aires

Our last long bus trip, although at a mere 13 hours this felt like a walk in the park!! Russ decided we should go for the most expensive option so we went First Class in the Royal Suite. Actually sounds more impressive than it was. As you can imagine, I was not overly keen on the whole idea of spending more money on something than I needed to and so was waiting for something pretty amazing to happen to get value for money.

First off there was no red carpet greeting us at the bus station, and despite paying extortionate amounts of money for the seats, we still had to tip the guy who put our bags on the bus!! Then we were subjected to rock ballards for the first couple of hours, an identical DVD to the one we were forced to listen to on our previous bus journey... We eventually got some food and a mini bottle of wine, which was a nice touch and finally when they put a movie on it was a proper Spanish one, not just a badly dubbed English one so I no hope of understanding what was happening!! And then in the morning we were given sweet stuff for breakfast which is generally the last thing you feel like eating!! So money well spent then!! Russ got a glass of champagne so he was happy but as I don't really like champers that much I didn't even get that privilege!!!

Buenos Aires

It was nice to be back in a place that I was familiar with and knew my way around.

Went out on our first evening back for a few drinks, yet somehow it got extremely messy!! Went to the Kilkenny which is a big Irish bar that is generally quite popular with locals and tourists. Managed to end up talking to a couple of Americans and a Canadian who had all come in by themselves for a quiet drink... And then we got kicked out... I had no idea that bars shut in BA but by this time it was probably about 3am. For some reason that is still unknown to me, I decided that we needed to carry on somewhere else as the night was just too young to go home, and fortunately I knew a little place round the corner, El Cigale, and it just so happened that Tuesday night was THE night to go there!! Again we had to bribe someone to let us in and I'd like to say it was worth it but unfortunately can't remember too much, except everyone in there seemed to know my name - I wonder how that happened...?!! Russ however remembers most of it and had a very surreal moment as he met a p*rn star!!! Apparently he wasn't the nicest guy either and was a bit dodgy as he seemed to have loads of people running around after him! Russ then spilt this guy's drink over him and he was not happy so quickly had to make amends by buying him more alcohol!!

So the upshot of this night out is that we must have got home just around 5/6am and were passed out for pretty much most of the day, managing to make it out of the room about 6pm for a kill or cure MacDonalds (which killed me!) Then went straight back to the comfort of our beds again until we started to feel human...! The good thing was (as we realised later!) I had completely missed Valentines Day as spent most of it asleep and hungover!!! So no time for feeling depressed about being single then which is always a bonus!!!

Colonia

Seeing as we missed out on our day trip to Tigre, we made a big effort to get to Colonia for the day, in Uruguay. Even though we were only going for a day we had to go through all the customs malarky, unlike when we went to Brazil, so at least we were officially there this time!!!

Caught the ferry over there which took about three hours and then as we were on the way over an announcement told us that Uruguay was an hour ahead of Argentina. Good job they told us that gem of information otherwise we would've missed the ferry back!!

Colonia is a very quite little town and really picturesque - lots of cobbled streets and white buildings. Although it was a bit overcast it was also really humid, so another day of sweating a lot which is always nice!!! Wandered around the town for the afternoon, stopping for some food and browsing the shops!

Felt a bit bad as we managed to spend a whole day in another country without actually changing any money. Apparently they are so used to day trippers coming over from BA that most prices are in US dollars but then you can pay for everything in US dollars, Argentinian pesos or Uruguayan pesos. So it was all quite easy really, as most things tend to be over here!!!

Back in BA

Well the day finally arrived when Russ had to go home, and what was more appropriate than for it to piss down with rain all day?! Had a minor panic when I realised I had nowhere to stay for the night, but 3 hostels later and I had found a bed!!! Despite the rain we wandered round the shops for most of the day and then for his last supper Russ went for the steak option, just for a change!

To go out in style we went to the airport by taxi (mainly because we couldn't find the coaches to the airport!) and it was quite sad to say goodbye. I suddenly decided I didn't want to be by myself though and had an urge to get on a plane somewhere but I have to wait for just over a week until I fly to Guatemala so I think I can probably wait for that!!

Caught the public bus back, and was quite happy to have made it in one piece as the driver suddenly stopped for no apparent reason and it was carnage!! Luggage and people went flying all round the bus but there were no major injuries fortunately!!! And then I somehow ended up in a dorm room with three Spanish guys, not sure how that happened but I guess these random events are what I have to look forward to now...!!!!

Buenos Aires to Florianópolis

So my first long distance bus by myself and my first solo border crossing - this was to be an interesting experience... Made all the more interesting by the fact that I was the only foreigner on the bus!!

For starters the guy next to me had no problems invading people´s personal space, and so thought it was perfectly acceptable to hang his arm over the arm rest and poke me in the side for hours on end whilst I was rammed up against the window!! We were entertained by the odd film too in English with Spanish subtitles which was good, only every now and again the picture disappeared so you just had to guess what was going on!! Excellent! They also decided to turn one film off two thirds of the way through and then turn all the lights off so I guessed it was time to sleep! But then a bit later after we crossed the border they put the film back on (the new version of Oliver Twist!) so I had to watch it all again to see how it finished!!

On the odd occasion someone tried to talk to me, about unimportant things like crossing the border, I had no idea what they were talking about!! It also seemed that a police woman in the bus station in BA had taken a form from me that she wasn't supposed to, but it had happened to a few people so hoped I was going to be OK...! It also suddenly dawned on me as I was sitting on the bus that I had no idea where I was going, didn't know if I went through Uruguay or not, had no idea of the route or in fact what was generally going on!

But it turned out that I didn't need to worry - the bus drivers took care of the border crossings, standing at the desk at immigration so all I had to do was hand over my passport and bits of paper and the job was done!! Only other issue was food - apart from a few sandwiches they gave us they kept stopping at places to get dinner, lunch and breakfast. Apart from stopping at really random times so I generally was never hungry on schedule, in Brazil they also had a random system where as you walked through the front door they gave you a bit of paper - wasn't sure if this meant you had to buy something or not, and anyway everything on the bit of paper was in Portuguese so didn't understand it anyway!! So I skulked around for a bit and then followed what everyone seemed to do!!! So I guess it wasn't that bad in the end!! Was suffering from a slight lack of sleep though as lying on your back as if you were dead in quite a small seat with a stranger next to you is not really very conducive to sleep!

Anyway, 29 hours later I reached Florianópolis!! And then I needed to get on two more buses to get where I needed to go to! I debated getting a taxi as I hate getting on buses in the UK where I don´t know where I´m going, let alone in a country where I don´t speak their language!, but decided it would be character building to accept this challenge!! So I hopped onto bus number one, and in Brazil they have this great system where you pay the conductor and then have to go through this turnstile thing, which is fine unless you have a huge big rucksack on your back (or are very fat!)!! I got a bit stuck halfway through so the conductor bloke took pity on me and pushed me through! But then as the bus was really busy I had to stand in the aisle, and had to endure a really crazy bus driver (from the Argentinian school of bus driving I´m assuming!) screeching round corners! As I lurched from one side to the other I´m sure everyone was watching me waiting for me to go flying, but I managed to perfect some sort of technique that involved lots of leaning and holding on for dear life!!

Go to the terminal in one piece and found the next bus to get on. This time people just got on the back without paying, which I didn't quite understand. I followed suit though, and then started to panic, thinking I was going to get fined for not buying a ticket!! So when lots of people had got off I stumbled up to the front to ask the conductor to tell me when I was at my hostel and then asked about paying and apparently I didn't need to - you only had to pay once and can then take as many buses as you like! Marvellous - value for money, that´s what I like!

Eventually I got to the hostel, about 31 hours after leaving the one in BA and met up with Heidi. Unfortunately the weather had followed me and it had been raining there since Saturday night....

Florianópolis

Woke up on Mon morning to rain which I was not too happy about! Caught some buses over to another side of the island where there was a bit of civilisation and wandered around for a while in the rain and then caught the buses back. Sounds simple but 3 buses each way and lots of traffic meant a one way journey took over 2 hours!!

In the evening there was a band at the hostel for part of the Carnaval celebrations. I´d missed pretty much the rest of Carnaval but the band was quite good and got everyone up to dance! There were a few Brazilian girls at our hostel though and their shimmying around made everyone else feel that their shuffling around was slightly inadequate!!

Tuesday - no rain but lots of cloud! Went for a walk on the beach and then hired bikes for a few hours and cycled round the south bit of the island. You would think on a tiny island with very few roads it would be hard to get lost, but somehow we got a bit lost by taking a wrong turn but seeing as we had all day it didn't really matter and we found our way home eventually! And we cycled for ages out of our way so burnt a few extra calories too which is always a good thing!

Most people have left the hostel now so it´s a bit quiet. Just chilled out in the evening, looking forward to a good day of weather and then the torrential rain started, and continued for most of the night... Marvellous!

Wednesday - rain. It stopped for a while and we went to a different part of the island again as Heidi was catching a bus back to BA and I decided if I was going to be on my own for a couple of days then I was at least going to be in civilisation!! In the afternoon the weather got better and there was even a glimmer of blue sky as we walked along the beach! However, just as we were on our way to the bus station it started to rain- full on, road flooding, torrential rain! Great! Was almost tempted to take the bus back to BA myself but was determined to stay here until some decent weather arrived!! Five hours and six buses later I was back in the hostel, the rain had stopped and there was a BBQ! So life wasn't all bad!!

Thursday - sun!!! Was so excited! Went to the beach and lay there for a good few hours, until I had turned a nice shade of pink and then retreated back to the hostel and some shade!! Am so glad I stayed here now to see the place with a lovely blue sky!

Florianópolis to Buenos Aires

This really was an uneventful journey. Sat in the aisle seat this time so I could drape myself over the edge of the seat which is a bit weird but very good for sleeping! No food whatsoever this time though so we kept stopping which was really annoying me as they say 10 mins and then turn up 20 mins later!! Anyone would think these people like spending their lives on buses!!

Didn't quite get what was going on at the border... They took all our passports off us and left us somewhere for 30 mins, then came back and gave them all back to us - all they had done was write something on a bit of paper! Then they collected them all back up again and it took over an hour just to get an exit stamp for Brazil. Then they gave them back to us again! And then we had to go to the Argentinian immigration bit ourselves... And this was all happening at about 5am!! So when I got to the desk the blokey decided to start asking me questions which is my half asleep state had no clue what he was saying! It turned out he was asking where I was going... Seeing as I was on a bus to BA and standing on the Argentinian border, I'd say it was a fair bet that I was trying to get into Argentina!!! And everyone seems to think I'm Irish, even though I had a bit of paper that said I was from Inglaterra... Oh well, he stamped me in so I'm legal!!!

And then there was some more sitting on a bus for another 10 hours or so, with some films that appeared to be in Spanish but there were then Spanish subtitles as well so I have no idea what language they were in! It was quite interesting to watch The Da Vinci Code in a random language but the others were a bit harder to follow! So I slept instead! And then eventually we arrived, phew! Last long bus journey done!!

Buenos Aires again!

My last time here, feels like I've been here for ages now as I keep popping back! Seeing as it was Saturday night we decided to go to Opera Bay, which is THE place to go on a Sat (god I'm so trendy!). However, we decided to do the untrendy thing of arrive at 1.30am and not have to queue to get in, rather than get there at 2am and then queue for hours!!!

Heidi promised me a cheesy music room, so I was very excited to be there and spend the night boogying away to the likes of Wham and Duran Duran etc... However, BA was clearly not ready for my dance moves as the cheese room seemed to end up being the Rock room for the evening! I don't normally hear the likes of Oasis and Queen in many clubs I go to but they were quite popular here which was interesting!! They did play Summer of 69 aswell though so all was not lost!!!

On the Sunday Heidi and I decided to have a day of rest and get out of the city and find a nice swimming pool to lie by! We took the bus (it seems obligatory over here to always get on a bus with no idea where you're going!) and got off when we saw a big swimming pool, assuming this was the place. However, it appeared that instead of going to a posh place with loungers we ended up at a government run place! Well we were there so decided to go in anyway, couldn't be that much different could it...?!

Well obviously yes it could! Firstly we had to pay 2 pesos to get in - we thought this was to get in the swimming pool area but actually it was just to get in a grassy area, we then had to pay another 5 pesos to get into the pool area. But before that we had to have a shower (the woman kept moaning as didn't think we were wet enough, but we didn't quite understand what the point of the shower was anyway!) and then we had to have a medical consultation before we were allowed in! This consisted of checking our feet and then lifting up our arms! What diseases we might have under our arms I have no idea but we both got a clean bill of health and a little certificate to prove it! So after all this hard work (which took over half an hour of tooing and froing as we kept getting turned back from the entrace for various reasons!) we were finally allowed in!

So we had a very nice day there, sitting by the pool and occassionally daring to enter the water when the sun got too much to bear (the water was freezing but it was so bloody hot we were sitting there with sweat running down our faces!!), with about half of Buenos Aires! At one point during the day they decided to have an aquarobics session in the pool which was hilarious to watch - have never seen so many people crammed into a swimming pool clapping and shimmying around!!! Also the swimming pool was very well located by the domestic airport so every half hour or so we had a very loud plane fly very low over our heads, fantastic!

So in the end it turned out to be well worth going through all that pain to get there and get in, although it then took is about an hour to get out of the compound! Heidi thought that was what it must be like to live in an open prison - you can see the outside world but you just can't get to it!!