Lost in Vacation: Argentina - or: the Autobus Diaries

After the big laze on the Cooks another deadline was closing in on us: Stevie’s departure from Lima on the 11th of March. This meant 4 countries to see in less than 4 weeks. The batteries were still well recharged but the energy draining quickly after 5h of flight from Rarotonga to Auckland, 12h of stopover at the airport and another 11h of flight to Buenos Aires.

‘Buenos Aires’ (like ‘La Paz’) is one of these cities whose name promises something it can’t keep. BA is a rather polluted and moreover noise city with a fair share of hustlers. Still, there are some nice spots and sights, but the European flair the city boasts with isn’t quite what I was looking for in South American cities. (In contrast, the first cash machine I tried to use, which didn’t give out my solicited 300 pesos, fit my image of SA perfectly.)
But considering that all the people we met who have been to BA for a long time not only liked, but idolized it, particularly the night life, I am maybe doing the city wrong. But we stayed in our hostel 2 of our 3 nights in BA, where we spent the evening with some nice Chilean girls, which we had some hard time communicating with, as they spoke Spanish exclusively and my Spanish still needed (and still does) a lot of brushing up on. But the last evening, while I was going to bed early thinking that I´d have to die from a meat poisoning after we had allmost an entire cow including all its intestines for dinner, Stevies Spanish skillz proved to be airtight when he responded to the girls, asking where I was, with: "comer mucho carne"...

The cementerio de Ricoleta, with Evita´s grave. Lots of mauseleoums for BA´s haute volee...

La Boca, the colorful artist and Tango district of BA

Darum-tum-tu-tum

He still got it

We even met Diego Maradona, financing his addiction by taking pictures with tourists...

Unexpectedly I survived the meat intoxication, and we could take the next bus to Puerto Iguazu. With a duration of 17 hours it should be one of our shorter bus rides in South America. And: the most comfortable one. Argentinian buses definitely meet their reputation, they come up with steward(ess), dinner, whiskey on the rocks and - most surprisingly - enough leg space!

Towards (North)West - towards the setting sun

Puerto Iguazu is a small pueblo, but its share of the the Iguazu waterfalls is outstanding, compared to the Paraguayan or Brazilian side (even though Brazil is said to have the better views). So after one day at the Argentinian side we felt like we´ve seen it all and left our all-inclusive-club-ish hostal (Hostal Inn) to Salta in Northwest Argentina.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Standing at the uvula of the devil´s throat

I can´t see anything because of the spray, but I´m so wet and excited...

Only a part of the falls

Iguanas...

...and Alligators

Another 24 bus-hours and at least as many police checkpoints later, we arrived at the snug but fairly unexciting Salta, where we checked off the main sightseeing attractions, met a Death Metal music (Buenos Aires) and a Folklore music (Salta) fan, grabbed our last chance to bay a Mate and spent the rest of the time with what we like best in our holidays: Blogging...