We barely slept at all on the bus, despite it being comfortable, because two rows forward an old man kept coughing all night. He must have been seriously ill, because he coughed every ten seconds or so for nearly the whole night. Surely people that ill shouldn't be travelling? On top of that we didn't get the breakfast we had been promised when buying the tickets, the bus arrived three hours late, and it was pouring with rain. Looks like I chose the wrong week to give up drinking (which we had been planning to do for a month after we left Uruguay and Andre). There was nothing for us to do but go out for a drink.

Our hostel was recommended online for being quiet, having lovely hammocks to relax in (which it didn't look like we'd be using), and for having humming birds around their lovely garden (of which there was no sign). It was a little out of town, but we located a venue which our guide recommended for its strong caipirinhas and felt obliged to order one each. We were just looking at the menu and thinking about eating there, when the waitress chastised the couple next to us for drinking from a small bottle of water they had brought with them, rather than buying it there. It wasn't as if it was alcohol or something, just water, so, disgusted by their attitude, we decided not to eat there and instead followed the advice of a couple at our hostel, who were just at the start of a round-the-world trip, and went to a nearby Italian restaurant. The couple had been at the hostel for over two weeks, due to the girl getting a “stomach flu” on their first day, so we reckoned the guy must really know the town inside out. Unlucky start for them, though. We double-checked that they hadn't gone to the restaurant before she got ill. Mine was OK, but Joanne was very disappointed with her risotto. I don't know why she ever orders it, because it never lives up to homemade.

My carpaccio starter

Joanne's bruschetta starter

My spinach gnochi putanesca

Joanne's bad salty risotto

We had only been planning to stay two days in Puerto Iguazu, but our first day had already been written off by the weather. I bought a plastic waterproof coat incase the weather continued, because we couldn't just cower indoors from a wee bit of rain. The next morning, my second purchase of a crappy waterproof coat proved just as effective a talisman against the rain as the first one I bought in Nepal had been: it had cleared up quite a lot and it was even a bit sunny.

So we went to the falls. I don't have the words to describe them... so I'll just post lots of photos. They are awesome, incredible, overwhelming, stupendously powerful, breath-taking, and quite beautiful, thundering in the surrounding lush green forest. The park is inhabited by cheeky little creatures called coaties, which I later saw referred to as “... or racoons”. I've never seen a racoon before, so I don't know if that's right, but they are persistent in their attempts to steal food from customers at the cafes in the park. There are signs up warning that you shouldn't feed them or touch them, but we saw plenty of people ignoring the second warning. They are quite cute, but I wouldn't want to touch one, especially when it might mean a rabid bite in return. Or worse, it could steal my lunch.

People hassling the coaties

Coati

You can get really close

We first walked around the upper trail, which follows over the top of the falls along the horseshoe-shaped cliff they drop over. At points, the path is only inches from the flow as it plunges below, and there are places where you can reach out and put your fingers in the gushing water. It impressive to be that close up. The falls are absolutely huge, and go on for miles. Literally. OK, it is more than one mile, anyway. I don't know whether we were there during a period of heavy flow, but the whole area was full of water vapour, splashed up for the churning foam beneath. At one point, there was a view of people below, presumably on the lower trail, being absolutely soaked by this vapour on a pathway constructed just in front of one waterfall.

Jesus, I presume

Lots of people getting soaked

Quite busy

Next it was the lower trail for us. We had prepared for the soaking by putting everything into a dry-bag. You get some nice broader face-on views of a series of falls from the lower trail, but the main point seems to be the pathway that brings you right up to the massive, crashing, thundering, foaming white wall of water, with the boiling cauldron beneath. It's the crowning moment to stand there right in front of it, really driving home the enormity of the place, and it's just wow. Some people we protecting themselves with plastic macs and things, but I'd forgotten my newly purchased one, which I had only really intended for the rain anyway; and since it was sunny I was happy just to dry off after getting soaked.

The first bit you get wet

It's crashing down

Me in the middle of it

Me, wet, on my way back to dry land

Wooo!

Joanne in the middle of it

Coatis and Beer

Los Dos Hermanos

The final section of the park is a short train ride away at what is meant to be the most impressive bit of the falls: la Garagana del Diablo, the Devil's Throat. On the walkway after the train we met two American guys from the hostel in Buenos Aires, who had thought we might see in Colonia, since they were going there the same day as us, but in yet another travelling coincidence, here they were instead. The falls here are certainly incredible, and the quantity of water flowing into the hole in astonishing, but there isn't really so much to see, maybe because the flow of water was too strong, but the vapour obscured everything after the first few metres of the drop. Even from quite a distance you can see the cloud rising up from it.

The American guys from Bs As

La Garganta del Diablo

Foam

Us at La Garganta del Diablo

Joanne at La Garganta del Diablo

La Garganta del Diablo

La Garganta del Diablo

The really ugly Sharaton overlooking the falls

The last thing we had wanted to do that day was take a boat trip, which we had heard was great fun, but all of the cheaper options down at the water were cancelled because the water level was too high; even the boat trip to the island in the middle of the falls was cancelled that day; the only trip available was the full package, including a Jeep ride through the jungle. It cost too much, so we decided to leave it. Using our tickets as vouchers, we would be able to get 50% off the park fees the next day, so we decided just to try again then. This meant we would have to stay a day longer, since we had missed the first half-day due to rain and we were going to miss another half-day by returning to the Argentine side of the falls, so we asked at the hostel if we could stay an extra night: sure, no problem the guy on duty said.

That night we celebrated our lovely day by going out to another Italian restaurant. We were called in off the street by the owner and the prices were very reasonable for Puerto Iguazu which, as you can imagine, is a bit dearer than your average Argentinian town. The food was excellent, although my steak consumption has really got out of hand; still it was a cut I hadn't tried: bife de lomo, which I think it a fillet steak, though some menus translate it as other cuts; they have as little clue about European cuts as we do about theirs. For pudding I had something like zabaglione. A bit too rich after a big steak, but they didn't have the grappa I wanted to settle my meal, so I asked for a mate instead. They seemed very surprised and, although we had been in South America for over a month, we had only each had one sip of someone's mate; it isn't ever on menus in restaurants or cafes. I suppose they reckon there is no market because everyone always carries their mate and flask with them, but surely other tourists would buy it?

Bife de lomo

Pudding

written by  The Happy Couple on October 7, 2009 from Puerto Iguazu, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Panchos

Leaving Argentina, the bus stopped and we all had to get out of the bus to get our passports stamped: at one desk we were stamped out of Uruguay, then our passports were handed along one desk where we were stamped back into Argentina. As soon as we were back in Argentina, people were asking for tips again: the guy unloading our bags from the bus, then the creepy people than hang around in the toilets handing out sheets of toilet paper. The tipping culture isn't very nice in Argentina: it just isn't like that in Uruguay or even in Chile.

We spent hours hanging around the bus station in Concordia waiting for our overnight bus. There was nothing to do but eat more typical South American dishes, so I had a sandwich de Milanesa, which is just breaded meat in a sandwich. Not very healthy, I imagine, and I've started to suspect that it's veal, which I'm not that pleased about eating, but, if it is, it's not particularly young veal because it tastes very like beef. Finally our bus arrived over an hour late and, unfortunately, it wasn't the same business class quality bus we had to Salto, but it was comfortable enough.

Sandwich de Milanesa

Quilmes bock

written by  The Happy Couple on October 5, 2009 from Concordia, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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We were just settling in when I heard a familiar voice in the lobby. I went out and heard what was unmistakably Andre's voice, talking in quite proficient, but a bit self-conscious-sounding Spanish. I didn't know he could speak Spanish, although it sounded like he hadn't really embraced the accent at all. Then he appeared from the lift, on the landing, not at all changed in ten years I thought. Quite remarkable since in that time he has married and now has two children. I thought kids were meant to age you! He put out a hand to shake mine, but I insisted on us hugging, after all it was a decade since we last even spoke, and only the magic of Facebook had put us back in touch a couple of months previously, and an incredible timing coincidence put us in Montevideo at the same time. I thought nearly ten years in the USA might have encouraged Andre to become a bit more tactile, but he seemed as uncomfortable with a hug as I would have expected the pre-US Andre to be; oh well, you can take the boy out of Pretoria...

Andre's brother was in the same hotel, having also agreed to meet up with him while he was there on business, but he had been ill and was not yet well enough to come out for food and a drink. Andre took us to a nearby restaurant where the manager greeted him like a son and teased him about smoking all of this cigarettes; definitely the same Andre: ten years later, still smoking without really admitting to it, so always having to nick them off other people. I don't really come here that often – he just has a really good memory, Andre protested when the manager backed off to let us choose. Wanting something a bit more grown up than medio y medio, we ordered a bottle of tannat, an exclusively Uruguayan cultivar, not really expecting much after the Chile and Argentina, but it was actually very nice. Until the previous day I hadn't even known that Uruguay made any wine.

Reunion!

It was great to see Andre again, although he seemed a little distracted as he was working again the next day, so he wasn't going to go all out and get really drunk with us. He did make a brave effort, though, taking us to a live music place afterwards where there was a jazzy band on. I was surprised by how white everyone was. The ethnic make up of South America really isn't what I expected: in Chile they looked kind of northern Spanish when I was expecting them to look like a mix of Spanish and indigenous, then in Argentina they did have that kind of look, when I was expecting them to be much more European; this I blame on the Che Guevara biography I'm reading, which describes Argentina as the most European country in South America, where the indigenous people are not at all in evidence. Of course the mistake I made was assuming that nothing had changed since the 30s when he was a child in Argentina, when the truth is that Argentina has been through several big changes since then.

Anyway, now we were in Uruguay, which I admit I had no real pre-conceived ideas about, but had assumed, as a former Spanish colony, people would look vaguely Spanish, probably with some indigenous mixing. In fact, away from Colonia, where there are so many Argentinians on holiday, Uruguayans on the whole look like northern Europeans, perhaps German or Dutch. Apparently they also pride themselves in not being hot-headed and macho like some of their Latino neighbours, and this really seemed to be the case in this club: compared to other countries in South America, where you might expect Salsa, Tango, or Rumba, but certainly something up-tempo and exciting, with the crowd dancing or bouncing or getting really involved somehow; in this club, everyone was sitting around barely smiling or even moving, listening to cool jazz, and politely clapping between songs. Nobody danced, nobody whooped, trilled, or whistled. Maybe it was just that club or just that band, but Andre reckoned it was very typically Uruguayan; they are very stoic, he explained. How could that happen? I suppose there was just far more post-colonial immigration to South America from non-Spanish Europe than I had realised. I knew that there were a couple of German enclaves in Brazil and Argentina, but Uruguay seems to be an entire country of German descendents, although there must have been lots of Italians too for the accent to end up like it has.

It's weird to hear people this white speaking fluent Spanish

The next morning we went for coffee and the combined German and Italian influence was very much in evidence in the pastry shop where we bought our breakfast: there was an incredible variety of delicious-looking fancy cakes. I bought a rather over-ambitious thing, like a cross between an éclair and a mille-feuille, and filled with a thick layer of dulce de leche, which is an incredibly sweet substance, usually for spreading on bread. Afterwards I felt sure I was going to go hypoglycaemic when my body over-compensated and was flooded too much insulin to deal with the huge sugar spike.

An oompah band in the main square

Huge paella(!) some being made at a fruit promotion

Later that day we attempted to go shopping again, still desperate to replace some of our ailing clothing, but it was more expensive than we had hoped, and it's just not very easy to go shopping for bargains in a European-style city you don't know. Asia is far easier to shop in, and much more in tune with the way I shop: everything is cheap and it's all from stalls in the one location; no expensive shops and cheap shops you need to determine which is which and, if you don't like the price, you can argue about it. Here, just as I am when shopping at home, I was at a total loss and we returned to the hotel empty-handed. At least while we were shopping we had a chance to see some of Montevideo; it seems similar to the nicer towns in Argentina, but without all of the horrible graffiti everywhere.

What does it mean?

This sign is just plain wrong

It has quite nice buildings

Montevideo

Montevideo

Montevideo

I've forgotten who this gaucho hero is

That night we went out with Andre again. His work was over this time and he was much more relaxed, but unfortunately the night had to be cut short so that he could leave and go for his 3am flight back to New York via Guatemala. We agreed to pay him and Nicola a visit in New York if it was before they moved to Berlin, otherwise we would see them there; in turn Andre told us that he had several hundred other places he would rather visit before he ever found himself in Glasgow. Pah, I'm sure Glasgow can outclass New York any day of the week!

Joanne's spinach canelone

My second heart-attack, I mean chivito

Out benefactor gone, we had to start slumming it in dorms again the next day. We wandered around, following Andre's advice about where to go, but we couldn't really be bothered; we were getting a bit sick of being in towns again: it was time for some more nature! The town is quite nice, nicely decaying in parts, but it was just starting to look like more of the same. We passed a couple of nice market, hovered around a redeveloped enclave in the new town, and I had another chivito; they're not that unhealthy. We also popped down to the Rambla, which is apparently the longest promenade in the world.

An antique market

Good condition old Ford

Good condition old Ford

The Rambla goes in that direction for 22km

70s car

Beer

Redeveloped area in old town

Un-redeveloped old town

Our real hotel

A hostel we didn't stay in

They have sycamore-lined avenues here too

Nice barrel-aged local spirits

written by  The Happy Couple on October 4, 2009 from Montevideo, Uruguay
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Anyway, I set my alarm and woke Joanne up, both of us totally unready for the day ahead, me especially. We made it to the bus station on time, then, when buying our tickets in Spanish I used up so much of what little concentration I had, that I lost my phone. I looked up the necessary words then asked at the desk if they had found the phone I had just lost. No, of course they hadn't, someone had clearly picked it up the moment I stupidly and sleepily left it lying on the counter. Then I found it in my bag; it was going to be a day like that.

Amusing sign on the bus. They are addicts.

The bus to Salto was even more luxurious than the others we had taken in South America: this one was like an aeroplane business class, with only three seats per row. We arrived at the hostel in Salto after walking miles with our bags, first because we missed our stop, and then further because the directions to the hostel were so awful. The receptionist didn't know any English, so we had to rely on my poor Spanish, but on top of that she was new, apparently, so when we were chased out of the 6-bed dorm she first took us to, by an old lady who was in bed, she didn't know what to do. She fell back on a phone call to the manager and instead took us to an 8-bed dorm. We had booked a 6-bed dorm and certainly would have complained if the dorm filled up, leaving the psycho old lady a dorm to herself, but the whole hostel was really empty, and there was so far nobody else in our room, and since it was quite late, we reckoned we had the dorm to ourselves.

Sunset over Salto

We had been hoping to get to the hot springs, but they are further out from town than I realised and we arrived a bit late. The only other tourist attraction near Salto is the waterfall, after which the town is named, but why would we bother going to see some puny waterfall when we were going to Iguazu Falls the next day? Salto seemed quite when we went out in search of food, particularly because it's not really on the gringo trail, so it wasn't very touristy, just very laid back. We found a restaurant someone online had claimed served the best steaks in South America; quite a bold claim, and totally untrue it turned out: my steak was quite good, but the best in South America? Come on!

Best steak in South America?

"Salmon in pepper sauce"

In a couple of places around Salto, we saw railway lines that weren't overgrown, so it seems in Uruguay, in contrast to Chile and Argentina, they do actually still use the railways that they poured money into in the past. Mind you, we never actually saw a train.

written by  The Happy Couple on October 4, 2009 from Salto, Uruguay
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Our ferry to Uruguay was quite early in the day, which meant negotiating the Buenos Aires metro during rush hour. It actually wasn't too bad and when we got off and looked around, confused, an Argentinian offered to help us. Unfortunately his English wasn't good enough and I couldn't muster the Spanish I needed in time. I resorted to pointing at the boat icon on the map where the ferry port was and saying the name of ferry company: Buquebus. Still he had no idea and wandered off. About thirty seconds later, he came running after us: oooh – Buquebooss; apparently I had pronounced it too much like an English U instead of a Spanish one. We didn't actually need any help now that we had decided which direction to walk, but he wanted to help us. He told us, apologising I think, that Argentinians are very rude. After asking where we were from, he told us that he doesn't like the British... but that he likes the Scots and the Irish. Oh, you don't like the English, I corrected. Then we reached the ferry terminal and he gave us each a kiss on the cheek goodbye. I'd heard that they are even more keen on kissing than continental Europeans and it seems that's correct: a five minute walking conversation with a stranger is enough to earn a kiss from another man.

The ferry to Colonia, I think, is the most luxurious boat I've ever been on: much nicer than those grotty cross-Channel efforts, and many times better than the cross-Channel cast-offs that they use for the Cyclades.

Patterns and textures

Once in Colonia, we were struck by how many people are walking about with a cup of mate in one hand and a thermos flask tucked under the other arm. In Argentina you see quite a lot of people outside, sucking on a Bombilla, but in Uruguay it's an epidemic and they don't even bother to sit down like they usually do in Argentina. Shops everywhere have entire window displays of hundreds of different flasks. They must be world leaders in flask technology.

Somehow the horns go with the beer

The hostel was lovely and the staff were very friendly and helpful; a total contrast to the place we had left behind in Buenos Aires, with their obsession with rules. There was a fire burning in the bar, so we felt obliged to sit there and sample a Uruguayan beer before we ventured back out to wander around. The old town isn't very big, so we thought we would probably have time to see most of it in the remainder of the day, and we weren't wrong. It is very pretty though and, like Argentina, there were old cars in various stages of decay but, happily unlike Argentina, the whole place wasn't covered in ugly graffiti.

Road to the jetty

Colonia

Colonia

The promenade

Car matches house

Really old car

Twee!

More patterns and textures

Lighthouse and destroyed nunnery

Relaxing

This busker I like

Museum

Sycamores lining the streets

Colonia

"Drugstore" restaurant in front of the clocktower

Old Ford

Old Ford

Colonia

More old stuff

Colonia del Sacremento was set up as a Portuguese colony in direct competition to Spain's Buenos Aires, denying them exclusive access to the region's riches. It soon because a centre for smuggling and so historically was a pirate town. Arrrrr. Portugal eventually ceded Colonia to the Spanish, eliminating its raison d'etre and precipitating its decay. Actually it seems in pretty good shape, apart from the crumbly city walls, so it must have been largely rejuvenated by all the Argentinian tourist money.

Colonia

By the city walls

For Gav

For Gav

Oh dear

Dear oh dear

My dream car

My dream car

Ouch

Another French wreck

Joanne in Colonia

Saturated in light too

Street of Sighs

Street of Sighs

Street of Sighs

Street of Sighs

Street of Sighs

St Miguel

We had been dreading staying in another dorm, because we were really starting to feel like we deserved another double room, but they had been all booked up or far too expensive for the last couple of places. But this dorm was a bit better: it had an en-suite bathroom and only one other person staying there. The next day, though, Joanne had a few insect bites. And they were very itchy a red, just like bed bug bites tend to be. We were only staying there one night, so there was nothing to be gained by complaining and they had been so nice that we didn't want to anyway.

One of the staff members let me use his own laptop to write the DVDs of photos that I had first tried to create in New Zealand, because the guest PCs had no DVD writer. Then, when I completely failed to communicate at the post office, so failed to send the package, another member of staff phoned the post office for me to help me and find out what had gone wrong. The contrast with the staff in Buenos Aires could not have been starker. After finally succeeding to send the disks home, we decided we owed it to them to warn them about the bed bugs, without actually complaining, just because they could end up with a problem, so Joanne very quietly had a word with the manageress.

Colonia

Medio y medio

This time, when we were harassed by a busker, I simply said no quiero when he put his cap out and he didn't bother us for money again. Unfortunately, there was a middle-aged couple, Argentinian I thought, who kept encouraging his crooning by giving him more money and making specific requests. We were contemplating asking to be moved inside when he finally left us in peace. That was when the manager appear in a silly hat, wearing a mask, and blowing through a kazoo. Maybe realising what a grumpy old pair we were, he focused on the other couple who were loving it. He had a different silly rubber hat for each course, including a chicken and a cake, as well as different sparkly jackets and other silly props. Anyway, the food was nice and at least he wasn't looking for extra money like the buskers.

Then it was off to the bus and on to Montevideo.

The Cathedral in Colonia

written by  The Happy Couple on October 1, 2009 from Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Buenos Aires

Determined to improve on the bad start, we set out on the Time Out Origins walking tour, Joanne had copied down from the magazine in the hostel. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city; I don't know why we even wasted our time on Cordoba, but even here there seems to be loads of (re-?)construction and graffiti, which does a lot to make Argentina seem shabby and negate the impact of such a gorgeous place. The old cars, at least, seem to be in better condition in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires

Casa Rosada

Malivinas (Argentina) Veterans

Roof of famous pharmacy

Famous pharmacy

At one point we were tailed by a dodgy-looking character, but he must have just been waiting for an opportunity when one of us dropped our guard and gave him a second to steal a bag or something, because when we stopped and turned around to look at him from the other side of the road, he lingered for a few seconds before turning and heading back the way we had come.

Representative of a lot of Bs As

Nice church

Bs As

The buildings aren't all nice

Good graffiti

So-called bife de chorizo

Joanne's slightly better bife de chorizo

A cheesy Ford

A cheesy Ford

Another banger

Another banger

The cerveza artesanal place just around the corner didn't have any tap beers on, so it was more of the insipid Argentinian bottled beer, which is only a small step up from American mass-market beers like Bud. We gave up and went back to the hostel, me to blog, Joanne to watch films.

Middle-of-the-road graffiti

The next day, we planned to see much more of the city by taking the open-top city bus tour. We had some trouble finding the nearest stop to hop on at, which is at the Palacio del Congreso building. There is a huge monument to los Dos Congresos outside the building, which is entirely surrounded by a high fence, presumably to prevent this one monument from being vandalised. It seems a bit sad. We could not find the bus stop and had to walk all the way to the kiosk at the start of the tour.

Not so good graffiti

Mobile graffiti

Graffiti protection

El Congreso

Buesno Aires

Widest road in the world (apparently)

The redeveloped waterfront

What a lovely city and what a shame we were leaving the next day.

written by  The Happy Couple on September 29, 2009 from Buenos Aires, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Old car

At the hostel, the guy working on the desk seemed quite hostile, as if he had just woken up. He let us in to dump our bags, as we had hoped, but then he told us that check-in wasn't until 2pm, so we couldn't stay. He told us there was a famous market on and we should visit that. What an unfriendly welcome, and the only place in nine months of travelling we have encountered something like that. Compare this to the people in Macleodganj in India who let us stay and gave us tea, even though we weren't going to stay there, or the place in China where they had let us use another room to sleep or shower because ours wasn't ready yet. So, literally shivering, we made our way to the street the market was on. Nobody had set up yet. We walked the full length of the street looking for any sign of a market, but found only icy winds. We spent some time (and money) in a cafe, waiting to see if the market materialised, but the few people who turned up with boxes looked doubtfully at the sky and then disappeared again.

Duff beer

Finally we could take no more and headed back to the hostel to ask for more clothes out of our bags. When we arrived the same horrible guy said “Don't you want to wait inside?” so we were in. After nearly four hours risking hypothermia we were allowed into the hostel. “Most people are up now”, he said as if in way of explanation, as if we were going to come in and make loads of noise and wake everyone up. Three hour later, all the up to 2pm, he finally checked us in. Now, I knew that Indians tended to be overly bureaucratic, but I had no idea Argentinians were so obsessed with following rules; or maybe it was just this hostel, or even just this receptionist. “Some people are still sleeping. They got back drunk very late last night, so don't worry you won't wake them” he told us. Then when we went into the room, none of the beds seemed to be free, although there were only three people in a six bed dorm. They had spread their stuff all over the room. Joanne was incandescent: he kept us waiting all of that time, probably just so some drunk people could lie in, and with all that time we were kept waiting they haven't even made sure the room is ready for us.

So called bife de chorizo (a lo pobre)

Bife de costilla a lo pobre

Now that we were allowed to, we both had showers, which were sorely needed just to warm up, if nothing else. Then it was out for lunch: we found a place selling bife de chorizo, keen to repeat the fantastic experience in Mendoza. It was quite a bit pricier, but we now realised what a good deal we had got before. Joanne went for a slightly cheaper bife de costilla which is a T-bone steak, but they were both fairly awful. What a let-down and what a bad start to Buenos Aires. The day was a write-off. But it was raining anyway, and we couldn't face being out in it any longer. We would have to miss the famous antiques market which is only on Sundays. We had already noticed a propensity for Argentinians, particularly, but not just, the men, to barge right into us when walking down the street. They appear to make no effort whatever to do their share of getting out of the way, and I swear that some of them were actually going out of their way to barge us, and it was much more noticeable in Buenos Aires. They give the impression of being too arrogant to change their path at all, but I think with some of them it's just naked aggression. Joanne asked me if that's where the phrase argy-bargy comes from and I started to wonder myself. We had heard that South American machismo is at its zenith in Argentina, but I didn't really expect it to extend to some of the women too.

Old car

Old car

This one's for Gav

This one's for Gav

The one glimmer of hope to rescue our time in Argentina was that what we had seen of this city did look very attractive, although the Argentinian graffiti is at its worst in Buenos Aires. And the Spanish seemed much easier here than Cordoba: everyone sings the language, making it sound really like Italian.

Comfort wine

We ended the day with a consolatory bottle of wine, getting something a bit pricier than we normally would, still looking to make up for the failed wine tour.

written by  The Happy Couple on September 27, 2009 from Buenos Aires, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Che

The house had been turned into a museum, which was moderately interesting, though I felt like it was a bit of a spoiler at points, since I am currently reading an excellent biography of him, called Compañero. Each room in the house represented a different period of his life, starting with toys he had owned as a child and letters he had written to his aunt, then the famous motorbike on which he started his travels around South America, until the last few rooms, where it was mostly photographs of him with Castro, then on campaign in the Congo and Bolivia. Actually the motorbike must surely have been a replica, because they left their motorbike for scrap in the Andes didn't they?

Che's bike

Che's house

Che's patio - with his writing on the wall

Argentine fare

Nice clouds over Alta Gracia

Che's neighbour's house

Che's neighbour's house

Sierras Hotel

Main square Alta Gracia

Jesuit church

The town itself is really quite small, but fairly pretty, and we both preferred it to the supposedly pretty Cordoba. In the main square a young jazz band had set up and were playing to all of the bars and cafes surrounding the square. It seems like quite a lively place as well. But we couldn't linger too long because we had to get back on the bus to return to Cordoba in time for our overnight bus to Buenos Aires, or BA as all the travellers seem to call it, though I never saw it abbreviated to anything other than Bs As by actual Argentinians.

Clock tower Alta Gracia

Old Ford

Older Ford

Our bus to Cordoba from Mendoza had been really quite comfortable, better than anything we encountered in Asia, so we expected the same again. Unfortunately it was not so: our overnight bus to Bs As seemed to have about twice as many seats crammed into it and I looked forward to a night with no sleep.

written by  The Happy Couple on September 26, 2009 from Alta Gracia, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Cordoba

It's sunny!

Plaza San Martin - off limits

Graffiti

Cordoba

Neo-Gothic Iglesia Sagrado Corazon

Neo-Gothic Iglesia Sagrado Corazon

Neo-Gothic Iglesia Sagrado Corazon

We went to look around the Jesuit ruins but we couldn't find any sign of the guided tour and gave up, since there are much better examples further north and in Paraguay. We passed a demonstration, which seems to be an Argentinian institution: we had hard demonstrations every day we were in Mendoza as well.

Demo

Cordoba

A particularly bad piece of public art

Beer

Beer

Cordoba

Cordoba

Argentine flag

An old car

It's amazing how much difference your ability to speak another language can be sabotaged by a native speaker who is totally insensitive to the fact you can't really speak the language, yet with other, more intelligent people I suppose, they can really make your life so much easier. Even ordering and paying the bill with Visa was difficult with this guy: rather harassed by my inability to communicate, I asked him in Spanish “do you have Visa?” instead of “do you take Visa?”. You would think it should be easy enough to work out what someone who has just asked for the bill is really trying to say. I even pointed at the Visa sign, but he eventually managed to hear “Visa” as “cerveza” instead of just seeing the obvious mistake. Later, chatting to a Porteño with less English than we have Spanish, we discovered that the accent in Cordoba is particularly unusual, so that probably contributed to the lunch time debacle. When he realised we were going to have communication problems he said podemos comunicar sin idioma, “we can communicate without langauge”. Only later did we discover that really was his fields: he had been staying in Cordoba for two months busking with marionettes and making good money apparently. In fact we were able to get by on Spanish rather than non-verbal communication. In most (or all?) of Argentina they slur the “y sound” for both letters Y and LL and pronounce it like the second G in “garage” in French. So amarillo, yellow, becomes something like amarijjo. In Cordoba this guy told us, they also slur the double-R, so that perro, dog, becomes something like pejjo. It is quite liberating talking to someone who has no option to switch into your own language: we just had to muddle through, without feeling at all embarrassed about how badly we were doing. But it was hard work and after the second bottle of wine we started to give up. Anyway, we were hungry, so we got directions to an empanada place and left.

Argentinian empanadas

More Argentinian empanadas

We had been told in Chile by several people that the best empanadas in South America are in Argentina, so we were keen to try them, despite having been totally sick of the Chilean ones. They were much nicer. Rather than greasy, flaky pastry, it was a plain short-crust pastry (I think, not too good with pastry terminology) and the meat filling was more interestingly flavoured. Back at the hostel we caused some amusement when we realised that other people staying there, for a conference, were not animators as we had heard but animal inseminators or maybe it was animal maters we had first been told.

Greek Orthodox church

written by  The Happy Couple on September 25, 2009 from Cordoba, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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Finally we went out to look at the town. It was shut. I have plenty of memories of holidays in continental Europe, where hours were spent wandering around ghost towns just because they like a long lunch. It doesn't happen much in Europe any more, but the tradition seems alive and well in Argentina. Everywhere you could sit down there were people drinking mate from nice cups with bombillas jutting out of them. But everybody seemed to look very depressed; it was almost as bad as India, but when I considered how shabby the town looks, it didn't seem that odd after all. I felt like I was wandering around Clydebank. We were planning to buy some clothes as our clothes shopping was now well overdue, but the only shop we saw opening times for suggested that they were closed for four hours over lunch. We needed something to do in the meantime, because our hostel was a bit out of town and we didn't want to walk back and forth.

Beer

The only places still open were restaurants and bars, so we decided that lunch would do to fill the time. When we saw somewhere offering bife de chorizo for AR$23 we decided this was the place. It seemed a bit more than we should be spending and a bit more than we were expecting, since we had been told that Argentina is cheaper than Chile, but we had also been told that this cut is the best one in the country with the best steaks in the world, so we couldn't resist. Inside we discovered that it was actually a very good deal, because it normally costs AR$35. The meat was amazing: nice thick, juicy steaks. We washed it down with some Malbec wine, an Argentinian cultivar, and I had a local beer. Lunch cost our entire daily budget. Ooops - but it was worth it!

Bife de chorizo

By the time we were finished our lunch, we were so full and tired from the wine that we couldn't be bothered shopping and just returned to the hostel, pledging that the next day would be a full one. Again I was struck by how shabby the town is: the drains are all open, like the poorer parts of Asia, there are really worn-out cars everywhere, and there is no consideration at all given to pedestrians: no crossings, no pedestrian lights, no stopping to let you across. It really seems like they have the American love of the automobile (and truck), in fact most of the old cars are old American ones; it's a bit like Cuba, except the cars are from the 70s instead of the 50s. And they are in much worse condition that the Cuban equivalent.

Dodgy car and drain

I just couldn't get over how different it all was from Chile.

Next morning we arranged to go on a wine tour in the afternoon. The hostel could arrange two different tours: one was Mr Hugo's bicycle wine tour and the other one was in a minibus. The guy working in the hostel told us that the bicycle tours were dangerous, because of people looking for drunk tourists to rob, and Joanne had read somewhere that the vineyards on the cycling route tend not to be as good as on minibus tours. So we booked up for the minibus tour. There would only be two vineyards, which was a bit disappointing, but there was also an olive oil factory. Woo.

In the cellar

Waiting for our tasting...

The Andes in the distance

Another cellar

Yet another cellar!

An expensive wine they teased us with

More wines we weren't allowed to taste

The olive oil tour was actually the best part of the day but, when we decided to buy some unfiltered olive oil and sun-dried tomatoes, we discovered that they didn't take credit cards, which was all I had. We had been told by three different people that everywhere takes credit cards in Argentina, but here is a place on a tour, for goodness' sake – for tourists and they didn't take credit cards. The tour we had signed up for was a “bilingual tour”, but the English seemed to be forgotten about after the introduction. Utter rubbish! Then, just when we thought our day could get no worse, because we were on our way home, the tour guide picked up the microphone and announced that we'd be stopping off at a church. On a wine tour! She explained it was la virgen de vino, the patron saint of wine, but I couldn't have cared less by that point. I wanted my wine! When we got back, we went straight to the supermarket and bought an expensive bottle of wine to make up to ourselves what we had missed out on the tour. I bought myself a nice-looking beer just in case the wine didn't cheer me up.

La Virgen de Vino on the church

Something to do with the Virgen. Who cares?

The area around the wineries was quite pretty

Nice beer

We were tempted to stay an extra day and do a different wine tour, maybe the cycling one, but would it be any different? We decided against it and made our way slowly down to the bus station. Getting a bus in Argentina is not a simple matter: because of the stupid and wasteful freemarket system they have embraced, it is necessary to walk up and down dozens of different companies' desks, asking each how much?, when?, and so on; they don't have menus up telling you that information, and there is no central, impartial information point you can go to, much the same as Thailand. It would have been the same in Chile, but we had chosen the one company with a price up on the way to Valparaiso because it was less than we had expected, but there were only about five people on the bus, and buses leaving every five minutes; what a waste! Our guide book said there were buses every hour to Cordoba, so we hadn't bothered to book. What our guide book had not mentioned, and we learned when we arrived there, is that the buses are every hour, after 9pm, so we were stuck in Mendoza for an extra half day. If we had known we would have had time to do the wine tour before the bus, but now it was too late.

We heaved our bags back to the hostel and asked if the guy on duty minded if we left our stuff. He was very nice and said we could use the internet, shower, make food, or do whatever we wanted. So we went online to change the hostel bookings we had made in Cordoba and Buenos Aires, which now needed to be put back by one day. The hostel in Cordoba was full the day after we had booked, so we just had to drop the first night. We thought this would be OK, since we would probably be leaving there at night as well, so we would have two full days, even if it was only one night. My friend from Cape Town, Andre, had said he'd be able to meet up with us in Uruguay, but the ferry books up well ahead of time, so we booked that as well. This was the most organised we had been since New Zealand.

Taking advantage of our unexpected extra time, we headed out to buy clothes, but didn't find anything we liked. Instead, we ended up sitting down for lunch at a basic looking cafe. We expected food to cost less than we had paid for the bife de chorizo, so I thought we should experiment with how cheap it was safe to go. My lunch was a parilla, or grill, for AR$15, including a glass of wine and a salad. Sounds nice. Joanne went for three slices of pizza for AR$8, but she went for “juice” instead of wine. In Chile we had discovered that actual juice seems impossible to buy; everything they sell as if it is juice is actually nectar which is a disgustingly sweet mix of water, fruit juice, and sugar, but even that seems to be too healthy for most Chileans: probably the most popular drink we saw at breakfast was Coca Cola. In Argentina it was turning out much the same: fizzy drinks everywhere and fruit juice is impossible to buy. Lunch was really horrible. Clearly food wasn't supposed to be as cheap as that, but at least we knew that we had misjudged. Suddenly the bife de chorizo seemed like excellent value.

AR$15 worth of food (plus wine, not shown)

We picked up our bags from the hostel and went to the bus station. Amazingly Salli, the Aussie from the hostels in Valparaiso and Santiago, was getting the same bus as us. She was raving about the fantastic wine tour she and her friends had gone on, had we heard of Mr Hugo's bicycle tours? As much wine as you can drink back at Mr Hugo's house after visiting loads of vineyards. I was raging so much that I was very tempted to get off the bus and stay for an extra day, but we were already falling behind schedule and we didn't have much time in South America. I had to let it go.

More transport, more discomfort. The seats were made for midgets: the edges of the head rest poked into my shoulder blades when the chair was fully upright. Terrible crooning Argentinian music blasted out of speakers directly over our heads. They provide an on-off switch for everybody's lights; why don't they provide one for everybody's speaker? It's madness. Bife de chorizo aside (which is difficult to do because it was so good), Argentina had started off very disappointingly.

written by  The Happy Couple on September 24, 2009 from Mendoza, Argentina
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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