Buenos Aires (by Rone)

We had heard lots of good things about Buenos Aires from fellow travelers  hence we were both pretty excited to get to this city after an eventful 3 weeks in Chile.Our first impression while leaving the airport in a taxi was the contrast in colours compared with Chile. There was a lot more green trees and grass compared to the desert where we had just been in north Chile. It was also apparent by looks that BA had a lot more money than Santiago.Our first night we stayed in a lovely B&B in the heart of Parlermo. We arrived very late after a grilling 24h travelling journey, but we went straight to the streets in the search of the well-known “best steak in the world” for me to try. There was a really nice vibe in this trendy neighbourhood, with charming cobblestone streets, bookstores, bars, and boutiques; so we decided to treat ourselves to a proper meal in one of the restaurants. My first experience of Argentinian steak was GREAT, but little did I know it was only going to get better :)

Chilling in our flat

The next day we missioned to another district to book into our new accommodation. I think one of the reasons we were so looking forward to BA was because we had rented an apartment in the city, which meant we had an actual home for a week!  Kaz even found a climbing gym where she was accepted as one of the locals after a week’s climbing at the gym.

BA had loads of wonderful parks, and people were either running, walking, roller blading or even doing some tango dancing in the parks from early afternoon to late evenings. The rest of the city was very easy to get around with a metro, easy walking access and lots of Starbucks for some well-deserved coffee breaks.  

Best Empenada in the world

Well deserved Empenada after sightseeing

Less than £1-sizzling....!

I managed to explore loads of the parks during my runs while Kaz went for climbing sessions. Afterwards we would catch up in the apartment and prepare the most amazing dinners. You could buy 2 massive high quality pieces of steak for about £1.50 in total.  Of course Kaz made me have veggies with this!! The Argentinian Malbec wine from the Mendoza region was also something worth mentioning, I found it to be a very good quality wine and very easy to drink especially with red meat. People here also love their white bread and the bakeries were spoiling us with lots of options. One of the bizarre things here was that almost every 3rd person was walking with a “Mate mug” sipping on it throughout the day. Mate is a traditional South American infused drink prepared from steeping dried leaves of “yerba mate” in hot water. It is served with a metal straw in a cup and everywhere people were walking with their hot water flasks and mate cups. We had a few sips of this at the climbing wall and it literal gives you a VERY STRONG CAFFEINE KICK, but the Argentinians sip it like water here!

 

The story of this vault is that the girl was mistakenly buried alive

We walked about 10-15km every day to see everything we could in BA. One of the highlight attractions is definitely the Cementerio de la Recoleta: This is where all the rich families in Buenos Aires have their final resting places. There were big ornate vaults everywhere, including the famous vault of Eva Perón, which is the most visited vault in the cemetery.

Eva Peron's vault

Karen in  front of yet another fancy vault

At the cemetery entrance

You can’t leave BA without having a good understanding of how famous Evita Perón was. Born in 1919 she was the second wife of President Juan Perón and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her young death in 1952 at the age of 33 due to cancer. She is usually referred to as Eva Peron or Evita as in the well-known movie or musical. It was incredibly interesting to go to her museum, to her vault in the cemetery and also visit the Pink Palace. I’ve always loved the movie “Evita”, but to see and hear all the history clips, readings and go through the details of her journey made me really appreciate what a strong person she was. She was very much loved, but also resented by a few of  the Argentinian people.

With the guards in the Pink Palace

For me, I really admired her passion and all the things she’s achieved, and I think her speech on the Pink Palace balcony “don’t cry for me Argentina” just before she died of cancer  must have been one of the most emotional speeches to be observed. A few days later we managed to go on a tour through the Pink Palace where she worked and gave her famous speeches to the Argentinian people. This is also where the current president and polittians work from.

The balcony Evita addressed the Argentina people

 It was extremely interesting to see the palace from the inside on the weekend, with paintings of famous influential people such as sport stars, musicians, politians etc. Pictures of Mercedes Sousa, a well know musician was also amongst one of the people on display. My mum actually recommended one of her CDs to us, so we decided to get one after the Palace visit. From then onwards it was Mercedes Sousa on the iPod at every opportunity  Unfortunately she has passed away now, but she really is incredible!!

Karen in front of the Pink Palace

At the Milonga

We booked to see a Tango show one evening and we were seated 5 m away from the stage. We were both fascinated to see the athleticism of these dancers as we watched the show staring wide eyed. They made it look so easy and stylish, but when we tried some of the simpler moves later that evening we certainly didn't look like them!! After a long day of sightseeing the next day we ended up watching some more tango in the Milongas. A Milonga is both a place where a tango dance will take place, as well as a specific type of tango dance. It started at 8pm and was on a rounded dance floor in the middle of a park. The locals came dressed in high heels, very smart suits and cocktail dresses. This was not the place for beginners, and it was fascinating to see how much passion and style goes into the tango dance.

More sightseeing:

The dogwalkers  really do know what they are doing!!

Well deserved coffee breaks

The Obelisk

In the Japanese garden

Art work in a  park

Our boat in Tigre Delta

We ended up staying a few days extra in BA due to a bus strike that went on for 5 days. But no complaints since it gave us an opportunity to go visit Delta Tigre. It’s a town 28km north of BA and lies on the Parana Delta, and is a weekend and tourist attraction. We took a train for 1h to reach this town and then jumped on a local boat on the river to explore more of this unique town. It seems like all transportation to and from the houses was through the river boats, and all the house were surrounded by rivers and smaller canals.

The water in between the houses

Waiting for our taxi boat

The packbacks still just as big

We eventually managed to buy some bus tickets and left for Colon (Entre Rios) the following day. And so we started our overnight bus journey, leaving the busy city to relax in a very small seaside tourist town.

We stayed in a lovely B&B and had a really relaxing 3 days. It is situated next to the Parana river and about 60km away from El Palmar Park. We went on another adventure and somehow, with our broken Spanish, managed to rent a car for the day. We drove all the way to the park for some walking, sightseeing and I even did a long run in the park. It was stunning: so many palm trees everywhere. A real contrast to our last national park where we were in the desert!

Photos from the park:

Small animals in the park alongside beautiful birds and thousands of palm trees

Karen enjoying the view

Amazing sunset with palm trees everywhere

After 3 wonderful days we got on our 15h bus journey - toward the Iguazu falls. Both feeling very excited to see one the 7 natural wonders of the world.

Chillaxing in Chile (by Karen)

I've wanted to go to Chile for absolutely ages. I'm not sure I know exactly why, just something about the country has always drawn me.

With its 4270 km length and an average of only 177 km width, and with the magnificent Andes running all the way along its eastern border from top to toe, it's a country of vast scenic diversity.

You know how one tends to have a picture in your mind when you think of a particular place or country, well mine for Chile is that of an old wrinkled toothless lady standing outside a ramshackle hut with a bright colourful cloak drawn over her shoulders. But with all the internationalization and recent developments I was wondering if this was just an image of the past. Luckily this was not the case, and although of course there were big cities and roads and smart houses, the underlying Chilean characteristics and love of colour and art still shines strongly.

Church in Caldera

The Chilean people are pretty laid back, adopting the Latin-American relaxed "mañana" (in my own time) vibe. They were generally very friendly and welcoming, but at the same time they are very curt, no frills sort of attitude. They don't speak much English, but with a combination of the little Spanish we have learnt, plus pre-prepared google translations, plus Spanish phone apps, plus some charades, we managed to get by :). What I did find so bizarre is that even after telling them we didn't speak much Spanish they would still prattle off an entire monologue in Spanish and at high speed and then look at us expectantly. Sorry nope, we STILL don't understand Spanish! :)

I loved the colour of Chile. Everywhere you looked there was vibrancy and life.  They are big on wall murals and graffiti. 

Some of the murals were really excellent pieces of art, skilfully done and often with some historical context. The houses are also a variety of colours, especially in the smaller towns. None of this boring white or cream for the Chileans I tell you.

Virgin Mary statue

We started off in Santiago and that was a bit of a let-down. It wasn't quite the trendy or exciting city that we were expecting. We found it to be quite grubby and a little bit boring quite honestly. It had some cool bits to see of course, the Virgin Mary statue on San Cristóbal Hill, the Plaza De Armas, and a few museums and cathedrals, but even now as I write nothing of Santiago really stands out in my mind. Probably the best bit was the wall murals which tended to have quite a dark side to them but were very interesting.

Camping out in Santiago airport - 6am flight

Hot dogs with guacamole - Chilean favourite!

View of Santiago from San Christobal hill

From there we headed all the way down south to Patagonia region where we did our super-awesome-best-ever-experience trek in Torres Del Paine (see separate blog post, April 2013). After that we returned to Santiago, but bypassed the city and instead we jumped straight onto a bus and went 7 hours north to a beach town called La Serena.

La Serena was a welcome change from Santiago, starting with our super sweet hostel lady Maria, who was just so endearing that we couldn't help but want to stay just so she got our money rather than someone else. We had a very chilled beach day, although this still involved getting to and from the beach ... a 1 hour walk from our hostel. We also attempted to visit the Mamalluca observatory with a tour group, but unfortunately there was too much cloud cover, plus a full moon, and so they warned us that the viewing would be very limited and probably not worth the cost. It was up to us as a group to decide if we wanted to still go ahead with it, or else we could cancel and get full refund. So we voted to go back. Northern Chile is famous for its perfect stargazing skies since it boasts an average of only 25 days a year of cloud cover. So the fact that we hit one of those 25 days was a tad unlucky!

Rone braving the heat of the day to get in a run!

From La Serena we headed another 8 hours north to Caldera, where I felt like we really got to experience rural and authentic Chile. It was way less touristy than La Serena, plus a much smaller town and literally in the middle of semi-desert. The stark desert hills on the horizon were mesmerising, and the rugged coastline one of the most beautiful I have seen. 

Market in Caldera

Rugged hills of Pan De Azucar National Park

We hired a car and drove further north to visit the Parque Nacional Pan de Azúcar, with a Bulgarian/New Yorker friend we met, Antonia. The park was stunning, powerfully striking with its barren desolateness.  I know I'll never do it justice with words so will just post some photos and hope they say what I cannot. I really loved it - it was a place that spoke to my soul. 

Parque Nacional Pan De Azucar

Small fishing village north of Caldera

One of the numerous cacti in the park

Stunning views

Captivating coastline

Playa La Virgen

Playa La Virgen is rated to be Chile's most attractive beach, so of course we had to go and see it for ourselves! We managed to negotiate an extra 2 free hours on top of the usual 1 day (24 hours) for the car hire, and so only had to return it at 1pm the next day.  

Just couldn't resist :)

At first light we sped off to see the "Zoologico de Piedras" (stone zoo) which consisted of some interesting shaped boulders, where if you applied some marijuana-like imagination you might just make out some resemblances to various animals. We then embarked on what turned out to be quite an arduous journey to get to Playa La Virgen, navigating some rather dodgy gravel roads.  

Going for a dip

But eventually we got there and sat on the beach to eat our breakfast, and I of course went for a quick dip in the clear turquoise blue water. It was a really lovely beach, but we rated some of the beaches that we stopped at on the drive up to Pan de Azúcar to be better!