Argentina

Well I made it safe and well to Buenos Aires and met up with Fay. During the day we went shopping (the thing to do in BsAs). Buenos Aires is a lovely city and has a very European feel to it. Also the weather was great so for the first time in 2 months I was back in my summer clothes - yeah!! In the evening we went to Club 69 which is an experience!! Its a club that puts on a drag show which is very colourful, but means there are lots of weird and crazy looking people wandering around! Despite this I did not have the best experience here. I owed Fay a drink so she decided she wanted a cocktail and I thought I would join her. So I went up to the bar and bought us both a cocktail costing 15 pesos each (It is really odd here, you have to pay for your drink at the till and then take your receipt to the barman who then makes your drink). I did just that and was then told by the barman that they didn´t have the ingredients for the drink (Its the beginning of the night and they have already run out of ingredients!!). So I told him that we would like to change out drink order. But to do this we had to go back to the lady at the till!!!!!! This was already getting stupid! So I went back to her to discover that in fact she had only put one drink on my receipt, not two as I had paid for. She refused to believe that she had made the mistake and that she had charged me twice - despite my change proving it!! I argued with her and the bar man for 10 minutes - I lost as only 1 in every 10 words I spoke was Spanish!! In the end I gave up and settled for the fact that she charged me twice for one drink!

Now I would have been alright if it wasn´t for what happened when we got a taxi home. When paying for the taxi, I gave him a 20 pesos note. He returned it to me saying ´fake fake´. I looked at the note and compared it to another 20 and indeed it was a fake. Guess where I had got it from - that stupid bl**dy women at the bar in Club 69!! Oh how I hate her now!! So in fact I had now paid 50 pesos for a 15 pesos drink - what a rip off. I have since tried to pass the note on, but it is very obviously a fake so no one wants it (and before you guys say how stupid I was to accept it, it was very dark in the club).

I must also mention the hostel we were staying in - Milhouse. Fay, who had been at the hostel longer than me and she had said to one of our friends, that people at Milhouse seem to have a lot of very loud sex here. No joke, when you use the bathrooms you can here people screaming their heads off... It actually turns out that the hostel is situated right next to a porn cinema!! I have to say it makes a change to listening to people singing in the shower!!

Anyway, the next day Fay and I made our way to Iguazu Falls which is on the boarder of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We took an overnight bus which turned out to be freezing (we were still dressed in our summer clothes and did not expect the bus to feel like the North Pole!! We arrived at Puerto Iguazu in the morning, checked into our hostel and then immediately jumped on a bus to Brazil. You can see the falls from both sides, and as it is quicker to get around the Brazilian side we decided to do that first.

We got officially stamped out of Argentina, but when going through the Brazilian immigration the bus seemed to fail to stop - hmmmm. It eventually let us off outside some hotel where we were to catch the next bus to the falls. Although we were still thinking about the fact that we were not legally in the country, we decided it was best to ignore this and just continue onto the falls!! The falls was spectacular, and the sound was deafening - what more can you say. I took loads and loads of photos (so if any of you are bored when I am home and fancy looking at 200 plus photos of falling water then I would be happy to show you!!). On the way back to Argentina, the same happened again. The bus failed to stop at the Brazilian end and we just got stamped back into Argentina - so we didn´t have to do any explaining. And, despite spending a day in Brazil, I do not have the stamp in my passport to prove it :-( Although, we got away scot free, there was one guy on our bus who had entered Brazil via Rio and therefore had no exit stamp - he is going to have a few problems when he wants to re-enter!!

The next day we got up really early to visit the Argentinian side of the falls. And I have to say it was completely worth it. In my opinion, the Argentinian side is much better. You get a lot closer to the falls, there are tons more walks and you get far more varied perspectives of the falls. It was a beautiful day so we just walked around the park and had a great time. In the evening I had to say goodbye to Fay for the last time. She was heading back to BsAs to fly back to Australia. I was heading onto Salta, which is in the very North of Argentina to meet up with Marc and Emma.

I got on to the bus and sat down in my seat. This was going to be a very long journey - 28 hours in total and I had to change buses at one point. During the night the bus was stopped a total of 3 times by guardes who got on the bus and demanded to see our official papers (apparently they are making sure none of us are drug smugglers or wanted!). This did not help the sleeping situation! And then at 2am in the morning (while I was still attempting, unsuccessfully to sleep) I was disturbed by the waiter who said I was sitting in the wrong seat and the guy who was supposed to be in my seat in fact wanted to sit in it. I thought this was ludicrous and produced my ticket which indeed did state that I was in the wrong seat! Turned out I had sat in the seat that I was supposed to sit in on the next bus I was going to take!! I managed to persuade the guy to take my seat so I didn´t have to move! Then at 6am in the morning, when the bus was just about pulling into the garage station it packed up!! They kept trying and trying to turn it on but it was having non of it. So for 2 hours we sat there, waiting and waiting and every so often being vigorously vibrated while they tried to start the engine (so no more sleep was to be had!!). As I didn´t speak spanish I had to guess why we weren´t going anywhere. I kept seeing a guy running to and from the petrol station with a canister, I therefore guessed that we must have run out of petrol literally 5 meters from the pump - what are the chances!! Anyway, eventually we managed to set off again and we just made it in time for my connecting bus to Salta from Tucuman. I arrived at Salta at 1am in the morning and Emma and Marc where there to meet me. They had very kindly stayed up so that I wouldn´t be lost in a new town in the middle of the night :-)

Salta is a lovely place, although it is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. We spent the day shopping through the artisan markets, which were excellent - I bought quite a bit of stuff that I didn´t need!! They have so many odd things there, including mugs made out of cows hoofs and bracelets made out of llama´s toe nails!! (anyone fancy those for xmas???). Unfortunately Emma had to leave the next day for Seattle, USA as a friend of hers needed her. So that left Marc and I to investigate the rest of the city for the next couple of days. It turned out there was a religious festival going on so we got caught up in that which was rather exciting. For 2 days before the festival, huge groups of people kept arriving in the city who had come from the surrounding villages/regions. Some had walked for over 2 days to get there! Some wore colourful clothes and came in traditional costume! Others just made lots of noise and set off loads of fireworks! For the finale the town celebrated by setting off the air raid sirens for an hour (they are very load and now I have a feeling what it was like during the World Wars - not nice!)

I do have to mention the lady at the hostel we were staying at. She, for some reason took a disliking to me, I think she thought I was stupid or something - anyway, this became very obvious after one day when I asked for my room key. I then asked her ´how do you say it?´ (I am still learning my numbers and keep getting 14 and 15 mixed up). So she says without missing a beat ´fourteen´!! I just look at her and said ´I know that, how do you say it in Spanish?´. Marc thought the whole thing hilarious!!

After the festival Marc and I did a couple of day trips around the area. We got to see some cute little villages, huge coloured mountains, a huge salt plains and tons of huge cactus's. We did a little wine tasting and shopped at more artisan markets. All very enjoyable. I then had to leave Salta and head back to BsAs where I met up with Caroline and Peter from Austria who I had met in Santiago while attempting to learn Spanish! In the evening we went to a tango show which was OK. Although it was more amusing watching the old man in front of us groping his lady friend (did they not realise they were in public!!).

The next day we went shopping, but then decided that since we were in a city of beautiful people we should attempt to make ourselves look less like scrubby backpackers so we went off for haircuts and manicures - all very nice and civilized!!

It was then time for me to say goodbye to Caro and Peter as I was to go onto Uruguay...