I've been wanting to do a day by day recap of our trip to Argentina and Uruguay, but I haven't had the time or the patience to write it. I think it's because our DVR was overflowing with tv from our 2 weeks out of the country, and that took priority.
Saturday, 10/15
Alex was nice enough to stay with Annie at our house and take us to LAX. He came over, dropped off his stuff, and took us to the airport. We checked into our flight, and we were on our way. I paid $7.99 to watch live tv on the 3 hour flight. It was Saturday, so there was a lot of college football to pass the time. It was a nice flight. After dropping us off, Alex came home to realize that Annie likes cheese and can open zippers.
We landed in Houston and got on our connecting flight to Buenos Aires. We didn't have assigned seats until we checked into this flight, and we ended up sitting in different rows, and we both had the middle seats. That sucked. A lot. I sat between two large men. Both smelled. Tylenol PM and a glass of wine helped me sleep for about 6 of the 10 hours.
Sunday, 10/16
We landed in Buenos Aires. My luggage was still in Houston. All of my clothes and my toiletries. Yuck. We file a report with the airline, go through customs, and get picked up. The international airport is about 40 km outside of the city, so it was a nice drive in.
We arrive at our hotel. We stayed at the Forcadell Apartments in a part of town called MicroCentro. This is very centrally located to Puerto Madero, a new part of the city and all the subways (subte). But it's in a very busy, dusty part of downtown.
It's about noon, and our room is not ready. The front desk worker tells us it will be ready at 1:00pm. I desperately need to eat and use a restroom, so we walk to a small cafe about a block away. We order some food, and I go to the restroom. The first thing I notice when I walk into the stall is a hole in the plaster wall with exposed pipes. Huh. Ok, maybe they had some plumbing problems or something. No big deal. I do my business, stand up, and look for some sort of flushing mechanism. I don't see anything. Then I notice a small chain attached to a pipe in the hole in the wall. I pull that, and the toilet flushes. Huh.
We go back to the hotel at 1:15pm. I'm thinking that we gave them an extra 15 minutes, so our room must be ready by now. Nope. They take us up to a sitting area on the 2nd floor (the 1st floor in Latin America). We fall asleep on the couches until they tell us the room is ready (almost 2:00pm).
They take us up to the room. The cleaning lady tells the front desk worker that the floors might still be wet from the cleaning solution. We don't care because we really need to shower and unpack. We should have cared more. This cleaning solution they use is very strange. When it first goes down, it is very slippery. As it dries, it turns sticky like honey. When it is finally dry, it turns to a varnish and is not noticable. Since they put down a ton of this cleaning solution, part of the floor was slippery like ice and other parts were super sticky. I did fall once as I walked from honey to ice. I was too tired to care.
Living, dining, and kitchen
Bedroom
We had plans to go to a Boca Jrs soccer game that night. The tour group picked us up at 4pm for the 7pm game. Argentines are very passionate about soccer. There are two main teams in Buenos Aires - Boca Jrs. and River Plate. Apparently, when these two teams play it is called the SuperClassico, and it is known as the most bitter rivalry in the world.
We were warned not to eat the choripan (think Argentine hot dog) at the stadium by Alex. When we arrived at the stadium, we saw what he was talking about. There was a giant grill with sausages, and the cook was moving them with his hands. Who knows where his hands have been, and those sausages couldn't be too hot if he was moving them with his hands. Gross.
Inside the stadium, we got a tour of the Boca Jrs. museum. Diego Maradona is a god among men, and that is evident everywhere.
Outside the stadium
Mural of Maradona
Statue of Maradona
After the museum tour, we were taken to our seats.
This is what happens when the home team comes onto the field.
Monday, 10/17
We were picked up at the hotel for a half day tour of the city. We didn't take a lot of pictures, and we were pretty tired from the game the night before.
Chris at the Plaza de Mayo
La Boca
More La Boca
I love super markets in foreign countries.
La Boca is a pretty, colorful part of Buenos Aires. It is where a lot of Italian immigrants put down roots when they first came to Argentina. It is now a very poor, crime ridden part of the city. During our tour we were only allowed to walk through about 3 blocks of the neighborhood.
My bag was supposed to arrive that afternoon, but the volcano in Chile closed the airport, and my bag was still in Houston.
We were dropped off in Recoleta. I needed clothes and toiletries, so tried to find the Recoleta mall. Unfortunately, the map our tour guide gave us had it incorrectly marked. We walked forever (it seemed like hours to me), but we couldn't find it. We finally gave up and went back to our hotel. There was another mall about 10 blocks from our hotel, so we went there instead.
We walked past the Buenos Aires zoo on the way to the subte. That was strange and disappointing.
After the mall, we went back to our room to rest. That night night we went to dinner in Puerto Madero.
Puerto Madero is a new, clean part of Buenos Aires. It used to be the old port, but in the last 15 years or so, it has been refurbished. It is now lined with condos, office buildings, and restaurants. It's nice and clean, but kind of boring. It certainly did not have the Argentine spirit like the rest of the city.
I did read about a nice restaurant there called Las Lilas. We don't normally eat meat, but we had to make exceptions while on holiday. Chris ordered pork belly. I ordered steak.
We got on a ferry and took off for Colonia, Uruguay. We were met by our tour guide. Colonia is a picturesque town with a lot of history. It was beautiful, but I was bored.
This stadium was built for bullfighting. There were exactly 10 bullfights before bullfighting was outlawed. They don't use it for anything else.
Lighthouse in Colonia
Lunch in Colonia
Our tour guide showed us some architecture in Colonia. He showed us the Portuguese influence as well as the Spanish influence. My favorite line was "and here you can see a Portuguese door. Notice how short it is." Haha.
After too long in Colonia, we got on a bus for a 3 hour ride to Montevideo. This went through some beautiful country. One thing that was weird to me was that one other passengers walked up to the bus driver and said something to him. In the middle of the freeway, he pulled over to let her off. Very strange.
We arrived in Montevideo at about 7pm. We walked around for about an hour or so and went to dinner.
Wednesday, 10/19
We woke up in Montevideo and hopped on a ferry back to Buenos Aires.
Montevideo Ferry Building
When we arrived in Buenos Aires, I was very pleased to find my luggage waiting for us at our hotel. Hooray!
That afternoon we went walking through San Telmo. This was our favorite neighborhood in Buenos Aires. It is where Tango was born (that's not why). But it seemed to be more of where real Portenos lived.
Meat market in San Telmo
I almost overpaid a butcher when we stopped in the open market in San telmo. He was nice enough to tell me I was wrong. But then he proceeded to make fun of me to another patron. Oh well...
I think this is the night we went to an Italian place for dinner. To be honest, I can't actually remember.
Thursday, 10/20
We had the whole day to ourselves in Buenos Aires.
We took the subte into town to check out the Palermo neighborhood. This is supposed to be the hip, up and coming area of Buenos Aires. It is so large that it is divided up into to smaller areas called Palermo - Soho and Palermo - Hollywood. They are pretty similar to their American counterparts. We liked Soho better. It had a lot of cafes, shops, and markets. Hollywood was very similar to Hollywood in the US. It was gritty and dirty during the day, but you could tell that it was very lively at night.
We went to a "closed door" dinner party that night. I had been desperately searching for restaurant reviews for Buenos Aires for weeks. I kept coming across a blogger named Dan, who is an American living in Recoleta. It turns out that he is a chef and sommelier. He and his partner live in Recoleta and hold dinner parties to make a living. He hosts a dinner party 3-4 nights a week in his home, and you can book it online. He had two spots open for Thursday night, so we booked it.
"Closed door" dinners happen all over the world, and there are quite a few of them in Los Angeles. Dan's dinner party consists of a five course meal paired with wine. He will pick a theme for the dinner, and away you go. The guest list is completely by chance. You never know who you will end up with for the dinner party. Here's the run down of our party that night:
- Raphael - a DJ from Oakland
- Marie - a PR person from DC
- An American couple from Paraguay. He works for the US state department. Ironically, they lived in Knoxville for a few years. His wife refused to learn Spanish. She is going to have a hard time in Paraguay.
- A man who runs the Bulgari hotel in Bali (he is from Buenos Aires), his wife, his mother (who still lives in Buenos Aires)
- The Bulgari hotel manager's friend who currently lives in Buenos Aires. He is a creepy older American man who is filthy rich. He moved to Argentina because he bought a vineyard in Mendoza.
The party was a lot of fun, and certainly one of the highlights of the trip. It was really nice for me because everybody spoke English, and it was a relief to turn my brain off from comprehending Spanish all day.
Friday, 10/21
We hopped on a plane to go to the Iguazu falls. These falls are in Northern Argentina, near the Paraguay and Brazil border. It was a 90 minute plane flight. I forgot that American airlines are the only airlines that don't feed you anymore. But the food is awful, so I can't say I really miss it.
Every flight comes with a little box. Inside the box is a jamon y queso sandwich. Think ham and cheese on white bread. They also come with an alfajore (pastry) and a caramel candy. I was saving the alfajores in my purse, but Chris said they were awful, so we tossed them.
We arrived at the Sheraton in Iguazu Falls. We upgraded to this hotel because it is actually inside the national park. This was totally worth it. The room was nice too. Here is a video of the view from our room.
The Sheraton dinner was kind of gross. Think really boring American food. I wish the hotel had offered Argentine food, but instead they only had boring pastas, sad salads, and weird things like meatloaf.
We took the bus into the town. This was a 40 minute ride, and the town is pretty gross too. It's in the middle of nowhere, and the only industry is tourism. There are a lot of shoeless people on the street begging for money, and there are a lot of overprice restaurants on every street. We weren't sure what to do, but we did know that we needed to get back to a bus stop or else we would never get back to the hotel. We ended up eating a sad dinner in the Sheraton restaurant. Oh well.
Saturday, 10/22
We woke up bright and early to go into the national park. We had a tour through the park, which was totally unnecssary. If we ever do this again, we will bypass the tour. You can walk the entire park by yourself with no tour guide.
Map at the entrance of the park
At La Garganta del Diablo (the devil's throat)
Waterfalls
More waterfalls
The waterfalls were amazing. This was a great trip. We paid for a boat tour too. We got into a boat, which took us down into the falls. This was totally worth the money. We were completely soaked, but it felt good because it was pretty hot out. After the boat tour, we went on a tour of the jungle. On the tour, the guide was telling us all about the plants and wildlife of the forrest. It was really interesting, but there was a family behind us who would not stop talking. It wasn't even the little kids, but the adults too. I wanted to murder them. We didn't see any wildlife other than a toucan, but that was pretty amazing too.
We got back to the hotel and showered. Instead of crappy restaurant food, we went to the bar and ordered pizza and a salad. It was surprisingly not too bad.
Sunday, 10/23
We had some free time in Iguazu before our flight out. I got a massage, and Chris wandered around the national park. He got to do his favorite thing, which was to ask people if they would like him to take a picture with their camera (usually the picture taker is left out of every shot).
After my massage, we walked down to the national park for lunch. There are 3 choices. Argentine fast food, overpriced buffet, Argentine fast food #2. We had Argentine fast food.
Then we hopped on a plane back to the Buenos Aires airport. More jamon y queso sandwiches. We switched plans to fly to Trelew (Patagonia). We turned down the jamon y queso sandwiches on this flight, and the flight attendant was in disbelief.
We arrived in the tiny Trelew airport. It was cute. Here's the worst part about these airport transfers - the drivers pick up whole groups. We came right off the plane and found our driver. But we had to wait for 4 other people who had checked luggage. We spent a lot of time waiting in airports.
It was finally time to go to our hotel in Puerto Madryn. But it's an hour drive. And it's 9pm. We were really tired. But the bright side is that we found a FANTASTIC pizza place right near our hotel.
Monday, 10/24
I woke up with a sore throat. This really sucked. Going from the hot and humid jungle to an airplane to the cold, dry desert really did a number on me. But we had a penguin tour that day, and I had to power through it.
We met up with our tour guide, Mary and our driver, Marcos. They were awesome. They took us to Punto Tombo where we got to frolick with penguinos.
This armadillo was trying to steal eggs, but it was wary of all the humans watching.
Penguin Video #1 - coming from the beach
Penguin Video #2 - deliberation
Penguin Video #3 - crossing
After the penguins, we went to Gaiman. This is a little Welsh town in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, the Welsh really liked the idea of being in the middle of nowhere, so that's where they settled. We paid too much for Welsh tea and pastries, but it was really good. And I was full-blown sick at this point, so the tea felt good on my throat.
After Gaiman, we went back to Trelew. We stopped in town for about an hour for people to visit the Paleontology Museum. I wasn't all that interested, so we went into town to find a Farmacia so I could buy something for my throat. We successfully purchased some throat spray, and that helped. We thought we hit the jackpot when we found a store called El Rey de Queso (the king of cheese). Unfortunately, they were on siesta, and we had to get back to the bus.
We got back late that night, and I was pretty pooped from being sick. We went back to our favorite pizza place and chowed down.
Tuesday, 10/25
We both woke up super sick. We thought about cancelling our tour so we could just sleep all day. After showers we felt a little better so we forced ourselves to go on the tour to see whales, sea elephants, and salt lakes.
The tour was ok. We didn't buy the whale watching package, and we felt like we spent enough money already so we stayed at the town of Puerto Piramides while the rest of the group went on the boat. The town was really small, and we walked the whole thing in about 20 minutes. We spent the next two hours just wandering around waiting for our group to come back.
After they came back we got back in the bus to check out the sea elephants. This was a little disappointing. They are really lazy creatures, and the bridge down to the beach washed away the day before, so we couldn't go down there to see them.
This day was kind of a bust. The best part of the tour was our crazy driver, Marcos, passing other tour buses on dirt roads.
Wednesday, 10/26
We got up and made our way back to the Trelew airport. We flew back to Buenos Aires for our last night there. We were still feeling ill, so we took it easy.
We took the subte to San Telmo to eat at a choripan place we saw online. It was incredible.
We wandered around some more, and I took a nap.
That night we went to a small tapas place by our hotel called Tancat. It was mediocre at best. Apparently the thing to order there is this weird plate of roasted potatoes covered in chorizo COVERED in cheese. Everybody ordered it, and I thought it looked gross.
Thursday, 10/27
This was our last day in Buenos Aires. We had to check out of our hotel at noon, but we weren't getting picked up until 6:30 for our flight.
We took the subte to Belgrano, and we walked to Barrio Chino. We have a tradition of finding the Chinatown of whatever city we are in, and Buenos Aires is no exception. Since we had time to kill, we hung out at a Chinese restaurant for lunch for over 2 hours. This is totally normal in Latin America.
We took a long walk back through Recoleta, and ate one last ice cream a Volta, a gelato chain. We finally arrived at our hotel around 6pm. We figured it would take a while for the hotel to find our luggage. Our guide arrived early, and we were off to the airport.
That's it! That's our vacation in a nutshell.
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