Argentina - Iguazu falls, Buenos Aires, an Estancia and a day trip to Uruguay

10 September

So, after the aforementioned best bus journey, we found ourselves in Puerto Iguazu, the town on the Argentinian side of the falls (the river and falls mark the border between Brasil and Argentina).  We got ourselves checked into a hostel with an amazing swimming pool (!) and fantastic hot showers which was quite exciting and just hung out there for the rest of the day, eating and drinking beer.

The following day a minibus picked us up and took us back to Brasil to see that side of the falls.  The place was relatively Disney-fied with a bus taking you down to the concrete walkways to all the viewpoints, but it was really quite nice.  We were a bit unlucky with overcast weather, so though we had some amazing views of the waterfalls in their entirety the photos haven't turned out all that great.  We got up close to one part of the falls by walking out on a walkway over the water which was pretty cool.

There are about 275 separate waterfalls over a 2.5 or so km stretch of river and they're about 60-80m high and (according to the oracle that is wikipedia) Iguazu has the second highest flow of any waterfall in the world with 1700m3/second which is hard to imagine until you see the thing!

The following day we went to see the Argentinian side of the falls which were a lot more impressive.  There were still some great views of the falls in their entirety, but there was a lot more close-up stuff which was really amazing.  There are literally tons of water just thundering over the edge and it's amazing.  We even managed to scrape together enough cash between us to go on a massive rib and be dunked under one of the waterfalls which was bloody cold!!

After getting a little sun by the pool the following day, it was time for another night bus, this time down to Buenos Aires.  This bus was even more impressive as they served us food, red wine and champagne!!

Plaza de Mayo and the pink palace

Buenos Aires has turned out to be one of my favourite cities in the world (Rio is also up there on the list).  The places is split into neighbourhoods which have distinct feels, from the centre of town with massive plazas and grand (mostly French style) buildings, to the massive parks, the Palermo area which is full of the cool people, San Telmo (where we stayed) with an amazing Sunday market, Puerto Madero with new fancy apartments and restaurants and La Boca with multicoloured houses and the famous Boca Juniors football team.  There is also a large nature reserve just on the edge of town.  The scale of the place is just amazing, but as it's in neighbourhoods it feels quite manageable.  There are also massive avenues connecting various parts of the city with some roads 8 or 10 lanes wide which is kind of crazy. The city is built on the edge of what is apparently the largest river estuary in the world, but other than the Port (Puerto) area and the nature reserve you don't really get the feel you're in a city on the water.

Puerto Madero

We took a bike trip round on the first day to get a feel for the place which was a really nice way to do it (especially as it's quite a flat city) and then spent the next couple of days mastering the subway system and exploring all the areas properly.  We visited most of the parks, including some amazing Japanese Gardens (with fantastic Japanese restaurant attached), and the zoo which could be so amazing, given it's got all these cool buildings in the style of where the animals come from (eg a Balinese temple for the elephant house), but the whole place is really run down and many of the cats and bears were walking round in circles looking very sorry for themselves.  Quite a sad moment.

La Recoleta cemetary

We also went up to Recoleta cemetary which is terribly exclusive and like a mini city with all these spooky above ground tombs including that of Eva Peron (Evita).  And we also checked out quite a lot of the architecture with visits to mansions, the museum of decorative arts and a lot of the churches.

Sarah, being a hell of a lot more organised than me, also got us booked on a couple of really great tours, one being a night out at a tango show (entrance including pudding and as much red wine as we could drink!) which was a little touristy, but really good, and probably the best way to see some tango, and also a night out at the football which was at the Bonboneria the home of Boca Juniors (Maradonna's team).  It was very much like the football in Ecuador with people going absolutely nuts and fireworks & flares being set off, and drumming and singing and all sorts.  When Colon scored against Boca the Boca fans were upset for about 2 seconds before they started singing again, cheering their team on.  I think Boca won 3-1 in the end.

The food was also pretty damn good, including empanadas (sort of like mini Cornish pasties, but I always had the cheese & onion ones), and oodles and oodles of Dulce de Leche which is this thick, syrupy, sweet, fudge flavoured, boiled up sweetened condensed milk.  And we ate icrecream almost daily.  Mostly dulce de leche flavoured!  Not quite up my street, but we also ate out at what was supposed to be the best steakhouse in town.  It was quite an amazing place, and completly packed.  Sarah ordered a steak rare and ended up getting a steak medium (I sent it back!) plus about 10-12 side dishes of things like mashed potato, salad, chillies etc.  It was absolutely amazing!

Sarah also booked us on a great 3 day trip out to an Estancia just south of Buenos Aires which was really lovely and relaxing.  The Estancia was built on a lake and had tons of farmland around (though we think little still belonged to them).  We were the only people there for the first few days and we were lucky enough to have great weather, amazing food, horseriding on demand (we swapped our slow horses for fast ones on the second afternoon and I got some pretty impressive bruising!).  There were also tons of chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, geese and dogs pottering about, a fire constantly lit in the main hall to keep us toasty and unlimited quantities of (fairly rough) red wine to drink.  We also managed to get a little bit of sunbathing in, and Sarah, going out in a kayak on the lake, managed to dunk herself in!  Sarah also managed to get dunked when her horse decided to sit down in a flooded part of the field!

Back in Buenos Aires we changed to a more backpackery hostel and met a lovely English girl called Holly at the bar.  We went out to visit the rose gardens (I'm sure they'd be even more beautiful if they were in bloom!) and then took ourselves on a day trip to Colonia in Uruguay.

The ferry crossing was only about an hour and it was all very organised with immigration checking us out of Argentina and into Uruguay in one fell swoop before we got on the boat.  We were really lucky with the weather in Colonia too and had a nice day walking around the ancient town and visiting about five of the most ridiculous museums I've ever been too (they had collections of things like tiles, stones with grooves in them so that ropes could be tied to them and used as weapons, reproduction glassware etc!).  But we had some great food, some white wine, and the place was really nice.

The following day Sarah left and the day after that Kerstin (German friend who I started the year in Colombia with) arrived.  No rest for the wicked.......!