Friday, January 22, 2010

Hola from Bunos Aires


Hey everyone,

Sorry it's taken a while but here's our first trip update. Enjoy.

Unfortunately the start of our trip wasn't so great. Our flight was delayed 9 hours to begin with, then another hour or two at our stopover in NZ, meaning we arrived in BA roughly 30 hours after we left home. Boooo. For those thinking about it, i'd stay away from Aerolineas Argentina if possible.

Since arriving in BA, we've stayed in 4 different places in 3 very different areas of the city, downtown BA,Palermo, and now San Telmo. Downtown was very touristy in a boring kind of way. Lot's of souvenir shops and Parilla (grilled meat) restaurants. Palermo was much nicer. Lot's of interesting restaurants, bars, and shops, and it's a safe area. San Telmo is a bit more dodgy but also as good food.

Christmas was strange over here. They celebrate Christmas Eve here and at midnight everyone goes out in the street and lets off fireworks. Po and i were on the terrace of the place we were staying, enjoying a drink, when we started hearing fireworks on the street, so we raced downstairs. It's so cool, someone from our hotel came out with a huge box full of fireworks and on every street around us there was another group letting off their own fireworks. Po was worried we were going to get hit :-)

Last Sunday we went to San Telmo where there was a Sunday antique market which went for several blocks across the suburb. It was so lovely! So many beautiful things, mostly European - like brooches, lace, photos, jewelery, clothes and other typical market stuff as well. Po bought a dress and eyed off many a broach. Casey pondered a leather jacket (he is still pondering). Leather stuff is really cheap here. A nice leather jacket costs around $130 Aus. There was also some really good street buskers along the way. Definitely recommend to anyone coming here.

Afterwards we headed to the national art museum. They had some Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Degus, Picasso, Diego Rivera, and lot's of Rodin. Mostly older period stuff though. Unfortunately by this stage Casey was thoroughly burnt! So we headed back the main tourist strip for some late lunch, a hot dog, hamburger, and bottle of red later we stumbled out back to our hostel and crashed straight to sleep.

In Palermo we met another Aussie traveller who we went to see Recoletta cemetery with. It's a beautiful old cemetery full of huge, over the top mausoleums. Pretty interesting stuff.

Yesterday we went to La Boca, a pretty touristy area, but a fun one, full of bars/restaurants, tango, & markets. We finally had our first proper parilla. They bring out a grill to your table which is heaps with different types of meat. Different steaks, kidney, chorizo, blood sausage, & chicken. This is our plate after we had stuffed ourselves:

Tomorrow we leave for Santiago, where we are only planing on being for 2 days. We're a bit tired of big cities and want to get out and explore. Buenos Aires has been good but we probably should have only stayed here for 5 days or so. Still the extra time gave us the opportunity to get over our first case of Casey disease, and acclimatise. Whilst our Spanish is still horrible, we are getting a bit better at communicating to the many people here who don't speak Spanish.

So our plan from here goes roughly like this:
Santiago for a few days before heading to Mendoza (Wine Country) for a few days. Then we will get a bus to Bariloche where we are hoping to do a few weeks of Spanish classes. From there we take a few weeks heading down into Patagonia before bottoming out at Ushuaia. Hopefully we can get a flight from there to Iguazu Falls, and make our way into Paraguay where we'll probably do some more Spanish classes. From there, it's Bolivia, then into Peru to prepare for the wedding and to meet up with our wonderful friends who are able to make the journey.

Hope everyone back home had a beautiful Christmas and New Years.

Case & Po.

Happy Birthday Nat, I hope you're having a wonderful day as you truly deserve it! Let me know everything you get up to xxx

Hope everyone is having a fantastic Christmas/new years break.

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