Wood-Shaped Rocks in the Petrified Forest

It looks like wood, but this is solid stone

North!

El Gato Julio- not to be trusted

I've been battling some sort of cold/flu type infliction, which has kept me pretty quiet for the past week. Our hostel is inhabited by a bipolar cat who viciously attacked me with a lightning one-two and then wouldn't get off my bed. We've done lots of exciting things like walking around, shopping for socks and perhaps most thrilling of all, going under the drill at the dentist. It's not all beer and skittles here.

Angie takes advantage of the gratis abrazos (free hugs) on offer in San Telmo markets

So, in between maintenance we went to some art galleries, further explored the tremendous vegetarian opportunities, browsed markets and drank lots of coffee. Not much to write home about... dental ordeal over -time to leave- we head North to the sun.


To Iguazu....

15 hours after leaving Buenos Aires we stepped off the bus and into the glorious warmth of Iguazu. A taxi dropped us off at the hostel where we spent the afternoon getting our fluro white bodies reacquainted with UV rays.

Foggy Buneos Aires

The streets were swathed in a thick fog all day, and when night came, the sulfurous uplighting of buildings by the streetlamps weirded everyone out.

Back to Argentina

Bye bye Uruguay

As far as uninspiring and depressing places go, the boarding 'lounge' at Colonia port ranks up there with the inside of a shipping crate. Tastefully fitted out with a torn and abused pot pourri of ex-ferry seating, the frigid room is decorated with faded advertisements for perfume and liquor (the boat is a duty-free zone). A constant buzz comes from an unidentifiable source somewhere in the ceiling, a dark coolness radiates from the grey rubberised floor.

Buen viaje!!


The slow boat between Buenos Aires and Colonia is fitted out with all the incandescent glitz and sophistication of your favorite RSL. I ventured up onto the upper (outside) deck but was driven back inside by the vicious winds of the grumpy River Plate. We docked in BA, went through customs, joined a throng of eager taxi hunters outside the terminal and ended up being voluntarily ripped off to make it to the hostel that (we hoped) had accepted our booking.

Angie Eats a Steak.

Angie vs cow.

Oh, Dios Mio!- they never shut up about it here. Steak. Everyone. Steak steak steak. Its all people want to talk about. And when I can't enthuse? And have to drop the V-bomb? So many time I've seen the look of embarrassment, mistrust, shock, pity. Some people apologise, some can barely disguise the horror.

Anyway, we went out to dinner with a friend and Angie ate a steak. I agree- It was spectacular- a great hunk of cow you could use as a pillow. I was more impressed by the nine delicious and perfectly prepared side dishes- roasted garlic and onions, pumpkin mash, mushrooms, green vegetables among the mini side feast.

Who needs steak? (I can hear you frown)

Buenos Aires- Episode One

We spent two weeks in Buenos Aires. Was it really two weeks? What happened there? Bits and pieces, most of the highlights are on the blog already. It was good to get into a city for a while- get amongst the noise and the people and the thick grey air. The best part, for a pair of (most of the time) herbivores such as us, was the chance to have someone else cook- proper food, not cheese pizza (a new staple). We ate a few vegie or vegie-sympathetic houses, ranging from floppy all-you-can-eat bain marie galleries, to wholesome Krishna food (cheap and tasty worldwide), to exquisite sit on the floor African, to Chinese mock meat spice extravaganzas. In a country as obsessed with beef as Argentina, the city provides blessed culinary relief; food for the belly.

An Australian with British citizenship eating African food in an Argentinian restaurant.

Many days we'd just find ourselves wandering around the streets, exploring the endless grid of concrete. Plans would be drawn up sometimes, but usually scrapped once we got a few blocks from the hostel because our path crossed something else more interesting.

The police cars are not threatening.

It was nice have a double bed for sleep, encased in a private room, free from the sporadic and always disturbing sounds of leaving, arriving, packing and snoring. Eventually the ever-present background noise of the city got to me. Noise is absolutely inescapable in a tightly packed city like BA. It was everywhere, always. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft, often kicking you in the eardrums with a pair of steel-capped boots. The streets are narrow, with tiny sidewalks and busses constantly spewing blue gas and black sound. Walking along these streets feels like climbing through an industrial revolutionesque smoke machine- all sound and grinding gears.

At the moment this photo was taken, every single vehicle pictured was blasting its horn.

So we left- but just for a little while. There's still plenty of things to see and to do (and to have done to us). Just a little while to recharge in some fresh air and undiluted sunshine on a beach in Uruguay- a holiday.

The Edges of the Buenos Aires Sky

Wandering Buenos Aires

How to amuse the kids while shopping- Buenos Aires style

This is the highest floor of the Abasto shopping mall, the largest cathedral of its kind in Buenos Aires. To placate the children who are unenthusiastic about capitalism, you can bring them here, where swinging pirate ships, dodgem cars, zeppelins on monorails and a rollercoaster emit a fierce golden sulfur glow. Infinitely more impressive than that plastic rocking car outside Woolies.

Recoletta Cemetery

Where Argentina's rich, famous and dead live in surrounds more luxurious than most of the hostels we've stayed in.

MALBA: Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires

Malba is a big white gallery full of fantastic art from the 20th/21st Century. It houses mainly work by Latin-American Artists, but there is also a mezmerising collection 60's and 70's of Op-Art, the biggest single collection I've seen on display anywhere. Grooooovy! No photography allowed inside, so Angie only managed to sneak in one photo (from the permanent collection I think):

Everyone loves Che

Outside the gallery a towering VU meter flashes in reaction to the level of ambient noise.

Botanical Gardens- Catland

In a strange throwback to Ancient Egyptian feline veneration, cats have free reign over these gardens on the outskirts of the CBD. Much to Angie's delight, there are literally hundreds of kitties lazing around and being brought food by the local people.

Kitties everywhere

Myself and this beast were equally surprised to find two human babies suckling at her teats.

Cheap Paris- The City not the Heiress

19 hours on a bus? Surely no amount of money saved can be worth that brand of prolonged stationary torture. In most countries, this is true. Not in Argentina. In Argentina time on a bus is time to unwind, be still and glow the same way you do when you've just done something really clever.

The seats are generous, three to a row and they recline 180 degrees with the grace of a timelapse flower blooming. Wine, coffee, champagne and whiskey served on takeoff, hot food, and from our seats at the very front of the upper level, a view over everything else on the road to where this elegant machine is taking its payload of 24 passengers, 1 driver and 1 attendant. Yes, this is first class travel, comparable to 1st class air travel (at least I assume it is), and for just $80AUD. (Shot taken during one of the multitude of hair-raising overtaking manoeuvres we witnessed from on high. I am convinced that Argentinian bus drivers possess eagle vision and can see around corners)

After I had a relaxing and luxurious 19 hour bus ride we arrived in Buenos Aires. Angie's 19 hours was less enjoyable than mine, due to a second assault by suspected food poisoning. BA is a huge city, 30 million people live there. We jumped in a cab to take us to our hostel right in the middle of the nest. Angie was still recovering, so I went out and had I minor explore of this new city.


The feeling of arriving in a new city is something that you only get and can only keep for perhaps a few hours, maybe a day. Its the precious first impression, the intensity of meeting a city for the first time which is unique. Everything is brand new, there is no point of reference and you can't rely on anything being familiar to centre yourself. Its a magnificent sensation of new, and you have to drink it in, because as soon as you turn a full block and end up back where you started, the brief moment of pure virgin experience is diluted, and you start to know the place.

This pigeon slept outside our room every night

Of course, the more you try to extend this moment of newness (by not concentrating too hard on where you're going of where you've been) the more likely you are to have set yourself up for a royal case of 'I'm lost and have no idea where home is'. Which of course a got an acute case of. After deciding that I had wandered the streets long enough and it was now getting too cold and too dark for me to be out here, I tried to turn back and experienced the downside of new. A really good way to extend that feeling of being new is to go walking around at night, because then your points of reference tend to be much fewer. But by all accounts, Buenos Aires is not a good place to be doing this sort of accidental exploring at night, because there are places which you just don't go (dangerous places). With the sun now down and a rising sense of paranoid tourist panic now bubbling away below, I quickened my step and thankfully, found a map outside the 'Subte' station (subway). After returning to it a couple of times I managed to find my way back to the hostel, inches of daylight remaining.

20 lanes of pure urgency

Now it was tourist time. Over the next few days we wandered around the city (Angie calls it Cheap Paris), feeling a little overwhelmed by the size of the whole thing. Our hostel was on Avenue 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world. It's 20 jam packed lanes wide, full of motorists keen to beat everyone else to the end of the road, wherever that is. They're so keen that they tend to squeeeeeze in between cars next to each other at the lights, so often there'll be two lanes painted on the road, but three vehicle nestled together inside those lanes, engines revving like dragsters in anticipation.

Acres of trinkets

At San Telmo, we went and saw the largest markets I have ever been to. It was a combination of street stalls, show halls and blankets on roads, selling every kind of tourist trinket imaginable (with a brutally heavily emphasis on tango-themed souvenirs) along with really fascinating antique treasures. In the four hours we spent walking the market, we backtracked once to buy some vintage postcards, but that was the only time we doubled up on seeing anything.