Chris' Adventures My highly anticipated trip to the America's...

Argentina

We arrived in Buenos Aires and went straight to the Hostel that Sophie had booked us into from back in Australia.. We were in the suite room and it was awesome.  It was kinda like a little apartment with the most comfortable bed ever in the universe and pillows like fluffy white clouds.  It was just what we needed as we pretty much had only had 5 or so hours sleep the night before because of the early morning flight, and previous to that had walked 46 odd k’s in 4 days..

We spent about 4 days in Buenos Aires.  Buenos Aires was a very very hunky-dory city, it was very modern but also had the South American cultural side to it.  There were many stylish looking people there who unlike me were obviously up with the latest fashions.  Sophie fitted in quite well tho and I think we found ourselves shopping pretty much every day we were there (although by this stage my funds were running very very low so I didn’t buy a whole lot!).  

We also did a big city tour which gave us a bit of a grounding in the city so we could find our way around.  It’s a very strange experience getting whisked away in a taxi from the airport after arriving in a new city and being taken to the hotel.  You really have no idea where you are and it takes a couple of days to start to be able to find your way around.  So the city tour was good for that.  The tour also took us to the stadium that was Diego Maradona’s club teams home ground in his younger days, which didn’t really mean a whole lot to me but I got photos of me in the stadium looking really excited to make Toby and Rob jealous. Ha.

Sophie’s parents also shouted us to a tango evening which was very very kind.  Thanks Alex and Betty :).  This was also very cool as we got a three course dinner, free wine and a Tango show.  Although everyone was speaking and singing in Spanish (and there was a lot of talking and singing going on!) and we didn't understand a whole lot but it was still really good to see.  

We also decided one night to go to the fancy-shmanciest restaurant that we could find.  We found a really really REALLY nice one (I’ve honestly never been to a restaurant that fancy before – and I really had no idea how to act in there.. hehe) and the meal cost us a total of around AU$30!  That was for a bottle of wine and both our meals!  We thought that was a pretty good deal!

After Buenos Aires we caught the “Best bus in the entire universe” from BA to Iguazu where we would see the famous iguazu falls.  The bus featured reclining seats that reclined to a completely flat position (have a look in my photo album to see photos of it) and it cost for a around 20 hour bus trip approximately AU$40 each.. Not too bad eh?

Iguazu

We decided to book with the same hostel company that we had stayed with in BA who also had a hostel in Iguazu.. This kinda proved to be a bit of a mistake.  We had booked for two nights and when we arrived there the girl told us that after the first night we were gonna have to change rooms for the second night.. This was quite annoying as we were pretty sick of packing and unpacking our bags every few days, so when staying at a place for a couple of nights, not having to do this was one of the best things about it.  So we asked if we could get that changed and we could stay in the one room and she told us that she would try and sort it out and she would let us know.  THEN.. We didn’t hear anything so we got up early and packed our bags and dragged everything out to the reception the second morning to change rooms only to be told that we had been changed to now be in the same room but they forgot to tell us.. Good times..

So on the second day in Iguazu we took a day trip out to the Iguazu falls.. The falls were amazing and we had a beautiful day to be seeing them.. They were amazingly powerful, The photos that I have really don’t do it justice at all..  When we first got there we took a boat ride up the river where we got a good look at some of the falls and they took us under one of the falls and soaked us all!  We then took a walk up to the main waterfall which was amazing to see.  There were hundreds of birds flying through the resulting mist which really just topped it all off!

The hostel that we stayed at had a really big awesome swimming pool so we didn’t really do a lot in Iguazu (there wasn’t really a lot to do there actually, but the falls made it worth it) but on the second night we went to a pub and had a fair few wines and beers.. This would prove to be a bad idea for the fun times (sarcasm alert!) we would experience the next day!

Cordoba… Hang on, no…. Back to Buenos Aires

Id like to start this part with a bit of an anti-advertisement… If you ever go to Argentina, do not, I repeat, do not ever travel with the company EXPRESSO SINGER… Understand?  EXPRESSO SINGER ARE BAD.. EXPRESSO SINGER are a terrible bus company.. Ok.. Now that we have established that I will continue..

So we had to check out of our hotel at 10am so we packed all our stuff and put it into the hostels storage room for a few hours while we waited to go to the bus terminal for our bus which left at around 1 o’clock.. While waiting to leave the hostel Sophie started getting unwell.  She was having to go to the bathroom to vomit literally about every 15 minutes.  This wasn’t good as we had about a 25 hour bus trip ahead of us to Cordoba.  So after about 2 hours of hell in the humid hostel reception we got a taxi to the bus station where we thought things would get better as the buses we had previously been on had been awesome and we couldn’t wait to get on there and just sleep!

We arrived at the bus terminal about half an hour before the bus was due to leave.  The humidity was even worse here and Sophie was still really unwell and was still vomiting every 15 minutes or so.. So when the bus didn’t arrive til over an hour after the departure time we were quite pissed off to say the least.  When It finally arrived I grabbed the big bags and put them in the storage area of the bus while Soph waited with the small bags.. I then went back to Soph to grab the small stuff and then we started heading towards the bus only to see it driving away complete with our big bags on board.. I think this was one of the worst moments on the trip and im sure it would have been about 10 times worse for Soph who was still feeling really crap and I was seriously worried that she was going to collapse or something cos she could hardly keep her eyes open.

In the only lucky twist of fate for the day the bus got a red light just after leaving the terminal that I swear stopped it for like 3 or 4 minutes so we chased it down and managed to get on… And you’d think that nothing else bad could happen.

We got put in the upstairs section of the bus which had no windows that could open and yes, the air-conditioning wasn’t working.  To state the obvious it was absolutely boiling up there.  Note that this was meant to be a ‘luxury’ bus company.  Soph looked like she was about to die at this point and was very pale so I complained about the lack of airconditioning.. About 15 minutes later they pulled over in the middle of nowhere and another bus pulled up and we had to swap busses.. This one was better and did have airconditioning, however we got told to change seats a few times which wasn’t what we needed as Soph was still visiting the toilet with the same frequency.

So we stayed on this bus for about 5 hours (with Soph still sick) until Soph decided that she couldn’t be on the bus anymore and needed to find a bed.  I think at this point we also realised that it was not the alcohol that was causing her to be sick and something else was at work (although the alcohol wouldn’t have helped).  We had no idea where we were but we had just been told that we had to change busses again (I think back to the old one) so we decided that this is where we would end our fabulous journey with EXPRESSO SINGER… Remember, EXPRESSO SINGER IS BAD.. I’d also like to point out that the staff on the bus were really, really rude the whole time.  When they drove off without us at the start which really shouldn’t have happened because I had told them I had to grab more bags and had shown them my ticket, when we jumped on they were laughing and didn’t even bother to apologise, and lots of other rude moments.. So yeah three thumbs down for EXPRESSO SINGER. Booo

We then found a random (kinda dodgy) hotel in the middle of the night and we managed to find a chemist and get some weird south American medicinal drops which helped Soph stop vomiting.. It was quite a day to say the least.

The next day Soph was feeling a lot better but we both werent up for a 20 hour trip to Cordoba so we decided that we would skip those two towns and fly to Buenos Aires and then thru to Santiago, Chile where we would stay for the rest of the trip..