I´ve been in Argentina for 4 days and have already seen so many amazing things! I arrived in Buenos Aires on Friday evening after 23 hours of travel. I was hosted by the lovely Nick & Joanna who gave me an excellent introduction to the city and porteño life.
We spent Saturday and Sunday walking around the city and hanging out. One of our first stops was the Recoleta cemetery. The guidebook made it sound like it might be cheesy, but it was amazing. It´s basically a 3/4 sized city made up on masoleums ranging from elaborate & ornate to run down and Edgar Allan Poe scary. I felt like a semi-giant walking around the ruins of a Byzantine city.
We also spent a lot of time walking around the Recolata and Palermo barrios, ducked into a restaurant/ bar to check out the Argentina v. Spain soccer game over some Quilmes (local brew of choice) and papas fritas with salsa golf (yummy tomato sauce & ketchep mixture). I loved the botanical gardens, mostly because it is host to a legion of stray cats.
After my weekend in B.A. it was onto the bus for 20 hours of amazing scenery and bad Hollywood movies dubbed into Spanish. The bus was a really comfortable double decker deal & I had the prime seat- top level, front row with 180 degrees of windows.
Riding out of B.A., we hit the pampas, endless grassy flatlands colored by a small village every hour or so. I thought I would get bored driving through the pampas, but I loved it. As the sun set and Escape to Witch Mountain with the Rock was playing, we drove into a massive thunderstorm. It became all pitch blackness punctured by these amazing flashes of light and awesome bolts of thunder.
After the storm, I managed to fall asleep pretty easily. When I woke up and peeked out the window, I saw a dome of stars outside from horizon to horizon. The only time I have seem more was in northwest Hokkaido. After a bit of a struggle, I fell asleep again and woke up in time to see the sunrise in Neuquen. Neuquen is very dry and desert like, as opposed to the pampas, but still flat and seemingly endless.
Eventually, this gave way to the mountains and rivers of northern Patagonia, another truly amazing landscape. It feels a bit otherworldly with its craggy peaks, herds of Andean camels and impossibly turquoise lakes, like stepping into Middle Earth.
Then into Bariloche, tourist central for northern Patagonia. It´s pretty, but a little too touristy for my tastes. They have this main shopping street filled with cheesy souvenier shops. I started liking it a little more as I got off the main avenues and walked along the quieter, more residential streets. I´m sure I´ll be back, as it´s the travel hub of the area and I´ll only be 2 hours away.
Tomorrow I´m getting on another bus and going to the farm in El Bolson. I´m excited and a little nervous, but mostly just looking forward to getting settled and figuring out what I´m going to be doing for the next 3 months.
Will post some images as soon as I´m on a less ghetto computer. More soon!
