Where to start? It´s been a helluva week! LaPaz was brief, but intense, particularly the bus ride TO... but for now I´m going to leave that out and talk about Buenos Aires.
Sigh....it was automatic love for the architecture, the parks, the sunshine, the people...and we arrived at our hostel, opened up the floor to ceiling windowed doors and shutters to our beautiful little terrace that overlooked a cobble stone street and we were DONE. Truly, madly, deeply in love.
I could describe each event as it occured, but with the detail I´d want to put in about each and every little thing we did, I could write a novel about our first week!
Every morning was spent on our wee terrace eating fruit salad (the mango´s are divine!) and then a stroll through our neighbourhood, San Telmo. A vibrant, cobble stoned, artsy area brimming with antique shops, markets, independant clothing designers, little art galleries, bakeries, cafes, bars, beautiful old buildings and lush plants. More often than not we would stop at our new favourite haunt, that although not ´pretty´has the best, cheapest empanadas we´ve found and espresso to die for.
The rest of the ´day time´was spent exploring other neighbourhoods, and lovely as they all are, we´re thrilled that we picked San Telmo to be our ´home´.
Recoleta is beautiful, ritzier than the other areas, full of gorgeous boutiques, apartment buildings and cafes. It´s also home to an awe inspiring cemetery that is like a mini-village full of huge sarcophagi and gorgeous sculpture. There´s a beautiful law school, great parks, interesting public art and an interior design MALL(!).
Palermo is most known for it´s shopping and yes - shopping was done....as was having great Indian curry at a little British pub while half watching the football game.
The city centre has this MAD pedestrian strip that goes on for eons, chockablock full of people, gorgeous buildings, McDonalds, fur shops and people hounding us to see live Tango shows. And, some of the best busking I have seen in the world! Oh, and a fancy pants mall with a beautifully painted cathedral like ceiling - very odd!
Most evenings were spent making and eating dinner on our balcony, drinking cheap (but delicious!) wine and watching the world go by, dreaming and scheming of ways to eventually move here! Grin. But best of all was the little bar directly across the street from us that didn´t ususally open till 10 or 11 and was hopping till 6am. We watched some great live jazz, boogied to a fun punk cover band and made some new friends. And on the nights we´d go to sleep ´early` the sonds of the bar mixed with the tango playing down at the square, although loud, was our own Buenos Aires lullaby...
We were both heart broken to leave on the Friday but had already bought our tickets to Mendoza, so off we went.
15 hours later we arrived on a sunny morning, checked into a hostel and sat down for coffee to decide what our next week looked like. Everyone had raved about Mendoza; a beautiful city, the wine capital of Argentina, great outdoor activities, but we just weren´t feeling it...one of us made a crack about going back to Buenos Aires and instead of laughing we looked at one another and said ´what if?´. We pulled out our map and realised how FAR Mendoza was from everything else we were planning on doing and before we knew it we were apologizing to the hostel owner and rushing back to the bus station. Two nights in a row on over night buses, 30 hours in total, less than 10 hours in Mendoza and we are back in BA!
We were greeted with the sunniest of days and the Sunday market was just setting up directly in front of our hostel. We spent the day mixing and mingling in awe of all the beautiful arts, crafts, clothing, antiques and music and retired early that night, giddy at the thought of an extra, very unplanned week in beautiful, beautiful Buneos Aires.
Our itinirary has changed a little, but after this week we´re still heading up to the falls, to northern Argentina and to Bolivia for volunteering and much more hiking. It´s funny, neither of us had ANY intention of staying in a place for this long, but it has struck us both equally. And really, this kind of flexibility is part of the beauty of traveling.
I probably won´t update the blog again until we´re into Northern Argentina so that we can soak in the beauty that is this place; with gorgeous food, bottles of wine, amazing music and grins on our faces that are bigger than either of us thought possible.
xoxo
