Ha! All I can do right now is laugh at the ridiculousness that the last few weeks have been. On SO many levels, both wonderful and challenging.
For those of you who don`t know, we are back in Buenos Aires due to some challenging circumstances which I´ll explain shortly. But, I figured out why the universe wanted me to come back...the steak! Oh. My. God. As a lot of you know, I`m not a huge steak fan and thus kept forgetting that Argentina is the steak capital of the world. Our first night back, Helen, Alejo and I went to a great little parilla in San Telmo and I almost died of happiness. Seriously. Best. Steak. Of. Life. Wow. And for less than $10CND. Sigh, the drama of the past weekend was almost worth it considering what a blissful experience that was!
So, why are we back in Buenos Aires? Unfortunately, because I had my money belt stolen which aside from a fair bit of cash, had my passport inside. The only Canadian embassy in Argentina is here in BA! So, Helen and I had to take an almost 24 hour bus ride back here from Jujuy...not to mention that we both got incredibly sick that weekend - fever, chills, muscle aches. It was either the flu or possibly a mild case of dengue fever, guess we`ll never know!
We`re both feeling heaps better though physically and my mood has improved dramatically now that the shock of the whole event has worn off. I`m incredibly thankful for the support of all you lovely people back home, and the lovely people at the embassy.
BA is as beautiful as we left it, albeit a little chillier as fall has hit. Before leaving to explore Northern Argentina, Helen and I spent another 10 days here (upon our return from Mendoza). It was a great week and a half, basically spent the same way as our first week here was - wandering the city, sitting in parks, drinking wine, seeing live music, frequenting the bar across the street, cooking delicious food, eating out at phenomenal restaurants, making friends, etc. etc.
Once again, it was hard to leave but after almost 20 days in total we felt that we had to, as time is running short on this wee trip.
We headed straight to Puerto Igauzu which hosts some of the worlds most spectacular waterfalls. And spectacular they were! I`ve never seen anything quite like them. Such power, such energy. We were already a litle wet just from the spray of them while crossing a few bridges, but in the afternoon a torrential thunder and lightning storm broke out - within seconds we were drenched! It was immensley powerful to experience the falls this way, but also slightly terrifying as we were walking along metal bridges over the top of the falls as the rain pummeled us, the wind tore at us and lightning bolts flashed across the sky - crazy! We saw monkeys, beautiful birds, crazy creatures that I don`t know the name of that tried to steal our food at lunch (think racoon, but a south american version?). We also went on a 3 hour walk to some waterfalls that are less frequented, me terrified of seeing a puma and Helen terrified of the massive spiders hanging over head. We were quite the pair! All in all, Igauzu was wonderful - humid, tropical, lush...
And then our 20+ hour bus ride to Tucuman (not sure if you´ve noticed, but we`re taking a LOT of buses!). This one though, hands down the most memorable! It was still chucking it down with rain outside and our bus leaked(!) so there was a small river running through it, pooling in the bathroom (and I´d only brought flip flops - gross!). Some of the WORST movies of life, but hilariously so, and wonderful company. We met Charlotte, a lovely girl from France and Santiago from Argentina. We had the brilliant idea of drinking wine to pass the time, so at one of our stops Santiago ran into the station and came back with a couple of bottles. We spent the next few hours drinking wine out of little plastic cups, giggling away, half watching the terrible movies on the wee tv sets and having a great time! 20+ hours passed by suprisingly fast.
Once we arrived in Tucuman we decided it wasn´t really worth stopping in, so we hopped on a bus for a few more hours to the lovely little town of Tafi del Valle -known for it`s cheese and it´s olives. Yum! We lucked out and got our own little adobe apartment with kitchen and bathroom and a little backyard for dirt cheap. And, a wood stove, that although almost smoked us out saved us from freezing as the nights in Tafi were frigid! The days were beautiful though and we explored a little of the surrounding hills, wandering and getting lost, as we tend to do, coming across beautiful wild horses, seeing gorgeous panoramic views of the city and surrounding hills, walking through gorges full of lush plant life and just soaking it all in.
After Tafi, we headed to Cafayate as we had heard that there was plenty to do there. And was there ever! On our first day we took a walk to the waterfalls, along Rio Colorado. Apparently a 3-4 hour walk...Well, it starts with a 6km walk from town to the START of the walk. That took about an hour and a half along dusty roads surrounded by vineyards, beautiful red rocks and parrots flying overhead. Once we arrived a number of people stopped us offering to be our guides as the walk was very challenging. Helen and I thought ´What? You follow the river. What? It can´t be that hard!` and went on our way. Well, after attempting to rock climb up a steep cliff to where we thought the path was, we saw a guide and two girls head off in a different direction, so we made haste and took a look at where they were headed. Phew! We lost them after a while, but found the river and it looked pretty easy going from there. And it was STUNNING! Huge red cliffs surrounding us on all sides, massive cacti and crazy little shrubs, boulders and rock formations blocking our way half the time and strange grass that was taller than us both...There wasn´t much of a path to be seen, but skipping back and forth across the river was a delight. We were constantly going up and down, clambering over boulders and rocks and parting the tall grasses that were in our way. We eventually came to what looked like a bit of a dead end when we saw the guide again. He was leading the girls up from a cave that was right in front of us, so we shimmied our way up through it and ended up about half way up the hill - I LOVE climbing up through caves. Man, oh man! The rest of the way was mostly the same and eventually came to a high point on the hill where we could not for the lives of us figure out what to do. And there again was the guide! We ended up officially joining them for the next hour as he took us up and down super steep hills, helped us scramble along steep rock faces, pulled and pushed us up and down through caves and took us to two lovely waterfalls. The waterfalls all in all weren´t stunning, but the experience of walking to them is one that I´ll never forget. We said goodbye to the guide and girls and settled down for a lovely lunch of tomato sandwiches, sitting there in awe of how in the middle of absolute nowhere we felt. Muy, muy bien! All in all, we walked for about 7 hours that day and very happily fell asleep quit early that night!
The next day we ran into some delightful british girls who were going on a free wine tour the hostel was offering. It was 10:30 in the morning and we were going to explore the Quebradas that afternoon, but we thought - why not! We only went to two vineyards, but they were great fun. The wine that is produced in Cafayate is beeeautiful, and the sample servings were quite generous. Definitely an interesting way to start the day! We made a quick lunch and then joined our group for the Quebrada tour. The Quebradas are these incredible natural sand stone formations that go on for about 80km - brilliant reds, greens and yellows - unlike anything I`ve ever seen. Helen said that it`s remeniscent of Utah, which as I´ve never been there doesn`t mean much, but if you`re reading this and have been there then hopefully that helps! We were thinking about exploring them independantly, but weren`t sure how difficult it would be as you have to rent a bike, hop on a bus, get off in the middle of nowhere and make your own way. In hindsight, I think it would be great fun to do it that way. But, the group of folks we went with were a lot of fun and we ended up meeting a great Irish couple that ended up accompanying us to Salta. The Quebradas were phenomenal, dusty and hot, but just incredible colours and majesty for lack of a better word. In total we expored them for about 5 hours and we both got some incredible photos.
That night we went out with a group of girls from the hostel, but after the first bar Helen and I were both feeling a little funny, so had an ´early` night. And we woke up feeling terrrrrible. Feverish, achy and weak - but we were planning on heading to Salta that day and concious of the little time we had left, we hopped on the bus. In Salta we had a quick dinner with the Irish couple and then slept for ages. And in the morning, sometime between leaving the hostel and getting on the 3 hour bus to Jujuy, my money belt disapeared. I didn`t realise till we arrived in Jujuy, so hopped on the bus back to check the hostel and subsequently fill out a police report. 3 x 3 hour bus rides, plus the stress, plus the fever made for one helluva weekend. And the next day we were back on the bus to BA...
Where we are now. We`ll be leaving tomorrow or Wednesday. Sad to be leaving AGAIN, but also excited about what Bolivia will bring. This past week in BA has been great. Catching up with Alejo, exploring some new areas, getting to know some wonderful artists who took me around La Boca and some galleries and artist residences there, trying the steak, and feeling more and more `at home` here.
That`s all I got for now.
xo
