What's new...Buenos Aires!
So we are leaving Bolivia, La Paz airport does not have much going on so killing time and trying not to spend any money (remember that time we were in Tahiti?) was becoming somewhat of a skill for us. A desperate Canadian girl had me help her clarify a phone plan is Spanish whilst Rob was being accosted by a lady selling hand cream out of her jacket...
Rob "I don't speak any Spanish. Only English"
Hand cream lady "ah si [continues trying to sell hand cream in Spanish]"
Next stop was Santa Cruz Airport. This is where we discovered the amazingness that is Cinnabon! The sugary goodness was so delicious and kept us going until we boarded our 1am flight. As we get closer and closer to arriving in Argentina the songs from Evita start to sing slightly louder inside my head and the excitement develops. Having spent most of my childhood listening to the musical, with my mum I was excited to get to BA and do some of the Evita 'must dos'. It was also going to be good to meet new people as part of our tour, even if we were highly likely to be the oldest there.
When we got to our hotel we had to question if we had come to the right place. Having spent the past week showering before bedtime to get warm enough to sleep we entered the lobby which had giant chandeliers and lemon water available for guests...amazing! It's 7am, check in isn't until 2 and at some point during our time at Santa Cruz airport Rob had pointed out that something I was wearing smelt really bad! Thankfully our hotel was able to get us into our room at 8.30 where we promptly went to sleep!
When we finally rose we started wandering the streets "cambio cambio cambio!" Due to Argentina's crazy law making it illegal to exchange foreign currency there is a 'blue market' for the US dollar. As we walked down Florida Street, just around the corner from our hotel, people on the street just walk up to you "cambio cambio cambio change sir? Good price? Cambio? Change?" The banks change 9 pesos for every USD with the street vendors offering up to 14pesos. We were warned to be careful of counterfeit notes and staying safe with the hotel offering a competitive rate of 11pesos. Our guide later told us that he was in Mexico when they brought in the law against exchanging currency and he was unable to access any money from his Argentinian bank account for over two weeks!
Buenos Aires is a beautiful city and its easy to understand why it is called the Paris of South America, despite the rain. Equipped with our waterproofs we headed out to explore the city. First stop - Recoleta cemetery! We have never seen anything like it. The cemetery is where the rich and famous go as their final resting place. This is where we would find the graves of the Duarte Family. It was incredible to see the size of some of the tombs and mausoleums. As we wound our way back around towards the entrance we happened upon a funeral taking place...slightly awkward
Next we walked around the dock front where we saw a one legged guy throw up as he was walking down the street! Hands down weirdest thing we had seen so far and we had seen embalmed llamas! As we headed back to the hotel to dry off I researched La Casa Rosada. Having misread the map earlier and taken a photo of the wrong government building we headed back out to visit the grand palace! It was pretty incredible. All Evita'd out we headed to get ready for our groups welcome party to start the tour.
The tour started with a group get together and then a meal to get together with everyone. Needless to say that 1) we were the oldest bar two guys who were visiting from Spain 2) we ate a lot of meat 3) we drank a lot of beer and even more cocktails! It was a great way to get to know everyone and get ready for spending two weeks together. The next day we got on a 17hour bus ride to Iguassu falls.
I think it's fair to say that Rob and I had few expectations from Iguassu. We hadn't heard much about the falls prior to booking our trip and had decided to join the group on the recommendation of our travel agent based in the fact that few people would speak English in Brazil and we speak no Portuguese. Iguassu was far more than we expected. The falls were absolutely incredible. The size, volume and beauty just blew us away. We spent two days at the national park and it was probably one of the highlights of our trip. Our three days at Iguassu were finished off with a BBQ at a hosts house with 2 other G Adventure groups. The meat! So much meat! It was amazing! Next stop was a 24hour bus to Paraty before then moving on to Rio.
Rio was hot! Still in their winter it was hard to understand what it would be like in the summer! First off we took a walk along the famous Copacabana beach. We sat beach side with $5 beers and took in the sun, sand and speedos. So many speedos. There must be a law which forbids men from wearing any other clothing items when within 3 blocks of the beach! I've said this before but there were also a lot of women with amazing arses. Such butt envy! The second day in Rio we walked along Ipanema beach (in our opinion far nicer than Copacabana) then up to Largo where you can look directly up at Christ the Redeemer. Acutely aware of next years Olympics in the city we were guessing where we thought different events would take place, guessing Largo may host some of the boat races.
Day three took us up to Christ the Reedemer and it was clear why it is considered one of the modern 7 wonders of the world. Absolutely massive and incredibly high it was hard to imagine how it was sculpted and put on top of that mountain. The views from the top over the city were amazing and we were lucky to have relatively good visibility. As we descended to get onto our shuttle back down to the city the whole area clouded over and rain looked inevitable. Entertained by the monkeys jumping around the van waiting area we headed off to Lapa to see the famous Lapa steps. The Lapa Steps were started by a local mosaic artist and were incredibly detailed. Realising we should have gone on a weekend afternoon when the markets and bars were open we walked the steps before deciding to head back to the hostel.
Not quite believing that our South America journey was over we started to prepare ourselves for the east Coast of the USA. Not before a bit of airport drama! Deciding to leave 3hours earlier than necessary to share a ride with some girls we had met on our tour we again had some airport time to kill. With plenty of time before check-in closes we headed up to the desk (one of the first ones there) hand over passports (becoming quite good at this bit now) and have the check-in lady be unable to find our ticket number. Not to worry she's going to go and speak to someone more senior and find out what the problem is. 45minutes later 2 people walk back towards us at the check in desk. Word of warning - this is never good news, two people are not usually coming over to say "we've checked you in". Somewhere someone had taken us off the flight and not put us back on. The advice? Call New Zealand and ask the travel agent what to do. After tears, several Skype calls and very very anxious waiting STA travel manage to get us booked on to the flight with 1 actual minute before check-in closed. Both of us being the sort who like to be super early to airports found it quite stressful to be part of the "last call for flight XYZ" group. Krista and Emily I know that you are pros at this I don't know how you do it. Finally with arses on the seat with minutes before take off we crash out. We managed to munch what has been the best aeroplane meal we've had to date and then slept all the way to Miami! Now that's one way to kill time in an airport!
