After another 40+ hours in aeroplanes and airports, we finally arrived in South America. First stop: Buenos Aires (BA), Argentina! We spent almost a week in BA, dividing our time between San Telmo in the South and Palermo in the North. San Telmo is one of the oldest parts of the city and has some lovely antique shops and clothing stores or plazas where you can sit in the sun and drink wine or eat whatever takes your fancy. It was so nice to be in summer and out of the cold European winter! We did a few bicycle tours of the South and the North of BA to try and get our bearings as BA is truly massive! The steak is absolutely to die for and the chimi churri sauce is so yummy I wanted to send some home! Palermo is much quieter than San Telmo, and there are a lot of lovely parks that you can walk around. There are also some great bars and restaurants, including a great sushi restaurant that was so cheap! It is a very lively city with so much to see and do. You could really spend a lot of time there. But it's like everywhere, you see what you can and what you don't know doesn't hurt you! One of our favourite areas of BA was La Boca. It's quite a dangerous and poor area, but all of the houses and buildings are painted in bright greens, reds, yellows and blues! It's so lively, with people tango dancing in the street and little market stalls selling leather goods and jewellrey.
From BA we took an 18 hour bus ride to Iguazu. This was o ur first experience with South American bus rides and the rumours (if you've heard them) are true! The seats are huge and extend to almost horizontal position! They bring you wine and food and play movies. It sounds crazy, but an 18 hour journey is relaxing and is even enjoyable! Anyway, enough of the bus! Iguazu is where some of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world are found! They are on the border of Argentina and Brasil. We spent an entire day exploring the nantional park, absolutely blown away by the beauty and the massive scale of the waterfalls. There are hours and hours of nature walks that we did, which enable you to see the waterfalls from so many different perspectives! This is truly one of the most stunning natural wonders that we have ever seen. We even took a boat into the waterfalls which was so much fun! And a bit scary! Needless to say we got totally saturated! The hostel we stayed at in Iguazu was also fantastic, with a massive pool for us to sunbake by and sip on caiparhiñas! The waterfalles are in the Missiones rainforest so it is very hot and humid, but so tranquil and beautiful.
After a few days in Iguazu, we took another mammoth bus trip and went from the Northeast to the Southwest of Argentina. There (in Patagonia) you can find the beautiful Lakes District. We visited Bariloche and a beautiful town called San Martin de los Andes. As you may have guessed, the Lakes District is in the Andes, near the border of Argentina and Chile. It is like Switzerland in South America! Huge lakes surrounded by snow covered mountains, but the only thing was that it was 30 degrees! Even the buildings are like Swiss chalets and it has a very ski resort feel. We did a lot of walks and exploring in the mountains and around the lakes. We lay on beautiful almost deserted lake beaches that were like islands (the only give away that they were not were the families of ducks that occasionally swam past)! This area is also famous for it's art and crafts and gourmet foods and produce. We could have spent weeks there, but Christmas was fast approaching so it wsa time to push on after a week of relaxing! That was the last place we visited in Argentina as we were going to spend Christmas and New Years Eve in Chile!
