After leaving Puerto Natales we
travelled 12 hours to get to Ushuaia, the southernmost town in South
America and the point from which the rich people go on trips to
Antarctica. We expected Ushuaia to be cold and windy and wild, just
like the end of Earth should be, however we were a little
disappointed. The hostel we stayed in (Hostel Freestlye) was really
good. New and clean with a really huge room that you could lounge
around in, listen to music or play pool. The National Park near
Ushuaia is Tierra del Fuego and this is largely the reason people go
to Ushuaia. So we went there and (whoopy!) did some more walking.
Tierra del Fuego was nice but was like a poor man's Torres del Paine.
There were less trails, smaller mountains, less impressive lakes and
no really amazing views. But, still it was good to see it for
ourselves. From Ushuaia we wanted to go straight to Buenos Aires.
To save us a coach journey that would have taken 2 days, we decided
to fly. Much quicker and not really that much more expensive.
So Buenos Aires. We got in late and
spent the first night in a fairly crap, over-priced hostel. The next
day we went to the centre of BA (that's what they call it here) to
find somewhere better and we got really lucky. We went to a
well-established hostel called Milhouse which had recently opened up
a new hostel on the next block. The place looked like a hotel
inside. It had a big bar, brand new pool table, big TV and lovely
rooms, so we happily spent the next few nights there, and thanks to
some birthday money from mum and dad we even managed to pay for a few
nights in a private room. Staying in a dorm in BA is not that much
fun considering how late people stay out. BA was really nice. We
met up with a couple we met at the animal sanctuary (hello Gui and
Kelly!), we went on some long walks around the city, ate a lot of
cheap pizza, saw a few crappy sites and some good ones, had a
fantastic steak and chips dinner and to top it off the weather was
fantastic! Where did we visit? Well on one day which resulted in a
particularly long walk, we saw the unimpressive dock, the even more
unimpressive imitation Big Ben, the amazing Recoleta Cemetery and a
Japanese garden. The cemetery was really good. The town's rich
people have had big sarcophagi and statues built here for many years
and the result is a cemetery that looks like a tiny town of tiny
houses. It's really very odd. Unfortunately this long walk of mixed
value also resulted in us being very sunburned as it had looked
cloudy when we left and didn't bother to put any sun lotion on –
Big Mistake! A few days later we went to La Boca one of the supposed
slums of BA, however, this place is so touristy now it can hardly be
called a slum. The coloured houses were pretty nice and Dave enjoyed
the pre-football match excitement.
From BA we got a long 18 hour bus
journey to Puerto Iguazu. Time to see another one of the big reasons
for coming to South America – Iguazu Falls. Puerto Iguazu is a
nice little town and we both really enjoyed the feeling of being back
in the jungle. The hostel (Residencial Uno) had a swimming pool
which was a welcome relief from the heat, plus seven fluffy and fat
little puppies which is a bonus for anyone. The next day we set off
for Parque Nacional Iguazu, which apparently has more to offer than
just waterfalls but like everyone else we didn't bother to find out
what. The first trail shows you the waterfalls from a distance and
the view is brilliant. You get quite close to some of the waterfalls
and some people enjoyed getting saturated by their spray. The next
trail takes you across the top of these waterfalls and you really get
a sense of how huge the rivers are that are feeding in to them. The
park has a little train that we got on to take us to the piece de
resistance Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's throat). This waterfall
is ginormous and really, really loud, we had to shout at each other
to hear ourselves. Although we had done well so far, there was no
avoiding the spray from this waterfall and we both got pretty wet, me
more so than Dave as he kept using me to block the water. The fall
was also so big it seemed to create its own wind and a girl waved
goodbye to her hat as it was swept off of her head and into the
froth. The falls were really very impressive and it was definitely
well worth the trip. The next day we bid farewell to the puppies and
got a bus across the border into Brazil.
