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Tegan & Ingrid's world adventure

Spanish, Tango and meat, meat and more meat.

ARGENTINA | Saturday, 18 February 2012 | Views [1329]

Hola from Argentina!

Here we are back in the Southern Hemisphere and the heat. After the past three months of winter weather with not a day over 15 degrees it was a bit of a shock to the system to arrive in hot and humid Buenos Aires. But after a few days of having your clothes stick to you with sweat within 30 seconds of walking out of your door we got kind of used to it. I still wouldn’t say I enjoy it but hey, it felt a little more like being home in Melbourne than the cold winter of New York.

As we have mentioned in earlier posts South America is the only continent on this trip that we have never previously travelled to so everything was new and we really knew nothing about what we wanted to do once we arrived. The extent of our plans when we got off that plane in Buenos Aires was that we had booked an apartment for the first week of our stay and had Spanish classes each afternoon for two hours. We thought it wise to do our best to learn the basics as quickly as possible and we were right. One thing we have quickly realised is that South America has the biggest language barrier we have come across. Even when travelling in Asia and not knowing a word of the local language it is still easier than here. I’m not exactly sure why that is, maybe it’s that I have been travelling in Asia for years and am just used to it or maybe it’s the fact that almost every country down here speaks one language that I don’t understand and that is daunting or maybe it’s a combination of a lot of different factors. Either way, it came down to the fact that it took less than a day for Tegan & I to realise that we wanted to learn as much Spanish as we could whilst we were here. So like I said we had two hours of Spanish courses each day. It was basically a crash course to teach us basic phrases handy to travellers rather than actually starting at the beginning with grammar lessons as you would when usually learning a new language. We quickly learnt how to read and order from a menu, how to ask for directions, phrases needed when shopping, how to express how we are feeling and basic personal introductions. This at least set us on the right track. We still of course find it almost impossible to understand what someone is saying to us unless it is a direct answer or question we have learnt during our lessons but with time I’m sure we’ll understand more, plus we have been told repeatedly by other travellers that Argentinians have the most difficult accent to understand of all the Spanish speaking South American countries. So we have taken comfort in the fact that “it will get easier.” (We hope!)

Before our lessons each day we spent some time exploring the city. Buenos Aires has a distinctly European feel to the city. It is a bustling metropolis with a real blend of old and new architecture throughout. We quickly acquired a taste for the local foods such as delicious meat Empanadas and amazing Argentinian steaks called ‘Bife de Lomo’ and ‘Bife de Chorizo’. In fact Tegan & I both agree that some of the best steaks we have ever had we have eaten in Argentina. Argentinian's just love their meat. They eat basically EVERY part of a cow. They love it all. We also discovered an amazing condiment to meats the Argentinians love called ‘Chimi Churi’, a mixture of peppers, spices, oils and vinegars that is just heavenly. During that first week we also enjoyed a Tango show. We went to a show recommended by my sister, Erica who travelled to Argentina two years ago. The dancers were brilliant as were the musicians and singer/MC. Definitely a worthwhile 100 pesos spent. We also got to celebrate Chinese New Year in the tiny Buenos Aires Chinatown region with some music, markets & performances.

For that first week of our stay we were staying fairly close to the central city area so it was easy to walk pretty much everywhere we wanted to get to such as our Spanish classes, dinner at a local steak restaurant, supermarkets, the new harbour area, the famous plaza area and beautiful government building and of course some inner-city shopping. For the few places that were too far to walk we caught the “Subte” subway system or the local buses. These were neighbourhoods like the coloured houses of La Boca, the Antiques market, shops and cobblestone streets of San Telmo and the cemetery and craft market of Recoleta. We found it really easy to use the local public transport system once we learnt a few simple phrases of Spanish. The only issue with the buses was that they only accept coins and Argentinian coins are ridiculously hard to come by. In fact Argentinians pretty much have a generally fairly screwed up currency system. Their largest note is 100 pesos about the equivalent of $25 but try and pay with 100 pesos and most places will give you a devil stare! Even if what you are buying is more than 50 pesos. Also if you need coins as part of your change they just won’t give it to you and much of the time will just round up or down to the nearest note available and give you that instead. Therefore making it extremely difficult to gather coins for the buses! Apparently there is even a black market here for coins. Where people actually offer for you to buy bags of coins at 10% more than what the coins are worth just so you have change. There are conspiracy theories rolling around that this black market is actually run by the very transport companies that provide the buses for which you need the coins in the first place! Ridiculous system if you ask me.  

After a week in the busy hot city we decided a beach break was in order. An easy 1 hour ferry ride away from Buenos Aires and you can visit the gorgeous old Uruguayan town of Colonia. A cute old town with cobblestone streets, lovely old buildings including the still standing fort walls and some great beaches. We really enjoyed a couple of days chilling out in this town. But it’s not the place for great nightlife so it was back to Buenos Aires and on to neighbourhood of Palermo for us. We had heard this was the place to be to enjoy some Argentine nightlife and they were right. We stayed in a particularly social hostel and made some great friends who we spent some time eating and drinking with in the evenings. We also had one of the best steak meals we’d ever eaten thanks again to a great recommendation from my sister. Whilst we were in Palermo we also took some time out of the city with an hour train ride to the riverside town of Tigre for a relaxing walk along the riverbanks in this lovely Argentine summer haven.

Something we were not so pleasantly surprised by in Buenos Aires were the prices. We had heard that South America was cheap but really from what we found Buenos Aires was definitely not what we would call cheap. We spoke to quite a few travellers who indeed confirmed that even in the last two years prices in Argentina have risen quite dramatically. It’s quickly becoming an unaffordable destination for budget backpackers in South America which is really quite sad as it is such a beautiful city with so much to offer the international backpacker. Still we managed to find some affordable food with a little searching and were told once we left the capital things would become considerably cheaper. We were looking forward to that after the rather large chunk of our budget Buenos Aires ate in to. 

After numerous recommendations from different people on what to do with our three weeks before we were due to arrive in Brazil we eventually decided to head north and purchased a couple of bus tickets on to our first northern destination of Cordoba.

 

 

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