Back in Buenos Aires

Back in Buenos Aires and it feels like being home. The wine and the steaks taste great. The Brazilian-fried-everything-with-added-salt just can't compete.

The bus to Sao Paolo from Curitiba was pretty long - a 6 hour bus trip extended to 8 hours because of a blown-out tyre. They take it out of you, but I'm sure they're going to get a lot longer. I can't say the 15-24 bus journeys in the south of Argentina and Chile look too appealing.

We arrived at Sao Paolo yesterday and got a taxi to the other side of the city, where we met up with an old friend of mine from uni - Stef. By the time we got there it was 8pm and we hadn't eaten all day. So it was food, quick catch-up and then bed before a 5am start and heading to the airport and back to Buenos Aires.

Being in Buenos Aires feels like being back in Europe. I think we are appreciating it much more having travelled around a bit (although we still have 16 weeks to go!) It's nice to be able to understand a bit more of the language (we didn't really make much effort with the Portuguese in Brazil - I'm attempting to cram Spanish as much as possible instead).

We had a great time in Brazil - Ilha do Mel was nice, as was Morretes. But, it looks like we're going to try and change our flights and head back home from Bogota, Colombia rather than fly back to Rio. This'll mean that once we're in Patagonia we'll be heading north until we hit the Caribbean rather than trying to do a circle and cover a unmanageable distance. It just seems to make sense that way.

We'll see.

(View of our hostel in Morretes, Parana surrounded by the Atlantic rainforest)

PS Last week we saw one of these

Morretes

Currently in a really nice little town up in the mountains of the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil called Morretes - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morretes.

Tomorrow it's back to Curitiba and then to Sao Paolo.

Pretty tired.

Day 2 of Iguazu - and more

Ilha do Mel

Currently in Brazil on our last full day on an island called Ilha do Mel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paran%C3%A1_%28state%29). It`s been a good place to take it easy, do some sun-bathing, get sun-burnt and watch season one of The Wire.

We arrived after a 10-hour bus from Foz do Iguacu and one of the most beautiful train journeys ever - from Curitiba to a small town called Morretes. The train teeters on the edge of massive canyons and makes its way a through the Atlantic rainforest. As you can imagine the views were spectacular.

Ilha do Mel is fairly remote - we had to get a local bus to the port town of Paranagua and then take a two-hour boat to the island.

The island itself is lovely - long sandy beaches, no cars and very little to do a part from sunbathe and swim against the monumental waves. But the food is over-priced and not particularly great - lots of pizza and fried food. It's great place to stay for a few days but we're happy to be moving on.

Iguazu Falls
Rewind to about 5 days ago - Iguazu managed to completely live up to and exceed expectations. Despite the distance we travelled to get there, the preceding hype of the falls and the huge influx of tourists, the Argentine and Brazilian falls were both spectacular in different ways.

The Argentine falls allowed you to walk all around and over some parts of the falls, witnessing the huge volume of water flowing; whilst the Brazilian falls were more of an up-close experience where you could feel the full power of the water! They were quite different - with the Brazilian side revealing another whole section of the falls that we hadn`t realised were there! We spent quite a bit of time at the Gargenta del diablo (Devil`s throat), which

was intense (and drenching).

Day 1 of Iguazu

Some highlights from day 1.

More to follow...(internet connection permitting). We're off to the Brazilian side now.

Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina

The Jesuit ruins at Trinidad and Jesus were definitely worth the trip over to Paraguay for. Beautiful ruins surrounded by stunning scenery stretching off into the distance.

Paraguay, on the whole, is a funny place (or at least the little we saw of it). Blonde hair and blues eyes mixed in with people of local guarani origin. Strangely there's also quite a high Asian population, even a Japanese restaurant. The sushi was pretty good. The Yaki soba, however, tasted like instant noodles. Worth a try.

Paraguay feels a little neglected and the city of Encarnacion, where we've stayed the past couple of nights, feels more like a small town. There's not a lot to do here a part from visit the missions on the outskirts. The Jesuit ruins were completely deserted - especially the one at Jesus, where we were the only people there. It's great to come to a place where there are no other tourists!

Having seen the ruins we decided to head north through Paraguay rather than back to Argentina and onto Iguazu Falls and take the local bus. The 5-hour trip cost us a quarter what it would in Argentina (about £5). However, the checkpoint and bridge between Paraguay and Brazil was a bit of a nightmare. We started out getting a bus, but abandoned that about a mile from the checkpoint as the traffic was so bad and caught a taxi instead across the bridge into Brazil.

We had a brief 20-minute Brazilian introduction as we were driven through Foz do Iguacu at high speed and onto the border with Argentina and Puerto Iguazu - stamped in and out again within 30 minutes - 3 countries in 30 minutes.

Puerto Iguazu, as you might expect is quite touristy, but appears much nicer than Foz. Looking forward to the falls tomorrow.

So far...

So it's been a week since we arrived but it feels a lot longer.

Paraguay

We've packed a lot in, visiting three different countries in that time - Argentina, Uruguay and now Paraguay.

We're currently in a place called Encarnacion, on the boarder with Argentina. It's pretty non-de-script, which is completely different to the impression we had got from the guidebook, which had made out that it was amazing. We were expecting a colonial town with cobbled streets, churches and beautiful plazas. Instead we got concrete buildings, tacky signs and the feeling that no one really wanted to live there. The hostel was great (cheap and clean) but there wasn't enough to really keep us there any longer than necessary.

However, before Paraguay, this is what we've got up to:

Esteros del Ibera (Argentina)

We got up at 5.30 am this morning and hitched a lift (for 50 pesos!!) out of a beautiful nature reserve in the north of Argentina called - Esteros del Iberia.

View Larger Map).

It's a pretty remote place, which we got to on a beaten-up old bus along a dirt road, through flatlands and pampas, passing all sorts of strange animals. It also was pretty much off the gringo trail. It seems more tourists miss it out and head straight up to Iguazu Falls, which is about 6 or 7 hours north by bus.

Getting here was well worth it - an hour after we had arrived we were on a little boat getting up close to crocodiles and capybaras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara) and other weird creatures and practising our bad Spanish on the ranger and the other guy on the boat - an Argentine version of Crocodile Dundee.

Colonia del Sacremento

We had spent a few days previously in a colonial town called Colonia del Sacremento, just across the water from Buenos Aires in Uruguay. It's a fortified old town which we got to by boat - just a couple of hours from Argentina.

The town itself was pretty touristy but extremely relaxed and the hot weather can't fail to make you feel great. The highlight was lying in the central plaza, looking up and seeing two hummingbirds directly in the tree above me.

We also found ourselves engaging in a conversation with a group from Texans - "The problem with the UK is there is just too much immigration". Yikes! We had our first try of mate - which was interesting. Definitely will take some getting used to...or not.

Travel dilemmas

We were back in Buenos Aires that evening, having only just caught the ferry (turns out the clocks change in Uruguay).

Once again we found ourselves flicking through the guidebook trying to work out our route around South America. This had a number of problems - namely we haven't booked anything other than our airfare out of Rio and there are too many options to choose from. We keep changing our minds every couple of hours / beers.

There's also the element of cost. Argentina is expensive and trying to book flights or boats from one place is costly.

It's also beginning to dawn on us how massive South America is - the road from Buenos Aires to Mercedes, for example, took just over 8 hours and we arrived at 2 in morning! It's less than a inch on the map!!

Where next?

We're going to stay in Paraguay for a couple of days and go and see the Jesuit communities a little further north. They were the subject of the film staring Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro - The Mission. Great film.

However, there doesn't appear to be much else to do in Paraguay, so it'll be onto Iguazu falls on Friday / Saturday and then across to Brazil.

This could all change though...

Make up your mind

Today has been a day of decisions. Where are we going to go on this trip? What are we going to do?

It's looking likely that we are going to bunk off the language school. Buenos Aires is great but there is so much else to see - a whole continent and it feels like it would be wasted spending too much time here. It feels very European and affluent. Not exactly what we imagined South America to be like but a great place to see all the same. It's difficult to know exactly which direction we are going to go.

It's been a fairly productive day. We've booked a ferry over to Colonia del Sacremento in Uruguay for tomorrow. Lunchtime was spent drinking wine, watching tango and then planning a trip which is only now feeling like it is actually happening. It'll be interesting to see what we eventually do.

Some things about Buenos Aires:

1. They sell Nerds - I remember these from when I was younger, but they don't seem to sell them in England anymore
2. Rush hour in another country is just as bad as back in London (the Subte is hot and no one talks - a couple of drinks helps the experience of being packed in with a load of Argentine commuters)
3. The smell of food is amazing - steak, bread, etc
4. Palermo feels like Paris.

Arrived in Buenos Aires

So here starts the first blog from the South American travels blog. Whether it will be updated regularly or not remains to be seen.

Just got into Buenos Aires after a pretty bumpy flight and a change in Sao Paulo where we stayed on the plane while the cleaning ladies cleaned around us. Sat next to a lady who wrote for the Times.

It's 12.30pm and I'm absolutely starving. But just wanted to say - first impression of BA is that it smells of freshly cut grass and feels pretty European.