Buenos dias Buenos Aires, part two. Time to say goodbye

Our journey back to Buenos Aires is miraculously on time, and gives us time to shower and change before Bonne Maman treats us to dinner and a tango show. We have much needed G&T, red wine and good food before the dancers come on and do their thing. The movement of their bodies, the story they tell, the costumes and the way they dance is just outstanding.













This particular blog is a story of goodbyes. Having done a quick shop in the morning for the essential dulce de leche and empanada pastries, Bonne Maman and I have a teary goodbye before she heads off to the airport. Vicks and I have a lazy day and chilled out movie watching evening, then on her last day (sob) we do a bus tour of the city, stoping at La Poesia, our favourite bar for a spot of lunch.




And then it's off for our final supper and a lovely bottle of fizz (a parting gift from Vicky), a bit of dancing (both in the flat and on the balcony) and a lot of hugging.


Vicks gets up with me at 5am to say goodbye. She has been the best travel buddy and I've loved every minute of our wonderful adventure together - apart from the hospital admission, during which she was absolutely brilliant. I know I'll miss her terribly, but well be reunited in a month and Jess Veale awaits me in Peru.

La Isolina - heaven IS a place on earth

Racing to the bus station, trying to keep Mum and Vicky calm. 'Chillax, it's Argentina - the bus will be late'. We get to the bus station with 15 minutes to spare. No sign of our bus, until we see a bus from the company we've booked with leaving the depot. Off to customer services, who eventually ascertain that the bus is late. An hour and a half late. No matter. We're on the bus soon enough and six hours later, we arrive in Olavarria.

The lovely Maria meets us at the bus station and takes us to the estancia, La Isolina. We are immediately wowed. It's stunning. We're invited to take a seat and have a glass of wine and some nibbles before going in for dinner. Maria's family are staying too, and they are absolutely lovely. The food is to die for and Mum spend the entire trip pestering Maria to write a cook book.




La Isolina







Maria's beautiful family (with apologies to Eugenia for not being in this photo!)

The following morning, we're up and about for a leisurely horse ride across the pampas with Jorge, Maria's husband. Jorge speaks French, as does Bonne Maman, so they get on famously. I ride Chimanga, who will become 'my' horse for the duration of our stay and he is brilliant, but my god, he loves to eat!









We ride out every day, most days twice a day, topping up our tans, going faster and faster as we get more comfortable on the horses and spending the interim period eating and lazing by the pool.


On Saturday, we have the most wonderful barbecued lunch, where we all help ourselves to various pieces of beef and sit under the trees. The black pudding is to die for.












On our last afternoon, we all gallop back to the estancia and have our pictures taken on horseback on the lawn, before Mum and I go for a walk around the grounds and get some last minute hammock photos. Chimanga has a tear falling from his eye as I say goodbye to him, and this nearly sets me off as well, he's been such a good horse.












Sadly, all too soon it's time to say goodbye, after four amazing days of riding, eating, and properly relaxing. We head back to Buenos Aires for the final part of Vicks and my grand adventure. Jorge and Maria have been the most wonderful, attentive, inclusive hosts, and we have had the best time at their estancia. I hope to return again soon!

Buenos dias Buenos Aires - part one.

At the airport we jump in a taxi and whizz past loads of big memorials to previous Argentine generals and various wars. Must not mention the Falklands, must not mention the Falklands....the taxi driver asks where we are from, and we tell him 'Londres', though I am quite tempted to say 'Australia'. It takes us forty minutes to check in to our hostel as the guy at reception is new, but he's cute and friendly, so we forgive him. It takes a further ten minutes, and the help of a friendly Aussie, to find our room. The hostel is in a huge building of faded grandeur, and our room is obviously one of the maids quarters, but at least we have a private room.

We head out shopping the following morning. We get on the bus to Palermo, and can't pay, as buses only take coins, which are surprisingly hard to come by. So, we feign ignorance nod travel for free. Vicky and Helen 1 - City of Buenos Aires 0. Palermo is lovely and Vicks instantly decides this is where we're staying when we come back from the Estancia. We walk for miles, my shoes start to rub, and eventually we stop off for lunch, before heading to the cemetery where we have a guided tour and make the obligatory stop off at the tomb of Eva 'don't cry for me Argentina' Peron.




That evening, we head out to a tango lesson, followed by dinner, unlimited wine and a tango show. As about 50 of us, majority female, stand in the room where we are to learn tango, I can't help reflecting that maybe the unlimited wine BEFORE the tango lesson would have made everyone a it more relaxed. We learn the basic steps, and both Vick and I are called to the front of the class to show 'em how its done.







The show afterwards is spectacular, and having bonded with several other people over tango and wine, I head off to the sister hostel of ours to drink and dance. I have a vague recollection of dancing the tango in the street with strangers, and being sick on my shoes, and Vicky tells me I wake her up coming in at 3am. Needless to say, we have a very chilled out Sunday.

We wander up to La Boca on Monday, before finding our favourite bar in Buenos Aires, La Poesia. With several glasses of Malbec under our belt, and having made a few new friends, we head off to a tango bar. We dance a bit of tango, drink some more and then decide to head back to our hostel. We have a very chilled out Tuesday.




Plan A - spend the day exploring Buenos Aires. Plan B - get drunk on Malbec.



Wednesday morning dawns bright and early, and I'm off to the airport to pick up Bonne Maman, who had decided to come and see her darling daughter for a week. The airport is chaos, like the tube at rush hour, fortunately, I am used to the tube and can elbow it with the best of them. Bonne Maman comes out, we have our 'Love, Actually' airport moment and I take her back to the hostel, clocking that she's packing Bollinger - hurrah! We go empanada making, which is (as with everything in this city) fuelled by Malbec and hosted by yet another reception hottie, who insists on calling my mother Mama, and tells us we can make willy shaped empanada should we so wish. HELLO, I'm with my mother......In the freestyle empanada making contest, Vicks makes a bear, and I make Christ the Redeemer, and we both win a cocktail. Yay, us!












That evening, we take Maman to the best steak restaurant in Buenos Aires and eat meat to die for, which some poor cow of course did, but the sacrifice was worth it. As one of the girls at reception in our hostel says, 'Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.'







Maman has coped remarkably well with an overnight flight from London, and spending all day in Buenos Aires, but we eventually call it a night and prepare ourselves for the six hour coach journey to Olavarria and our estancia stay.

Igauzu Falls - more water than you could ever imagine.

Checking in at Rio, we meet an American couple who are heading the same way as us and agree to spend the afternoon on the Brazilian side of the falls before heading to our separate hotels. Trouble looms when our taxi driver who takes us to the falls tells the Americans that they need to have paid $160 and have printed proof of this before we can cross the border. They don't have this, and are most put out. We agree we will go to the falls and then head back to the airport to sort out their paperwork before we cross into Argentina.

The falls are most impressive and there is a variety of wildlife to keep us entertained as we undertake the two hour walk around.










Then it starts chucking it down. The rainforest lives up to its name. We get soaked to the skin. Fortunately, our taxi driver is unperturbed, and after a brief sojourn at the airport to sort the Americans out, we are on our way to the Argentine border.

The river is the border between Brazil and Argentina, with the Brazilian flag painted along half the bridge, and the Argentine flag on the other half. I'm quite nervous about this border crossing, as animosity between Britain and Argentina is high, but the tension is relieved when the American lady tells us her daughter is studying 'cock' in Central America (after fits of giggles from us, and pursed lips from her, we ascertain she means conch). The border crossing is drive thru, we don't even get out of the car, and pretty soon, we're ensconced in the luxury that is Loi Suites.





We have the most amazing steak and Malbec for dinner, then prep ourselves for a soggy day on the Argentine side of the falls.

It rains. All day. It's a bit like being at home. We see the amazing falls, and using the adage "if you're going to get wet, might as well go swimming", we take a boat right into the falls.








Now we are literally soaked to the skin, but it was worth it to see the awesome power of all that water. We decide to take the little train up to what is considered the most impressive part of the falls, the Devils Throat. It's a kilometre trek on a metal bridge out over increasingly fast flowing water, but it's so worth it. In spite of the rain, the might of the tons and tons of water falling and creating massive clouds of spray and the birds seemingly flying out of the water is jaw dropping.









Heading back to Loi, soaking wet and looking forward to a hot shower, we agree that we're really pleased we added this detour to our trip. However, we're also in dire need of some sunshine, and look forward to the following day, and our flight to Buenos Aires.

Location:On the border - Brazil and Argentina

Brazil - party central!

Things Brazilians are brilliant at: 1) partying 2) carnival (see point 1) 3) samba (see points 1 and 2) 4) the body beautiful 5) thong bikinis 6) making caipirinhas

Things they are not so good at: 1) salads 2) queuing 3) being quiet, especially when rocking in from carnival at 5am.

We love Rio. FACT. On arrival, we pop up to the bar on the roof of our hotel, for 'just the one', to find that England are playing Brazil. We proceed to have three caipirinhas, which the barman liberally tops up with cachaca on an ad hoc basis, while watching the game. At the end, I fall off my chair, but its unclear as to whether this is because England beat Brazil, or due to the cocktails.

Needless to say, we have a lazy day on Ipanema beach after this topping up the tan, before heading out on a tour the following day to see the sights of Rio. Our tour guide, Mabel, takes no prisoners and by 9:30am we are in the queue for the cable car up to Sugarloaf mountain.







Feeding monkeys on Sugarloaf. Rabies alert!

The cathedral inside is pretty cool, then we all head for lunch where every one gets a bit more chatty after shots of cachaca from the ten litre bottle.









After lunch, we head up to Christ the Redeemer. Mabel has a cat fight with the lady responsible for getting people up to the Christ, and the whole tour group launches into a rendition of 'this is how we do it' on the drive up, much to the amusement of the driver, and possibly something to do with the lunchtime cachaca. Up at the statue, it's hot, hot, hot, and very busy, so having taken the obligatory 'arms out' shot, we head back into town.





Usually when writing this blog, I'd use my photos as an aide memoir, but I often left the camera behind, as everyone told us we'd be mugged in Rio (we weren't). Therefore, I am sadly unable to show you pictures of the rather wonderful Brazilian national dish of feijoada - black bean and pork stew, served with rice, very garlicky spinach and manioc flour. This fortified us for our trip to carnival that evening, which fortunately I did take the camera to.

Ahhhh, carnival. The whole city goes bat shit insane, and looks like one big hen/stag party - men in skirts, whole groups dressed as pints of lager and both sexes in wedding veils. We can't get on the Metro at our nearest stop, so have to surreptitiously follow the locals to one we can have access, where the queue is bout an hour long. We are saved by a man who does us a massive favour and sells us two tube tickets at a mark up that we are happy to pay to avoid the queue. The tube ride itself is wild, everyone sings, dances and bangs on the ceiling in time to the drum that someone has helpfully bought with him.

We're finally in the Sambadrome by 9ish, just as the first parade starts. It is amazing, indescribable, a riot of colour and music and costume, and honestly ranks as one of the best nights of my life. Some snapshots are below:
















By 3am we are ready to call it a night, having danced and drank for several hours.

The next couple of days are spent topping up the tan on a very busy Copacabana beach and eating wonderful crepes and great Mexican food in Ipanema (there is only so much Brazilian food one can eat) before we move on to the peace and tranquility of Igazu.

San Pedro de Atacama and Bolivia

Well Toto, I guess we're not in Santiago anymore. San Pedro de Atacma is a dusty little town with no paved roads and a certain amount of charm. It's the gateway for our three day trip to Bolivia to see the Uyuni salt flats. But first, we have sandboarding and a trip to the Valley of the Moon to undertake.

I tried snowboarding once. I lasted three minutes. I fell and banged my knee and decided there and then that I intensely dislike winter sports and would never ski or snowboard again. I had hoped that sandboarding would be better. It was hot after all. I could get a tan. And then I had to climb a sand dune at altitude with my board, and that alone nearly killed me. Heading down the dune took longer than coming up it and involved an disagreement with the instructor as to whether or not what he was asking me to do was even possible, according to the laws of physics. I retired gracefully.



The Valley of the Moon was much better. We were taken to salt caves and a lunar landscape before another climb to a vantage point to see the sunset with a glass or two of Pisco sours.




Salty.








We awake at ridiculous o'clock the following morning for our journey to Bolivia. We have been told to bring lots of water, but also that there are no toilets (go figure) and that the accommodation is basic. It is therefore with some trepidation that we cross the Chile/Bolivia border.




The landscape is incredible. There's nothing for miles, apart from llamas. We stop at many lagoons, and get to have a swim in a natural hot pool, which is like bath water.








Our group is lovely, and after some llama spotting by another lagoon, we retire to our accommodation for the evening.





Unfortunately, we're 4,800 metres above sea level and the temperature outside is dropping below freezing. The altitude sickness is starting to kick in and we all feel a little grotty, so it's an early night in our dorm.

Still not feeling brilliant in the morning, we leave to see some rocks in the dest. Sounds wild, doesn't it? They're pretty spectacular though.









Yet another lagoon trip beckons, but this one is full of wild flamingoes.




All the little dots in the background are flamingoes too.







Our tour group.

We spend a thankfully warmer night at a more sensible altitude the next evening, before heading to Uyuni and the salt flats the next day. They are like nothing I have ever seen before. Tens of thousands of square metres of salt, covered with a inch or so of water because its the rainy season, creates a giant mirror, reflecting the sky, the mountains and us when we play in the water.













After Uyuni, the tour is all over and we head back to San Pedro, glossing over a brief overnight stop at the place we stayed on the first night. It was a great trip, we met some wonderful people and the salt flats were amazing, but it was tiring, having to pee behind a jeep was no fun and we are desperate for a shower.

Fully restored, and still having a day left in San Pedro, we head out to their salt flats, which are dry, to get some silly pictures and swim/float in the salt lake, which is awesome.










On leaving San Pedro, we pop back to Santiago for a brief overnight stay before our early morning flight to Rio.