Buenos Aires 2 and the road ahead

The past couple of days we had our hands full exploring Buenos Aires. Like I said in the previous post; this city is absolutely amazing!

Yesterday we didn´t quite do as much as we planned. We moved to a different area of town and a new hostel. We also booked some flights, got something to eat and then took a little bit of a nap. We left everything for the evening! We decided that we would see what the night life was like. Turns out it works a bit different from South Africa. Firstly everybody planning on going out goes to sleep early. Between 8PM and 11PM the streets are pretty quiet. There are a few restaurants or cafés open, but that´s about it. Then everybody starts crawling out of the woodwork at about 1AM! Many of the clubs only opens at 2AM! From there on it´s partying until sunrise and then of to bed to about 9AM or 10AM when the day starts.

We WALKED about 35 blocks to get to the area where all the restobars and clubs are located. Most of the places were still closed or not open on Tuesdays (the rest day, it looks like). We finally found a plaza similar to parts of Stellenbosch with lots of bars and quite a lot of people just after midnight. Here we drank a few beers, before catching a taxi back to the hostel, utterly exhausted at about 2AM.

Today we first finalized our plans for the next couple of days. And then, with yesterday´s LONG walk still freshly implanted in our minds and tired bodies, we did it again! Crazy...

We decided to check out Palermo, a really upperclass area. It is filled with massive parks, lined with trees, designer shops and SO many statues and monuments we grew tired of taking photos!

Our first stop was the Buenos Aires Zoo. It was very cheap to get in and reasonably interesting. It did have many of the South American animals, a very impressive constrictor collection (pythons, boas and all the other squeezy snakes) and a superb collection of butterflies, beetles, scarabs and other creepy crawlies (they were all dead and stuck to a board though).

dude, it´s a llama!

From here we strolled through one of the parks to the Japanese Botanical Garden. This was really nice and we took a well-deserved pitstop here.

Next stop, Recoleta. This fancy neighbourhood is similar to Palermo, but has even more skyscrapers, statues and monuments. The goal of this excursion was the Cementerio de la Recoleta. This necropolis is were all the ultra rich and powerful spend in eternal rest. It is an experience walking through the streets lined with massive crypts, adorned with as much marble and statues as possible. The highlight is supposed to be the Evita Peron´s grave, but it would be shame to go straight there and skip the others.

our way back to the hostel we stopped at the Hard Rock Café for a quick chopp (basically a draught) and then it was all the way to the hostel. Again utterly exhausted! We did get some very good por kilo dinner, three knives and three forks (they only come in threes or twelves) at a big supermarket.

I recently got the first batch of probably many bites and there is an especially bad one on my ankle and the front of my foot. It is quite swollen. It is annoying when walking, but it will probably be OK in a day or two.

We had to purchase our flight for the next part of the trip in advance to keep costs as low as possible and hopefully everything goes smoothly or we could end up stranded somewhere in Patagonia (the south of South America). Everything should be fine, did a lot of planning but still, you never know before you get there.

Tomorrow we fly to Ushuaia, the southern most point of Argentina. It is going to be a LOT colder there, which would be a nice change. The average temperature for February is about 8 degrees celcius. There we will stay a few days and explore the town and the Tierra del Fuego National Park. From there we catch a bus through Rio Gallegos to El Calafate. El Calafate is the hub from where you explore the Perito Moreno Glacier. This should be really impressive. Then we fly back to Beunos Aires where we have to spend the night waiting or sleeping at the airport before we fly of the Bariloche, a little town in the Argentinean lake district. We should arrive there on the 15th of February.

Cheers,

Neil