Well following a stellar send off for Sam and Dave I made my way on up to Iguacu Falls in the north of Argentina. I decided that seeing I only had only a few bus rides left in South America, I would splurge a little on this trip. Splurging meant that I bought a ticket on a “Cama Suite” class bus which actually entailed a lay flat seat to cater for all your sleeping pleasures. Now I know I have said it time and time again, but the busses here are bloody amazing. On the road I had my choice of free champagne, whiskey, scotch, beer etc. The only problem was that my body was in some sort of alcohol induced shock after my time in BA which physically prevented any actions even hinting towards the ordering of a beer. Damn disobedience!
The trip was fantastic. The bus dumped me off in Iguacu as fresh as a daisy. Catching a local bus out of town I checked into a massive resort style hostel called Hostel Inn. The place came kitted out with a massive pool, outdoor bar and many other mod cons unbefitting to the usual hostel. It was here that I teed up with an Aussie girl called Danielle to travel around the famed Iguacu Falls.
True to expectation, the falls did not fail to disappoint. The crowds were a little annoying however, especially to an Aussie who is used to seeing nature without too many others around. But this aside, what spectacular nature it was! The falls are truly deserving of their world heritage listing in my humble opinion. The photos I took don´t do it justice but even they are still amazing! The area around the falls is littered with gorgeous jungle which is home to a myriad of butterflies and other whacky South American creatures.
A lovely blue butterfly that settled on Danielle´s arm
Aside from the falls though, there isn´t much else to Iguacu. Needless to say that because of this my stay was short. Booking yet another bus, I traveled to the town of Salta with 3 other Aussie guys from Adelaide. These guys were all at the beginning of their trip and pretty keen to see where the fun was at. Once in Salta we teed up to rent a car together and chase that desire to rip it up and get amongst the fun stuff. The car was a great idea! With it we traveled north to the towns of Tilcara, Humahuaca and Purmamarca free to stop and run around as we pleased. The country side there was absolutely amazing. It was like it has been lifted straight from a road runner cartoon with its massive expanses, deep canyons and rugged peaks. Truly amazing.
Tom and a cactus.
Pulling up for the night in Tilcara we stayed at an awesome hostel towards the top end of town. From here we did a little trekking to check out the local sights.
I thought I´d improve my view of the surroundings by climbing a bridge...
The next day we headed off to Purmamarca and the seven coloured mountains which it is famous for. Seven coloured mountains you say, well it is pretty self explanatory stuff really. Seven colours in a mountain......It was quite visually stunning. Moving on through Purmamarca we made our way to the “salt plain”. Hmmmm, not really much on Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats I´d have to say.... The altitude at this point was over 4000m and I thought this was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the effects of altitude on your physical endurance. Foot race!
The 7 coloured hills of Purmamarca.
Haha, the newbies got the idea pretty quick! My analogy for the effects of altitude on your running is that it is like running while holding your breath, you start out strong, then you drop J. Well after my bit of fun, we chucked a few reverse owies in the car and were off. Off to get lost that was..... We pretty much crossed the border to Chile before we realised we had overshot our turn off by a long, long way..... Awesome. Taking a very scenic route back to Salta we arrived late that evening pretty happy to be done with the inside of a car.
The next day the boys and I said our goodbyes as they headed off to Chile and I made my way to Cordoba. Lucky for me I was placed next to the only other gringo on this bus. The guy´s name was Isaye, a Dutchie from good ol Hollandia. We made friends pretty quickly and soon enough we were off to the same hostel in Cordoba and just kicking it around town together. He was a bit of an adventure nut and mountain climbing was his thing. He has climbed all through Europe and was in South America for the big stuff. His interest made him the perfect partner for some adventuring as we set about mountain goating around the hillsides. We spent ages trekking up and down the hills around Cordoba just making our own way around. It was nice not having to worry about the usual abundance of animals and insects hell bent on messing up your day by killing you. This is what I usually have to deal with in Australia, but not here. If it looks like a snake, insect, whatever here you just give it the boot treatment. V. nice.
Alas, my favourite old Argentinean trick of hostels booking your beds out from under you came to get me again. This time however the stakes were raise as these bookings were made days in advance. I call this one the long jam. So instead of moving to another hostel, I made the executive decision to head for Buenos Aires again to see out my last few days there before heading home.
I´m going to say this now because I can.... I am so over Buenos Aires and the Argentinean way of making just everything that much harder for you each and every day. As my days came to an end in South America, there was a slight amount of relief that I was leaving just for this reason. I think a classic example of how everything just didn´t go my way was my trip to the Santa Terresa theme park. I had heard of this park from some girls in Cusco Peru. It is the world’s first religious theme park and ranks an impressive 12 out of 10 in the absurdly stupid polls. Apparently they have a 40ft mechanical Jesus that they raise on the hour every hour just so the crowd can see his some 36 independent movements! Now that is something that was not too be missed! Well, apparently a friggin mechanical Jesus doesn´t work on Mondays. Sunday is a-okay though.... The irony of the situation was that this was the one time I actually have gone out of my way to see Jesus and he had stiffed me. Plus he left me with a 100 Peso round trip taxi fare for my troubles. And the good guy award goes too....
The day I arrived in BA, there were celebrations for the new president elect all the way from Parliament House (shown) to Congress.
But bitterness aside, my time came and I was off to the airport. To my surprise there was some 10 others from my hostel catching the same flight as me and taking advantage of this we all banded together to book a shuttle bus. Unfortunately our bus driver was a rather simple bloke who didn´t realise the urgency of having to be at the airport at a certain time. He kept picking people up and loafing around as we soon became an hour late for planned arrival time. The guy I was sitting next to on the bus decided, amongst his fits of peaking out, it was necessary to stress how important it was that we “hurried the f@ck up” to the driver. So looking around the bus he asked who spoke Spanish. Getting responses like “a little”, he decided that he would take it upon himself to do the speaking with his Spanish. The conversation went a little like this: “Amigo...... (and in English) we are running late, can you hurry up”. I couldn´t contain my laughter! Apparently you can speak Spanish as long as your first word is amigo! Well, for the rest, English is fine, they understand.... From here it was “Amigo, do you have any musica?” quickly followed by “Amigo....Do you have any other musica?” and so on and so forth. At least this lightened the mood as in the end we barely made it to the airport on time. I made my plane with 2 minutes to spare which was a little too close for my liking.
And so it is. It is back to the grand old land that is Australia and goodbye to all my mates and travels. Depressing really.
