Argentina

Argentina! What a great introduction to South America! Where do I start? Well, we flew from Fort Lauderdale to Buenos Aires, an overnight flight via Bolivian Airlines. This meant that we had a slight layover in Bolivia, however it didn't allow us enough time to leave the airport. Also we quickly realized that most people did not know any English, so we had to rely on my not-so-fluent attempts at speaking Spanish to get us through our flight delays and gate changes.

Day #1: Despite a few struggles, we made it to our first destination in Buenos Aires. Bianca was a little under the weather due to spending the last three days at Holy Ship, which is an EDM Cruise, so I started the morning alone on a free walking tour I had seen advertised at our hostel: Sabatico Traveler’s Hostel.

Our hostel was located in the Monserrat area of Buenos Aires which seemed safe overall. It was extremely walkable to most parts of the city, which was a major perk of staying in this area. It was about $15USD each, and it was not only clean, but offered a good breakfast, and an awesome rooftop. So despite no AC – I would stay again.

I met a German solo traveler whom I asked if she wanted to join me on the free walking tour so we walked about a mile away where we met the rest of the group awaiting the walking tour via free walks Buenos Aires. They offer two different tours daily we did the first morning walking tour that started at 10:30 "Walking through the Recoleta," If you're in Buenos Aires, I highly recommend this tour as it was very informative and showed you many areas of the city I probably would have gotten to see on my own.

We started at the Plaza Estado del Vaticano - The corner of Libertad and Viamonte, just look for people wearing orange shirts. If you choose to go on this tour, make sure you're able to walk for quite a while as I believe it was about 8 miles in total and almost 4 hours long. We ended the tour at the Recoleta cemetery, which I had had numerous people tell me that this was a must see while visiting. I thought this sounded weird at the time, however once arriving at the cemetery I understood why. This is like no place you've ever seen before, as there are thousands of tombs. You could spend the majority of a day just here alone. Bianca started to feel better towards that afternoon so she met me at the cemetery and we grabbed some lunch at the back of the building before finding a little bike stall.

We rented bikes for about 3 hours and biked from the cemetery down to the Palermo district. It’s a beautiful area and I highly recommend renting a bike and exploring it as it would be a little too much on foot since its pretty spread out. There are several parks, lakes, monuments, a planetarium, etc. Overall it's just a gorgeous part of the city, and you won't be disappointed just wandering this area.

That evening we wandered some of the back roads from our hostel to San Telmo, one of the guys at the hostel recommended the area for some good beer and nightlife. On multiple nights each week in this area, you'll find live salsa dancing in the streets, along with a night market. This being a Monday night there wasn't too much going on in the city, so we had some wine and wandered through the San Telmo Market (mostly food) . While wandering back to our hostel we found the buildings covered in street art and grabbed some pictures along the way.

When we got back to our hostel, we checked out the roof top as we had seen there was a “spa.” We found out this this is not a jacuzzi, FYI it's a bath of water that is dirty and ice cold. However, there was a group of people from the hostel hanging out in some hammocks on the roof drinking beer we joined and talked story for several hours. I do love staying at hostels because it gives you a great opportunity to meet like minded people in the group rooms, which is much easier than it is in a hotel where people are contained to their separate rooms.

Day #2:

I started off the day with the hostels free breakfast while bianca slept in. I chatted with some people from the hostel while in the lobby and made some friends. We decided to take a taxi to La Boca area, which I had read can be pretty sketchy. Be sure to be out of that area before night fall. El Caminito is the famous street in this area that's super colorful and filled with art and some vendors as well.

We taxi'd back to the Monserrat area where we wandered the streets until night fall stopping at the Obelisco monument to get a quick picture, as all of the other tourist were doing as well. In this area, the streets are lined with restaurants and delicious wine.

While in Buenos Aires, we wanted to see a live tango show. Most can be pretty pricey, however we were able to find one for $27 each at Cafe Tortoni, They perform the shows in the basement of the restaurant. At first we thought we had the wrong place, as upstairs it is a nice restaurant with not much space to dance. They have two shows a day: Monday through Friday, so make sure to check the times and get your tickets. For you frugal travelers, this was the cheapest option we were able to find.

We enjoyed the show accompanied with some Cabernet, maybe two bottles was too much..

After the show we wandered back to our hostel, which was only about a mile away, we were definitely tipsy, but we made it safely home after wandering a bit. Overall this area was fun and we befriended some locals enjoying a few more drinks along the way. Although the next day we did meet some people who were robbed by gunpoint a few blocks away from where we were staying. We are grateful for making it home safely the night before.

Day #3: From Buenos Aires we decided to fly to Iguazu falls. There was an overnight bus that also would take you there however it's about a 15 hour bus ride that sounded pretty brutal. We recommend to pay the extra $50 and take the flight route instead. It was a short flight and you'll find out that this airport is tiny; only two gates so don’t expect much. We found no one spoke English at this airport so practice your Spanish before ya go! It was about this time, we realized we should have learned more spanish before making this trip but that's besides the point). From the airport we got a taxi to our hostel. I can not speak highly enough of this hostel, this was one of our absolute favorites this entire trip. If you're going to Iguazu I highly recommend you check it out!

Mango Chill Hostel is full of art, buddha trinkets and just a great peaceful environment including a pool to cool off in during the heat of the day. At check in, we made friends with some of the girls who were sharing bunks in our room (8 room dorm).

We decided to check out the Mexican place up the road with a group of about 6 of us. Happy hour here is much different than in the US… here it included free shots of some of the worst tequila i've ever tasted. This did not stop us though, I believe each of us had at least 3.,,,

Day #4: They were able to give us info at the desk about ways to get to the falls, which included a bus from just about a block away from the hostel. Luckily the bus left pretty frequently, taking you to the entrance of the park. The bus cost about $2 round trip and takes about 1/2 hour to get to the park. We waited in line for a while in the tourist line to get tickets to enter the park for about $25. Quick tip: if you keep your ticket and come back the next day its 1/2 off.

We should have researched this more but again as we could have saved money and came back the next day to continue exploring. We did a few of the high rated trails to view the waterfalls. We were trying to find one that would allow us to swim through the falls, however we were unsuccessful in finding this. So instead we found a Jet boat thats about a 30min ride for $20 that literally takes you underneath the falls, soaking you in water which was just amazing!

I would definitely recommend this if you're in the park, it was relaxing and a good way to cool off. After our day of exploring the park we made it back to the bus headed to the hostel. Since there were only a few people back at the hostel, we jumped in the pool and ordered some cold beers pool side.

As the groups of people ventured back we began talking to everyone and finding out what they had done. Two of the girls were able to find that route to the swimming area, of course we were jealous.

That night at the hostel was a “family dinner BBQ with unlimited wine for 2 hours” so we signed up with no hesitation, especially because they had a vegetarian option for me. Needless to say 2 hours of free wine amongst a hostel full of backpackers was a sight to see, we were chugging our glasses endlessly and ended up on these blow up whales in the pool having a whale war competition until one of the girls fell off, haha... it was a good night. Followed with beer pong and several other drinking games at the hostel bar.

Day #5: The following day we got a taxi to the airport for our next stop, Cordoba. We had read about it in our lonely planet book and it looked like a fun college town. We thought we could check it out and it would leave us close to Chile which was the following destination. However, we didn’t realize that college would be out right now for summer. Slight oversight.... This was the hottest stop on our trip by far, nearly every business was completely shut down until the sun began to set due to the extreme heat. We had chosen a hostel last second which appeared to have good reviews.. our taxi driver later informed us that it was previously a brothel house. It was advertised with AC however this was only in the living room. It also advertised breakfast which was not true. The dorms had 10 beds, which is what we booked with one fan for all 10 beds in which in the middle of the night some jerk got up and pointed it directly at him rather than letting it rotate, leading the rest of us to wake up feeling like we were in a sauna.

Getting to Cordoba from Iguazu was a little terrifying as our flight was delayed for a good 4 hours, with no announcements in English, we only would catch the flight number and realize they were referring to our plane. Eventually we attempted to ask what was going on. After asking several people, someone said "canceled" which was the only English word he said and we couldn’t determine the rest of his Spanish. We went back through security to the information where they told us the flight was just delayed. One of the security men the was asking Bianca if she had a bike- “bicicleta?” -which annoyed her as she thought he was telling us to bike there. Being 1,500 kilometers away, this was not amusing at this point. A guy approached us and was laughing, asking us if we spoke Spanish, he was Italian and had been living in Ecuador for the last several years, so his Spanish was perfect and sounded so much like the Spanish they speak in Argentina, so we clung to him the rest of our days in Argentina, as he was our source of communication. You'll find many more people speak English in Buenos Aires and Iguazu than in Cordoba. Well our plane eventually took off and we discovered that it was delayed due to engine difficulties. After a terrifying take off leading Bianca to take a Xanax, we made it to our next destination.

Checking into our hostel (Mate! Hostel) was difficult as the person running it didn’t know English. They also told us we couldn’t exchange money although it was advertised in large print right behind her head that they do. We wandered to find an ATM and came back to pay and she didn’t have change or access to the money drawer which apparently was the issue in the first place. Needless to say we never received our change after we paid. Let me say... don’t stay here, it left much to be desired. However, we left and met our new Italian friend at his hostel (Alvear Hostel) which was so much nicer, cleaner, cooler and friendlier than ours.

As I mentioned before, we came to find that nearly every business and museum were closed due to the extreme heat. So we relied on trusty google to find us something to do instead. We discovered there was a pretty nice looking public pool (Natatorio Municipal Parque Sarmiento) for about $2 USD entrance fee, surrounded by a beautiful park (Parque Sarmiento). So we took a taxi there and were very surprised how intense the screening process was involved just to enter their public pool. To enter they combed through your hair, checked your feet and under arms, as well looking for rashes and bugs. The pool is definitely worth the $2 as it was very clean and nice to relax and cool off seeing as our hostel and the outdoors were both scorching!

After spending the day chatting with our new friend and sharing travel stories, we taxi'd back to meet a friend of his that lived in Cordoba and she joined us for dinner and showed us some of her favorite spots. We wandered through this night market in a cool Bohemian neighborhood-- Guemes and ended up at a rooftop restaurant with decent food and wine. We were amongst some great company. We continued on to a bar with a dance room, and of course as we got up to dance the band switched and was playing some music that was nearly impossible to dance too. It was around 3 am though so we decided to call it quits before our morning flight to Chile.

From Argentina we continued to the next country on our trip – Chile & Peru.

Overall, we found Argentina to be a beautiful country and realized we had much more to explore on a future trip!

Check out our podcast to hear more on Argentina! Find it on Itunes "Im not lost travel podcast"

Keep an eye out for our blog on Chile & Peru to see how the rest of our adventure went!