Buenos Aires, day 1 and Uruguay

The bus ride from Iguazú falls to Buenos Aires was 18 hours long. Luckily for us, the Argentines know how to ride in style. For Ar$200 (a little less than US$60), we got the best bus I have ever been on. The seats reclined a full 180 degrees, we were served lunch, a liquid snack, with a choice of soda, water, whisky, or fortified wine, a hot and cold dinner, and an after dinner glass of champagne. With two movies and a glass of wine, I slept like I've never slept before on any mode of transportation. It was amazing.

Upon our arrival to Buenos Aires, we found that we arrived earlier than the subways even opened here, so we took a taxi with a driver that wasn't too friendly and he coughed and spluttered the entire way to our hostel. Our hostel was great. It was a modern building with about 5 floors of rooms and a basement with a lounge area, decorated in a modern scandinavian IKEA-esque way that was really sleek. Our room wasn't going to be available until later since we were so early, so they were nice enough to let us eat breakfast there then they gave us directions to the San Telmo market, an open air market where hippies -sorry, I mean artisans- perform and sell their goods to the general public. There's also a lot of clothing stalls, odds and ends stalls, antiques stalls (some of which are antiques, others are really glorified junk shops), just about everything you can imagine and tango shows, by really good dancers and some not so goods ones (or in one case, a man whose partner was stuffed and velcroed to him [as a doll, not as in a former living being]). It was definately an individual experience. We went back to the hostel, checked in to our room and took a little nap, met our roommates, two (what we think were) Argentinian guys, and then we sat around and thought about what to do next and planned our trip to Uruguay the next day. For dinner we decided to try a Cuban restaurant a little further away from the hostel. We took the subway to get there and it had a pretty good atmosphere, so we stayed and got our dinners. They were good, but nowhere near that of my mom's or abuela's cooking, so I wasn't floored or anything (though I expected that) then about 3/4 the way through dinner, John stabs into what looked like a mini cockroach. We stopped eating at that. We didn't make a big deal out of it but showed the waitress and she was mortified. The restaurant comped John's dinner and bought us flan for dessert. We didn't mind the bug too much and were happy to have gotten dinner at half the price we would have paid. We walked down the street back toward the subway, only to find it closed (at 10:30 at night, a little early in my opinion for a big city subway). So we hailed a taxi to get back to the hostel, only to find that neither of us remembered the hostel's street name and the driver had never heard of the hostel. Luckily, I remembered the name of a nearby street, so we didn't have to walk far. We got up to our room and decided that we would go to sleep early by Argentine standards so that we could get up and go to Uruguay by a decent time. We brushed our teeth, got in our pijamas and locked the door and got in bed.
Somewhere around what I imagine was 4 o'clock in the morning, could have been earlier or later, I didn't have a watch near me, there's a knock at the door. It was our roommates. John answered the door and asked them if they had a key, to which he got no answer and he went back to bed. I'm not sure what they had been doing, but I'm fairly certain they were either drunk or otherwise incapacitated. They proceeded to make as much noise as humanly possible while shushing each other and whispering. Then they both stripped down and got in the shower (a side note: the shower was a single shower about the size of a shower tub). For the next half an hour or so we heard more shushing and a lot of giggling coming from that shower. I stuffed my earplugs in further and rolled over and eventually they came out of the shower and went to their appropriate beds. Despite their growling snores, I slept relatively well and woke up earlier than everyone else. The first view of my day was the well-furred derriere of the guy sleeping across from me. As I climbed down from my bunk I noticed the other one sleeping with no covers, just his hands holding on to the critical body parts. Once I started pulling out my pack and stuff it roused them enough to cover themselves. We packed, went downstairs ate breakfast and then took the metro to the dock, only to find out that the next ferry didn't leave until 6 o'clock pm. So we hoofed it over to a nearby mall to kill sometime. This mall was the most beautiful mall I have ever seen. The interior of the mall was very renaissance, with frescoes on the ceiling and walls and marble and intricate carvings galore. The stores were very upscale, so we didn't buy anything (not that we can fit anymore in our packs right now). We headed back towards the boat area and went through customs and on to the boat where we were able to get front row seats for the hour and a half trip.

After the aformentioned time, we arrived in Colonia del Sacramento, a colony in Southwestern Uruguay founded by the Portuguese and appropriated by the Spanish. It is a charming little city with about 22,000 inhabitants, criss-crossed with cobble stone streets with ornate buildings, some from the turn of the century and some way before then. On just about every street sits an old car, some still running and well cared for, others long forgotten and two at the restaurant "The Drugstore", one you can sit and eat in the other a home for plants. The turisty areas of Colonia are concentrated in a small area, so we only spent two days here, but we explored the lighthouse, the official gate from the Portuguese fort days, the old cathedral, and the fountation of what is speculated to be the ruins of the former Portuguese governor´s home.
The food there was pretty good, nothing too different there, but I did have a "sweet" pizza that supposedly is only found in Colonia (or Uruguay at least). The pizza crust was topped with mozzarella cheese, bananas, and chocolate. It was delicious, I´m hoping I can recreate it when I come back.

From Colonia we took a cheap bus for two hours to Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay. There´s something about Montevideo that instantly puts you at ease. They still have the same pretty buildings that Buenos Aires and Colonia has, but the fact that you can see the beach from just about every street is an added benefit. Also, Uruguayans are about the nicest people we have met so far. We took a taxi from the bus station to the hostel, which was in a nice old house and a convienent location from everything.
We went to a place down the street called Marcos to try out the chivito sandwich that Uruguay is famous for (and you can only find there). A chivito is a steak sandwich, with a thinly pounded steak topped with mozzarella, onions, peppers, olives, ham, bacon, egg, lettuce, and tomato. I feel like there was more in this sandwich, but that´s all I can remember for now. It is an amazingly perfect blend of all that is delicious, although I suppose too many of these would probably lead to a heart attack eventually. We walked around our area for a while and along the beach, where they were opening a collection of art featured in the Louvre along the boardwalk. The bay side beach wasn´t too spectacular, I personally wouldn´t get in the water, as it is a tea color.
We spent the rest of the night in the hostel, first talking to some other people that were staying there, our roomates were Aussie and there was another American there (he´s currently AWOL from the Navy) looking for an apartment there. After that John spent the part of the night looking for somewhere to watch the Duke/Carolina game. He finally convinced the kid working there to let him watch it on the laptop and the kid wound up really getting into the game (for Duke of course).
The next morning after breakfast we rented bikes from the hostel and rode them along a road following the beach down into the downtown area. We walked around sightseeing and went to an area called the market. The thing about this "market" was that it was really a bunch of parillas or grills that specialize is various types of meats. We found one that had decent prices (to be fair we didn´t look all that hard, we were HUNGRY) and sat down on the stools in front of where they were cooking. The grill was full of everykind of cut of meat you could imagine. John and I managed to narrow it down to chorizo (spicy sausage) to start and John had a filet that we can only estimate was around 22oz while I got the kebabs and we both got potatoes for our sides. While we were waiting we got to watch one of the cooks make paella for the people next to us that looked amazing. We got our chorizo and managed to hold out long enough to take a picture then devoured it. We were salivating by the time our lunch came along. John´s steak was huge and he ate it all, he didn´t really bother with the potatoes as he saw them as "wasted space". My kebabs were huge, but I managed to eat 3/4 of them and some of my potatoes. We washed this all down with a beer. After we were done, the girl sitting next to us turned and started talking to us (she turned out to be from New York), saying that we had to try the wine drink called a "medio-medio", which was half dry white wine and half sweetish bubbly wine. It was created at Roldo´s, a bar in the market there. So we went over to Roldo´s in our post food stupor and drank medio-medios until we felt quite nice.
After a short visit to the bathroom, we went back to our bikes, where we discovered our butts were REALLY sore from riding earlier. We rode over to the mall where we watched "Changeling", which was really good, albeit slightly depressing. I´m not sure how we managed to ride those bikes back to the hostel; I don´t think I sat down the whole way.

The next day we got up early to catch the ferry back to Buenos Aires, though I can honestly I was not ready to leave. If you´re looking into retiring relatively soon, you should look into Uruguay, it´s cheap, beautiful, and the living is good. You could probably get by with English, but learning Spanish is really useful (and it´s fun to speak!).

Hope everyone is doing well and winter isn´t too bad for you!
Miss and love you all!
<3
Lauren

Iguazú Falls

Iguazu Falls is between Brazil and Argentina, with most of the falls on the Argentine side. They are stunning. We had great weather (albeit a little hot) for the Brazilian side of things, we got to hike up the little trails and see a few of the different areas of the falls. We got to stand below the biggest section of the falls and got soaked by the mist. The panorama views of the falls are impressive. The next day we left for Argentina, to see its version of things. Well, the first day we got there in the afternoon, and decided to wait for the next day to go 'cause we wanted to have enough time to see everything. The next day we woke up and went to eat breakfast, then the skies opened up and poured. Hard, all day. So we didn't get to go, which was a pain since we had already bought bus tickets to Buenos Aires and the bus left at two the next day. Well, we decided that we absolutely had to see the Argentine falls before we left, so we got up early, took our bags to the bus station and caught the first or second bus to Iguazu. We got there and found out that since we were foreigners, we had to pay Ar$60 when all the Argentinians only had to pay Ar$20 at the most. I didn't like it but oh well, it was a small price to pay for the beauty of the falls. John on the other hand griped and moaned about how it wasn't fair and if "this would never happen in the US..." blah blah blah blah-blah. All the way up until the view of the first falls. Then nothing. The falls were so amazing they shut him up for a brief minute! Then in typical John fashion he said, "I'm going to stand here for three times as long as any Argentinian since I paid three times as much to come here." John aside though, the falls were amazing. I cannot find enough words to explain. They made the Brazilian side look like nothing. These falls are so large and powerful, they make Niagra look laughable. Even Eleanor Roosevelt said "Poor Niagra" upon seeing these falls. These falls should go on everyone's list of must see, but if you can't, we took some great pictures, so you should go look at those to get an idea of what I'm talking about. So far we only have the Brazilian side up, but the Argentinian side should be up sometime soon.
Love and miss you all!
<3
Lauren

PICTURES!

YAY!! We have some pictures!
Click here for the link
You do have to join snapfish to see them though.

<3
Lauren