Following on in this series of catch up posts about our journey so far, after taking in the sights of Iguazu and taking a day to chill out and book some of our onward journey we headed to Puerto Madryn our first stop in Patagonia.
To get to Puerto Madryn we needed to take another 19 hour overnight bus back to Buenos Aires, this we had already booked as an BA-Iguazu-BA journey from our first hostel. From BA we then had a 5hr wait before we boarded the 18 hour overnight bus to Puerto Madryn. Hours spent on bus so far – 56. Now of all places to start getting what I´ll term TD (look it up traveler´s d….) a eighteen hour bus ride isn´t the place, especially when there is a sign above the toilet saying reserved for liquids only. I blame the buffet at the Iguazu hostel. It was on this journey I developed a dislike for overnight bus travel, fortunately Gen was still in perfect health and as with the other bus rides managed to get a few hours sleep.
There's a whale there...can't you see it?
Puerto Madryn´s main draw card at this time of year is whales, Southern Right whales to be exact. When we checked in at the hostel the guy behind the desk told us if we went to the main pier we would see whales, if we went to a particular beach we would also see whales. Walking into town we were a little skeptical that he could make such a guarantee as you´d struggle to find even commercial whale watching operations in Australia that would make such a promise. As we found out the hostel guy was telling the truth and we didn´t even have to walk out on the pier to see our first whale out in the bay, they could be easily spotted from the main promenade.
Gen scanning the bay for whales
After a stroll on the main pier we headed 3km around the bay to the southern point to check out the Ecocentre which had some information about the southern oceans, a small token pool with some live weeds, grasses, slugs and crabs and plenty of information about the local sea life.
Playa Hotel - Puerto Madryn...clearly it's where all the playa's is at
After our short stay in Buenos Aires we were pretty keen to get out of the city and see some of the natural scenery Argentina has to offer, first stop Iguazu Falls or Cataratas del Iguazú in Spanish.
The Iguazu Falls are located in the north eastern corner of Argentina, near the town of Puerto Iguazú, a nineteen hour overnight bus ride from Buenos Aires (I´ll post about these buses later). They are shared between Brazil and Argentina, Argentina gets the up close views of the falls and Brazil gets the panoramic view of all the falls. Iguazu consists of some 275 waterfalls cascading from a plateau into the one valley.
Most of the falls are somewhere between 60 and 80 meters high. They are accessed via a small train and system of paths and walkways that allow you to see the falls from above and below.
The main attraction is the Devil’s Throat a large u shaped section of the falls approximately 7oo meters long and 150 meters wide descending 82 meters into the river valley below. The Devil´s Throat is accessed via a long walkway that crosses over the Iguazu River to bring you right to the Devil´s Throat so you can feel the awesomeness up close, it is perhaps more awesome if you refer to it via the Spanish name of Garganta del Diablo.
After arriving in Buenos Aires we were both pretty jet lagged and spent our first day sleeping or at least trying to. Nobody appears to sleep in Argentina, especially backpackers in Buenos Aires. Dinner isn´t until about 10pm so people are generally out until 4 or 5am, unfortunately for us and our jet lag our room was next to the smokers courtyard where everyone seemed to meet for a smoke and a loud discussion at 4am in the morning.
On our second day we headed out to check out a bit of Buenos Aires our main destination being La Recoleta Cemetery. To get there we walked via some of the many parks that are in the Palermo/Recoleta neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, on our way we as the Lonely Planet puts it, lucky to see one of BA´s dog walkers taking about twelve dogs for a walk around the street. This seems to be a big thing in BA with one small park in Palermo having a holding area for dogs, presumably for owners to leave their dogs so they can be walked at some stage during the day. Our walk also took us past a number of important looking monuments….what they celebrate I am not particularly sure.
La Recoleta Cemetery is famous because it is the final resting place for many of Argentina´s rich and famous, the most famous internationally being Eva Peron. The cemetery is a maze of elaborate mausoleums in varying styles and states of repair.
The large entrance gates to the cemetery were under repair during our visit so we didn´t get to marvel at the architecture but we did get to spend a couple of hours wondering around the cemetery checking out all the different little alleys and mausoleums.
We almost missed Eva Peron´s crypt as we were on the lookout for a large crowd in front of it, as it turned out there were only four other people looking when we were there.
After visiting the cemetery we headed into the centre of town for a look and to grab a bit to eat, our first sample of the Empanada. Empanadas are a pastry folded kinda like a pastie and costing about as much as a sausage roll, the main filling is carne(meat) but you can also get them with fillings like polo(chicken) or ham and cheese.
Well it´s been about a week since we touched down in Buenos Aires. After a 16hr flight via Auckland and a free shuttle into the city we had the challenge of finding a taxi from the city centre out to our hostel in Palermo. Fortunately four young Brazilian girls had also been dropped off by the shuttle and were having similar difficulty finding a taxi even though there were substantial numbers of the little black and yellow cars whizzing past. We(they) decided that as two of them had really big bags and they wouldn´t all fit in one cab that two of them would come with us…even though we had a big pack each. What followed was a ridiculously cramped 35 minute cab ride for Gen and the two girls in the back as they had to travel with our packs on their laps, I got away pretty easily with only my legs being crammed against the glove box. This gave me a pretty good view of the competitive driving that seems to be the norm in BA, at times we were three cars wide across a street that I´m sure was only intended for a single vehicle, somehow though it all seems to work without much sign of road rage or even long bursts on the horn. On arrival at the hostel we checked in while Gen waited for the feeling to return to our legs then headed out to a local Parrilla (Grill) to get ourselves a serving of meat, then headed back to the hostel to attempt to adjust to the new time zone.
