Setting Off

Wed 18 January 2017

And so, with heavy bags but light hearts, we left our home country with a teary farewell. We’re off!

Arriving in Buenos Aires the first thing that I noticed was the lack of English, but airport signs are pretty standard so we didn’t have too much of an issue.

We wandered out and took a taxi, where the driver unfortunately didn’t speak any English at all. At the end he did a neat magic trick, where, after taking our money, he made one of the 500 pesos ($50 NZD) notes disappear, with a 5 pesos in it’s place, and then demanded another 495 pesos. We argued back and forth in different languages for a while until he realised that we weren’t falling for it and tada! the 500 pesos note re-appeared in his hand and we were good to go.

Out of the nice, air-conditioned airport and the nice, air-conditioned taxi, we checked into the backpackers which was… not air-conditioned. Ugh. We had cold showers and collapsed for the night, too hot to feel very hungry.

The next morning, we went exploring!

We went for a wander towards some big government building (large and pink, for some reason). The streets round here are funny - all but the biggest look like dodgey back alleys.

On the way we found a little market, which was lovely.

On the way back we managed to get lost. Panting our way through the rapidly heating streets, we barely managed to find our way back before heatstroke set in. That was about it for the day, we didn’t stray far because of the heat that made walking very uncomfortable. Maybe we’ll get used to it?

The next day we learned how to tango! We also went for a big walk around to the old docks, where there were some nice parks, and some very cool bridges - instead of pulling up and down like normal bridges near docks, they rotated sideways! I’m pretty sure that must be harder to make, but they looked very cool.

After more wandering about, we had dinner at the pub where I got a huuge beer (they only came in 1L bottles) before the tango lessons. We fell asleep exhausted but happy.

We had a tour booked the next day, at the (in)famous La Boca! La Boca used to be a very poor region of the city, and all the residents worked at the dock. Whenever they painted a ship they would take any left over paint home to paint the neighborhood. It was so colourful that Laura fitted right in with her bright pink top!

That evening we met up with our tour group for the first time and got to know - Oscar, our lively leader.

We set off at a ridiculous hour the next morning (seriously, it was 3:00), and we were on our way to the Iguassu falls!