Today we finish in South America. As our day was basically wake up, breakfast,
pack, lunch, airport transfer, and flight, there is not much more to say. So instead this blog will be the summary of
our time in South America, and of course some comparisons of the countries.
First I’ll start with some stats. We spent different amounts of time in each
country, stayed in different numbers of locations, and travelled different
distances, so this will affect some perceptions. The list is:
Brazil – 41 days, 14 locations, 4335km
Argentina – 31 days, 10 locations, 6327km
Uruguay – 12 days, 5 locations, 1320km
Chile – 6 days, 3 locations, 844km
Paraguay – 2 days, 1 location, 100km
There was also 1 day spent travelling from Uruguay to
Paraguay via Argentina which is not included in any of these countries
individual counts, and 2 overnight bus journeys in each of Brazil and Argentina
which are not counted in the counts of places we stayed in.
The first thing to mention is the total distance covered on
the trip. Between travelling from place
to place, and day trips, we have covered almost 13,000km. The straight line distance from Ushuaia to
Salvador is about 5,333km, so we did about 2 ½ times the distance. Had we travelled the full 13,000km from
Ushuaia in a straight line, we would have ended up in Canada somewhere near
Winnipeg. However the straight line
distance is enough in itself. To put it
in context it is almost the same distance as Dublin to Buffalo, NY, London to
the Equator, or (this one amazed me the most) Warsaw to the Taj Mahal (and I
will also add that doing this by bus would not have been as pleasant as Ushuaia
to Salvador).
Anyway that is enough stats, time to get onto the overall
impression of this part of South America.
Originally I had thought that it would be a close tie as to whether I
would prefer Argentina or Brazil, but in the end it was no contest, Argentina
was by far the better place to visit. There
are a number of reasons for this, and I’ll list them out in a few categories
below, also mentioning which of the smaller countries scored particularly well
or badly in these areas.
Accommodation
The accommodation in South America is actually fairly
consistent across all the countries, but the value for money changes. We stayed in hostels, bed and breakfasts,
apartments and hotels, depending on what was available, so comparing the best
and worst is a bit hard, but I can make a few like for like comparisons. The easiest to compare are the two apartments
we stayed in, in Rio and BA. There is no
comparison, the one in BA was far better.
It was bigger, especially the bathroom, the kitchen was better equipped,
the TV and internet worked, and despite the locations being in similar
neighbourhoods, it cost 30% less than the one in Rio. The same ratio could be applied to the other
forms of accommodation; generally Brazil was up to 1/3 dearer than Argentina
for similar levels of quality.
In terms of quality the two things that stood out about the
rooms we tended to get in South America were their size (usually a bit too
small) and the bathrooms (usually not quite up to the standards we would expect
in Europe, even allowing for the non-flushing of the toilet paper). However the bathrooms were quite clean, even
when they were shared (which was not the case the previous time I was in South
America).
Outside of the big two countries, the actual best value for
money hotel we stayed in was actually the one in Paraguay, which was the
dearest hotel in Encarnation, but the cheapest we stayed in in South America. It was a full 4 star hotel and really was
very nice. The worst value hotel was
probably the one we stayed in in Colonia in Uruguay, there was nothing wrong,
although the room was small, but it was a bit dear. Generally in Uruguay the accommodation was
not as good value for money as elsewhere.
Meals
These should be broken down into breakfasts and other
meals. Almost all places we stayed in
offered breakfasts as part of the price (as opposed to India where it was
usually extra). However the quality of
breakfasts did differ significantly between places. Argentina was the worst by far, mostly
because local custom is that they only have a croissant for breakfast. So in some places that was all we got, and in
others maybe a little fruit or cake. The
breakfasts got better in Uruguay, but not by too much, and but Chile and Brazil
had much better breakfasts, Chile’s being more bread, dairy and cake based, and
Brazils having more fruit. The most
random aspect to breakfasts were cereals (cornflakes), you never knew whether a
place would have them or not, it was interesting to try to guess.
The poor breakfasts in Argentina were more than made up by
the good food the rest of the day.
Generally meals in Argentina were good, and although sometimes expensive,
they were still on average cheaper and better quality than Brazil. The steaks
in Argentina need no praise, they are reknowned for how good they are, but
other things in Argentina are superb as well.
The pizzas, pastas and ice creams are every bit as good as in Italy; and
the chocolate is as good as Switzerland.
They have made the most of their mixed heritage to give us great
food. Everything else, bread, salads,
wine and beer was very good as well, even McDonalds was pretty good.
This is not to say that the meals in Brazil were bad,
actually they were usually quite good as well, they were just noticeably
dearer. Brazil did try to go for
quantity to make up for quality in a few cases, but it doesn’t really work for
us as in the hot climate we really don’t want to overeat.
The poorest quality meals we ate were in Uruguay, they just
were not that great. Nothing
outstanding, and two or three were particularly poor. Due to a lack of choice
in Paraguay we ate in the same two restaurant a couple of times, and in
fairness they were good meals, especially given how cheap they were. From a food point of view Chile was similar
to Argentina, and indeed two of the best meals we did have in the whole trip
were in Chile.
Drink
I mentioned it above, the wine and beer in Argentina was
pretty good, and it was the same in Chile.
Beer is similar throughout South America, thanks to the surprising
amount of Germans who emigrated there.
However the wine from Uruguay was nowhere near as good as the other two,
and not surprisingly we didn’t try it in Paraguay or Brazil. Argentina was the only place to have a real
pub culture where we could just hang out and have a drink. Otherwise we tended only to drink when
eating. Some of this is for safety
reasons, in Brazil it didn’t feel safe to be staying out too late after dark
(of course when we were in the south of Argentina it never did get dark).
On the subject of pubs, I should mention that the best Irish
pub we were in was the one in Ushuaia (despite its green beer), while the worst
one was in Montevideo, where we were the only people in there at 7pm. However it was still better than Encarnation,
where the Irish pub was closed.
Cost
South America was nowhere near as cheap as I thought it
would be. In the four years since I had
been to Argentina and Chile before they had gone up in price by a bit. They and Uruguay were about 20% dearer than I
expected. So was Paraguay, but we
expected it to be cheaper in the first place, and it was. Brazil though was the killer in terms of
price, noticeably dearer than the other locations, not really a value for money
destination anymore.
On a related subject, that of the economy in general, it
should be noted that all the economies we visited seemed quite healthy, and
with the exception of Brazil there were few signs of actual poverty. Most people wouldn’t have the same standard
of living as in Europe, but the shops were pretty well stocked, there seemed to
be plenty of people working, locals were all able to eat in the expensive
restaurants (sometimes more so than the tourists). If designations like first and third world
still existed it is obvious that Chile, Argentina and Uruguay would count as
first world now, and the rich half of Brazil would also.
Towns
We stayed in towns and villages of all sizes, from Sao
Paulo, one of the biggest cities in the world, to Cabo Polonio and Ilha do Mel,
with only a few hundred residents. It
does make it hard to do like for like comparisons, but it is safe to say that
on average the smaller towns were nicer places to hang out than the larger ones
no matter where you were. But these
towns were usually tourist towns, and therefore set up for tourists to relax
in. The most local experience we had
would have been in the tiny village of Perito Moreno where most people only
stayed overnight for the bus, but we stayed two nights. This was fun because I think we did get a
more real picture of rural Argentinian life than anywhere else.
But as for the tourist towns, I have to say I enjoyed El
Calafate as a place to hang out. It
certainly was better than Barriloche, which was quite overdeveloped. Ushuaia was also pretty nice, but it was
expensive. In Brazil Ouro Preto was by
far the prettiest and nicest of the tourist towns, although Petropolis was also
quite OK. Perhaps the best comparison of
how Argentina beats Brazil is in the two towns around the Iguacu Falls. Puerto Iguazu was a nice place to stay, Foz
de Iguacu was a bit of a kip.
As for the cities, then there is no contest, BA wins by a
long way. Cordoba, Rosario and Mendoza
weren’t bad in Argentina, but there wasn’t too much to them. BA
had so much going on that you stay for a month and still not see
everything. In contrast the big cities
in Brazil didn’t encourage staying around.
Rio, which does have the most to offer tourists, is not very
inviting. Sao Paulo was surprisingly
nice, but we still saw most of the interesting bits in two days. Belo Horizonte had nothing to offer tourists;
Salvador had a nice centre but was even less inviting than Rio. Curitiba was probably my favourite Brazilian
city, but even it only had a day’s worth of interesting sights.
Beaches
We only really went to beaches in Uruguay and Brazil,
although we did see the artificial one in Paraguay as well. Here there is no comparison, the beaches in Brazil
were far better. This is only partially
because of the weather (Uruguay was hot enough, but the problem was the wind)
but mostly because of the location. A
large part of Brazil’s coast is backed by green mountains, giving great views
from the beach, and even those that are not mountain backed, generally have
white sand, clear water, and palm trees.
Brazil’s beach towns may also have appealed because they generally were
the nicest places in Brazil, with even the largest, Ubatuba, having a certain
charm. Paraty and Trancoso were really
nice places to hang out (although expensive even for Brazil) and the two
islands, Ilha Grande and Ilha do Mel, were fantastic.
Having said that the best beach of all was in Cabo Polonio
but a lot of this was because of the way in which you get there, no boats here,
instead big 4x4 trucks take you over the dunes. And although it is on the mainland, it feels
more isolated than the islands due to its lack of electricity. And although it was a bit windy, we were
still able to get a lot of sunbathing done.
Beauty Spots
I think this is a personal preference, but I much preferred
the natural beauty of Argentina over Brazil. It does have nice beaches, and the
mountains are a surprise, but in the end I thought it was a lot of the
same. Argentina has everything, ice,
beaches, lakes, mountains, plains, jungle, you name it and it seems to be there
somewhere.
Of course the best single beauty spot, Iguacu Falls, was
shared between Argentina and Brazil, but the even here the Argentinian side is
better. The other great spot, Perito
Moreno Glacier, isn’t that far behind.
And then three of the next four, Tierra Del Fuego, Lago Roca and
Circuito Chico were all in Argentina.
The other, Torres del Paine in Chile, was pretty beautiful as well, and
in general the beauty that Argentina has is shared by its long neighbour.
Historical Sites
This side of South America doesn’t have that many
pre-European sites, so we didn’t really get a great deal of ancient history
like you might in the Andes. There was
one exception, the hand paitings at Cuevas de los Manos, which was nice but not
that extensive. We did get a lot of
colonial history, and there is no question, my favourite was Colonia in
Uruguay. As one of the few places where
Portuguese and Spanish colonists both built, it had a nice mix of architectural
styles. And it had a nice setting and a
nice set-up for tourists. But Ouro Preto
and the Jesuit missions were not too bad either. The most disappointing historic site had to
be the centre of Cordoba, other historic centres, notably Salvadors, extended
over many blocks, but really it was a single block in Cordoba with a few
churches and a school. Not really that
great a UNESCO world heritage site.
One statistic not mentioned above are the numbers of UNESCO
world heritage sites we visited, so here they are. As some of these are historic, and some are
natural beauty spots, I’ll split the totals as well.
Argentina – 5 (2 Natural, 3 Historic) out of 10.
Brazil – 6 (3 Natural, 3 Historic) out of 18.
Chile – 1 (Natural) out of 5.
Paraguay – 1 (Historic) the only one in the country.
Uruguay – 1 (Historic) the only one in the country.
Bus Journeys
The final category here is how we got around. The buses and roads differed in quality, but
in general they were better in Argentina than Brazil. The real difference was in the overnight
journeys, I had no problems sleeping on the buses in Argentina, but in Brazil
it was a challenge (which I failed at). Having
said that one of the worst journeys was in Argentina, from Ushuaia to the
Chilean border. But normally the
Argentinian buses were comfortable, had entertainment, food, and stopped a lot
less. And the roads were far better once
we got out of Patagonia. So there is no
real contest. Brazil did have decent bus
stations, and the best one of all was surprisingly the biggest one, Sao
Paulo. Still because it is a way of
transport for all, not just the poorest, in general buses are not a bad way to
travel around South America. They beat
the trains. Although we were only on a
couple, this is mostly because there is no way you would travel on them because
they are slow and not very comfortable.
Overall then it is easy to see that Argentina wins for
me. I much preferred it. And despite this being my second trip, there
is so much to see that if I went back for another month I could travel around
and not visit anywhere I’ve already been.
Brazil is also like that, in fact there is at least 2 months of travel
more could be done without getting near repeating, but it is a lot less likely
to be revisited by me. Having said that
I still feel the country I need to visit again is Chile, I’ve been there twice,
and I still don’t feel I have done it justice.
Uruguay on the other hand has been mostly done, and Paraguay didn’t
really have much more to offer either.
