Buenos Aires - January 29th

When we got back from dinner last night, at around 23:00, there was a party just beginning in our hostel.  In fact they asked us to join them in their asado (barbeque) which would be starting at midnight.  We have gotten into the habit of eating later, but this was far too late for us.  Unfortunately it also meant music through the night until 05:00, and a really bad night’s sleep. 

We had a relatively early start for the bus, but when we got up at 08:00 there were still people just going to bed.  I think they had stayed up to watch some of the Australian Open tennis, but that final went on far too long.  It was still going on through breakfast, packing, getting a taxi to the bus station, having a coffee there, and it was even still on when we got on our bus at 11:30.  The bus journey itself wasn’t that exciting.  Rosario is only 4 hours from BA by a big motorway (at one point there were 6 lanes on each side), and aside from one stop in the middle, it was pretty direct.

When we get to BA we take a taxi from the bus station to our apartment.  Because we are staying in BA for so long we have rented an apartment for 8 days in the neighbourhood of Recoleta.  This is a relatively posh area of Ba with apartments lining every block.  Thus the first impression of BA is that someone has kidnapped the Upper West side of New York and moved it south.  After checking into the apartment (a longish process as a representative from the letting agency has to go through leases, inventories and building rules with you) we get to look around our apartment.  There isn’t too much to see, it’s a studio apartment with a little kitchen, dining table, two chairs for watching TV and a bed.  Added are a balcony and bathroom.  It’s actually perfect for the length of time we want it for.

After we go out to look around the neighbourhood.  We are fairly well situated, there is a fruit shop on one corner or our junction, a coffee shop on another, and a laundry on a third corner.  Within a block is a nice bakery, a kiosco (sweetshop), a pharmacy,  and three mini supermarkets, including a Carrefour Express.  Best of all we are only 6 blocks from the subway, and on the way there we discover a full sized Carrefour halfway.  It looks like we are pretty well located.  Rather than going out we shop in the big Carrefour for some salad, wine and cheese and instead we spend our first night in BA in watching TV.

Rosario - January 28th

We are a bit late up this morning as we both suffered a bit from dodgy stomachs the previous night.  The culprit in my mind is the place we had dinner in Cordoba on our second night.  We had a big salad there and from the glimpse we got into the kitchen on our way out I have to say it didn’t look the most sanitary of places.  Still unlike in India it was a once off event, not a two day crippling incident.

Our day in Rosario starts with our now usual look around the shops as Dorota searches for those perfect pair of Argentinian trousers.  Luckily today we find them after not too many shops have been entered into and we can continue with looking around the town.  Rosario is different from Cordoba in a number of ways, mainly it is a much taller place, the apartments that line the streets are 10-12 stories high instead of 3-4, which gives much needed shade, and it doesn’t have as much historical background.  But it does have a more lively feel to it, even after everything shuts down at lunchtime for siesta (and this being a Saturday nothing reopens).  So it is a pleasant place to walk through.

Rosario’s three claims to fame are it is the birthplace of Che Guevara, Lionel Messi, and the Argentine flag.  We visit the place where Che lived, but it is a private apartment still so you can’t go in.  There is a large monument to the flag, which you can go up and get panoramic views of the city, so we of course do that.  There are no monuments to Messi, in fact we don’t even see many posters or people wearing his shirt. I think I read once that he isn’t actually too popular here.

The rest of the day is spent lazing on the banks of the river Parana, the massive river that flows through northern Argentina.  It is really interesting, because on the opposite banks from this big city is jungle, and in the middle are tropical islands with beaches.  We were going to go over but the queues of locals were far too long for us to stand in, so we contented ourselves with sitting out the day in the city parks.  Our taste of the river was in our dinner, where we shared a massive grilled fish that had been caught locally.

Rosario - January 27th

Today we are going to Rosairo, the third biggest city in Argentina, as we continue our big city acclimatisation in preparation for Buenos Aires.  One good thing about travelling between these big cities is that they are linked by motorways, and the times on the busses are short.  To avoid the heat we have arranged an afternoon bus so that we can pass the hot hours away in air conditioned comfort.  Because of the late departure we have time to spend blogging and sorting out photos before we head to the bus station for our 14:00 departure.

Except it isn’t 14:00, it is 14:30 but we miswrote the time down in our notebook.  So we actually are an hour early when we arrive.  And like so often happens, being early almost causes us to miss the bus because we aren’t paying enough attention to what is happening (namely our bus is not the bus company we were told it would be but another one instead).  Still we get the bus, and begin the trip to Rosario.

The trip itself begins well, as we speed down the motorway, but all too soon we are off the motorway and stopping in a small town.  And this is when we discover the second miscommunication about this bus, we thought it was an express, getting to Rosario at about 19:30, it is actually a stopping everywhere bus, getting there at 20:45.  There is nothing to do but sit back and watch the rubbish film (Conan the Barbarian).

Because of the time delay when we get to Rosario all we can do is get a taxi to the hostel we are staying in, check in, and find the nearest place to eat.  This turns out to be a pizza place around the corner.  Now there are some who claim that pizzas in Argentina are even better than in Italy or the US, but so far they have been good but not outstanding.  That is until now, as this pizza is one of the best I have ever had.  We had a half and half, one with ham, chees, an egg and peppers, and the other with mince and sweet corn, and both were amazingly good, and not too dear.  Despite the fact that I never actually ate pizza in the US or Italy, I can see how some people can make this claim.

Cordoba - January 26th

The only problem with having English language TV is that you can stay up too late watching it, and hence the next morning is a late start.  Unusually our hotel does not do breakfast itself, but give you a voucher instead for a café on the next block where for once I manage to persuade the waitress to give me diet coke instead of coffee as part of the set breakfast menu.

Then we start looking around Cordoba.  It is the second largest city in Argentina, but doesn’t feel that big.  Yet it has a lot of museums, art galleries and so on.  This is partially because it has been a major educational hub with many universities for a long time.  And the reason for this is the Jesuits.  They founded the town and its first university, and this is so important it is now a UNESCO world heritage site.  So it is to the old Jesuit block that we first head to, although a few shops are visited along the way as Dorota continues her search for the perfect pair of Argentinian trousers.  The Jesuit block itself is fine, but not that much to see here, it is after all only a block in size.  The real part of the UNESCO site are some farms 25km away from town that were built by the Jesuits to finance their operations.  But we aren’t going to get to see them as they are a bit out of the way.

After the Jesuits we continue on our shopping expedition.  Conveniently there is a very large shopping centre one block away from the Jesuit block, so we go in there, look around, and get lunch in the food court.  Afterwards when we emerge it is even hotter than before, by far our hottest day so far, so we decide to afternoon in a museum or two.  However this isn’t as easy as it seems, the first one we try only opens at 20:00, and the second one at 18:00, so we give up and go to a bar for a drink to cool off and wait them out.  We try for a third museum just after 17:00, only to get there and find it was open all afternoon and closes at 17:00.  At this point we give up on museums.  The nice map we got from the tourist office should really have had the opening hours on them.  At least one thing is certain, getting up late didn’t make us miss some of the museums.

We do wander around a bit more, there is a quite large pedestrianized zone in the centre of town with some nice shopping, and of course there are the usual plazas and churches to see, and amazingly we actually find an art gallery open so we go in there as well.  Then we go for dinner on a rooftop before heading back to the hotel, exhausted after 12 hot hours of wandering around Cordoba.

Cordoba - January 25th

Today is a long bus day, as we are taking the 08:30 bus from Mendoza to Cordoba.  This is an 11 hour journey, because it stops everywhere along the way.  This is the price to pay for taking the daytime journey, most of the time slots were night time express busses (although still 9 hours, which actually is too short to sleep properly because there will be a movie and some sort of meal in the way).  The bus station in Mendoza is like a lot of the Argentinian bus stations, bigger than the local airport, and provisioned with more services.  The terminal is like a shopping centre, with pretty much everything you need for a trip, and loads of stuff you don’t need, available in all the shops.

Once we get on the way it is the usual combination of sleeping, eating dulche de leche biscuits, and bad movies.  The only difference today is that we are stopping everywhere, which can be a problem for sleeping and watching movies (with all the people getting on and off).  It also means that the driver has a timetable to keep, which means that despite the fact we are on a very good motorway road, he isn’t doing top speed.  It is a little frustrating, knowing you could be getting there faster.

The day actually passes fairly fast, we got one half decent movie, Cowboys vs. Aliens, which the nuns in front of us slept through, thereby proving for Father Ted fans that Argentinian nuns at least don’t like scifi.  The countryside outside the window was as flat and featureless as ever, the only difference being that now we were in proper farmland, with arable land growing all sorts of crops, not just having cows roaming over scrubland.

When we got to Cordoba with its equally airport sized bus station, we walked to our hotel and dumped our bags.  Not wanting to wander around too much in the dark we asked the reception for a restaurant recommendation nearby and went to an Italian restaurant two blocks away where we ordered food that was far too much for us (only two dishes and a salad, but they do eat big here).  After dinner we went back to our room, and having TV for the first time in a while, watched a brand new subtitled Law and Order SVU before crashing out.

Mendoza - January 24th

The day started with the walk home from the football match.  Actually there isn’t too much to blog about here.  We ended up getting a taxi back to the hostel because the heaven’s opened up again.  We had booked seats under the roof in case of rain, but in the end we could have been on the open terraces and still sat (due to the low turnout) and not got wet for half the price.  But the rain did come eventually.

Because it was after 01:00 when we got back to the hostel we were a bit late getting up the next morning, and by the time we had breakfasted and headed out into town it was after midday.  Due to inconvenient scheduling we had got our two main activities for Mendoza done in a single day (the football became a Mendoza activity when we realised it was the mid-season break in Buenos Aries when we are there, so this was our only chance to catch a match), so we were at a loss as to what to do this time.  There are a lot of excursions to be done from Mendoza, and only half of them involve wine, but we were too tired to go on them.

So basically we ended up just hanging around the town for the day, going to various shops, having a traditional lunch (a Super Pancho, a hot dog, the fast food lunch item in these parts), and then looking for a nice spot to sit and read.  The park we walked to had no trees for shade, which is so unusual among all the tree lined streets in this town.  So we just walked to another plaza instead and sat there reading during the hot part of the day.

In the evening we had a free wine tasting at our hostel, which would have been rude to refuse.  After we went out for dinner at the very Argentine time of 22:00.  We walked to a Tapas restaurant I had been to 4 years before, and which I raved about.  When we had gone on Sunday it looked like it had closed for good such were the locks on the doors, but tonight it was open, and the food was every bit as good as I remembered.  The only problem with the food was we ordered too much, as we often do in Argentina.

Mendoza - January 23rd

The main reason why anyone comes to Mendoza is simple, wine.  This is the wine capital of Argentina, and a lot of the wineries in the surrounding countryside offer tours and tastings.  We were thinking about doing an expensive tour (about £100 GBP) but our hostel can sign us up to a cheaper one (about £40) so we decide to give that one a go.

One of the ‘benefits’ of this trip is that we will get picked up from our hostel, but this turns out to be a curse as we are one of the first groups picked up, which means we get a nice one hour bus ride around the city as everyone else gets picked up.  Eventually we head out to the first bodgea, Navarro Correas, which happens to be one owned by Diageo, of Guinness fame (our guide tells us this).  This is a slightly disappointing visit because of two things, the lack of enthusiasm of our guide and the crap wine they give us for tasting.  Our second and third wineries were much better, they were smaller and the guides had much more passion about their subjects.  The second winery, Vistandes, was a small modern winery, albeit with state of the art facilities, but they actually gave us decent wines.  And the third winery, Cavas del Don Arturo, was another small boutique winery which didn’t just give us decent wines, they gave us one of their best (so they say).

Of course some of this generosity through the day is because they know as we get more pissed we buy more wine.  Well that is except for the backpackers like us.  But all the locals with their cars back in Mendoza were stocking up on the wine.  After the tasting was finished (and apparently it has to be done in the morning when the palette is fresh), we went for lunch in a local restaurant.  This had been sold as having more foods that you could try, and we all scoffed at that idea.  But actually it was true. The lunch was a tapas type lunch with over 40 dishes on the table, 7 or 8 types of meat, a similar number of cheeses, and at least a dozen vegtable dishes.  Add to this 5 sauces, a few breads, 2 types of empanadas, a rice dish and a pasta dish, and they pretty much made the 40 dishes.  It was an amazng spread, and given the food must have cost £20, the wine at least £10,it made the whole day really good value.

When we got back to the hostel at 16:30 all we could do after that food and wine was have a siesta.  This was good because in the evening we were going to go to a football match.  The match was a local pre-season friendly (actually mid-season friendly but the leagues over here are strangely organised) between San Lorenzo (one of the big 5 Buenos Aries teams) and San Martin, a local team from nearby San Juan playing only their third season in the top flight.  We were going to the match with one of the staff from the hostel, and a friend of his.  They don’t let us go on our own.  We met up at 20:00 for the match, even though it didn’t kick off until 22:00.  This is because usually there are massive queues at the security gates, but for this match there wasn’t actually a big crowd, so we got through fairly easily.  I say that, but the search was thorough.  We had already left most of our possessions in the hostel for pickpocketing safety (again not an issue with this turnout) but anything which looked like something we could use as a weapon or throw onto the pitch would have been taken.  I had a pen in my pocket which I had forgotten about, and it was taken, the policeman who took it was kind enough to demonstrate to me that how could be used to stab someone.

Once inside the stadium all you can get to eat is the local speciality of Choripan, which is a chorizo hot dog.  It is some sort of tradition; you could set up stalls selling other stuff but nobody would buy it.  I’m not going to give too much of a match report, it was a boring first half although San Martin took the lead about 5 minutes before half time.  The second half was better, San Martin scored again, then San Lorenzo had a man sent off for an outrageous off the ball revenge punch.  However this woke them up and they scored twice to level, but then in extra time San Martin scored to win 3-2.  Quite entertaining for us neutrals, although as we were in the San Lorenzo end (this was deemed by the hostel to be the safer end – as it is more neutral, San Martin is a local rival of Mendoza) there was disappointment all around.  However you wouldn’t know it, the fans sang all the way through.  Also you woulnd’t have known there were only a few thousand of them, they made a lot of noise (more than an entire Emirates crowd at an Arsenal match).  The match finished at one minute to midnight, which is the latest I’ve ever been in a football stadium at, and which means the walk home falls into tomorrow’s blog.