Home

I made it.

5 Countries

3 months

33 hotels/hostels

2 homestays

5 domestic flights

22 bus rides, 9 of them overnight (not including day trips)

I am home. Sort of. I'm in the middle of homes. I have stuff in Teaneck at my parents house, stuff in my apartment in Hoboken, and have to move everything to Cambridge, MA.

Life is always an adventure.

Buenos Aires

17-20 August - Buenos Aires, Argentina

From Puerto Iguazu I flew to Buenos Aires with my LAN voucher that I got when my flight from Arequipa to Cusco was overbooked back in June. It was great because otherwise it would be a 20 hour bus ride. I shared a cab to and from the airport with a Swedish guy that had the same flight and whose hostel was around the corner from mine. We ended up having lunch at a parilla (so much food) and walking around the city that afternoon.

We stumbled upon La Casa Rosa (Spanish for "The Pink House"), officially known as the Casa de Gobierno ("Government House") or Palacio Presidencial ("The Presidential Palace"). This is where Evita addressed large crowds from that famous balcony. We saw a long line of people getting in so we decided to see what all the fuss was about and ended up taking a tour inside.

Inside Casa Rosa:

That night I saw a drum show called La Bomba de Tiempo with some people from the hostel. It was a really good show. But there were these stupid American girls that thought they owned the space and were really rude and annoying. I got into a little argument with one of them. The Aussies I was with told me those were the kind of girls that gave Americans a bad name.

The next day I did more walking around the city. Mostly Avenida Florida, a pedestrian street with a lot of shopping. At night I saw a tango show. We had a free tango lesson and had dinner. At my table I met Cecila who was ironically from New Jersey. She had been studying tango for about 6-8 months and even took some classes at Battista Dance Studio in Hackensack where my Dad takes lessons. Small world. The tango show was amazing. Tango is so sensual and emotional. It made me want to take lessons. I took a lot of video, but it seems blogger doesn't like the big video files to be uploaded so I put up a short one.

Tango Show

The next day I walked everywhere in Buenos Aires. I mean everywhere, and Buenos Aires is huge. Bigger than New York I think. There are 12 million people that live there. They have some of the widest streets in the world. One had something like 12 lanes.

Here is Puerto Madero, a somewhat new district in Buenos Aires. There were tons of nice restaurants along the waterfront including a TGIFridays and Hooters.

La Recoleta Cemetery was located in the Recoleta neighborhood. It has the graves of the most influential people of Argentina - writers, presidents, and just wealthy people. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums. The most famous person buried there was Eva Peron. However, Evita's grave was the most disappointing. It wasn't as grand or as ornate as some of the other ones.

Here is Biblioteca Nacional (National Library). It was built in the location of the presidential residence where Juan Domingo Perón and his late wife Evita lived.

Floralis Genérica was this big metal sculpture of a flower that closed at night.

Colorful buildings in the Palermo neighborhood.

For my last day I hung out with Tessa and Sanne. I had originally said goodbye to them In Iguazu. They went to Rosario before coming to Buenos Aires. We weren't sure if we'd see each other in Buenos Aires or not but we did. We spent my last day in South America at Caminito Street in La Boca. There were a lot of little shops and restaurants with live tango performances and flamenco also (well it may have been paso doble or something like that. Not really sure).

Buenos Aires is easily my favorite city in South America. There is so much to do there. 4 days was not nearly enough. I'd love to go back there.

Iguazu

14-16 August - Puerto Iguazu, Argentina

It was another long bus ride from Cordoba to Iguazu, about 10-12 hours. We got there on Friday morning and still had time to do things. We stayed at a place called Hostel Inn. This place was great. It didn't feel like a hostel at all... well except for the bunk beds and shared bathroom. But this place had a pool, a concierge desk, and even a place for massages. It was like a resort for a backpacker budget. It was great. And the weather was hot!

The first day we wanted to just chill at the pool but we first had to go into town to find an ATM. We wer running out of cash. It ended up taking hours and hours. One bank wouldn't take our cards. Another bank's ATMs weren't working. One person told us that all the ATMs in the town weren't working. I was beginning to miss how convenient ATMs were at home and how easy it is to get cash there. Well, we ended up at a casino and the ATM there worked. I guess they always make sure the cash at the casino works.

After that we had a few hours of sun left in the day to chill at the pool. That night at the hostel they had a Brazilian Barbeque, churrascaria de rodízio, where they have a salad bar and they bring the meat to your table. They even had samba dancers perform. It wasn't much of a performance though. It was more about bringing the tourists up on stage to make a fool of themselves doing samba and doing a big conga line and a limbo thing. But it was fun. We drank bottles of the best wine they had, about $12. It was yummy. I love Argentinian wine.

The next day we headed over to the Iguazu National Park to check out the waterfalls. The waterfall system consists of 275 falls along 2.7 kilometers (1.67 miles) of the Iguazu River. The falls can be seen from Argentina, Brazil, and even Paraguay. I stayed on the Argentinian side. Brazil requires Americans to get an expensive visa. I will have to go to Brazil on another trip, maybe Carnival in 2011. Who's with me? Anyway, the park was really touristy. It was set up like a theme park. It was also super crowded that weekend becuase it was some holiday and everyone had a long weekend.

Throughout the day we saw some animals. There were these critters running around everywhere, called coati. We also saw this cool bird. I have no idea what it was called. Also acaiman, crocodile, and we saw monkeys!! I love monkeys.

Animals were cool and all but we were there to see the falls. First we went to Devil's Throat, Garganta del Diablo. This was the biggest fall marking the border between Brazil and Argentina. We took a train to the other side of the park and then walked on walkways to get there. It was really crowded and hard to get to the railing to get a good picture, but you just have to be a little patient, and a lot pushy.

We also did a boat tour to get to the bottom of the falls. And boy, do you get soaked. They put you right under the falls. It was great because the sun came out and there was a beautiful rainbow.

After that we hiked around the lower circuit and then the upper circuit to get all different views of the falls. It was so beautiful. I loved it there. It was truly amazing.