Overland Trip - Argentina

30th January, Day 1 - Buenos Aires

Sorry to leave our nice accomodation in Palermo, thanks to the lovely folks at Caseron Porteno. We had tried to book a room for our return to BA at the end of February, but no luck, as there is some kind of Tango Mondial happening. Boo hoo!

Taxi'd it to the Majestic Hotel where we will spend at least the first night of our overland trip and checked in.

Despite this being the first day of our trip, there's no activities planned and we have the day to ourselves. Again, it's annoying that this is considered part of the trip. To raise a smile we get out of the early afternoon heat and head to the cinema and watch A Night in the Museum/Ben Stiller. Not bad.

After, and with pre-planning in mind, we head over to the San Telmo area to check out the Garden House hostel. Yep, all is good and we book up for our return on 25th February. It's 63 Pesos a night for a double, breakfast included. Not the best area, but we're happy with it, and it's close to the subway. With taxi's being so cheap too, it's not a problem.

Good news - the itinerary for our trip has been tweaked, so we get out of town a little earlier, tomorrow lunchtime. Thanks Kim!

Met up with Sarah back at the hotel and the three of us went for some food, before making our way back to Cafe Tortoni for a Tango show.

Disappointing venue, and our seats are at the back, which wouldn't have been a problem if it weren't for the waiters continuing to serve during the show. Also, the stage is not that high off the ground, so you don't really get to see the leg-action. It's all about the feet! Shame, because the performers are good, the band too.

31st January - Day 2

A few things to do before we leave, including getting our memory cards onto DVD, then some food before we head off in the truck.

Strangely, we get down to reception for the agreed departure time, to find no-one else around. Soon realise we are an hour early, though very mystified as to why the watch has changed by an hour and 15 minutes. Spooky.

So, at the proper time, we return to the truck and the group get their things packed into the under-seat lockers. With 18 on board we've not got as much room as the last trip, where we had 2 lockers each. We soon get things wedged in okay.

All done by 2pm and we hot the road, RN14 to be precise. The scenery out of town not great and the land around us very flat.

Got to our first campsite at the end of the afternoon and cracked out the dome tents, which will hopefully go up quicker over the next few days.

Our leaders, Kim and Duncan, get dinner started and most folks muck-in to get the food ready. Ate, and chatted, with our group. Also spoke in our basic Spanish to a group of Scouts who were on a camping trip. Communicated surprisingly well.

By the way, so we don't forget names in years to come, our group are; Sarah H, Emily, Neil and Jill, Tom and May, Andy and Gerry, Mike, Graham, Andy, Celia, Sarah K, Richard and Natasha and Julia. All a good bunch, from 19 to 67. It's good to be somewhere in the middle.

Didn't sleep too well on our first camp night - a little hot.

1st February - Day 3

Up at 7ish, glad for a shower, though the facilities pretty grotty, and I hate it when there's no locks on the toilet doors, especially if they are 'squat' toilets.

After brekky we hit the road at 9am - scenery not really changing, and not too interesting at this point. Grateful though, for the breeze whistling through the truck.

Arrived at Santo Tome (the river is teh boundary between Argentina and Brazil. The water is murky, though nice to swim in. We are warned not to pee in it, otherwise there's little critters that will swim in your peepee hole, and they don't come out easily.

Nice setting for a camp here, right next to the river.

After dinner most of us strolled into town, where earlier we saw them setting up for a 'mini' Carnaval - great timing, arriving today.

Cost us a few Reais to get into the main street to take our bar-seats for the procession. The youngsters go off first - lots of floats and skimpy outfits, even for the toddlers! Not quite bordering on bad taste though.

Quite funny to see the guys sprinting along the road to plug in their floats to electricity. Also, feel sorry for the participants, who are being towed at a snails pace behind some kind of vehicle that is coughing up its last horrendous, black, fumes.

The adults follow soon after, and this is when we start to see some backsides hanging out of cheesecutter undies. Mike soon runs out of blank discs to record onto. I think his camera zoon has also jammed.

Some folks at the side of the road selling aerosols of foam spray - of course, would be rude not to join in. Most of us get a coating, though we seem to be picked on by the local kids. At least we don't resort to using the empty cans as weapons.

Great night out, and in bed past 2pm, though the procession continues. Nearly get attacked by dogs on the way back.

2nd February - Day 3

Up early again, and on the road. Mostly driving today, though we stopped at San Ignacio Mini Jesuit ruins. Pretty impressive, though pretty hot under the sun today.

Seems odd, we're parked up on what seems like the village green, and we're sitting down with all our lunch stuff spread around. Unlike Asia, we don't seem to attract too much attention - we miss that!

In the ruins, there's a large area where the houses and shops would have been,, with a large square and church. The Jesuits arrived in 1610, and although the aim of the priests of The Jesus Company was to evangelise the Indians, they did desperately try to protect them from the Spaniards, who were using them as slaves. The Jesuit mission was subsequently destroyed by the Paraguans in 1817.

After our village-green lunch we moved on, arriving at our campsite, on the Argentine side of the Iguazu Falls, at Puerto Iguazu. Popular, and busy, campsite - has two pools, though both quite busy. Opt for the one with less kids. Water a bit murky, and a little too warm.

After dinner, just hung around and 'shot the shit' as Duncan would put it.

3rd February - Day 4

Arrived at the Falls for 9.30 ish.

Got ourselvs the 'green card', which covers most of the excursions within the Falls park. Our first sector is a ride through a rainforest area. Little information given, and not a great deal to see.

At the end of the track, a speedboat awaits to take us 6km down towards the falls. Did some skimming over the wake of the speedboat ahead of us - a few tight turns here and there, but nothing to cause a sweat.

At the falls themselves, we get 'quite' close - enough to get soe spray. Falls look huge from the bottom, and they are very much spread over a wide drop area. Everyone gets a soaking.

The boat drops us off at the start of the upper trail and most of the rest of the day is spent walking around the various view points. It's very well done, though full of tourists. Devils Throat particularly impressive - moreso, we think, than what we remember of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Nice when the breeze blows the spray in our direction, as we swelter under the buring sun.

As well as the falls themselves, we get to see some wildlife around - a cayman, lots of butterflies (some of which land on us to suck up some salty sweat) - also, some large black and white lizards and Howler monkeys. Spent some time amongst a family of Coatis (cute critters from the racoon family).

All of us meet up at 6pm for our minibus back to the campsite - from there we make the short trip to the Argentine/Brazil border. Took a while to get through, not arriving at the next campsite until 10pm, though we're told that dinner will be waiting for us. Turned out to be very nice, especially the chocolate sponge pudding.

The campsite (perhaps not quite the right term) is packed, lots of overland trucks in town. In turn, it's noisy and the facilities are not so good. Get our first experience of Brazilian showers, which have electric heating elements in the shower heads. Also, lots of dangerous looking wires with water flowing over them. Do I dare slide the button over to HOT from COLD????

4th February - Day 5

Brazil continues on next thread......