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BELGRANO AND THE BANDERA
Hi guys!!!! Sorry it's been so long. In a word of explanation, we have primarily been in Buenos Aires in the last couple of weeks, catching up with friends and getting some chores done. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our next stop after the rappelling-drinking-Sangria-with-random-Argentines adventures in Cordoba was the small city of Roasario. We spent a few days at this river side locale about 4 hours short of BA. Probably the most exciting thing we did here was see the Monumento Nacional de Bandera. Rosario was the place where the Argentinian national flag was first raised and since then a massive "looks like it belongs in Washington" type monument has been built on the site. It includes a huge staircase, an eternal flame, water features and a tower you can go up and see a great view of the town and river. Underneath the monument is the tomb of Manuel Belgrano a former politician and the man who designed the flag (light blue and white striped with a friendly looking sun in the middle). And though it was rather pretty in places that was about all this town had to offer us. So it was on a bus back to Buenos Aires- the end of a full circuit of Chile and Southern and Middle Argentina.
BOOM
It was a lovely yet strange feeling to return to a city we knew so well. No stressing over taxis or addresses, no planning to get all our sight seeing done. Just some very relaxed visits to the park, nice meals and wandering around our favourite neighbourhoods. One exception was a visit to BA's Barrio Chino- China Town. There we found an amazingly cheap and good Chinese lunch AND a glorious Chinese grocery with so many of the ingredients we'd been searching for to make some tasty meals, including green curry paste and coconut milk! We stayed in a great part of town called Palermo during our 5 day stay, in a hostel called BAIT BA- highly recommended for the fabulous staff who were very understanding when the following incident occurred. To explain the story I first have to explain mate- mate is a tea like drink, made in a round gourd, and sipped through a metal straw like instrument called a bombilla. It's hugely popular in Argentina and Uruguay so of course we had to buy the equipment and try it ourselves. One night while preparing mate at the hostel, Ryan fetched our handy dandy thermos (mate is sipped from a little gourd so it needs to be filled up often with fresh, hot water. Thus many Argentinians are seen hauling gourd, bombilla and thermos all over town) Unfortunately we knew that we may have left a little tiny bit of soup in the thermos from approximately two weeks before and it may be a little stinky. I tried unsuccessfully to open the thermos, handed it to Ryan and as he tried- there was an explosion! Yes, the gases from our former soup had built up and resulted in a loud-gunshot-like bang and startled hostel guests and staff. Oops!
While in BA we also did a pub crawl with the lovely Estelle (so fun to hang out with a Melbourne girl!) and our friend Adam who we met during our last stint in the city as well as some new mates Jessie and Kevin from Wisconsin, USA. We began with pizza and red wine, visited 4 bars and somewhere near the end of the night sampled some chilli infused vodka (that part was not so fun!) On our last night in town we had a delicious dinner with Jessie and Kevin at a beautiful, atmospheric restaurant in Palermo called Las Cabras. We swapped a lot of travel stories and had a priceless moment where after Ryan consumed a rather large mixed grill type dish, Kevin later said to him "I don't know how to tell you this man, but the table behind you are splitting your dish between three people" ha ha ha After a brief last visit to Adam's place we took an emotional taxi ride through our old Buenos Aires neighbourhood- we really will miss that place!!
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TOWN
We woke early the next morning to clear out of our hostel and catch a taxi across town to the city's ferry terminal. Here, we bought tickets for the slow 3 hour ride across the River Plate to our third South American country, Uruguay. We began the trip standing on the top deck of the ship, watching our city disappear into the horizon until we were surrounded by nothing but blue (ok, maybe the water was a little more brown than blue). We spent the rest of trip enjoying the smoothness of sea travel in contrast to some of our bumpy bus rides, and soon arrived at our picaresque destination - Colonia. A very small town situated on the southern coast of Uruguay, Colonia was founded by the Portuguese in the late 17th century, and was used primarily as a fortification in wars against the Spanish. The territory was fought over, captured and exchanged many, many times, until eventually it was to ultimately remain a Spanish (and later Uruguayan) possession. Surprisingly, despite its turbulent past, the historic quarter of Colonia (also the oldest town in Uruguay) looks as though it has been perfectly preserved from its earliest days, replete with cobblestone streets and colonial buildings; even the old stone ramparts of the actual fort are still mostly intact. In short, it really does deserve its UNESCO world heritage site listing! We spent our first day here wandering through this incredibly romantic part of town (yes, there is even a lane called 'The Street of Sighs"!) and later watching the sun set over the river. Hayley claims that it is the most beautiful town that she has ever seen, and I am inclined to agree with her.
BULL
The next day, we decided to check out the other side of town, with one particular goal in mind. Hayley had spied a location on our map of the surrounding area, which was marked Plaza de Toros. So, we made this our objective for the day, and set out on our little walk. We soon discovered, however, that we were in for more of a walk than we had anticipated. After about two hours of wandering, we finally arrived at the Plaza (which, turns out, is in a whole other town called San Carlos de Real!), but it was worth it. Not quite sure what to expect, we discovered that the Plaza was actually a derelict bullfighting arena, which had long, long ago fallen into disrepair. We naughtily jumped the fence and explored the mini-coliseum, and snuck back out after stealing a few photos. The history of the arena itself is really quite interesting, largely due to the lack of bullfighting that occurred there. Built in 1910, the ring's early matches featured some of the best bullfighters of the time. However, no more than 8 fights were held up until 1912, when the Uruguayan government passed legislation outlawing bullfighting. Since then, the edifice has slowly been allowed to turn to ruin, an almost eerie focal point in an otherwise unremarkable suburb. After this interesting little diversion, we walked another two hours back to Colonia, where we devoured our lunch, and organized to make our way to the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo.
SUNNY!
After a 2 hour bus ride (we've decided we don't like these too much- 2 hours is just a pain where as 4 hours is long enough to get on, read a book and have a bit of a nap- bus ride experts lol) we arrived late in Montevideo. There we booked into a hotel (quite a luxury to have our own room and bathroom but it actually worked out cheaper than a hostel) in the middle of the Ciudad Vieja, the original, oldest part of town. The lady at reception kindly gave us a map and explained very clearly "Here ok to go out and eat at night. (draws big circle on the map) Here NO (draws big cross)". Perhaps because it's such a small city, the good and bad neighbourhoods sometimes practically adjoin. You can walk from Teatro Solis ( A huge fancy old theatre) around the corner into a really rundown area. And while our hotel was on an ultra safe, touristy pedestrian street, a few streets away the old buildings are falling down and being used by squatters. Quite sad really! So we grabbed a bite to eat on the city's biggest road 18 de Julio ( Ryan had a Chivito- he insists he's trying all the local delicacies but I think he just wants to eat all the greasiest foods in South America. This particular gem involved a pile of salad, topped by a pile of fries, topped by steak, topped by bacon, topped by ham wrapped around cheese nicely capped of with an egg. Seriously.) And we were excited to get started on some sight seeing the next day….unfortunately the next day it rained. And rained. And rained. So we didn't do much more than eat lunch and watch cable. But the FOLLOWING day we got out of the hotel. We had coffee at an adorable café above an art deco style book store ( with many books in English- we resisted!) and took a walk up the aforementioned 18 de Julio. It's very busy and bustling during the day with people selling all manner of things on the streets, though the traffic is considerably more sedate than Buenos Aires - some drivers even give way to pedestrians here! The weather was also beautiful- sunny and about 27 degrees- bliss! We headed back to the Old City for a few photo ops, lunch and wander through a nearby plaza with some antiques stalls. (We must be getting old cause we love this kinda stuff now- however antiques here are a little different, they'll have like silver ware next to old dentures!) Later that evening we met the lovely French Canadians from Cordoba, Catherine and Gen for some drinks in a street café near our hotel then dinner in an adorable Italian style restaurant, which we are determined to visit again one day because we want to try everything on the menu! All in all a lovely night, and the girls offered to take us to the Saturday market the next day as well!
BEAR
So the next morning we met the girls in Plaza Independencia (the bear statues I have photos from in BA are there- I guess they just keep getting shifted to the next city!) and caught a bus to the suburb of Pocitos where the market is. Ryan was a little bored because it was mostly clothes but I loved it. The afternoon was rounded off by a visit to the Mercado de Puerto, a big old building with lots of parilla restaurants inside and a LOT of atmosphere. We ate waaay too much food and listened to people playing instruments and singing. Very lovely! In a final farewell to Montevideo (ok we may have to come back for a bus connection, we're not sure yet) we had a few more drinks with Catherine, Gen and some other Montevideo international students, before returning to our room to prepare for our next journey- to the very isolated beach town of Punta del Diablo- woo!!
SO sorry it's been a while since the last blog, thanks for your messages and the footy updates Tony- quite pleased last week, not so much this week.
Love you all- Hayley and Ryan
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