Hi everyone!
Well, our week in Argentina was great. Our first couple of days we just spent chilling out and seeing the sights. Met up with a guy that we'd met in the hostel in Rio on our first night and of course immediately went to look for a parrilla (steakhouse)! Next day we visited Casa Rosada the old Royal Palace and the state graveyard which was bizarre. It is where Evita is buried so classed as a tourist attraction but you can actually see the coffins in little houses the families have constructed so that they can all be buried (if you can call it that) together in them! Quite creepy!
From Buenos Aires we did a day trip to a little town called Colonia in Uruguay. Caught a very plush ferry across with duty free like it used to be on the boat from England to Ireland before the governments decided to just tax us anyway! Didn't indulge in any duty free but not for a want of trying however it appeared they didn't want to take our money and when we tried to pay with card were told we'd have to wait til we docked...it shut when we docked I was not impressed! Ah well, we'll be passing through many more duty frees before we get home not that we need it!
Colonia was a really pretty and sleepy town so we just wandered round and got the all important stamp in our passport! Next day we went to see a football match. Racing v Belgrano. From what I could gather Racing are our version of premiership and Belgrano are divsion 1 and Racing were playing to stay in the premiership and Belgrano were playing to move up. Thank the Lord Racing won as the fans were complete lunatics. To give you an idea, they have a moat around the pitch to stop them storming it and police all over the place in riot gear carrying massive rifles. V scary!
The night after the football we went to a Tango show which was spectacular and even though Ivor would normally moan about going to something like that, he'd had his way about the football and was actually pleasantly surprised by the Tango. Tango in BA is crazy. Old men and really young girls it always seems to be will just start dancing in the middle of the street. The one we went to see was a full on show with a band and a Peruvian folk dance & music set in the middle. It was great and very hard to describe so I won't but can't imagine we'll see anything like it again.
One other major activity in Buenos Aires I've completely glossed over is steak.....We ate lots of steak in Buenos Aires and yes it does live up to the hype of being the best in the world. However I don't feel I am the correct person to really be writing on this subject as Ivor is much better versed! As we all know Ivor believes vegetarianism is somewhat of an illness so I'm going to leave the subject of Argentinian steak to him but needless to say I was actually sick of red meat by the time we left, irrespective of whether it is the nicest and best in the world. So, it's chicken all the way!
After what seemed like our umpteenth steak we left Argentina for the bright lights of Lima and er...bright lights they are not! Lima is a crazy little city. We arrived there early in the day and were collected by a taxi sent by the hostel. Talk about wacky races. It would appear car horns in Peru are just there to be used non stop all day and all night so they beep even when they're not wanting to catch anyone's attention or make people aware of them! We only had a couple of days in Lima before we flew to Cusco in the Andes so just visited some Inca ruins close to the hostel.
Bit difficult to get your head round how old the ruins are when you see them but everything has been so well preserved and it was really interesting to learn all about. Also saw some Llamas and Alpacas and Guinea Pigs which we were encouraged to eat...I have no intention of eating it but of course Ivor wants to! We arrived into Cusco a couple of days later and slept to try and get used to the altitude. It worked to a certain extent as neither of us was too sick but it does take a while to get used to it and it's horrible to feel breathless when you're not even exerting yourself at all!
Cusco is complete tourist town. Ivor really liked it as he was glad to be away from the city but I had been a little naive at how touristy it was going to be and was shocked to see that the city is completely overrun with every nationality imagineable! After giving ourselves a couple of days to adjust to the altitude and changing hostels to a rather plush new place that was expensive for Peruvian prices we decided to get our trips booked only to discover that there were 2 days of strikes in Cusco because the Peruvians aren't happy about the price of petrol & inflation...who is!
Wasn't looking like we were going to be able to go to Macchu Picchu after travelling all that way as everything was booked up for days due to the strikes but as luck would have it we managed to get 2 tickets on the train for the day before we left. Also booked a trip to The Sacred Valley another set of ruins in the area and got up and out for 08:30 to go on the tour after only having a few hours sleep only to be told it had been cancelled due to the strikes! So, ended up doing both tours in our last 2 days in Cusco and we were completely exhausted but it was definitely worth it.
Firstly we visited Sacred Valley which is a group of ruins, one 4000m above sea level so the hiking on that was tough. We also visited an artesenal centre where they showed us how they get the wool for all their tapestries etc and what they do with it to turn it into the bags and wall hangings that you can buy. Was really interesting and good to see the real Peruvian countryside rather than just Cusco. Our last day we took the train to Macchu Picchu which was fantastic. Absolutely stunning and worth the long journey. Obviously not as difficult as doing the Inca trail but still long!
From Cusco we returned to Lima for a couple of nights before I flew home for a few days to deal with some family stuff and Ivor has gone to Bolivia. We both fly back to Lima on Friday and will meet there before flying on to Chile for a week then New Zealand. So with my unexpected trip home our dates for places are all over the place but we'll be getting that sorted when we get to Santiago and hopefully be able to get at least a week in New Zealand and a week in Australia before we hit Asia. So this is where I shall leave this update and will pick it up in Santiago, Chile!
