Rare Adventures

Tag: Argentina

  • 10 things I didn’t expect to find in Argentina.

    10 things I didn’t expect to find in Argentina.

    After 2 weeks travelling the length and breadth of Argentina, we discovered a few things we didn’t expect, here is a quick summary for those planning a visit.

    1. Buenos Aires is an amazingly beautiful city. It would be one of the most attractive capitals if it was in Europe. Big French and Italian influence come through loud in clear as you move around. I am sure that the grid system was great when it was first installed, now it is a well-established gridlock. The suburbs of La Boca and Palermo Soho are not to be missed.
    2. Italian influence.  Speaking Spanish I was fully expecting it a lot of Spanish culture, but it is much more Italian. All over the country the local’s area speaking Spanish with an Italian accent, it is very noticeable when they speak English as well.
    3. British music – wherever you go in Argentina, you will find 80s and 90s Britpop playing. The thing that is weird is that it all the songs are cover versions of the tunes by alternative singers, I suspect this may be to get around music licensing laws.
    4. Lovely People – happy, friendly and lots speak enough English to get by. In fact, there is a lot more British influence than they realise. They also don’t like using shower gel, it is clearly a big luxury in that part of the world.
    5. Stunning scenery – we have also concluded once you have seen one mountain you have seen them all, even if it is in mystical Patagonia. We have some really beautiful places, but it is also rugged and wild, the Argentinian side of the Andes is barren desert as the mountains take the rain. Unlike Europe, there are no foothills that build up to the range, it goes from flat desert to mountains very suddenly.
    6. Vaping – basically they don’t, there are still a few smokers around, but vaping is non-existent.
    7. Cash and credit cards – getting cash out of the ATMs is really expensive, minimum £8 service charge and often a lot more. I also found using credit cards online is hard work as UK cards seemed to assume I was a fraudster.
    8. Internal Flights – the country is huge, so air travel is essential, but it is expensive and more unreliable than we were expecting.  We had a very bad start with FlyBondi, but after that most flights were at least on the same day, but always late.
    9. Cost of living – it is pretty much the same prices as the UK, steak and Malbec is a bit cheaper but not massive. All their menus are digital as the prices are always rising.
    10. Homosexuality – Argentina is one of the most permissive countries from that perspective, they were the first to have same sex marriage, we even saw a gay pride march in Ushuaia, they all looked a bit nippy.  
  • Highlights of a day in Ushuaia

    Highlights of a day in Ushuaia

    Ushuaia is that last bit of civilisation before you get to Antarctica, the tourist industry calls it the end of the world, and it certainly is the end of the road, the pan American Highway 3 starts or ends here depending on which way you are heading.

    Ushuaia is a wild and windswept place surrounded by towering snow covered mountains all around it, with the Beagle Channel separating Argentina with Chile just across the straights. Coming into land was a bit of an experience with a 70mph wind behind us and no sign of land until you hit the runway, in our case, with a bit of a bump.

    We had a nice little place called Hotel Austral the room even had a heated floor to keep us warm, and it was no coincidence that our hotel was located next to the Dubliner Irish Bar, this seemed a great idea until they all piled out at 2am singing.

    I’ve now been to the most southerly point of 5 of the 7 continents and this is without doubt the wildest, Cape Horn is on an island about 50 miles away on one of the myriads of islands they provide the barrier between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Antarctica is about 800 miles south and there are winds that reach 150mph.

    Ushuaia is the capital of the Malvinas, part of which includes the Falkland Islands, so we were not too sure how Brits would be greeted in this area. However, we had no need to be concerned as the locals were very friendly and welcoming, that having been said, I wouldn’t advise wearing a Union Jack t shirt and we left our England rugby bobble hats at home. The war is basically a subject to be left alone and generations tend to move on.

    Ushuaia has found it’s way into the global tourist industry by virtue of building a cruise liner port that is the stop off for trips to the Antarctic, it has also built an amazing airport on a spur of land that juts out into the Beagle Channel and is very exposed to the elements.

    The end of November is the start of their summer, and it is cold and windswept, so it is difficult to imagine how desolate it must be in the winter.  It is a major skiing centre, nearly all the shops are dedicated to skiing and outdoor sports, but the Argentinian skiers must be hardy souls as this is the equivalent of skiing in the Arctic, like the Norwegians!

    Ushuaia is basically one long waterfront, which has been adapted to cope with cruise visitors near the key. Unlike Mediterranean cruise ports, there is no bargain gold or watches shops, a few souvenirs are about it. The cruise clientele coming through are made of hardier stuff as they are on their way to Antarctica.

    It is also home to a very dull museum and a Hard Rock Cafe, that wasn’t exactly bouncing either.

    Running parallel to the waterfront is the main shopping street, another very long street with all the shops interspersed with coffee and cake shops, eating to stay warm seems to be the local pastime.

    There is a notable lack of bars anywhere. Apart from our local Irish Bar we only found one other proper bar, and that was our old favourite from El Calafate the Patagonian Brewing Company again.

    We worked out that, due to its location, it was almost certainly the most southerly bar in the Americas, so we grabbed the table in the window, which made it the most southerly table, and had a beer to celebrate drinking in the most southerly, place and followed up with more beers and a lamb burger to fully celebrate reaching the end of our journey south.

    To be honest, there isn’t much to do in Ushuaia other than walk along the waterfront and get a few photos. We visited a museum that was utterly boring and reflected a history of hard labour as a penal colony and the indigenous people who were largely wiped out by the arrival of the Europeans and their ailments.

    There is a poignant reminder of the Falklands War, with images of the Argentinian troops occupying the islands. For me, it was very sad to see the images of young conscripts, brave and totally ill equipped on a mission to regain what they saw as their national territory. The problem was that the British naval forces, supported by some of the best paratroopers and commandoes in the world were on their way to reclaim it, so there was only ever going to be one outcome.

    The main trips are the Beagle Channel and the Tierra Del Fuego national park, which I will cover in a separate blog.

  • Buenos Aries in a day

    Buenos Aries in a day

    A whistle stop tour of a surprisingly attractive city

    Well technically it wasn’t a day in Buenos Aries, it was only half a day because the world’s most useless airline, Fly Bondi.  They managed to cancel both flights, so we arrived in Buenos Aries 24 hours later than planned, and then the flight that did leave was 8 hours late, so we lost a big chunk of the day allocated for our stop over.

    However, adaptable as ever, we still managed to make the most of it, had a good tour and stayed at a great hotel. Any hotel that isn’t a chain or wants to overcharge now calls itself a boutique hotel, but Fierro hotel was an absolute cracker. From arriving at reception at midnight and finding out breakfast is served until 3pm to entering the room to find a fridge with champagne and a wine cooler, it really was the real deal.

    Our flight to the Bariloche was scheduled to leave at 1630, but it was Fly Bondi, so time and day don’t mean much, but we were on a tight schedule. We were up early for the city tour, we had booked with “Tours Buenos Aires” which didn’t start too great. The taxi picked us up at 8.45am and we were still sat in the cab an hour later. It wasn’t clear if this was caused by the infamous Buenos Aries traffic or he just got lost, but anyway it wasn’t good.

    We finally met up with the coach tour, where we met Rosa, a lovely lady tour guide who seemed to have no grasp of time, which probably didn’t matter to the rest of our fellow tourists but was of critical importance to us, so the tour ended with us jumping off the bus and getting an Uber it ran so late.

    We have more days planned in the schedule for Buenos Aries, so this was a great chance to get an initial feel for the place. After Rio, we weren’t too optimistic about the city, but Buenos Aries is a surprisingly attractive city. Unlike Rio, it has embraced its European roots and the buildings are stylish, in fact, you could be in any major European capital city, including the traffic chaos.  Maybe it is the effect of being a nations capital that leads to the building having more status.

    The tour headed to the Boca area of the city. This is the oldest part of the city where the trading ships from around the world arrived, it is also the home of the Argentine Tango culture with a rich and colourful history.

    Republic of Boca

    Within the “Republic of Boca” is the Caminito, this is a complex of streets that are dedicated to all things wonderful about Argentina. The houses are all brightly coloured and have murals of famous Tango artists or figures of famous Argentinians like Maradona and Messi looking down from balconies into the streets.

    Argentina is famous for football, rugby and polo, so it came as a surprise that this is not it’s national sport, it is a game called Pato, which involves horsemen throwing a duck between themselves. To prevent cruelty to ducks, they now use a ball that has handles as is thrown instead, not many people know this!

    The world famous football team Boca Juniors stadium is right in the middle of this area and provides a colourful backdrop to local streets, and with all the bars, one could imagine match days being quite lively, in this area.

    Palermo

    Even the dogs where football kits

    We then moved on for a tour of the city, many of the government and main buildings were designed by the French and the Italians and together they do make an attractive place to be.

    There are numerous parks that give the feeling of spaces as your travel around the city, but in practice they seem to provide opportunity for racing circuits for the cars. The area of Palermo is one of the most attractive suburbs with lots of greenery.

    Presidential Palace

    There is a central square with the president’s palace and the balcony made famous by Eva Peron. It impossible to escape the legacy of Eva and her impact on the country, it is deeply embedded in folklore similar to Lady Diane in the UK and Marilyn Monroe in the US.

    So, it was a brief visit, but it has given us lots of ideas for when we come back. We had planned to do the day trip to Montevideo in Uruguay. However, we discovered the day trip to Montevideo is 5 hours each way so isn’t really a day trip, so that is now off the itinerary.

    Time to head to Patagonia for the next phase of our adventure.