6 Days in beautiful Buenos Aires, living it up.

From the moment we set foot in South America I think we had both been looking forward to our last stop, Buenos Aires, quite a lot of the travellers we have bumped into on our way round have told us how great it is although I should counter this by saying that several other people told us it was their least favourite place in South America.

The city itself is fairly modern, especially in the centro area where many of the government buildings and shopping streets reside. At times the buildings could be anywhere in Europe and many of the buildings with their grey slate roof tops would not be out of place in the center of Paris.

Best and worst of South America

Now that we are safely back in the UK I thought I should do a little Q and A with myself, thinking about our time in South America to get an idea of what we both enjoyed and what we would probably do differently if we were doing it again. I got the idea for most of the questions from the things that people have asked since I got back.

1) What was the biggest surprise?
The prices. We were lead to believe that we could survive for 50 quid a day between us but because we chose to shun tourist menus and also because of our fairly hectic schedule, which saw us either travelling or visiting another tourist site, I think we spent close to double that.

Private dining at devils point, Uruguay

The longer you are on the road for the more blasé you become. We've tried hard not to make too many errors on our trip but our arrival at Punto del Diablo, after a 5 hour bus ride from Montevideo, indicated that the plan we came up with while we were hungover in Colombia about 3 weeks ago, may have not been made with access to as much information as we needed.

The first minor issue we were aware of, it is now Autumn here, we noticed it in Buenos Aires, and certainly in Montevideo (where we got caught in a couple of massive downpours) but it was even more apparent in Punto del Diablo as it was cool, cloudy and the wind was gusting strongly. This change in the climate had lead to a more major issue, the tourist season was over. This was starkly indicated to us as we disembarked the bus by a number of the restaurants in the centre of the fishing village being boarded up for the winter!

Buenos Aires, where dollars are king

We arrived at our final stop in South America, Buenos Aires, after a short ferry crossing from Colonia de Sacremento in Uruguay. Watching the city come into view on the far side of the river was definitely a mixed emotions thing, I am not going to miss the endless packing and unpacking but the day to day experiencing new things is definitely going to be a loss.

On the advice of several people we have spoken to on the road we arrived carrying dollars. I was a bit confused/worried about this as no one mentioned this when we were in Mendoza or Salta, and also because if we withdraw dollars we pay an exchange fee and then (in sane parts of the modern world) you pay another fee when you convert the dollars into whatever currency you are using.

Colonia de Sacremento.

The last stop on our brief Uruguayan excursion was Colonia de Sacramento. This is a UNESCO world heritage site on the banks of the Rio Plata which was originally set up by the Portuguese to smuggle things into Buenos Aires. It's main function has changed a bit since then but people still flood across from buenos aires on a regular basis with Several ferries a day crossing the river.


Colonia is now more of a holiday location with many people from Montevideo and Buenos Aires owning the beautiful river front properties. The other reason the Argentinians were apparently flocking there was because in Uruguay you can withdraw dollars, which is now impossible across the river (driving the exchange rate sky high) the downside being that the queues at the cash points are usually long and people tend to spend at least 10 minutes in the booth (we waited an hour in a queue of 5 people!). At the time this seemed pretty crazy but for reasons I will cover in my next blog it now makes sense.

Montevideo, it's a long way from Iguassu

So, we're in Uruguay! No idea why, I guess we fancied another couple of passport stamps and trying out a different mode of transport.

Whoever said it was better to travel than arrive has never tried getting to Montevideo from Iguassu. It was not a great deal of fun, it involved an 18 hour bus to Buenos Aires (which arrived at 6:30am) followed by a ferry the following morning at 9.

Now had we been less panicky travellers we could have tried to get from the bus station to the ferry port on the same day, but our tickets indicated that we should be at the dock 2 hours before departure as that is when boarding starts.

Iguassu and the moon on a stick (ok maybe everything but the moon!)

After Rio we flew (I know what you are thinking about budget but this was less than 80 US dollars each) to our second and final brazilian stop, foz do iguaçu or the iguassu falls.

The falls sit near the Paraguayan, argentinian and brazilian border with the latter two countries sharing the falls (80% are on Argentinian land and 20% are on Brazilian turf)

They are massive, to see them properly takes at least a day and a half, and we were told that you have to view them from both sides, on the Argentinian side you get really up close and personal with the falls, there is also a solid 8 or 9 km walk to see all of the separate waterfalls where as in Brasil you can see pretty much the whole falls from one vantage point. On both sides you are going to get wet, if you take a speed boat to get a closer look (i would recommend it) you are going to get completely drenched so take a spare set of clothes or stuff that dries quickly (at least you dear reader are forewarned, we just got soaked and had to live with it).