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Santiago, Chile
The bus from Mendoza to Santiago took us through some spectacular scenery, quite a change from the relatively mundane prairie-like Pampas of Argentina.
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| Argentinean vineyard |
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| Progress is being made on the Cathedral |
Mendoza, Argentina
I had great hopes for Mendoza. Friends we had met had raved about how this was their favorite place in Argentina. For us, maybe not so much.
It started off badly, with me screwing up the hotel reservations. I chose this hotel, the most expensive we have stayed in on this entire journey, based on the reports of the great breakfast included, something much sought after in a country that doesn't seem to understand breakfast. Unfortunately it turns out that if you book your room via Expedia, the breakfast is not included, so we are reduced to walking the streets in search of the standard Argentinian breakfast of coffee and toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.
Mendoza is a very touristy place, offering a huge selection of restaurants. Unfortunately those that we would consider as "dinner" options, do not open for business until around 9PM and consider the wine selections to be more important than the actual food. If you show up before 10PM, you basically will have the restaurant to yourself. Needless to say, this does not work for us older Canadian cruisers. Late lunch at a sidewalk cafe is more our speed.
The main reason people throng to this area of Argentina, and Mendoza in particular, is for the fact that this is the heart of wine country. Almost all tours or other activities revolve around wine - lots of winery and wine-tasting events. All of which is, of course, of no interest to non-wine drinkers like ourselves. Our activities have basically been reduced to sipping coffee or smoothies in the cafes and reading books in the park. Fortunately this town has lots of cafes and parks. In the afternoon, when the heat of day hits, when the locals take their siesta, we also head back to our air conditioned hotel room for our own siesta.
As Susanne sums up the city, and much of Argentian as well, it is too expensive, too hot and too boring, with poor service providing bad food. Tomorrow we will finally be out of this frustrating country, taking the bus over the Andies and back into Chile. With any luck we will be back on the boat within a week.
{GMST}32|53.268|S|68|50.46|W|Mendoza, Argentina|Mendoza, Argentina{GEND}
Cordoba, Argentina
Yet another city in Argentina.
Sometimes when we wake up in the morning, we have to ask ourselves where we are. After a while, these cities seem to blend together in our minds. Cordoba, the second largest city in Argentina (3 million people, compared to 13 million in greater Buenos Aires), has the usual historic old town section, complete with a central plaza and accompanying church.
Being very picturesque and containing a maze of pedestrian-only shopping streets, it is a pleasant place to spend a few days, but probably not worthy of a longer stay. One point in its favour is that we have found the first good restaurant we have encountered in Argentina to date - oddly enough it serves Chinese food. So far as we can tell, this country's diet consists of steak and ham and cheese sandwiches; not a lot of variety.
Walking around town has turned up a few interesting sitghts, like an odd skateboard park, a very tall lighthouse (an awful long way from the nearest large body of water), and a sort of ferris wheel, designed by Gustave Eiffel.
There is a large park that would normally be a great place to spend some relaxing time, but the unfortunate lack of care and maintenance makes it less than desirable.
Two items of concern. First, the temperatures keep getting warmer. Today the high is around 31 degrees, predicted to be up to 36 in a few days, and we are heading further inland towards even hotter country.
The second item of concern is the escalating prices. The combination of a rather expensive country, high season in said country and the awesome decline in the value of our Canadian dollar, have forced us to think about getting back to the boat, in relatively inexpensive Ecuador. The shortest route from here appears to be to continue on to Santiago in Chile, then catch a flight to Guayaquil; so that is the current plan.
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| Cordoba Bus Terminal |
Tomorrow, we will be embarking on our longest bus ride in a long while, a gruelling 11-hour marathon. This will take us to the town of Mendoza, in the desert at the foot of the Andes mountains, apparently stopping at every little wide-spot on the highway in between.
{GMST}31|25.0956|S|64|10.8654|W|Cordoba, Argentina|Cordoba, Argentina{GEND}
Rosario, Argentina
We had a much nicer day today. No rain and a high temp of 26 degrees, perfect for wandering around town.
Downtown is a whole lot busier on a weekday.
Like so many of the Latin American cities we have visited, they have several blocks in the center of town that are closed off to vehicles, making for a very pedestrian friendly core, with lots of sidewalk cafes and eclectic shopping experiences.
Near the banks of the river sits the most impressive monument in town, a tribute to the birthplace of the Argentinian flag. For a small price, we were able to ascend to the top of said monument for some excellent views of the city. After that, we did a touristy type walk along the river - kind of neat to see those big ships so far inland.
Rosario turns out to be a pretty nice, laid back, kind of place, but I think one day is really enough to see the majority of it. Tomorrow we will continue on our quest to cross the continent. Next stop will be Cordoba.
{GMST}32|57|S|60|38|W|Rosario, Argentina|Rosario, Argentina{GEND}
Rosario, Argentina
The verdict is still out on Rosario.
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| Buenos Aires Bus Station |
We left Buenos Aires on the 10:30 bus for the 4 hour drive to Rosario, a much smaller city set on the banks of the Rio Parana, the second longest river in South America. After leaving on a slightly overcast morning, about half way we hit some high winds and thundershowers, all quite exciting as we had a perfect view, riding at the front on the upper storey of the bus, especially when the bus started aqua planing as it changed lanes. By the time we reached Rosario, the rains had stopped and it was a beautiful day.
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| Choose your speed limit |
Walking around town on a Sunday afternoon, the center of town looked deserted - pretty well standard for these very conservative, Roman Catholic cities - Buenos Aires was much the same.
This morning we set out with good intentions to see the sights along the river, but suddenly the skies got very dark and the wind started howling. We beat a hasty retreat back to our hotel, where we are holed up reading books, watching endless episodes of CSI on the only English TV channels and updating this blog, while the rain pours down outside. I think this city has a lot of promise if we just get a chance to see it.
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| Does that look like a friendly sky? |
{GMST}32|57|S|60|38|W|Rosario, Argentina|Rosario, Argentina{GEND}
Buenos Aires, Argentina
I am sure that the with number of miles we have walked in this city, we could have crossed the entire country by now.
In addition to our own random wandering, we have now been on two actual walking tours. The number of interesting or downright odd buildings, along with their stories, is fascinating. The architecture continues to be an astounding mix of inspired beauty and extremely uninspired ugliness.
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| United Nations sculpture - closes up at night |
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| Planetarium - closed for renovations |
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| The Cathedral that the Pope calls home |
One district, not far from our hotel, is Puerto Madero, the site of the original port for the city. Now it is a lovely, gentrified home to upscale businesses and pricey high-rise residences. There are two marinas here, the yacht club that would not let scruffy looking vagrants like ourselves near enough to see, and another that is situated such that it could never be very private, being right in the middle of one of the old "Dikes" of the former port, now surrounded by trendy restaurants and such. We were treated to the spectacle of one of the swing bridges opening, holding up a huge amount of traffic, to allow a single small sailboat passage to the outer harbour - pretty cool!
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| 1906 |
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| 2015 |
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| Pedestrian bridge |
We visited an old navy training frigate, now set up as a museum. Also pretty cool.
One other museum that caught our eye was the Bicentennial Museum, where we got a glimpse of the last 200 years of history for Argentina. Suffice it say that they have had their share of turbulence over the years, a lot of it very recent - and there is nothing to say it is over yet. Economically, this country is still very messed up. I would not recommend converting all your money into Argentinian Pesos.
Today, we wandered down to the bus terminal and got some tickets out of here. Tomorrow we will be travelling upriver to the city of Rosario, the Salsa Capital of Argentina. Yah, that sounds like fun!
{GMST}34|36.5|S|58|21.9|W|Puerto Madero, BA|Puerto Madero, BA{GEND}
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