Day 9 – Iguazu to Buenos Aires
Before you start, I am well aware I’ve missed a day. It was a great day, and I have started to write it up, but the lack of Internet in our room at the Sheraton in Iguazu Falls just made things harder than it needed to be, so this is going to be out of order.
Today was a travel day. Or at least that was what I was expecting. What I didn’t take into account is that they eat late here. Like after I’m normally tucked up in bed late. So I might have to tough this one out and stay up past 9pm… We shall see.
We had a nice lazy start to the day with breakfast at the hotel. I felt obligated to dig out the macro lens I brought with me around the gardens for little effect, and then Sergei, our driver from yesterday, who you don’t know about yet, picked us up and drove us the 15 minutes or so to the airport. Check in was easy and we got extra leg room in the emergency exit row for no charge. Might be to do with the split demographic. Either partners with children or the elderly with strength or movement impairment. We are both safely in middle age with no kids we were a good fit. It didn’t stop Kings sticking his feet into my space though.
We ran into a NZ couple at the airport who are traveling with an annoying Australian. Who knew they were out there 🙂 they are off to some cricket to in Buenos Aires. I’m glad I’m not traveling with them.
Uneventful flight. We ended up spending more time in line to exchange USD to pesos than in the air. That may be a slight exaggeration but not by a lot. The baggage carousel advertised was not the one our baggage was actually on, but following a man shouting randomly in Spanish we found our bags. Kingsley’s was missing his luggage lock which was interesting…
The taxi ride into the city and the Hotel Bristol on the main drag took about 15 minutes and cost about 150 peso. I felt significantly safer in the car with Sergei than this taxi driver. I guess there are also fewer speed bumps in Buenos Aires. The music in the radio was a 80’s mixup so strange flash backs.
It is definitely cooler here than it was at Iguazu. Again the air conditioning in the hotel works. For those of you who don’t know our friend Craig you may not understand why I keep mentioning this. We walked in to our room at his ‘happy place’ temperature of 17 degrees. The view is not quite the same as our last hotel, looking into a back alley this time, but the room is cozy and the location is great.
Stuck between lunch (which we missed) and dinner (which is at a crazy-person hour here) we popped down to the local supermarket for some cheese, crackers, beer and medicine (some may know that as wine). Very thankful ro the lady behind is in line who explained what the girl at the checkout was trying to tell us about returning beer bottle for a Refund, like in Vietnam only less hand waving. Must study more (aka some) Spanish before coming back to South America.
The hotel we are staying in is just south of ‘the obelisk’. This part of the trip I have delegated to Kingsley to organise for good or ill. I recall when I took some tango classes with a very dear friend 12 or so years ago the most important lesson I learned was how important it is to allow someone else to lead. I will be dredging up that lesson over the next two days. I don’t know that I’ve been a very good student over the last decade so wish me luck.
First impressions are that this is much busier, less pedestian focused than Santiago was, and a lot more smokers. Might be my low blood sugar though. We shall see when it gets cooler and we head out.
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