Hola from South America

About a week ago now we flew into Buenos Aires to begin a 3 month trip around South America.  Our approach has been very laissez faire, with a false sense of confidence having survived ~4 months in Africa, we figured we would make it up as we went along and enjoy the freedom of a fully flexible itinerary.  To date, this approach has treated us fairly well - although does lead to spirited discussion about what to do and where to go next and, perhaps inevitable for independent travel, requires a lot of time spent planning while we are in each location.

The Main Falls

Both Jen and I have been hugely impressed with the South America that we have seen to date.  Argentina is a highly modern and very developed country, and Buenos Aires feels positively European.  The city is organised via a grid pattern and an efficient (and very cheap) metro system connects the major points of the city.  Our hostel was centrally located, clean and the double room we had was surprisingly spacious!  

We spent 3 nights in Buenos Aires before leaving for Puerto Iguazu (for the Iguazu Falls).  Intending to spend more time at the end of our trip exploring the city we spent our time in Buenos Aires principally in attempting to get a handle on the local language.  After a day of rest we spent two days (4 hours a day) at a Spanish school in a 'Spanish for Travellers' crash course with our own private tutor (attempting) to bring us up to speed on the very basics of the language.  We are by no means experts, but certainly feel like we can now understand small parts of some conversations.  

We arranged transport on an overnight bus to Puerto Iguazu through our hostel on our fourth day in Argentina.  The 20 hour bus ride was absolute luxury.  The bus system that has been developed in Argentina should be the envy of the rest of the world.  Nothing that either of us has experienced comes close to the comfort, convenience and cost effectiveness of the system that now prevails in Argentina.  Our 20 hour bus ride was ~550 Argentinian Pesos each (or about US$125) for a first class ticket.  Departing at 7.40 at night, we had two wide seats next to each other which could be converted into a lie flat beds (i.e. 2 metres between seats).  We each had our own personal entertainment system with a number of english movies (with spanish subtitles) to choose from, dinner (brought to us while the bus was moving and better than standard plane fare), drinks and breakfast the next day.  The time absolutely flew by and before we knew it we had arrived in Iguazu, almost 1,400 km north of Buenos Aires.  In addition to the fantastic bus system, the highways were wide and straight and permitted the bus to travel at full speed for the entire duration of the trip.  The conditions were highly amenable to a good nights sleep - exactly what we got! 

Iguazu was much more tropical than Buenos Aires, with temperatures in the mid-20’s and humidity much higher.  Puerto Iguazu (about 20 km from the falls) is a small town with a developed tourist market.  Almost everyone seemed to speak English (at least, the number of people speaking English seemed much higher than in Buenos Aires) and therefore getting around and eating was easy - we tried out our Spanish, but it was hard not to cheat when the going got tough.  

The Iguazu Falls, which we visited the following day, were really something else and captivating in their beauty.  They are much wider than the Victoria Falls we saw earlier this year in Zimbabwe and could be viewed from a distance permitting a panoramic appreciation of their majesty from a distance where we weren’t being drenched in spray!  The Falls have clearly had substantial investment put into them and were great value for money - there is a tourist friendly train which links the entrance gate to the main viewing area and following that to the upper part of the falls where a 1km long walkway over the river has been built to view the ‘devil’s throat’.  The Iguazu Falls could be thought of in two parts.  The river, which forms the falls, rounds a corner and becomes very wide immediately preceding the falls.  The river also gets separated (temporarily) by an island.  Most of the river on the right hand side becomes part of the picturesque and widely spread out ‘main falls’.  Whereas the river on the left hand side is funneled into a narrow channel and becomes the ‘devil’s throat’ (it looks and feels positively violent with massive water sprays sometimes obscuring the view of the falls completely).  Of course no trip to a big waterfall is complete without an absolute drenching.  We got ours in Vic Falls as we approached a particular lookout and felt like we had walked into a full blown storm from the waterfall spray - in Igauzu we got our drenching courtesy of a 15 min jet boat ride right up next to the falls themselves.  Wise to the likelihood of having wet clothes we got this in early in the day so we could spend the rest of our visit drying out.

After viewing the falls there wasn’t much left to do but move on.  We decided our next port of call would be Rio de Janeiro.  We booked another bus ride (24 hours this time) and hopped on.  Unfortunately first class services for this leg didn’t exist, so we booked the equivalent of a business class service.  The seats were still nice and wide, with ample leg room, but they didn’t recline all the way flat and there were communal tv's showing a fixed choice of movies rather than a personal dvd and tv.  In all, this hardly mattered - the trip was still very comfortable.  4 movies and a fairly good night’s sleep later we arrived in Rio at about 1pm.  Standing in the intercity bus stop - the first thing we needed to do was to was find a place to stay...

The Devil's Throat in the background - Brazil is on the left hand side of the river