Bas: March 2007 Archives

Cordoba is Argentina's second largest city with a very large student population, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to do apart from looking at yet more churches, so we decided to create our own fun the first night there.

A little known quirk of Argentinian culture are the so called hoteles por hora, though most charge for at least two. We found this out in the Lonely Planet which has a nice boxed section on it in the Cordoba section. Here is how it works: you drive up to the place (usually along a main road with Las Vegas style signs to lure you in) and a number flashes on the board, this is the number of your room. Once you get there, you drive into the garage and close the door behind you before entering the actual hotel room. In a few minutes someone comes to a tiny sliding door in the wall, takes your money and lets you get on with it. Anonimity is the name of the game. The room is very much like your average crumbling four star Hilton room except that this one has a jacuzi in the corner and the you-know-the-kind TV chanels are included in the price, a nice touch. Surprisingly absent, though, was the bible in the bedside cabinet. The Gideons must not know about these places yet.

I have no doubt some end up taking paid guests there too, but according to our guide on the next day's trip it is a social service. The idea is that it gives couples still living with their respective parents somewhere to turn, though the Lonely Planet thinks it is mainly for secretaries trying to work their way up the corporate ladder during the siesta. So probably a bit of both.

The next day we went for a hike in Argentina's newest national park, the Parque Nacional Quebrada del Condorito, quite a baren landscape, but an important breeding ground for the endangered Andean Condor. It is about an 8K hike to the canyon where the Condors actually breed, through an area that should be densly forrested, but as in so many places, we humans have selfishly seen to that problem. Even though it wasn't quite mating time, we did manage to see some of these majestic birds before the clouds rolled in.

Much of the return hike, via a slightly different route, we were covered in the clouds, not being able to see more than 10 meters in front of us, which was quite cool, in both senses of the word. It being quite chilly did mean nobody - including yours truly - was up for the refreshing dip in a wide pool in one of the rivers.

After Cordoba, we were off to La Cumbre. Suposedly a hotbed of outdoor activity, but to us it seemed more like a nice place to chill. Yes, you could rent mountain bikes, but there weren't any real trails, just dirt roads from town to town and people there seemed to know only one hiking trail, but it was quite a nice one so we took it. Up the hill from the town was a rather large statue of the popular fiction character Jezus Christ, and that was where the trail started. There was also where we met up with our guide, a friendly stray dog who seemed to know the trail and led us all the way.

Not long after setting off, we entered a field with some donkeys. They didn't bother too much with us, but the dog decided to get their attention. He succeeded and they started to follow him when he came back to us, so now we had one guide and three fellow travellers. They followed us down the hill, over a rock wall and even over the creek. We thought we'd never lose them until we came to a house being built and for no obvious reason they decided they had come far enough and stayed there while we and the dog carried on.

He ended up following us all the way to town, staying with us for lunch and despite our best efforts at distracting him with some food while we hurried off, he even followed us to the hostel. Lucky for us, there he was ahead of us while we turned into lane leading up to the house and while he followed us up outside the fence, he never found the way in.

There is a lot more to see in the Central Sierras, but most of them are pretty far out of they way and take more time to get to than you have to enjoy being there if you are on a short trip like ours. So we decided to skip town to a place where those things would be easier: Bariloche in Argentinia's Lake District. First we had to go back to Cordoba and then find another bus to take us the 23 hours south, which didn't prove all that difficult or uncomfortable as it sounds. Fortunately, the sound system in the bus was busted so we got to enjoy Scary Movie 4 in silence with only Spanish subtitles, which is probably the best - if not only - way to enjoy it.

So here we are, in the lake district. I'll have to give you a quick flashback later because we are already about to leave this place. Tomorrow, we hop over the border into Chile, to their side of the Lake District and a town called Pucón.

Being at an internet cafe at a time when it is also convenient to blog (ie: we haven't made any other plans) is a bit harder than expected, so it is time for a quick digest of 10 days in Argentina.

After arriving in Buenos Aires we managed to find a place stay for the next two nights before hopping on another plane to Iguazu Falls. BsAs is, in a way, just another big, noisy city, so we decided in advance we weren't going to stay there for very long. In my experience, if you go to a very big city - say, on the scale of London, New York, Paris, etc. - you need to spend at least a week there to start to apreciate it and find the good spots to go to so you can just start to enjoy it, rather than racing around from one tourist hot spot to another. So we enjoyed just wandering around some of the shops and really did only one tourist spot: Recoleta Cemetery, where Eva Peron is burried. An interesting place; it is like a minature city of mausoleums of Buenos Aires' rich and famous. Some in perfect condition, some crumbling to rubble.

When in Argentina, you don't have much of a choice, you must have steak. Argentinian beef is very, very good and they know how to cook it well too, on a parrilla. For a quick lunch, a lomito (steak sandwich) is a good choice and for dinner (which doesn't start until at least 20:30 for an Argentine) a bife de chorizo (thick sirloin steak) is the weapon of choice. For a really good one, we went to one of the upmarket restaurants at the Puerto Madero part of town. 400 grams is the minimum they do and two of the buggers, some starters and softdrinks will set you back 125 pesos - about 23 Great British Pounds. Yes, this really was one of the most expensive parrillas in Buenos Aires.

Mind you, the lamb they do here is pretty impressive too and so is the pork. Not to mention the yummie empanadas (small pastry filled with beef, chicken or other stuffings) that make for a good snack.

The next stop was Iguazu Falls, the worlds most impressive set of waterfalls. It would have been a 24 hour coach journey but because it took us well out of the way of where we wanted to spend the rest of our time in Argentina, we decided to pay up and get flights there. Those were about what you would expect to pay for an hour and a half flight, except that everything else is so cheap here, so why not the flights? Simple, because we are foreigners, they simply take the real fare and double it for us. Nice.

The falls really are impressive, but with something this gorgeous in nature, you expect to have to work for it. It needs to be a reward for a reasonably long trek through the wilderness. Unfortunately, it is handed to you on a plate, narrow gauge theme park railway, wheelchair friendly metal boardwalks and all. Somehow it takes away from the experience quite a bit and to be honest in hindsight it doesn't seem worth the time and expense. If you are trekking through the region anyway, by all means go and see it, but it is not worth going up there from Buenos Aires just for the falls.

What did make our day at the Iguazu national park nice in the end was the Sendero Macuco nature trail of some 3.5 kilometers to the small Salto Arrechea waterfall where you could climb down and take a dip in the lagoon below. Though you will always be there with a handfull of people, this trail isn't taken by the masses of tour groups.

To get back to on our loosely planned itinerary, we needed to backtrack to Buenos Aires and we spend the evening there before boarding an overnight bus to Cordoba. We spent the afternoon and evening in the Palermo suburb; first with the stray cats in the botanical gardens before heading down to the boutique lined cosmopolitan streets with many good restaurants, bars and coffee shops. If you are ever in Buenos Aires, this is a good part of town to stay in.

Now the long distance busses in Argentina aren't exactly your daddy's Greyhounds, rather, they can be seriously comfortable. If you choose to pay for Coche-Cama, you get a double decker bus with only three seat in a row in a 2-1 configuration. Though not quite comperable to British Airways Club class, they are very much like the kind of business class seats found on US airlines; lots of leg room and it reclines rather far. I am surprised to say I slept rather well all the way to Cordoba, which is a 9 hour journey.

More on Cordoba and the rest of our trip so far soon, it is getting late here and we need to get up early for some serious hiking near Bariloche in the Lake District.

Cusco turned out to be rather a larger town than we expected, but fortunately, the center around Plaza de Armas (every city in Peru has one named that, it seems) is quite compact. Unless you are hardcore into museums, churches and the insides of other ancient buildings done up specificaly for tourists, there isn't much to do in Cusco. Which isn't really a problem as at over 3000 meters above sea level, you wouldn't have the breath to do much running around, especially climbing the steep streets. In any case, we had some practicalities to take care of between our vists to restaurants and juice bars.

First of all we needed train tickets to Machu Picchu, which required two trips as despite their hefty price (US$105 each) only cash will do and in ID obsessed South America, buying a train ticket also means presenting your passport, which Kylie didn't have on her. Secondly, the contract for the sale of the flat came through, so I had to find a net cafe where I could print this PDF and sign it. Luckily, despite it's remote location I was spoilt for choice to get it back to the UK in a timely fashion with both DHL and TNT having an office in town. (even though their websites don't seem to think they do) The contract is now safely with my solicitors and the agent tells me the buyers want to close the deal next week. Fingers crossed.

After expensive Cuba, Peruvian prices are much more reasonable, except maybe the main attraction, Machu Picchu, itself. (see below) 4 nights in budget accomodation (which is comperable to your average GBP60/night British B&B) came to US$130. A good meal will set you back less than US$15 (starter, main, softdrink) and a large glass of fresh juice on the street is a wallet draining 2 soles - $0.66. Internet access is equally cheap; 1 sole per hour. The downside is that most places (and there are many) seem to have bought nice 1.5-2.5GHz computers and then stick, oh, 96MB of RAM in them and run Windows XP, making sure that despite the fast net connection, the computer itself is slow as hell. Maybe they should ask 2 soles an hour and invest a little in their equipment.

At 6am on Wednesday morning we took the "Vistadome" train to Aguas Calientes; 4 hours out of Cusco, this is the town closest to Machu Picchu. In fact, the train is the only way to get there and apart from the busses that take you to the ruins and some utility vehicles, the town is car free. That doesn't mean you don't have to watch before crossing the road as the train tracks are the high street! The city itself is very compact and completely filled with hotels and restaurant, each and every one of which serves pizza. Luckily, that is not the only thing they serve and you can get some pretty decent more traditional Peruvian meals.

Many take this train, hurry over to the ruins and get back to Cusco in the afternoon. We decided to spend the night here and go explore Machu Picchu the next morning. A wise decission not only because it was far less crowded and the light so much better for photography early in the morning, in the afternoon it was bucketting down too. More heavy rain was predicted for the next day but we got lucky; When the alarm went at 6 am, only a thin white overcast with some breaks was to be seen, but no rain.

We got there at 7 and spent the next four hours exploring and photographing. Thanks to the light overcast the light stayed nice and soft a little longer than usual, though the downside is not many nice blue skies in the photos. Just as we got back to the town after hiking down (a drop of 500 meters) the predicted rain came back with a vengance, so much so it knocked out the town's internet connections, leaving us with nothing much else to do than have lunch and read some books in the hotel's sitting room.

Muchu Picchu is an amazing place but you can't help but wonder what made these people think it was a good idea to build a city at 2500 meters above sea level on nothing but steep mountain sides; it is not like they now get to enjoy the tourist dollars! No matter, it may be a long way to come and cost a fair amount of money, it was certainly worth it. (Train, bus and entry come to US$150/person, and that isn't even counting the airfare from Lima to Cusco, which was included in our round the world ticket) Hopefully we have come back with some great photographs, but that will be a couple of months before I get around to sorting them out, no doubt.

By popular demand, I uploaded some photos of our travels; you can view them on the Flickr account I have set up for this.

Once we are back home, we can put some more on our own web pages, including ones taken with my camera. Until them, you will have to do with a small selection taken with Kylie's camera!