We left Ushuaia by plane and headed straight for Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, we booked a flight as we couldn’t face a 36 hour bus journey having been pampered for 10 days of luxury food and no actual backpack lugging, we figure it’d take us a few days to get back to reality. Reality bit back very quickly though.

We’d booked a hostel for our first night in Buenos Aires, and the lovely lady on the end of the phone said that a cab ride would only be about 15 pesos from the airport. 55 pesos later, on the meter, we arrived at our hostel in a not so hip part of town, hence the street urchins rifling through the rubbish bags outside our hostel. We got to reception and … “oh dear, we appear to have double booked you, sorry, we have no room for you, but don’t worry we’ve checked you in to the crappiest hostel in Buenos Aires right round the corner, there’s a lovely little crap hole of a room there, with no window, damp and mould on the walls and nice big yellow stains on the sheets and pillows and we’ll charge you as much as a half decent hotel downtown” nice. so it’s 10pm at night by now, and we’re wandering around Buenos Aires looking for a half decent place to stay, we found a place for the night. But Buenos Aires was rammed all week, hardly any room in any hotel, hence we had to move twice.

After the first few days, and going to some really bad restaurants, we finally began to start seeing the better side of BsAs. We followed our “Phill and Sue’s Guide to Buenos Aires” religiously and ticked off all the “Must Do’s!” including visiting Evita’s grave and trying to stick one on Maradona for making me cry myself to sleep in 1986. We saw some funny sites as well, like our cab driver falling asleep at the wheel, we had to wake him up, and a young lady washing her air Timotei style in a fountain on Avenida 9 Julio. Dolly enjoyed the shops on Avenida Santa Fe, and I loved going to see River Plate, as well as a little trip to see Boca Juniors stadium.

We also took the opportunity of being in the big city to visit the dentists. Dolly had some work done, and I had thechip on my front tooth fixed finally, after 4 years! (You may remember I chipped it on a bagel in San Fransisco, really old story here). It was much cheaper than getting the work done at home, and Phill and Sue had recommended Marisol and her brother Gustavo who were the best! we’ve never enjoyed going to the dentist so much! and never bought a bunch of flowers for our dentist before either!

By the time we’d left Buenos Aires, 8 days after arriving, we’d made up with her, and decided that we really did like the city a lot, and could have stayed longer in the end. But the road is calling us, and we need to be in Rio for the 22nd December to meet Dolly’s mum, sister and boy wonder. So our next stop was the Iguazu falls in the far north of Argentina. A day or so there, and now we have entered Brazil, and are now at the beach! yeah! but sadly it’s pouring down! hope the weather improves soon!

Dolly has also just said, that she’s trying to get round to writing a post for the site, but she has too many engagement emails and wedding gossip from everyone! So is trying to reply to everyone! Speaking of which, thanks so much for all your well wishes and congrats! It was really nice to get so many emails from everyone being so far away from home! We’re both eagerly looking forward to the big day, once we set a date! and if you missed our big news, you can find it here :D

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