Baker's Breadcrumbs

A week in Buenos Aires... it sounds like an indulgent amount of time to spend in a city known for its nightlife, culture, history, tango, and fine dining. It is surprising how quickly the time disappears! Factor into that a day and night of trying to recover from upset stomachs, and it really doesn't leave a lot of time.

Puerto Maldona

Buenos Aires cafe

To sum up our week... we started off getting tuned into the rhythm of Argentina. Our days started at a leisurely 11am, out the door by midday, back by 7pm for a siesta, out to dinner at 10pm and to bed sometime between 2am and 4am.
BsAa is a fascinating city, with a rich history and culture which is reminiscent of times past when BsAs and the rest of Argentina was a flourishing economy. Today, BssA is constructed of facades of beautiful, old buildings, many of which are decaying on the inside, or at least in serious need of an upgrade. Some exteriors of buildings are also crumbing and not restored at all. These are the tell-tale signs of Argentina's economic hardships in the past decades.

Plaza de Major

Plaza de Major

Plaza de Major

Just soaking in the atmosphere of day-to-day life in Buenos Aires also filled our days quite easily - such as wandering the inner-city streets along which professional dog-walkers can be seen with numerous dogs of all shapes and sizes all attached to one lead - a very funny sight!

Buenos Aires Dog Walker

Food was definitely a highlight of BsAs,where we feasted on many tasy 'bife de chorizo' (a thick cut of steak, not a sausage), and almost daily sampling of the many flavours of helado (gelato). A low-light of the food was the complimentary hostel breakfast, consisting of croissants smothered in dulce de leche (thick caramel worshipped by Argentines).

Bife de Chorizo

Bar la Poesia

Another highlight was tasting mate,' a strong, bitter herbal green tea that is consumed by Argentines at all times of day. At all times most Argentines will carry a thermos for hot water, a bag of the mate' herb mix and a special cup and metal straw for drinking it out of. The taste of mate' is very different to Japanese or Chinese green tea, with a much smokier flavour, and is a taste that must be acquired over time - which is unfortunately not something we have a lot of in this country.

Matte

On our first day (excluding the day we lay in bed sick), we went on a walking tour of the city from our hostel run by a couple of uni students. This took us to many 'off the beaten track' cultural and historical sights of central BsAs, as well as a lot of information about Evita and Peronism, as well as the the time of the military dictatorship and the current economic problems. Part of everyday life in Buenos Aires is demonstrations and protest. Walking around the city you come across these constantly, along with political graffiti. The most well known demonstration is the Madres de Plaza Major (Mothers of Plaza Major), which is a human rights movement started by 14 women in the 1970's who came to this main square in front of the presidents house to demand information about their missing sons and daughters. To this day there are thousands of people who went missing who are unaccounted for, and the mothers continue their march in a circle around this plaza each Thursday.

Demonstration Graffiti

Recoleta Cemetery was a novelty, with many striking and extraordinary graves that look more like they belong in a museum. The crypts are more like mini palaces for the famous and important dead people of BsAs, but we only knew of one person there, Eva Peron.

Recoleta Cemetary

Recoleta Cemetary

Recoleta Cemetary (Eva Peron)

Recoleta Cemetary

Our search for Tango 'authentico' found us in an historic dance hall watching the older generation dance tango - not exactly the flare of the Latin American Tango on the glossy brochures, but tango none the less. We also did a group tango lesson at our hostel, of which we both failed tragically, despite previously learning this.

Tango

Along came Saturday night and to our unwitting suprise, our favourite DJ Desyn Masiello was playing at Pacha nightclub, a superclub in BA. So, after a really good dinner with a friend we had run into in BsAs (Anish) and some of his mates, we headed to Pacha. The club was massive, and absolutely packed, with no room to move. let alone dance. We had an absolutely awesome awesome night here with Desyn producing his normal golden sets. And to top it off we were treated to a surreal sunrise at the end of the night.

Pacha

Pacha

A trip to the neighbourhood 'La Boca,' took us to of the famous multi-coloured houses of Buenos Aires. These houses were painted in these dazling primary colours back in the early 20th century using the left over paint from the dock yards. However, now the small area conserved for viewing these is like entering DisneyLand with huge numbers of restaurants, souvenir stores, tango dances and other street performers. Despite this, it does provide an amazing backdrop for some very colourful photos.

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca

La Boca is also the homeground of La Boca Juniors, BsAs's best known football team. Our quest to buy match tickets became a nightmare, after discovering contrary to the Lonely Planet's "advice" we couldn't simply rock up to the stadium on match day and buy tickets. Instead, we were royally scammed by some locals and bought pleb tickets at a hugely inflated price. The tickets were real, at least, and we did see the game, though had to cheer for the opposing team who ended up winning. The crowd at La Boca is known for its crazy chanting and cheering and general roudiness, which is what you really go to see, as La Boca is not playing good football at the moment.

La Bombonera

La Bombonera

All in all we had a fantastic time here, and wished we had more. Luckily we are back for one more night at the end of our journey!!

Falkland War Memorial

Plaza de San Martin

Plaza de San Martin

The next stop on our trip was Buenos Aires, but to break the bus trip up we decided to stop in to some of the Jesuit Missionaries ruins on the way. Upon arrival at San Igancio, we stopped at the tourist information office, and then began our crash-refresher course in Spanish. Somehow the guy in the info office convinced us to join him for a tour of a local park. So we set off for some breakfast before rendezvouing back at the tourist office for our guided tour.

We were promptly met with two beat-up cars taking us, and a few other tourists to the park. En-route we stopped at a native family's self-sufficient home where the family showed us around their huts and garden, before pawning us some hand-crafts.

Indigenous guide

Indigenous family and hut

Then it was on to the main event, the Rio Parana Parque. The guide was intensely passionate about el parque, the plants, the animals and most of all the history. Three hours later we had walked 5 km of an at times steep and rocky terrain, culminating in an intimate exploration of the ruins of a secret stone house of a high ranking Nazi officer, Martin Bourman. This guy fled Nazi Germany after the war, and hid out in this park for around 10 years before being discovered. In this time he built two houses, one for himself and one for his family, who actually never made it out to live there. There were also tunnels build to enable him to escape, and about 20 years ago someone discovered a nice stash of treasure hidden under some ruins of his home. Our Spanish was improving by the minute, by listening intently to the guide and watching his hand gestures, but unfortunately we did not understand most of the stories, but did have a German girl occasionally translating for us.

Historical cross

Strong, flexible vines

Rock formation

Nazi officer's hideout

After the parque, with raving hunger, the guide took us to a local's parilla (basically an Argeninian BBQ with meat, meat and more meat on the menu) and we recharged before heading to see the Jesuit mission ruins. The extreme heat, humidity and the overnight bus trip was taking its toll by this stage. We holed out in the air-conditioned museum for an extended period before making our way around the ruins (fortunately in English). These ruins, and the many others scattered through this region have a fascinating history behind them where the Jesuits set up communities that brought their religion to the indigenous people in a manner that also incorporated the 'acceptable parts' of the indigenous culture. They were extremely successful in this venture, so much so that the Spanish eventually decreed that the Jesuits were to be expelled from South America as they were a threat to their rule.

San Ignacio ruins

San Ignacio ruins

San Ignacio ruins

We then finished the day with a rather large helada (icecream) and a much-needed shower at a local hostel after two days without before continuing on our journey to Buenos Aires. Thankfully this time in a sleeper coach.

We experienced Catarats del Iguazu from the Brazillian side first, then crossed the border into Argentina for the second day of more Iguazu experience. The Brazillian side has the most panoramic views of the 25 individual and powerful falls, while in Argentina we had a more intimate experience. Both days were an absolute feast for photography - the falls have to be one of the most thrilling sights I have seen. The vast amount of water that you walk right out into along a platform is just mind-blowing, and keeping the camera dry proved to be a major challenge. On day two, we spent many more hours in the park which involved much more walking, and went on a short yet exhilarating speed boat ride that took us right underneath a few of the waterfalls. The view from underneath a huge, pounding waterfall is hard to describe - there is a lot of white, and it is loud, and we got totally soaked through, but was well worth it.

Pictures can describe these falls better than our words, so the rest of this blog is all about the photos.

Cataratas do Iguac (Brazil side)

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Cataratas del Iguazu (Argentina side)

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Carnaval was taking its toll, and by Sunday we needed a break from festivities during the day. We decided to visit Pao do Acucar, or 'Sugarloaf' before rejoining the festivities that night. We had a late start after a few too many Caipirinhas the night before, and nursing hangovers we trundled off to the cable car to take us up.

The late start meant we hit cable car 'peak hour' with busloads of other tourists arriving at the same time. We preceded to wait in queue after queue as we tried to ascend the rock. By the time we reached the peak the clouds we have come to despise descended over the moutain. By the time we had captured a few clear shots and returned to ground level again, the sun was setting.
We had intentions of resuming our Carnaval festivities with a trip to the Sambodromo, but our hangovers got the better of us, and we decided to forfeit the entire day.

After Carnaval had come to a close we set out to visit the remaining sights of Rio.On top of mount 'Corcovado,' stands the impressive statue of the Cristo Redenter, which can be seen from all over the city. We awoke to a clear, and sunny day, with only thin wisps of cloud, instead of the usual cotton wool and thought we had hit the jackpot. On arriving at the cable car train we discovered that the next available train was in 2.5hrs time, which meant arriving at the peak at 6pm. Fortunately there were plenty of enthusiastic taxis and mini vans who happily took our reals and drove us up. At the end of our mini van ride we discovered we needed to stand in another queue to buy a park access ticket, and then queue again to catch another van to the summit. When we finally arrived at the summit the clouds had closed in once again and swallowed the Cristo. We preceded to sit around waiting for the sun to clear for a few seconds to capture the all important photo. We were in for yet another lesson in patience (even Travis is getting the hang of this) and within a couple of hours had seen the entire Cristo, head and all. The Cristo statue itself was impressive and the ever-present forest of cloud enveloping us and the statue made for an eerie atmosphere that was quite cool.

Seeing inside a favela was on Ali's Rio hit list (what a surprise!), and we chose a tour whose proceeds went to supporting a school within a favela. The tour took us to two favelas, Vila Canoas and Rocinha. The first was a very small favela of 2,500 people, where we saw the school classroom and walked through tiny, dark and narrow-stepped alley ways. We were honestly expecting more doom and gloom (aka poverty, dirtiness and ill-health), and was surprised that the favela was actually quite modern, with homes having metered power supplies, and conveniences like fridges and TVs. From a distance, the houses appear cobbled together ad-hoc style with little organisation. Close up, some houses are constructed with nice bricks and tiles and some have real wooden front doors. You could clearly see the effects of these houses being constructed by builders and labourers with very little housing design or architecture evident.

The second favela, Rocinha, is one of the largest favelas of Rio, and is controlled by bandits and drug lords from ADA (Amigos dos Amigos). We walked down the main street of this favela, which was bustling with people and chock-full of shops, cafes and all the things you see on the streets of Rio, like banks and pharmacies.
Thanks to a relatively stable society and economy, the government is now pouring a lot of money into improving the conditions of the favelas, and has contributed medical and educational facilities. The previous president, built a large sport and rec centre for the young people and kids of Rocinha - complete with an Olmypic size pool. Seeing the favelas was, however, an eye-opening experience and a very interesting insight into these tiny, shackled together piles of houses that can be seen at every vantage point in Rio.

Carnaval now a fading memory, the past two days we have watched the city and its people slowly transition back into normal life (though most people take the rest of the week off), and the empty streets starting to function like normal once again. After a final cerveja by Leblon beach at sunset, we took a late night flight to our next destination, Foz do Igucu. We looked out over the lights of Rio one last time, smiling as the city immediately vanished in the clouds.

How to describe Carnaval? Chaotic, hectic, mayhem, exciting, enormous, crowded, filthy, wet....just some adjectives that can be used. To understand the size of this festival is hard without experiencing it yourself. The whole city is a party zone, so you can't walk out of your house without running into a street party. Think of Sydney's Mardi Gras and then think of having 10 of those running in the city, all at the same time, and for 5 days almost non-stop.

Carnaval consists of blocos (street parties), bandas (marching bands), concerts, Samaba school parades at the Sambodromo and Balls. We mostly stuck to going to blocos and bandas, although we did manage to get to the Sambodromo to see the glitzy parade. The best parties were definitely the bandas, which involved marching bands of around 30 people, surrounded by massive pulsating crowds singing and samba-ing slowly moving through the narrow streets. Add beer, tequila, toxic caipirinhas and frequent heavy downpours and you have one hell of a wild crowd. Almost everyone comes out dressed in celebratory apparel from wigs, devil horns, hats and leis to full on costumes ranging from super heroes to masquerade and anything else they dream up. Some of the costumes and ideas were quite incredible. And there is a big tendency for guys to come out dressd in comical dresses and wigs.

The two best bandas we went to were Maracutaia and Banda de Ipanema. The former is an African percussion band that definitely had the best music of all the bandas we saw. The bandas had the frenzied crowd jumping and dancing to the hypnotic beats. This march was through the narrow streets of Santa Theresa which is an old part of town with many crumbling mansions from a by-gone era. This areas has been the bohemiam hangout for the past few decades, and is filled with eclectic mix of bars, restaurants and shops. Access to this town is best done by the tourist tram. We lined up for an hour for this the first time before discovering the 'local' way of boarding the tram. This involves standing part way up the tracks and jumping onto the side of the already packed tram as it passed. Travelling up or down the narrow streets, hanging out of the tram with the passengers singing and chanting is one of the more memorable experiences of Carnaval.

The Banda de Ipanema was the other great marching band we saw, which marched down the main beachside avenue of the famous Ipanema beach. The crowd is described in Lonely planet as 'gay friendly', and there was no shortage of cross-dressed guys at this party. This was definitely the most packed and costumed crowd of all the parties we were in.

We also made the effort of going to the Sambodromo to see one of the main Carnaval parades. These are the parades you see on TV news where Samba schools compete with masses of dancers dressed in elaborate costumes and extravagent floats. These parades run from 9pm to 6am each night of the Carnaval and the Cariocas go crazy for their Samba school. Being unprepared to pay the large cost normally associated with seeing this event we waited for the parades to be running for a couple of hours before hitting up a scalper for a discounted price. Despite there being an unrelenting, heavy downpour (thank god for ponchos) it was definitely worth experiencing, even for a short time.