October 21st, 2006 | 
Author: Our travels through Argentina were confined mainly to the north of the country. Crossing the Bolivian border at Villazon, our journey started in the Argentinean border town of La Quiaca. From here we moved southwards stopping in Jujuy, Salta, Cafayate, Tucuman, Cordoba and Mendoza. A slight break in our travels through Argentina occurred after Mendoza when we left the country for a few days to see Santiago in Chile. After this brief break we spent the remainder of our time in Buenos Aires. Read the rest of this entry »
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Whilst we were in Buenos Aires Darren unfortunately developed flu so one day I took myself off to explore the area of Caminito in the La Boca district of the city on my own. He was feeling a bit better but didn’t fancy traipsing around the city so I wasn’t deserting him too much!
Caminito is in fact a group of streets situated in La Boca, a very blue collar and some would say quite rough neighbourhood in spots. For instance as a tourist, you’re advised to stay within the area surrounding Caminito and not to stray beyond this especially if you’re alone and carrying a camera. I’m not sure how much this warning needs to be followed as often the guidebooks warn you about areas which in fact turn out to be pretty safe, particularly if you’re being careful. However, bearing this in mind I did take a taxi from the centre of the city to La Boca and certainly you could see quite a marked change in the type of buildings and in their general state of repair. The streets of Caminito however were something else! Read the rest of this entry »
Of course we couldn’t come to Buenos Aires without sampling some of the great tango shows that the city is world famous for. Tango is thought to have originated in Buenos Aires in the 1880’s when male immigrants from Europe, living on the fringes of the city, frequented BA’s bars and cafes where they danced with waitresses and prostitutes. Later they were accompanied by small musical groups influenced by Pampas ‘milonga’ verse, Spanish and Italian melodies and African drums as well as the quintessential ‘bandoneon’ or small accordion which is synonymous with tango today. At this time, the dance was frowned upon by many of the elite of Buenos Aires who disapproved of what they thought was its more vulgar content. However, some more fashionable members of this elite took the dance to Paris, with it later spreading through Europe and even America until it returned to Buenos Aires in the early 20th century as an evolved and more refined dance. This time it was much more acceptable and has grown to become so much a part of the culture of Buenos Aires.
Tango is everywhere in Buenos Aires and caters to all levels from the amateur to the professional. There are numerous milongas (tango halls) and shows from the classic to the more modern. Read the rest of this entry »
Having spent a few days in Chile it was back to Argentina, this time via a flight we’d already arranged as part of our One World package. It was quite a surprise when we walked out of the airport terminal to find a taxi and discovered a very rainy capital city. Our taxi took us to a hostel we’d marked out in our guidebook which looked like a really good place to stay with a very cool bar but, you guessed it, this was full! The girl at reception was very kind and suggested a couple of other hostels for us to try so I left Darren with the bags and went out in search of these. Unfortunately the first one was full, as was its sister hostel, so I walked on to the next place. As per the Alison Wood giro, I made my usual mistake of going in completely the wrong direction. I was convinced I was on the right road but, after asking in a shop where I was, discovered I was in fact seven blocks away. By now it had also started to rain again and quite heavily too – great! Read the rest of this entry »
After enjoying views of Santiago from above via its funicula and telerifico our next stop was to explore the home of the famous Marxist poet Pablo Neruda (1903-73). Neruda was born in Maule, Chile and devised his famous alias fearing that his working-class family wouldn’t approve of his ambition to be a poet. Despite his Marxist leanings, Neruda in fact worked as a diplomat for a number of years whilst also writing his poetry, before returning to Chile where he joined the Communist party and was elected as senator for Tarapaca and Antofagasta. In spite of helping to elect him in 1946, Neruda was forced into exile when the President, Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, outlawed the Communist party. Neruda resumed his political career after Gonzalez Videla stepped down and was a presidential candidate in 1969 but pulled out in support of Salvador Allende. He became ambassador for France under Allende for two years during which time he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He returned to Chile but was suffering from poor health, having developed cancer, and only days after the 1973 military coup in which Pinochet came to power, Neruda died. Read the rest of this entry »
Having finished the walking tour of Santiago our next move was to explore in more depth some of the sites the city had to offer. Our first move was to make our way up to the Barrio Bellavista area of the city to central Santiago’s largest open space, the Parque Metropolitana. The first site to ponder from within the park is the 14 metre high statue of the Virgen de la Inmaculada Concepcion at the top of the Cerro San Cristobal. This is reached on foot, by bus or car or via the funicular railway which you take from the entrance to the park. Read the rest of this entry »
As mentioned in the previous article, before hitting Chile we’d spent quite a lot of time deciding where to travel to in both Chile and Argentina. We were keen to spend some time visiting the southern part of both of these countries covering the areas which border the two in Patagonia, particularly the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. Unfortunately after much research we came to the conclusion that it would have been too expensive and time consuming to try to visit these places at this stage in our trip. We’d also read that Chile was a very expensive country to travel around so, bearing all of this in mind, we decided in the end just to spend a few days exploring the capital, Santiago. Read the rest of this entry »
As mentioned previously, our initial plan had been to spend more time in Chile than just a few days but after much research, we just couldn’t spend the time or money at this stage in our tour in a country that was known to be not only very expensive but would also have involved very long journeys to reach the main sights we were interested in, found in the south. Since our One World package included a flight from Santiago to Buenos Aires our plan was therefore to travel from Mendoza over the border into Chile in order to spend a few days in Santiago. This sounds simple but unfortunately part of this journey was to be another ride from hell! Read the rest of this entry »
We arrived in Mendoza having caught a bus, this time from Cordoba, and were once again to experience problems with finding accommodation. We’d singled out a couple of hostels in our guidebook and arrived at one of these to find they only had dorm rooms and no doubles or twins. As the next place we’d marked out was quite a drive away, we jumped back into another taxi only to find the situation was the same at this place. Our lovely taxi driver then took us to couple of different hostels he knew and even went into them with Darren to speak to the staff but to no avail. Rather than asking our taxi driver to continue further and to spend more money on the fare, we decided to jump out in one of the areas of the city known to have a number of hotels. However, even doing this didn’t help too much as Darren walked up and down in search of somewhere to stay, only returning after some time to say he’d only managed to find one place with rooms for the next couple of nights which was quite costly. So, without any other choice we ended up there. In fact, the hotel was very nice and had quite a charm to it being stuck, as our guidebook had said, somewhere in the 1940’s.
The city of Mendoza is very nice and has five central plazas, the main one being the Plaza Independencia with perhaps the most scenic one being the beautifully tiled Plaza Espana. The city is also known for its cafe society with numerous cafes and restaurants set along the many tree-lined avenues which gives the place a very relaxed feel. However, the main reason that people visit Mendoza is to see the local wineries. Mendoza is responsible for producing almost 75% of all wine in Argentina and has a myriad of wineries for you to visit for some tasting. Read the rest of this entry »
Alta Gracia can be reached by an hour and a half’s bus ride from Cordoba and is a beautiful mountain town situated around a pretty lake. This houses not only a 17th-century Jesuit estancia but also one of the former homes of Che Guevara, the famous Argentinian revolutionary, which is now a museum.
The estancia itself was quite a nice place to wander around and contained a number of rooms arranged around a large, open courtyard area. However, we felt the information that was provided was very poor and didn’t give much insight into the workings of an estancia during the Jesuit era which we would’ve liked. Read the rest of this entry »