Argentina

Long time since last entry... I have been busy being on holidays :) Here's a summary of what I have been up to these past two weeks.

Arrived in BA on Dec 5th, hung out there for a week in the company of two local friends, Leo and Pedro, who showed me around and took me to the industrial port, to the japanese garden, to the leafy suburbs to have ice cream, to a concert with "Bajofondo Tangoclub" in puerto madero... on the 10th, Lotta arrived and we stayed two more nights in San Telmo. Here is a picture from the market in San Telmo, with a guy Lotta made friends with:

We also went to the Feria de los Mataderos, and sampled the asado (again, the pics seem impossible to rotate, sorry...):

We had the choice of "cow" or "pig" and went for COW. Yup, big pieces of meat! Just like Santa Maria De Buen Ayre in London Fields, but outdoors and "for real" ;)

The tour of Buenos Aires also included a trip to the Recoleta cemetary and some attempts at shopping... But having both caught a bit of a cold (tough life when you have to get used to 26 degrees heat and aircon), we decided to make our way up to the Iguazu falls as soon as possible. This involved a 16 hour long but surprisingly comfortable busride, complete with more aircon, PHAT seats that recline all the way to beds and a three course dinner and some random (bad) films.

The "town" itself is not very exciting, but the the national park with the waterfalls is impressive: 275 falls stretching over 2.7 kilometers, 20 m higher than Niagara...

We went on a ride in an old truck down through the jungle, with a very funny guide who when finding out we were Swedish started talking about allemansratten and some tree named after a Swedish botanist. The truck took us down to the river, where we boarded a speedboat that took us up the rapids of the Rio Iguazu to the falls and INTO the falls!!!! Great adrenalin rush and lots of fun! We then strolled around the park and took lots and lots of pics...

All in all we are having a wicked time, enjoying the heat and the melted cheese they serve everywhere. Last night we went to the falls again, for a "full moon" tour... looked very eerie in the moonlight... but a bit over-rated as the tour was with too many americans in their 60s, mosquitoes and was very hot (29 degrees at 11pm). I think we have had enough of the waterfalls by now.

This is taking ages, so no more twisting of your heads with unrotated pics... I will upload more next time. Tonight we are leaving to Salta in the Northwest (26 hours by bus...) where we will spend a week before we head back down towards the Atlantic, some days at the beach and then back to BA.

Hope you are all doing well, hasta pronto!

now we are off to BRAZIL for lunch :)