| Buenos Aires |
| Buenos Aires, 03 February 2005 After travelling for more then 28 hours we finally arrived in Buenos Aires. At least, that's what we thought but we still had to sit on a local bus for about two more hours before arriving in the centre of the city. In the meantime I discovered I am able to have a small conversation in Spanish and we got the address of a restaurant frequently visited by locals. It was great! Buenos Aires is surprisingly cheap! We thought the prices indicated were in US dollars but it turned out to be in Argentinian Pesos so we have to divide everything by 3.8. It makes that having a glass of wine in a bar costs about 1 Euro. Fiesta I would say! We stay in a very simple hotel and visited some highlights of the city. Here you have everything. A harbour with sailing yachts, busy shopping streets, historical buildings, ... There are about 48 different 'barrios' neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires. Today we visited the cemetery where Evita Peron was buried. Pretty impressive if you know that 'it is cheaper to live extravagantly all your life then be buried in Recoleta'. We also watched the 'Madres de Plaza de Mayo' having their weekly silent march at 15h30 on Plaza de Mayo. More then 30.000 persons are still missing. Pregnant women and sons/daughters disappeared because of their political beliefs or without no specific reason. Little by little we are adapting to a life without stress and cellphones. I think we won't have problems getting used to that way of living. We still have to experience the tango so we stay in Buenos Aires for a couple more days and we'll also checkout a colonial town in Uruguay by crossing the Rio de Plata by ferry. By the way, we both are sunburned so tomorrow we definitely have to use sunscreen (the temperature is about +25ºC) Hope you enjoyed our first report so far and we'll keep you posted! Greetings, Domi & Joris |
 |
| Buenos Aires, 08 February 2005 Ola, after being in Uruguay for a couple of days we are back in the big city of Buenos Aires.. Uruguay is a laid back and beautiful country with lots of meadows and cows. Every person eats about 60 kg of meat in one year so they need a lot of supplies and you can find them all over the country! After visiting the city of Colonia we decided to rent a car for one day and check out the gaucho-country. You see the gauchos along the road with their horses like we take our car to work! Speaking of cars! They all drive in 'old-timers' that are 'a little bit rusty' but some of us would dream to drive a car like that even though some of them are more than 40 years old! Tomorrow morning (very early) we take the plane to Ushuaia, ´the southernmost city of the world´! And we hope to get further than that ...to the real end of the world 'Antarctica'! It's now about 1.30u at night and we only have 3 more hours to go before the taxi will pick us up and bring us to the airport so it's time to go to bed! Chau, Joris and Domi |
|