So today is our last full day in Chile so I thought I`d recount our adventures and try to get everyone all caught up. We crossed into Chile through a mountain pass via bus from San Martin de los Andes, Argentina and have spent time in Villarrica, Santiago, Viña del Mar and finally Arica. We also visited a number of other towns such as Pùcon, Isla Negra, Iquique and Valparaiso over the past two weeks. We have seen much that reminds us of California while traveling in Chile and have had a great time so far.
The route over the mountain pass into Chile was very interesting. We passed directly underneath Mount Lanìn, a dormant volcano, through the Paso Mamuil Malal. The scenery was stunning as we came into Chile, but the road conditions were pretty atrocious - roughly 5 hours of rough dirt roads. Plus the bus left San Martin as 6AM so we were up before 5AM and were unable to sleep during the ride. Once in Chile we passed through a pine forest along some beautiful mountian lakes and alongside a number of mountain rivers. It was fun but exhausting.
Once in Villarrica we made our way to the Hostelria de la Colina, situated on a hillside above the city and with stunning views of Lake Villaricca and the active Volcan Villarrica, which belched out a steady stream of smoke the entire time we were there. There were also two other active volcanoes that could be seen in the distance, which was a humbling site. We were assured none of them had errupted in 30 years, which told me they are probably due. The hotel is run by a couple of expats from the states and was definitely the highlight of Villarrica. If you are ever in the area we would highly recommend staying here. They really looked out for us and made us comfortable. The restaurant was excellent and they made a mean Pisco Sour, which is now Sarah's favorite drink. We also met a few fellow travellers while staying here and had a great time hangning out with Paulina the bartender at the hotel who told us quite a bit about Chile and its history.
The town of Villarrica was nice but not particularly attractive and was filled with stray dogs (even worse than Mexico). While there we went trout fishing in a row boat down a river coming off the lake and found once again that Sarah is a much better fisher than I am. She caught two large trout that we in turn ate for dinner that night - the trout was much more like salmon in both taste and appearance that we were accustomed to and was incredibly good. We also went to nearby Pùcon to catch a bus to nearby hot springs. Pùcon is the adventure sports center of the Lake District in Chile, but it didn't really strike me in the 15 minutes we were there. Instead we headed on to some natural hot springs up on the mountain side. No that might sound like a lot of fun and we did enjoy ourselves, but seeing as how we were dependent on public transportation and the last bus was at 7PM, we were there in the middle of the day, and it was a very hot day. Sitting in 90 degree water when it's 85 degress outside isn't all that enjoyable.
We then headed by bus to Santiago, which took a good seven hours. We were very excited to get to Santiago as we had heard that Augusto Pinochet, the long lived former military dictator of Chile had finally passed away. The bus ride was long and despite the enormous mountains in the background, somewhat borning. The one bit of excitement came when Sarah was doing some knitting to pass the time. A little girl with a bit of a cold who was no more than 4 years old began watching Sarah over the back of her seat. The girl kept leaning further and further over the seat to see what Sarah was doing, and just when you thought she would fall over she sneezed all over Sarah, who in turn yelped loudly. The girls mother pulled her down, but did nothing in the way of apologize and Sarah, having suffered from a series of colds before we left on the honeymoon already, proceeded to bathe her arms and face in Purel in the hopes of avoiding getting sick herself. Needless to say Sarah was a bit on edge for the rest of the busride, especially since the girl kept standing in her chair looking to see if Sarah was knitting again.
Santiago is an impressive city, much different from Buenos Aires. The city is surrounded by mountains on most everyside, some of which tower close to 20,000 feet. Sadly you can't really see them because the smog is so bad in the city. We've heard that on a clear day is dramatic, but that they only have a handful of clear days each year. As it was the mountains looked more like a movie set backdrop where you could faintly see the outlines with little deatil. The city itself was attractive, with fewer of the awful high rise apartment buildings that ruin the Buenos Aires skyline. Our hotel was funky, with weird art deco furniture from the 70s, but was across the street from a nice park. We spent a lot of timw roaming around checking out the colonial architechture and sitting in cafes. We had the pleasure of watching a communist protest one afternoon. About 250 mostly teenagers came streaming by reveling in Pinochet's death. Shortly there after a set of trucks with water canons came by followed by motorcycle police and the paddywagon, and the protest was quickly broken up.
We decided to avoid Pinochet's funeral at the military school thinking better of getting too mixed up in it, but we definitely talked to most everyone about his death and what they thought, often with very interesting responses. It`s a testament to how much things have changed since he lost power that most people seem to go about their business and tell us that we shouldn't waste our time thinking about it. We did trak out to the school later in the afternoon once the funeral was over just to see what was going on and a handfull of supporters and detractors were still there, but the scene was very calm. We also headed out to the municipal cemetary to see the monument made for the tens of thousands torured and killed by Pinochet's regime in the 70's and 80's. It was a bit overwhelming and really drove home the enormity of what had happened by listing the names of all those tortured or disappeared. It left us speechless.
Next we headed on to Viña del Mar, which is the beach town most preferred by Santiagoans. It was a surprisingly large city and we did`'t spend much time there. Garish high rises dominated the beach area and the beaches themselves were filled with cigarette buts. We did however spend a day visiting the nearby towns which was much more exciting. We took a bus down to Isla Negra, the location of Pablo Neruda's beach house and location of his burial. He had designed roughly the entire house himself and it was full of his personal collections. He was an enormous collector of things - sea shells, bottles, african masks, folk art, bow spirits from old ships, model ships in bottles, nautical instruments and wagon wheels. It was a really cool house that overlooked the ocean. Afterwords we went to Valparaiso, which is incredibly reminiscent of San Francisco. The city is separated into two sections, the lower port area bordering the ocean which is fairly industrial and unattractive, and the upper section in the surrounding hills. The upper area is largely reached by ascensores, cabled pulled elevators that are a site within themselves. The neighborhoods atop the hills are filled with beautiful and colorful old homes - it's one of the most photogenic places we've even seen.
Finally we headed off to Arica for some much needed rest and relaxation on the beach before entering Peru. Only, Arica wasn't what we were anticipating. First of all, Arica is situated in the northern reaches of Chile along the border with Peru. It is also in the middle of the driest desert in the world. Many towns in the region have never recorded rainfall. So the landscape is increadibly barren. Once we arrived we went to the hotel where we had a reservation only to find that it was a dump (at least from the outside). Our cab driver even mentioned that he hated the place because they misrepresent themselves on the Internet and that most people tend to stay one night tops and then move to a new hotel. Well, we didn't even get that far, and we had the driver takes us to another nearby hotel on the beach which turned out to be even worse. Next we tried one of the hotels listed in Lonely Planet, which was also quite disgusting, before finally setlling on the nicest hotel in town, the Hotel Arica. Although not 4 stars as they claim, it has been comfortable, if not a bit overpriced for what you get. Needless to say this was not a great introduction to Arica, and we have been profoundly unimpressed with most other aspects of Arica. I would not recommend coming here unless you are taking the overland route to Peru. There is a cool church from the turn of the century that was constructed as a kit by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. The entire church is cast iron and the individual pieces were pressed cast iron that was put together as a kit in Paris and then shipped and constructed in Arica by the Peruvian government (Arica was Peruvian before the Chileans took it over in the War of the Pacific). Other than that we saw some mediocre beaches, got sunburned and drank Pisco sours. Oh, and we have been constantly serenaded by tens of thousands of marine birds that have nested on the rocks outside our hotel room. After awhile it begins to sound like each one is trying to talk over the others, creating a cacophany of sound that is deafening.
Fortunately we leave for Peru tomorrow.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
We're still here
Sorry about the lack of updates. We've been so busy running around South America that we never seem to have the time for communicating with the outside world. The past couple of weeks have been quite an adventure. We've seen some of the largest waterfalls in the world, kayaked on a pristine mountain lake, caught and ate trout, watched a protest get broken up by the national gaurd in Chile, eaten a lot of empenadas, walked a few hundred miles and spent an extraordinary amount off time in buses.
I´ll start with the waterfalls. We went to the Iguazu Falls at the beginning of the month. You might not have heard f them but you've probably seen pictures without knowing it. The falls are truly one of the great wonders of the world. I''ve never seen Niagra, but I can't imagine them comparing to what we saw - probably around 100 individual waterfalls, from a trickle down a cliff, to a torrent of millions of liters know as the Devil´s Throat. The sheer volume was dwarfing and mesmerizing to watch. It was impossible to look away. We even took a boat ride into the botton of one of the falls and have a video of the experience which we'll add to the blog later. The falls are situated around the broder between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina near the confluence of two major rivers. The area is a subtropical rainforest home to a huge variety of flora and fauna. We saw Coatis (a mix between raccoon and cat), large and small lizards, but missed much of the most exotic animals such as toucans, pachybaras, giant parrots and tapirs. We'll just have to come back some day. While in Iguazu we met up with Mark and Les from Dallas who kept us entertained for most of our stay. Mark's story of driving to Mexico was priceless and should be made into a movie.
Next we were off to San Martin de los Andes situated in the Lake District of Argentina in the northern reaches of Patagonia. To get there we flew back to Buenos Aires, then took a 15 hour overnight bus ride to Neuquen. This ride took us through the Pampas, which is probably the most boring scenery I can imagine, so it was a good thing it was at night. We were able to sleep most of the way. There was one stop for dinner in the middle of nowhere Argentina, where they forced eveyone on the buss to sit together and served a vile piece of steak that tasted like it had been cooking for days. No one said a word to each other for pretty much the whole meal. The next morning we arrived in Neuquen expecting to stay the night to break up the trip. The city was not particularly attractive and the bus station was miles from any hotel, so we decided to finish up the trip to San Martin which was another 6 hours. Along the way we passed the location of the largest dinosaur ever found. The had a life size model by the road that I got a picture of and it was quite a site. Once we got into the mountins and away from the Pampas the ride was quite beautiful. We saw Gauchos (Argentine cowboys), llamas, lots of sheep and cattle, a series of beautiful mountain rivers and a 10,000 foot mountain, which at the time seemed quite large.
San Martin de los Andes is an incredible mountain town, that would not be out of place in Northern California. The architecture was mostly Swiss chalet in appearance. The city is situated in a small valley surrounded by low mountains and sits alongside a large mountain lake. There are hiking trails throughout the area and access to white water rafting, kayaking, canoeing, camping and most any other outdoor activity you can think of. It was a mountain paradise. We kayaked around the lake for one morning and then took a ferry to a small village on the lake where we hhad lunch and walked around. The next day we took an all day tour of the area alog a route called the 7 Lakes route (Ruta de Siete Lagos) where we saw considerably more than 7 lakes, and countless rivers. It was beautiful but exhausting. San Martin was an idyllic town and if anyone comes down to this part of Argentina I would highly recommend it over Bariloche, which we found large, not that attractive and incredibly windy.
San Martin was our last stop in Argentina. We took a bus through a gravel road mountain pass into Chile. Strangely enough we had beautiful weather the entire trip until that day when it rained as though Argentina was sad to see us leave. We had to catch a 6AM bus to go to Chile so we were a bit sad and groggy, ourselves. But I'll save Chile for another time. The highlights so far have been Sarah out shining me as a fisherman, arriving in Santiago the day after Pinochet died, seeing Neruda's collection of shells and wandering around the streets of Valparaiso. Until then, take care.
I´ll start with the waterfalls. We went to the Iguazu Falls at the beginning of the month. You might not have heard f them but you've probably seen pictures without knowing it. The falls are truly one of the great wonders of the world. I''ve never seen Niagra, but I can't imagine them comparing to what we saw - probably around 100 individual waterfalls, from a trickle down a cliff, to a torrent of millions of liters know as the Devil´s Throat. The sheer volume was dwarfing and mesmerizing to watch. It was impossible to look away. We even took a boat ride into the botton of one of the falls and have a video of the experience which we'll add to the blog later. The falls are situated around the broder between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina near the confluence of two major rivers. The area is a subtropical rainforest home to a huge variety of flora and fauna. We saw Coatis (a mix between raccoon and cat), large and small lizards, but missed much of the most exotic animals such as toucans, pachybaras, giant parrots and tapirs. We'll just have to come back some day. While in Iguazu we met up with Mark and Les from Dallas who kept us entertained for most of our stay. Mark's story of driving to Mexico was priceless and should be made into a movie.
Next we were off to San Martin de los Andes situated in the Lake District of Argentina in the northern reaches of Patagonia. To get there we flew back to Buenos Aires, then took a 15 hour overnight bus ride to Neuquen. This ride took us through the Pampas, which is probably the most boring scenery I can imagine, so it was a good thing it was at night. We were able to sleep most of the way. There was one stop for dinner in the middle of nowhere Argentina, where they forced eveyone on the buss to sit together and served a vile piece of steak that tasted like it had been cooking for days. No one said a word to each other for pretty much the whole meal. The next morning we arrived in Neuquen expecting to stay the night to break up the trip. The city was not particularly attractive and the bus station was miles from any hotel, so we decided to finish up the trip to San Martin which was another 6 hours. Along the way we passed the location of the largest dinosaur ever found. The had a life size model by the road that I got a picture of and it was quite a site. Once we got into the mountins and away from the Pampas the ride was quite beautiful. We saw Gauchos (Argentine cowboys), llamas, lots of sheep and cattle, a series of beautiful mountain rivers and a 10,000 foot mountain, which at the time seemed quite large.
San Martin de los Andes is an incredible mountain town, that would not be out of place in Northern California. The architecture was mostly Swiss chalet in appearance. The city is situated in a small valley surrounded by low mountains and sits alongside a large mountain lake. There are hiking trails throughout the area and access to white water rafting, kayaking, canoeing, camping and most any other outdoor activity you can think of. It was a mountain paradise. We kayaked around the lake for one morning and then took a ferry to a small village on the lake where we hhad lunch and walked around. The next day we took an all day tour of the area alog a route called the 7 Lakes route (Ruta de Siete Lagos) where we saw considerably more than 7 lakes, and countless rivers. It was beautiful but exhausting. San Martin was an idyllic town and if anyone comes down to this part of Argentina I would highly recommend it over Bariloche, which we found large, not that attractive and incredibly windy.
San Martin was our last stop in Argentina. We took a bus through a gravel road mountain pass into Chile. Strangely enough we had beautiful weather the entire trip until that day when it rained as though Argentina was sad to see us leave. We had to catch a 6AM bus to go to Chile so we were a bit sad and groggy, ourselves. But I'll save Chile for another time. The highlights so far have been Sarah out shining me as a fisherman, arriving in Santiago the day after Pinochet died, seeing Neruda's collection of shells and wandering around the streets of Valparaiso. Until then, take care.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Buenos Aires and beyond
Sorry about being incommunicado for so long. We´ve been having terrible luck with the internet access since leaving Buenos Aires.
A quick wrap up of our days in Buenos Aires. We had and incredible time while we were there and can´t say enough about what a wonderful city it is. We highly recommend that every try to make it down here. The flights are expensive but with the given financial situation the prices are incredibly cheap for what you get in return. Although our arrival in the city was bumpy, we had no other incidents until the last full day in town (more on that later).
A few of the highlights from Buenos Aires:
Xul Solar Museum: Xul Solar was a genius/eccentric friend of Borges that has a museum devoted to paintings and other artwork. He was obsessed with metaphysics and mysticism, and much of his work incorporates the zodiac, numerology, and rosecrucian imagery. He was also into chess and developed his own languages. Much of the work had a proto cubist feel and the presentation of the work and the architecture of the builiding was quite striking.
Zorcal: Each morning we were woken by the sounds of the Zorcal, a small bird the reminds me of an oriole, that sings a song reminicent of the song Tequila. The songs started about 5:30Am each morning and we continued to hear the birds throughout the day while we were in Buenos Aires. The volume was quite striking, and we were amazed that such a small bird produced the sound.
Parilla: The Argentine equivalent of barbecue, but taken to a whole new level when compared to the U.S. These are the most common restaurants in Buenos Aires and essentially you have up to 30 some odd selections of meat that they will grill for you - anything from beef tenderloin to chittlins, and other less appetizing pieces of the cow, as well as chicken, pork and other meats, depending on where you go. You would get truly gargantuan portions for $5 to $10 US, and they served a delicious sauce called chimichurri alongside.
Ice Cream: Everywhere you went in Buenos Aires there weer increible ice cream joints, most of which will deliver. I´ve never tasted ice cream so good - and each place had at least a few different versions of Dulce de Leche, Chocolate and various fruit blends.
We also experienced a lot of very odd things in Buenos Aires. The first few days that we spent in Buenos Aires we constantly heard very odd cover songs, including a Bossa Nova version of the what sounded like the entire Bob Marley Legend album (we didn´t stick around tho here the whole album). We were constantly hearing wierd remixes, generally of very bad soft pop songs.
We encountered a number of interesting cab drivers along the way in Buenos Aires. Considering that most trip cost two to four dollars, we spent quite a bit of time in cabs. The first cab driver we had in Buenos Aires had lived in San Francisco as a student in the early 90´s and had been trying to go back ever since. In fact a number of the cab drivers that we rode with had a some point been to San Francisco. One night on the way to see a Tango show, we were picked up by a driver listening to Guns and Roses. As soon as he realized that we were familiar with it he turned it up and proceeded to blare the music while singing along and tapping the drum beat on the roof of the car. Next up came a mash-up of numerous mid to late 80´s heavy metal hits, starting with Shook Me All Night Long, and going through Def Leppard, Ratt, Van Halen, and numerous others. He finished with a bit of Madonna, his true love as he told us, as he dropped us off. That night after the show we were picked up by a driver who looked to be 80 and who was listening to Tango because he lived it, and who proceeded to tell us about police corruption and problems with the city.
The last full day we spent in Buenos Aires was quite an adventure. First off we decided to go to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site for it´s colonial architechture. We took a high speed ferry across the Rio Plata from B.A. which took about an hour. The Rio Plata is actually the confluence of a number of rivers that in turn pours into the Atlantic Ocean. The water was quite brwon, but the view of Buenos Aires was incredible. Upon ariving in Colonia we roamed around and found a nice open air parilla where we had lunch. We were so inspired that we´ve decided to emulate the place in our back yard once we own a home. The town was quite stirking - the original city gate and part of the wall from the 17th century were still standing a were a number of other buildings from when teh portugese were there.
The excitiement came when I started to have a alergy attack while there. At first it wasn´t so bad - a little snifling and sneezing - but on the ride back to Buenos Aires we sat near the duty free shop on the ferry which was filled with people trying on perfume and cologne. My sinuses promptly exploded and I spent the hour ride back running back and forth from the bathroom to the seats. I believe I went through a full roll of toilet paper. Then when we got back to Buenos Aires we realized we didn´t have enough cash to get back to out hotel and we didn´t have an ATM card but we did have a credit card. Plus it was about 25 blocks back to the hotel. So we sucked it up and hoofed it - all the while my allergies simply got worse. We managed to find a farmacia and get some alergy pills, water and a lot of tissue which I proceeded to use up as we walked back to the hotel. Although it was a beautiful walk, I´m not sure the people of Buenos Aires appreciated my sneezing all over their city. Once we arrived at the hotel I pumped myself full of anti-alergy pills including benadryl, actifed, and afrin. Not a good idea. I then felt so drugged up that I couldn´t concentrate for hours, and my heart was racing for the rest of the night.
We were able to rally to go out to dinner and since it was our last night we decided to hit one of the hipper restaurants in town named Gran Bar Danzon. The food and service were amazing. Sarah got dressed up in one of her new dresses only to discover that the entrance to the restaurant was a bit of a meat market - seven men intently starring down any woman that entered. We almost turned and ran, but managed to push our way through the crowd and enjoyed ourselves emensely. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that we finally got scammed by a cab driver. Just before catching a cab to the restaurant we stopped by the ATM - when we arrived at teh restaurant I handed the driver a twenty peso bill. He immediately responded saying that the charge was five peso and that I had handed him a two peso bill, which of course was impssible since I didn´t even have one. I was so defuddled from the alergy medicine that I honestly thought I had made a mistake, and even apologized before handing him more money. It was only after he drove off that I not only realized that I had been scammed but I remembered reading about this very scam when we were flying in from San Francisco. Score one for the locals.
And so ended our adventure in Buenos Aires. Next up Iguazu Falls
A quick wrap up of our days in Buenos Aires. We had and incredible time while we were there and can´t say enough about what a wonderful city it is. We highly recommend that every try to make it down here. The flights are expensive but with the given financial situation the prices are incredibly cheap for what you get in return. Although our arrival in the city was bumpy, we had no other incidents until the last full day in town (more on that later).
A few of the highlights from Buenos Aires:
Xul Solar Museum: Xul Solar was a genius/eccentric friend of Borges that has a museum devoted to paintings and other artwork. He was obsessed with metaphysics and mysticism, and much of his work incorporates the zodiac, numerology, and rosecrucian imagery. He was also into chess and developed his own languages. Much of the work had a proto cubist feel and the presentation of the work and the architecture of the builiding was quite striking.
Zorcal: Each morning we were woken by the sounds of the Zorcal, a small bird the reminds me of an oriole, that sings a song reminicent of the song Tequila. The songs started about 5:30Am each morning and we continued to hear the birds throughout the day while we were in Buenos Aires. The volume was quite striking, and we were amazed that such a small bird produced the sound.
Parilla: The Argentine equivalent of barbecue, but taken to a whole new level when compared to the U.S. These are the most common restaurants in Buenos Aires and essentially you have up to 30 some odd selections of meat that they will grill for you - anything from beef tenderloin to chittlins, and other less appetizing pieces of the cow, as well as chicken, pork and other meats, depending on where you go. You would get truly gargantuan portions for $5 to $10 US, and they served a delicious sauce called chimichurri alongside.
Ice Cream: Everywhere you went in Buenos Aires there weer increible ice cream joints, most of which will deliver. I´ve never tasted ice cream so good - and each place had at least a few different versions of Dulce de Leche, Chocolate and various fruit blends.
We also experienced a lot of very odd things in Buenos Aires. The first few days that we spent in Buenos Aires we constantly heard very odd cover songs, including a Bossa Nova version of the what sounded like the entire Bob Marley Legend album (we didn´t stick around tho here the whole album). We were constantly hearing wierd remixes, generally of very bad soft pop songs.
We encountered a number of interesting cab drivers along the way in Buenos Aires. Considering that most trip cost two to four dollars, we spent quite a bit of time in cabs. The first cab driver we had in Buenos Aires had lived in San Francisco as a student in the early 90´s and had been trying to go back ever since. In fact a number of the cab drivers that we rode with had a some point been to San Francisco. One night on the way to see a Tango show, we were picked up by a driver listening to Guns and Roses. As soon as he realized that we were familiar with it he turned it up and proceeded to blare the music while singing along and tapping the drum beat on the roof of the car. Next up came a mash-up of numerous mid to late 80´s heavy metal hits, starting with Shook Me All Night Long, and going through Def Leppard, Ratt, Van Halen, and numerous others. He finished with a bit of Madonna, his true love as he told us, as he dropped us off. That night after the show we were picked up by a driver who looked to be 80 and who was listening to Tango because he lived it, and who proceeded to tell us about police corruption and problems with the city.
The last full day we spent in Buenos Aires was quite an adventure. First off we decided to go to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site for it´s colonial architechture. We took a high speed ferry across the Rio Plata from B.A. which took about an hour. The Rio Plata is actually the confluence of a number of rivers that in turn pours into the Atlantic Ocean. The water was quite brwon, but the view of Buenos Aires was incredible. Upon ariving in Colonia we roamed around and found a nice open air parilla where we had lunch. We were so inspired that we´ve decided to emulate the place in our back yard once we own a home. The town was quite stirking - the original city gate and part of the wall from the 17th century were still standing a were a number of other buildings from when teh portugese were there.
The excitiement came when I started to have a alergy attack while there. At first it wasn´t so bad - a little snifling and sneezing - but on the ride back to Buenos Aires we sat near the duty free shop on the ferry which was filled with people trying on perfume and cologne. My sinuses promptly exploded and I spent the hour ride back running back and forth from the bathroom to the seats. I believe I went through a full roll of toilet paper. Then when we got back to Buenos Aires we realized we didn´t have enough cash to get back to out hotel and we didn´t have an ATM card but we did have a credit card. Plus it was about 25 blocks back to the hotel. So we sucked it up and hoofed it - all the while my allergies simply got worse. We managed to find a farmacia and get some alergy pills, water and a lot of tissue which I proceeded to use up as we walked back to the hotel. Although it was a beautiful walk, I´m not sure the people of Buenos Aires appreciated my sneezing all over their city. Once we arrived at the hotel I pumped myself full of anti-alergy pills including benadryl, actifed, and afrin. Not a good idea. I then felt so drugged up that I couldn´t concentrate for hours, and my heart was racing for the rest of the night.
We were able to rally to go out to dinner and since it was our last night we decided to hit one of the hipper restaurants in town named Gran Bar Danzon. The food and service were amazing. Sarah got dressed up in one of her new dresses only to discover that the entrance to the restaurant was a bit of a meat market - seven men intently starring down any woman that entered. We almost turned and ran, but managed to push our way through the crowd and enjoyed ourselves emensely. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that we finally got scammed by a cab driver. Just before catching a cab to the restaurant we stopped by the ATM - when we arrived at teh restaurant I handed the driver a twenty peso bill. He immediately responded saying that the charge was five peso and that I had handed him a two peso bill, which of course was impssible since I didn´t even have one. I was so defuddled from the alergy medicine that I honestly thought I had made a mistake, and even apologized before handing him more money. It was only after he drove off that I not only realized that I had been scammed but I remembered reading about this very scam when we were flying in from San Francisco. Score one for the locals.
And so ended our adventure in Buenos Aires. Next up Iguazu Falls
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