Rosario - Uruguay beaches and Brazil for Paddys day

Back to Argentina again and we headed to Rosario for a week to meet up with some girls we'd met in Bariloche. Rosario was my favourite Argentinian city. Not sure if it's because it was the only place we met locals or what but I really enjoyed it. Very much a student town. Lots of young people and probably the friendliest place we were in as well. Plus we ended up cooking unreal dinners. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but we've been doing lots of group meals over the last few months and we have all learnt lots off each other on cooking. Only thing is the meals keep getting bigger and bigger so I'm guessing without realising it were getting fatter and fatter!! It's gotten to the stage that some of the meals consist of nearly 1/2 a kilo of meat or steak per person, huge thing of mashed potatoes, huge salad and shit loads of garlic bread! Some of these only costing 2 or 3 euros worth. But we love it and its always a disappointment when we find a hostel that doesn't have a good kitchen. Other meals have included homemade pesto pasta, really good BBQ's or Asado's, homemade burgers stuffed with herbs and cheese, or pizzas with all our own toppings, stir fries with prawns or chicken and a good veggy mix, curries, cobb salads, fajitas, roast chicken stuffed with tomato basil and mozzerella and wrapped in bacon and a number of oven baked fish dishes. The food list on this trip is endless and quite creative and depending on the country. I don't think we've spent more than $4 per person for a meal with sides and starters that would probably feed 6 to 8 in a restaurant as opposed to four!

Meeting up with loads of friendly locals in Rosario

One of our huge meals that we cooked. Doesnt look too big here but shit loads of garlic bread, salad and nearly 400 grams of steak each and chorizo.

We couldn't afford Brazil for carnival where some hostels were costing up to $100 per night with a minimum stay of like 7 nights so we decided to go to Uruguay which was also meant to be good. A huge disappointment. Pretty much nothing happening at all. Went for the Monday and Tues before Ash Wed which is meant to be the end of it and it was just like a ghost town.

Montevideo

Montevideo was an all right city. Nothing special but Uruguay in general was so rich looking, developed and clean. Amazing houses, brand new cars, lots of cool apartments. Also even more European than Argentina. One guy I was chatting to on a bus his surname was O'Neill. I guess a lot of Irish came to this part of the world before. Apparantly Argentina is 5th largest Irish population outside of Ireland but not sure if thats true or not. I couldn't get over the price of some things in Uruguay especially in Punta Del este. We used to find Argentina expensive but looking back it was actually good value in a way. In Punta Del Este for example a beach town it was $11 for a McDonalds meal, $15 for a load of laundry and $5 for some bananas and a bottle of water. Even a small bottle of beer was $6 in a small bar. Punta del este was a very different world for us. Lots of crazy rich Argentinian tourists mainly. Like your package holiday place in Spain but trying to be a lot more classy. Meant to be good nightlife but nothing we could afford. Beaches weren't even that special.

So it was great when we got to Punta Del Diablo. It finally felt like backpacking again. Too much time spent in cities and "highclass" places in the last few months. This was one of those chilled out little beach towns that people come to for a few days and just stay. Nobody cares to be dressing up and being posh, or about fancy nightclubs, restaurants or bars which is the case in a lot of southern South America. Just relaxed and chilled out. The roads winding through the town just made of sand, surfers in the water but not overly crowded, cheap steak and seafood and great friendly hostels. Not like the money making business's we've been seeing a lot of lately but just a genuine hostel there for the sake of been a hostel and not to rip off tourists. One night we got this amazing cut of steak which Adrian cooked (best steak we've had is Adrian's) and this was one of the more expensive steaks in the shop and it worked out to be like 4 dollars for a kilo. Maybe they charged us the wrong price or something! This "town" was only 45 Min's from Brazil so after a few days it was time to hit Brazil which I didn't think I'd get to originally on my trip.

Punta del Diablo

From moment one in Brazil I liked it. We got the bus from Uruguay into the town of Chuy. A random little town because part of it was Uruguayan and the other part was Brazilian with nothing to distinguish the difference as you cross the road except it was Portuguese on one side. My first stop in Brazil was Porto Alegre.

We arrived in at rush hour and one thing I noticed is how happy and smiley everyone is. If you walk around a lot of western cities in the early morning and I've noticed it in places like London and America people are on their way to work and usually expressionless. Maybe listening to music on the subway or reading the paper but not all smiley and chatty. The exception of this I noticed in NZ before. Coming into Auckland everyone from the immigration guy, to the guy sweeping the floor and then the bus driver were all happy and smiling. Well it was the same here in Porto Alegre. People looked happy to be going to work! Prob sound stupid but just an observation I made.

That day and night was Paddy's day. A friend of mine that I'd travelled with three yrs ago in Asia had sent me a message. Hadn't talked to him much in three yrs but we'd spent about two months travelling and because of facebook he saw I was around and he happened to be in Porto Alegre on a last minute business trip. So we met up. Was as if nothing had changed and had a great night out.

Meeting up with old travel buddies

Went to an Irish bar. Actually it was the third Irish bar we tried as the first two were actually full. Still had to queue for about an hour. So used to going out lately at like 2am from months in Argentina and not even starting drinking until like midnight. But here people were standing in line at 7 O'clock. Maybe it was just because it was Paddy's day. Everyone was wearing green except for me and Nu cause we didn't have any. All sorts of Irish t-shirts going around and Guinness hats. Had a great time inside and by the end of the night we knew half the people in the bar. Everyone was interested in meeting the only two foreigners in the place. And I never drink Guinness but one guy insisted on keeping buying me Gunniess. Was a strange system in that you don't pay to get into the bar but you pay to leave it and all your drinks are put on your ticket. Brazil is crazy crazy expensive. There exchange rate has gotten so good in the last few yrs is the main reason why. So for example some of the beers here were 16 Reais or $10 or so. We only had four beers(besides the Guinness that people were buying us) and it averaged at $9 USD per beer. Crazy. And its not just drink but buses, accommodation and all as well. The food in supermarkets seems all right value however. Anyway we preceded to get very drunk. One thing that was annoying me was not been able to speak Portuguese. Its been years since I've been in a country where I can't speak the language. I'd say China about three and a half yrs ago was the last time. Everywhere else speaks English or Spanish. But anyway, Spanish is very similar to Portuguese so I kept trying that. But funnily enough most of the young people in this town said they understood English way better which we were well surprised with. So this one big guy that looks like the main guy out of Xmen decided to sing the Irish national anthem for me. Three times throughout the night. All in Irish. Ashamed to say it but I don't actually know it myself but the bits I did know he nailed. Not sure where and how he learnt that!

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Meeting loads of friendly locals

Punta del Diablo

Punta del Diablo

The guy who could sing the Irish national Anthem

Buenos Aires, Waterfalls, Carnival and how to hop across borders illegally

I'm not going to write a load of negative stuff about Buenos Aires because its not that I disliked it in anyway. But I'll just say it wasn't for me. I just expected a lot more from it. And I know its wrong to have high expectations or any expectations of a place or even to compare places but I can't help it, its just something I do. I kept comparing it to Barcelona, London and New York which its not like these in my opinion but I thought it was going to be. Plus I didn't have the money to enjoy it properly. Statistically its probably cheaper than any of the other cities above but as a backpacker you can find accommodation, food and drink cheaper in the other cities. Obviously you can find cheap stuff here as well but a lot of it was beyond what I could afford at this stage and I guess I just didn't know where to go for other stuff. Its got high class restaurants, people, nightclubs and a booming 24/7 night life. Usually something I'd enjoy. But I like to start early and maybe stay out all night like we did in Barcelona. However here nothing really gets going until 2. So we drank in the hostel before this but sometimes it would be 3 or 4am and then we wouldn't even make it out cause we'd be too tired at that stage and drinking slowly. I don't know was I too lazy or just been travelling too long or what but I prefer the more casual night life scene lately. Not a top end night club that you need to dress up to go to, then queue for hours outside unless you have a special pass or password. Besides all this it has a number of different neighborhoods. Lots of types of nightlife, restaurants, and parks all over the place.

Also even though this is nothing to do with BA in particular but the first hostel we stayed at Milhouse was a bunch of shit. It's one of the top rated ones in BA but this is mainly for partying. The staff weren't the friendliest. It was just a money making place. They had a bar which they tried to get us into upon check in when all we wanted to do was drop our bags in the room and could have checked in at reception. Then every morning they would come into the room and wake us shouting our names thinking we had to check out even though we didn't. The kitchen was small cramped unstocked and dirty. I guess a lot of this had to do with first time travellers who didn't know how to wash dishes. Then one day when I wanted to eat lunch all the staff were crowded around in the kitchen for ages eating when they easily could have sat in the bar. Once they finished they tried to move everyone out of the bar so they could clean the bar (where you sit) and kitchen so we couldn't even make food. Even a small thing like the TV room. They close this between 11pm and 3am just so they can encourage people to drink but I guess at 3am it gives people the opportunity to go have sex on the couches.

With a lot of thinking and pondering and changing my mind every hour about what to do I finally booked a bus to Paraguay not sure if it was the best decision or not but had to do something!!

After a 16 hour bus that turned into 20 hours we arrived in Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. Most other countries need Visas to come here and plus because its out of the way most backpackers don't even come. So I came up with Mallory, the Canadian girl I've been travelling with for a few months. Adrian stayed a bit longer in BA and Amanda was going to meet us here when she got back from the Antarctica. A lot of times in Argentina I feel like I might as well be at home or at least back in Europe. The culture there is such the same. Coming in here I felt like I was really back in South America or even actually in Central America. Statistically its the second poorest country in South America after Bolivia. Its hot and humid which we havn't had in months. There are no hostels here. There are hostels everywhere in South America but this just shows you how little tourists come here. It is literally on the border with Argentina and Brazil and we can see them from our hotel balcony but even still the people are different looking. Argentina is very European looking where as here we are like the only two white people walking around. At times I feel like I'm back in Thailand because of the heat, the motorbikes buzzing around outside, some BBQs on the street, the electronics and the look of the people. Other times it feels like Central America. There is also a big Asian culture here as well. Lots of Chinese and Korean food and even some Japanese. Its huge into Electronics. And I mean huge. South American in general is more expensive than anywhere in USA, Europe actually anywhere I've seen for Electronics. But I guess Paraguay has tax free or something so they have everything and anything here. Including all the fake stuff like phones that take two sim cards and stuff like that. And picture all the packaging that comes with electronics. Boxes and white foam and all that. They just throw that all over the streets!! So I guess a lot of Brazilians and Argentinians come across the border to buy stuff.

I'm finding it hard to get back into Spanish as well. 8 months in now and I've gone through so many stages or getting good and getting bad at it. I feel like now I'm back at stage one. Barely even able to ask for a hotel room or a bus. Everybody we met in Argentina had english so we barely used it and have forgotten everything. And even the bits I know the people reply to quickly I don't have a clue what they are saying!! But today I managed to somehow find this local bus out to Itaipu dam which is a big dam between Paraguay and Brazil.

So the following day I decided I'd head over to Brazil to check out the Brazil side of Iguazu falls. Mallory was sick in bed and going nowhere and Amanda was meant to have arrived on the Argentinian side of the falls. I decided I'd stay an extra night on the Paraguay side as Mal wasn't able to leave the country. The joy about been Irish or European in this sitation and not USA, Canadian Australian or NZ was that I can pass as many times as I want between the countries where as the others have to pay a fortune for visas which you have to get from a consulate or embassy and sometimes only allow one entry. So even though I could walk ten mins down the road to Brazil and possibly another short walk across to Amanda in Argentina the two girls couldn't meet up. Walking across the border was one of those border type towns you see when a really rich expensive country borders a really poor one. It felt in a way like the Tijuana/San Diego border. The paraguayan side was full of huge shops of electronics. People coming across with empty suitcases and big trolleys to fill up with stuff. All sorts of fake brand clothes, cigarettes etc. There is a bridge dividing the two countries across a river which takes less than 5 minutes to cross and even on both sides of the bridge you can see the different in peoples faces and the language people were using on both sides. There was huge lines of traffic and then pedestrians who had bought all sorts of stuff. Luckily for me all I had with me was a water bottle and got to skip all the lines. It was 35 degrees and crazy humid. Little did I know that in this town they took every currency but I didn't have any Reals and just started walking. They were also an hour ahead which I didn't know. I thought there would be a bus right there to take me to the waterfall but I had to go to centre of town first which by the time I walked there I was too late. So had a glimpse of Brazil, nearly walked into Argentina to see Amanda but decided to leave it till the following day when I could do it properly and came back to Paraguay again. Bit of a waste of a day but on the other hand very interesting. Another page wasted in the passport with all the stamps.

The two days after this I had to do the same all over again. But this time to avoid stamps in the passport and stopping and starting at every border I managed to find a way to cross through Brazil unofficially. I got on a bus with locals which drives right through the border. I then changed to another local bus in Brazil to go to Argentina but stupidly got off at the exit of Brazil rather than the entrance to Argentina so had a long sweaty walk through no mans land for a while. But literally managed to walk right through the exit border, passport in hand without them every checking me or caring. The following day coming back myself and Amanda did the same. She's Canadian so needs a visa for Brazil as well so even if she had stopped at the border they wouldn't have stamped her on but we managed to get through ok and even accidently skipped the Paraguay border and had to walk backwards to get stamped in. They are so easy going here its crazy.

So Iguazu was cool enough. Our first impression was bad at the devils throat. Could barely see a thing. But then did lots of walks around and saw other sides of the falls which was pretty cool but decided we'd seen enough and didn't need to see the Brazil side which is just meant to be a panoramic! After this we all headed onto Asuncion the capital of Paraguay.

Paraguay was a lot more normal in Asuncion but because it started raining we didn't do much at all. And we havnt seen proper rain in months. Met a cool English girl here who decided to come along with us to carnival in Encarnacion. I'll let the pictures tell most of it but basically lots of spray foam, like shit loads of it and lots of bare ass and parades.

Photos of all of this