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!
Meeting loads of friendly locals
Punta del Diablo
The guy who could sing the Irish national Anthem
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