A-Salta-ing the Andes

Moving further north in Argentina we started to enter more Andean territory. It was cooler here and the people started looking darker and shorter than the porteños in Buenos Aires. The bus for Chile didn´t leave for two days, so we had a bit of time to explore the town. We discovered yet more Super Panchos and 1 peso ice cream!


The Gondola offered impressive views of the city from above:

We also visited a brilliant museum where they held three mummified remains of children found 6,300 metres up on the Llullaillaco volcano. The children are believed to have been Incan sacrifices and have been extremely well preserved because of the cold and the altitude at which they were entombed. Unfortunately we couldn´t take any pictures here : (

Next stop was the cathedral in the plaza. It was pink and big.

Then it was time for some artistic culture, so we visited a contemporary art museum. We didn´t understand a lot of it, but we felt sophisticated none the less.

The delights of Salta were now at an end. We took an early morning bus north through exciting new scenery on the way to Chile.

Reaching the Argentinian border, we started to feel quite how high up we were. The border crossing was at about 5,000 metres above sea level. Matt started to feel a bit queer.

Cor-phwoar-doba

Cordoba wasn´t all that exciting. We had a look at the church and almost starved to death when we realised that nothing is open on Sundays. Super Panchos saved the day though!

Super Pancho (hand pictured not ours)

Watch out Buenos Aires!

Our flight to South America was long and confusing (we ended up in Buenos Aires 3 hours before we left Sydney. Eh?) but the captain was very nice. We made friends with him:

Despite the jet lag we both fell in love with Buenos Aires. We stayed in an area called San Telmo which was a picturesque, working class area with cobbled streets, intriguing graffiti and tango dancers on every corner:

Tango show in Plaza Dorrego where we enjoyed fine wine and finer steak

Nearby, in the Plaza De Mayo was the famous Casa Rosada; where Eva Peron addressed the crowds. It looked bigger in the film.

And a short subte ride took us to Buenos Aires´ poshest area La Recoleta, where Argentina´s elite compete and pay exorbitant amounts of money on elaborate tombs in the cemetery. This is where Eva "Evita" Peron nee Duarte is buried.

We didn´t think Evita´s was as impressive as a lot of the other ones. After the cemetery tour, we had a stroll around La Recoleta taking in the nearby churches and art installments.

This flower was outside the Law university building and opens every morning and closes at night, like a real flower, using hydrolics powered by solar energy.

In the evening we visited the world famous Tango bar - Cafe Tortoni for some impressive dancing and musical performances.

It´s hard to tell what this is, but these two guys took it in turns to simultaneously tap dance and bang out complex beats on the floor with long weighted ropes. Muy Impresivo!

The next day we dug out our map and went in search of the artistic, dock area of the city called La Boca. This district grew up from immigrants arriving and setting up house near the water. They painted their houses with left over materials from the dock yard and today it is a bright, bohemian tourist attraction, though people do still live there!

(ed) Matt wishes it to be made clear that the salad 

here pictured was merely a precursor to the steak which was his main course

La Bombanera home of Boca Juniors

Here endeth our visit to Buenos Aires (though I think we could both come back and live here one day). That night we took a posh super cama bus to Cordoba.

There is only one Lord of the Forest, and he does not share Paihia

Luckily we didn´t miss our ferry, and we rose and shone bright and early to climb aboard at 5.30am. Ych. It was pretty though:

After stocking up on books in Wellington´s Arty Bees bookshop we jumped back into Bill-the-Pony and headed north. We stopped at Waitomo glow worm caves, but we couldnt take any pictures of it. Check out it out here though.

Next on the agenda was seeing some enormous trees, so we stopped at the Kauri museum to find out about the brutes before we encountered them in the flesh/wood.

Matt´s second trip to the Kauri museum

Jen was terrorised by a plastic man asking if she wanted tea. HONESTLY!!!!

I think we are ready for the real thing now.

Tane Mahuta - Lord of the Forest

Phew that was a big tree! We found a pretty campsite next to Kai Iwi lake to rest up and reflect on it. 

We had just about time for a swift visit to the Bay of Islands before we had to head back to Auckland. We stopped for fish and chips along the way. Yum.

Chip stop! Gerrof my chips seagull

Paihia

After a lovely day at the beach we headed back to Auckland for what we thought was to be our final night in New Zealand. It was the last night of the Chinese new year celebrations, so we went to see the lantern display and fireworks in Albert Park.

We got up the next day ready to jump on a plane to Santiago, only to find out that the airport had been closed because of a huge earthquake! How inconsiderate. We found ourselves re-routed to Buenos Aires a week later. It was disappointing, but it meant we could catch up with our old pal Mark. You remember him, right? Here he is with Jenny being a statue:

The week sped by fairly swiftly with lots of visits to the park and swimming pool. We went to see a certain long-awaited movie at the Imax cinema, but we won´t say anything about that (betrayed sob). Then we had our 20 hour flight to Buenos Aires at 4.30am to look forward to...