Friday, May 9, 2008

Santa Cruz to Buenos Aires

Tuesday 29th April

Today we spent most of the day trying to get to Buenos Aires. Our flight was supposed to be at 1045, but on the way to the airport at 0900 - it started raining........and then came the thunder and lightning, and before we knew it we were in the midst of a pretty good storm. Oh well, nothing to do but sit and wait it out. Now, airports are not on my list of favourite places to be stuck at the best of times, and unfortunately Santa Cruz airport is fairly small, and thus lacks the distractions of copious amounts of duty free shopping, so we got very bored, very quickly, and basically sat reading our books for the next couple of hours - apart from when we saw Phil Keoghan (of Amazing Race fame) waiting for a plane too - now we are wondering if the Amazing Race was in town - that would be cool!

We finally took off at 1245, during a gap in the storm, and landed in BA at 1715. Flying over Argentina was completely different to many of the other places we have flown - for a start it was pretty flat. The agriculture also looked a lot more organised/westernised. It definitely looks more like a first world country. We are staying tonight at El Hostal de Granados in Sam Telmo (the artists/antiques barrio in BA) before flying to Puerto Iguazu in the morning. We had dinner at El Desnivel which is a Paradilla (Grill) Restaurant, where they serve huge chunks of steak which have been cooked over a wood-fired grill. Paradilla and red wine are the food that Argentina is famous for, so of course we had to partake in both. The atmosphere of the restaurant was pretty cool, very relaxed and laid-back, but still excellent service. The servings were huge, and the whole meal only cost us A$81 = NZ$32.

1 comment:

peach said...

I'm so jealous of your Phil sighting!

We have been tracking the racers since they began the race on 4/22. Would you be willing to answer a couple of questions for me? I would SO appreciate it!

You can reach me here:

contactrff@bellsouth.net

Thanks guys!