Day 112 - Tristan checks out...

All good things have to come to an end. And sadly, today was the day when my boyfriend of 4 and a half amazing months checked out of our hostel and boarded a plane back to the UK. gutted. No really, I'm SO gutted. Like I've been drugged up and had a kidney stolen, then left for dead on the street outside a harley street doctors. Devastated.



Anyway, I'm seeing him in 4 months in china, and that's a lot sooner than I could possibly have hoped for, so I'm gonna dry not to whinge about it too much. SO, a quick recap of the last few days. Firstly, I forgot to mention the sheer excitement of getting a CAMA EXECUTIVE bus from Igauzu to Buenos Aires. This was special. It costs about 3 quid more than a SEMICAMA bus (where the seats recline loads, but you are sat at an angle). This bus had properly FLAT BEDS for us, and we were well excited.





Sadly, they looked good, but were possibly the most uncomfortable of all the buses we had taken. Not a good move. But at least they were a bit more fun than normal. Anyway, after the pleasure of Holy Land, we didn't do too much for a couple days apart from eat at La Clac, a very fancy restaurant which we've been to about 4 times now, and shop - sam and tristan now both own a pair of argentine Converse, I have some new CDs, and tristan has a whole new wardrobe of tacky "Buenos Aires" tourists t-shirts which he wears VERY well.



On Monday, Tristan's final night before he returned home, I took him out for a romantic dinner...at La Clac, again. I put on my shirt and tie for the occassion, and Tristan donned his white shoes. And despite neither of us being wine drinkers, we sunk a bottle Lopez red wine between us and tucked into some fine pieces of steak.

On his last day, we checked out at 11am, grabbed some lunch with Sam who was sorely hungover from the night before, then the two of us headed into town on a bus to make the most of the sunshine and the city. First stop was the Museum of Fine Art, which had some work by my favourite artist, Goya, which was amazing - amongst a shed load of other stuff. Great museum.







After that we wandered through Recoleta to the cities famous cemetary, which is totally weird, but totally amazing. Laid out like a little village, complete with little streets and tree-lined avenues, the crypts themselves are like houses, all with shelves for dead family members (many vacant) and creepy stairs leading to more room underground. All the crypts can be seen into, and amongst other famous people, Eva Peron (Evita) is buried here, within a crypt covered in posters, flowers and camera flashes from all the tourists. Tristan and I wandered round the city of crypts, holding hands, for ages, soaking it up. Until it got too creepy.











And then we headed towards the centre, past some really fancy shops, down into San Telmo, with its cobbled streets, antique shops and retro clothes. As we approached the time that we had to get a cab to the airport, I kinda lost the ability to talk. And after the cab ride to the airport, I kissed the boy goodbye in the security clearance queue and left him to fly home.

And that was cool. A brief 2 minute cry and I was fine. Dealing with it just fine. That is, until, after a night out and 3 hours sleep, I spent the next day sobbing. Uncontrollably. All day long. At the hostel. On my computer keyboard. Into Suzi's arms as I said goodbye to her for 4 months. Killer. And as the sky got dark, we got a cab to the airport again, and this time it was us flying. Farewell South America - hello New Zealand.

   

Day 110 - Tierra Santa (Holy Land)

Holy Land is *UNREAL*...



After another mammoth bus ride (20 hours this time), we arrived at 8am back in the capital of Argentina, our final destination in south america before we head to New Zealand. It was sunday, God's day or rest, so we went to visit 'Tierra Santa', the world's first religious theme park. And *what* a theme park it is.







This place is nuts. Its a fibre-glass city re-enacting the events of the bible, right up to Jesus's death on the cross, and once every 30 minutes (get this...) a massive 30 foot high Jesus rises out of the mountain and turns around to face the park to the blaring sound of trumpets and the hallelujah chorus. Words just don't do it justice. This place is properly nuts.



We caught a couple of those rubbish disneyland-type shows where animatronic animals and people move woodenly in a weird theatre type performance of the Last Supper, the Creation and the Nativity. But the real highlight was the belly-performance, in which we thought the dancers heads were gonna ping off from their bodies from the amount of moshing they were doing.



This place is magical. If you are EVER in Buenos Aires, you HAVE to go here. I physically can't tell you how amazing it is. I still can't believe it actually exists.

Day 107 - Puerto Iguazú

There's not much to report from Iguazú. Its pretty self explanatory. After the 36 hour bus ride, which became 40 hours because some kid threw a brick through the bus window after 28 hours (no one got hurt guys, its fine), and after having an AMAZING steak in a super fancy restaurant the night before, we hopped on the wrong bus (one heading to Brasil), jumped off at the border, and hopped on another to the falls.







   

Was it worth the 40 hours? Yep. Pretty much. Its AMAZING. Seriously, there's a shed load of water, the sound is intense, the place is beautiful, and the birds dancing around the crashing water like lightning bolts is awesome. Apparently this area has had the worst winter in 150 years, so the water level was pretty low. At high season, I reckon it would blow your head off. But we were quietly happy with what we found. And the photos, whilst not capturing it properly, do a pretty good job.

Day 104 - Mendoza

Mendoza is NICE. It has parks, it has shops, it has museums, and its small enough to walk around in the two days we had. Perfect.



We arrived at 8am, grabbed a cab to a hostel, had some breakfast and laughed at Nicki, one of the hostel residents, who appears in numerous hilarious photos on the hostels photo-wall. We headed straight out, and caught a student show at the local modern art museum, before heading into town (3 blocks away from the hostel!) and grabbing some lunch.

   

Mendoza has this enormous park, again, right by our hostel, so we headed out to explore it. It pretty special. Its HUGE, and green and peaceful and amazing. We spent a good 3 hours wandering around it, before grabbing an amazing dinner (possibly the best steak I ever had, no less) at a restaurant called DON TRISTÁNS. My steak was called a "tristan roll". Love it.







The next day we headed to an amazing contemporary art museum. Beautiful building, nice sculpture, and an exhibition about some old dude with a young wife who seems to have travelled the world in his 90s. We also got to taste some honey from the mendoza area. which was a bit gross to be honest, but sam bought some cos she thought the woman was sweet. sucker.



   


(but to you, sweet tongue of Germany, I have chosen and searched for you, alone. Through vigiliance and grammar, from the jungle of the inflected nouns, of the dictionary, that is never correct with its precise nuances, i was drawing myself closer)

after that, tristan and I headed to the park for a long walk. We'd downed a glass of san-pedro spiked hot water before going in the hope that we might rub some trees, but it didn't work. Instead, we just lounged in the sun admiring the beauty of this place, before we booked ourselves on a, get this, 36 HOUR BUS JOURNEY to see the Iguazú falls. Are we nuts? pretty much.