Buenos Aires
March 22-31

We got in to Buenos Aires around 11 on Friday March 22nd. After taking a taxi to our Hotel, Ayres De Recoleta, which btw (by the way) turned out to be right across the street from the Recoleta Cemetary and a super nice mall featuring a movie theater and not 1, not 2 but 3 different McDonalds, if that’s not classy I don’t know what is! We got checked in and then spent the rest of the day checking out the city. Initially we were just planning on staying a couple days in BA and then heading out to the coast before coming back for a few more days. But because of our inability to pull out dollars and our cheapness at wanting to get the best exchange rate possible we did some research and found a place we could wire money from our bank account and then pick up pesos, but we would be getting 7.7 pesos to the dollar instead of the published rate of 4.8. Sounded simple, ended up turning in to a nightmare, and we weren’t able to get our pesos until Monday so we just decided to spend the rest of our time until we had to get on the cruise ship in Buenos Aires! Even though our hotel was a little more (a lot more) than the usual $15 we’ve gotten used to paying, we really loved the location and the fact that it had a kitchen for us to do some cooking, so we decided to stay there a few more nights. We had both signed up for Hyatt credit cards and received 2 free nights at any Hyatt around the world so, we spent our last 4 nights at the Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt. It's so fancy we couldn't even pronounce the name! :) We walked in to the lobby carrying our gross backpacks and wearing our wrinkled clothes and needless to say we felt like impostors!

Buenos Aires is an awesome city! It reminds me of cleaner, less crowded, more European New York. I absolutely loved it! So many great monuments and parks to check out and we felt super safe the whole time we were there. They have an awesome bus and metro system, but it is basically impossible to get change from anyone, which is what you have to pay with to get on the bus, so we walked everywhere we possibly could and ended up logging like a billion miles or somewhere close to… :) We saw as much as we could, which included just about every statue slash monument slash park in a 5 mile radius (and believe me there were lots), La Boca, Puerto Madero, the Recoleta cemetery, Tom Cruise (yeah I did just casually threw that one in there), a River Plate soccer game (yes they call themselves River Plate, don‘t ask me why it‘s in English), a TC 2000 road race,  the zoo, amateur UFC fighting (in a park between friends), shady money exchanges where we taken in to an underground den to conduct our transaction… You name it we probably experienced slash saw it here and loved every minute!

This was the place we stayed for the first half of our stay in BA, we made full use of that tiny little fridge and stove.

This is the Recoleta cemetery, it’s one of the most popular things to see in BA and I’m sure if we were Argentinean or even halfway educated about the country like we should be, we would know a few of the famous people buried here… :)

This place was massive and had so many beautiful tombs! McKay likened it unto a city for the dead…

Oh, a picture of a black cat in a cemetery, that’s not cliché….

Creepy or not creepy? These are just the stairs that lead down to the crypt of someone's ancestors…

Our delicious breakfast served right to our door every morning at our first hotel!

One of the things I have loved so much about BA is all the awesome clean parks they have everywhere. It’s awesome to see so many people hanging out and taking advantage of them!

Pic Dinner?

Oh my goodness this street has like 80 lanes! For real though, this is the widest street in South America it is right around 20 lanes across! 

These kids were magical with there soccer balls! Juggling and back flipping and balancing and hand standing all while keeping the ball in the air. We creepily sat on a bench and watched them until they all got on their bikes and went home!

We tried to go to church on Sunday and after walking 20 leagues just to find the church no one was even there! But we did run in to a really nice pilot from California who was looking for the ward as well. Another member ended up coming late and realized it was Stake Conference, so we all followed her across town and finally jumped on a bus that took us to the Stake Center, all I can say is the church is alive and well in Argentina!

And then there was an obelisk and we took a picture...

He’s trying to turn it in to an optical illusion where it looks like he’s holding it in his hands, I didn't know how to tell him he was only slightly off...

This was the day we hung out at Puerto Madero, that's where all the richie rich's live. Lots of yachts and fancy hotels and restaurants that we couldn't even stand in they were so expensive. Luckily we found this amazing cheap parilla on wheels with these awesome sandwiches and tons of great fixings to put on top, they were so delicious and we were craving them the rest of the time in the city!

I even got a prize for finishing my sandwich in the form of this awesome High School Musical plate! 

There was a pick pocket sneaking up on McKay right as he was taking this picture, so I quickly put on my mean face to scare him away, works every time.

After checking out the fake Capital building we found this sweet little pizza joint that had an indoor soccer field attached to the back of it. We ate our pizza and then watched some soccer. Oh man did it make me long for the glory days of C league coed soccer back home!

One night we walked out of our hotel and decided to take a stroll, we stumbled across this mess of people and paparazzi and red carpets. We immediately figured out it was a movie premiere but just assumed it was some low budget Argentinian flick that we'd never heard of. Since we couldn't see past the big barriers and throngs of people blocking our view we walked back to some monitors we had passed to see if we could pick out anyone we knew. This is what we found....

Uhh, yes that is TC himself on the monitor, that's when we knew, we'd finally made it to the big leagues!

This is one of the other stars of the movie Andrea Riseborough. Who really cares about her anyway though? :)

I know you’re probably jealous of this super close up shot of Tom Cruise, but please make sure to credit me for all future use of this photo.

Tom Cruise stood in this exact spot not more than 2 hours before this, I’m pretty sure that makes us soul mates!

Apparently this place is famous for the professional dog walkers and their ability to handle with ease so many ferocious beasts. We naturally had to capture this phenomenon in action! :)

This is the amazing balcony view of the Recoleta cemetery from none other than the McDonalds in the mall! Talk about a high class big mac!

We ate at McDonalds our very first day there and they made the mistake of bringing us a 2 for 1 sundae coupon, which we of course immediately used. Then for the rest of the trip any time we had any kind of craving for sweets McKay would work his magic and tell them we had a 2 for 1 coupon, but had left it at the hotel (lies), worked like a charm every time! Isn't he dreamy with those sundaes in his hands?

Our plush room at the Hyatt complete with a master desk on which we could conduct any and all business that might come up during our stay.

This is the amazing fruit that was delivered to our room twice atday at the Hyatt! You would've thought we'd won the lottery with how excited we got every time we walked in to our room and more fruit had magically appeared! That's like 1 1/2 meals right there, for free!

What, you've never seen a bathroom in a $650 a night hotel? Well now you have!

We spent one day at the zoo and had an awesome time, as is obvious by the clear excitement on my face...

I know what you're thinking, 'What!? You guys saw an elephant? That is INSANE!'

Wanna hear a joke? Come se llama? Llama... Get it?

This monkey was hilarious! At the zoo you could buy buckets of food that you could feed to a lot of the animals and it was very clear that the animals loved and expected the food. We weren't supposed to feed this poor guy, probably because it wasn't appropriate for his diet, but someone must have caved in and thrown some food over in the past, because he would walk around, find a piece of rock and throw it over a 12 foot glass ceiling and then look at you like, ok your turn! We were laughing so hard, his mamma didn't raise no fool!

Us in front of some water at the zoo, how precious!

Kentucky Pizza! Did it have anything to do with the state? No. Was it started by one of Colonel Sanders relatives? Probably not. Did that stop it from being the most delicious cheap pizza we've eaten? Of course it didn't. We liked it here so much we went out of our way to take the bus 20 minutes to get here again, only to realize that there was one within walking distance of the hotel, oops!

After visiting Kentucky Pizza for the 2nd time, we had a wonderful picnic in this beautiful, not drab at all, park!

La Boca! This is in front of the Boca Juniors stadium, they are one of the most popular soccer teams in Buenos Aires! This was also the day I discovered my husband did not know who Diego Maradona was, I was torn between tears and indignation at his lack of soccer knowledge.... :)

Is my husband the master photographer or what? He captured this pic of this car racing by at 80mph and it only took him like 12 tries... This was at the TC 2000 race that was going on in downtown BA, they closed off a bunch of the streets and had races going on Saturday and Sunday around town!

Saturday night we decided to go to a River Plate Soccer game and it was intense! You had to go through 5 lines of security guards like this, checking your tickets just to get through to the entrance of the stadium.

This is what a sold out crowd of 75,000 soccer crazed fans looks like and we loved every minute of it!  By far one of my highlights of the trip. Everyone was jumping up and down screaming or singing in unison the whole game! This might be a bit blasphemous to my Aggie heritage, but it was seriously like the Spectrum student section on crack times 50!

It was so jam packed in there and everyone stood the entire game and anywhere that wasn't occupied was considered fair game for standing to watch the game. Especially the aisles and stairways! 

Ole Ole Ole Ole! At the end of the game they wouldn't let anyone out of the stadium for 45 minutes while they cleared out the other team and all their supporters. They don't want the mobs of crazy fans killing anyone. I say that in jest, but apparently it's dead serious (pun intended)!

This is the garden of the Hyatt, naturally we stood out in the worst way possible at this classy up town joint, and not just because McKay walked around doing this pose the whole day!

We left the Hyatt on Easter morning and were so sad they didn't even ask us if we wanted any of these delicious chocolate Easter eggs for the road!

Iguazu Falls

Argentina

Iguazu

March 19-21 Tuesday through Thursday

Monday night after finally getting in to Puerto Iguazu we realized we definitely weren’t in Central America anymore! The days of $15 hotel rooms are so far behind us, I can’t even remember what that was like anymore! After asking around we made took a 20 minute journey away from any lights, town, and civilization and found a place called La Hosteria Mola. Nothing fancy about it, but it included a free breakfast (bread and butter) and had a tv smaller than an ipad screen, what more could you need? Tuesday morning, after filling ourselves up on the free bread, we headed up to Iguazu Falls. All I can say is A-MAZ-ING! I feel like I had it built up in my head from everyone telling me how awesome it was, but being there and seeing it was unreal.

While waiting at the bus stop to go to the falls we had  started talking to this Argentine couple Yesica and Marcelo. They were from Buenos Aires and were vacationing around the north for a couple weeks. They were so nice and we ended up spending the whole day with them. It was great to have some company as well as someone to take our picture! :) When we got back from the falls we met them at their hotel because they had wanted to buy some dollars from us, when we got there they treated us to sandwiches, some kind of typical Argentine egg meat thing, and this awesome apple soda. It was so sweet!

*On a side note, for those of you who haven't heard, Argentina has some weird things happening with their money right now. Basically the government is limiting the ability for the Argentine people (or anyone in Argentina) to buy US dollars. The inflation is off the charts and they want to keep the pesos in circulation instead of everyone buying up dollars. So, basically what that means is the official exchange rate that you get from banks, hotels, bus companies etc. is right around 4.9 pesos to $1. However in Buenos Aires there is now what's called the Blue  Market, it's basically a black market for people who want dollars but can't get their hands on them so they're willing to pay significantly more to get them. When we first got here it was just over 8 pesos to $1 and now it has jumped to around 8.75 to 1! It doesn't take a brainiac to figure out that 8 is better than 4.9! :)

Welcome to Iguazu, help yourselves to a cheesy picture in front of our classy sign!

On the train up to the falls! Entrance in to the falls was significantly cheaper for Argentines than for us and Yesical and Marcelo were so cute and tried to get us in on the local pricing. They told us to be quiet when we got to the ticket window and after getting their tickets the lady asked where we were from and they just kept telling her, oh, it's fine, these are just our friends. She wasn't buying it one bit but we really appreciated the effort!

This was a wild ride, they even had to post the speed limits for the conductors, who must sometimes get wildly out of control, at 8kmph!

Map of the Argentine side of the falls, the Brazil side is off to the left and has a completely separate entrance.

These little Coatie’s were everywhere, at first I was like, “Oh, how cute let’s get a picture of one of them trying to get my food!” But then after they viciously snatched away my half full bag of chips and tried to make a run for it  I was like, “Oh, no he didn’t! It‘s on now! Nobody messes with my $3 bag of chips and gets away with it.” 

This sign would have been a lot more useful before I was viciously attacked with nothing to defend myself but the fear of hunger that would come to pass if I let them succeed!

It tastes like rain... These are the walkways all across the river to the falls, they go on for what feels like miles.

On our walk across the bridge to the first set of falls we saw a massive spider, birds, fish, and this turtle just chilling out of the water.

And this croc! I realize this seems kind of puny, but we got caught up in the rush of the crowd taking pictures of anything and everything that came our way!

Our first view of the falls, we were in awe until we realized....

Waabam! So much cooler! Here's what they call the Devil's mouth.

Now here's the Devil's Mouth with me in front of it... Way better, true?

And more, in total there are over 75 water falls here, McKay personally counted... via wikipedia on the internet...

There's an old Argentine myth, maybe you've heard, that says fame and fortune will come to those who capture a rainbow above their heads while waterfalls flow in the background... No?

A view of the bottom part of the falls, behind the island and higher up is the Devil's mouth and to the left is Brazil.

And then we saw some  more waterfalls and it was like, what? Where did these come from? :)

And all the girlies say he's pretty fly for a white guy!

There's definitely a reason this is considered one of the 7 new natural wonders of the world!

In addition to these amazing falls, we also captured an alien on camera wearing a green vest...

"I. Am. Sparticus!" I'm pretty sure that's what I heard McKay yelling as he was posing for this picture!

These are like the babies of the falls.

Wednesday we explored the town of Puerto Iguazu, got some laundry done and figured out buses for our 20 hour journey to Buenos Aires the next day. For lunch we ate at this typical Argentina Parilla, which means grill. Argentina is known for it's awesome meat and every restaurant you pass has a big grill where you can watch them cook up plethora of different kinds of steaks, chicken, seafood etc. It's like a vegetarians worse nightmare! :) Also apparently ciesta time is alive and well in these parts, we tried to go to the grocery store in the middle of the day on Wednesday and it was closed. We didn't get it until we saw that the store hours were from 8-12 and then 4-9, must be nice having a 4 hour break in the middle of the day!

This isn't the best picture, but every time we walked past this gas station in town there was a line of at least 25 cars going clear down the street waiting to get gas, it was crazy!

While at the grocery store getting some stuff for dinner the power went out. Luckily they had generators, but we did have to walk home in the pitch black down the sketchy road to our hotel with only our rape whistles to protect us... This is us enjoying our romantic ham and cheese sandwich dinner complete with headlamps for candles while the power was out.

Thursday we got checked out of our room and hung out until our bus left. We got on the bus at 2 and settled in for a long ride. We ended up riding with Expreso Singer on a double decker bus. It was so nice, had seats that reclined more than 45 degrees, didn't smell like throw up and we even got midnight empanadas and sprite. If that's not classy then I've probably been away from classy for too long to recognize it anymore. The only downside to the bus was the endless customs stops we had to make. We had immigration officers get on the bus no less than 7 times and ask to see our passports and give us the stink eye every time, it was unreal! Especially because we were in the same country the whole time, I don't know what their issue was. Later we realized that at some point during the bus ride and probably one of these checks, we had a bunch of stuff stolen out of our bags. Both of our nice rain coats, head lamps, camera battery charger, and another cord that I'm sure they thought they needed more than us. I mean seriously, we've been traveling on the sketchiest buses possible for the last 3 months and the first legit bus we take in Argentina and it's game over. Who does that kind of thing? Luckily we're just heading down to check out a bunch of glaciers so it's not like we would have needed our coats anyway right?... (Said with sarcasm.) Other than that things went smoothly and we made it in to Buenos Aires at about 9:30 on Friday morning!

While waiting for the bus I was craving pickles like crazy and finally made McKay buy me this jar, I then proceeded to basically finish them off in the same sitting and made myself smell like pickles for the rest of the day... Oops!

Yesica and Marcelo were so sweet and came to say goodbye to us at the hotel. They then walked us to the bus station and helped us carry our back packs the whole way there, they are the best!