One year!!

Our first taste of Salta was a brief jaunt for just a few days before we disappeared into the wilderness that was Aldea Luna.  Every balmy, sun-filled day was spent enjoying long wine fuelled lunches and lazy wandering; admiring grand colonial architecture in a delightful palette of ice cream colours.  Arriving from Bolivia, it felt, suddenly, like we had returned to the ease of modern life for a sweet, sunny holiday from the stresses of travelling.  Gone were the ski jackets, hats, scarves and out came the summer dresses and shorts that have seen little more than the interiors of our rucksacks since Australia.  We had such an enjoyable time that, after our month in Aldea Luna, we returned for a few more days to celebrate our one year anniversary; on which we enjoyed a delicious dinner and reminisced on how astounding and life changing this first year of marriage has been.  We feel so incredibly blessed to have had this incredible opportunity to discover the world together, but cannot help but hope that every year of our life together won’t disappear with such speed as this one.

From Salta we took our first extraordinarily luxurious bus; complete with la-z-boy style leather recliners, flat screen TVs and a beef and roast potato dinner; to Puerto Iguazu, a small jungle town on the Brazilian border that has not much going for it other than its proximity to the mighty Iguazu Falls.  And, oh, how mighty they are.  We spent a lot of time discussing whether we were prepared to travel the huge distance required to spend just one day in the presence of the falls, and were certainly not disappointed that we had decided to do so.  It’s difficult to really explain how impressive they are, but their awesome power coupled with their tremendous beauty renders most visitors visibly awestruck (and exceptionally wet!).

Yet another luscious bus (this time serving wine and champagne!) transports us the 22 hours to Buenos Aires.  We anticipate the capital with as little expectation as we can muster and a certain sense of uncertainty; it seems that all visitors to BA either love it or hate it and we don’t want to get our hopes up only to be disappointed.  On the day we arrived it was pouring with rain, which can easily put a damper on any city, but even amongst the dreary misery we caught glimpses of the European beauty that has won BA as its reputation as the “Paris of South America”.  And in many ways it is like Paris, but, as we soon discovered, it still brims with Latin American charm, the combination of which is both eclectic and enchanting.  Cobbled streets filled with antique shops and artisans selling their wares, beautiful couples dancing the sultry tango on the sidewalk, little old men in suits and bowlers hats busking for their bread, and gorgeous old cafes that transport you back in time and sell by far the best coffee we’ve had in all of South America.    In a nutshell, BA has character; unique and lots of it; and is unlike any other city we’ve encountered.  We indulged in the popular tourist activities; walking tour, tango show, visit to colourful La Boca, market in San Telmo, coffee in Cafe Tortoni (Argentina’s oldest); but equally enjoyed embracing the portenos way of life – hours spent in cafes and restaurants, reading the paper, a good book, watching the world go.  Though not managing to oust Valparaiso from its top spot as favourite city in South America, Buenos Aires definitely captured our hearts with its efforts.  We may have even fallen in love a little bit.