the beginning of the best

I’m sitting writing this with my Spanish Audio tapes playing in my ears. We seriously need to brush up on our Spanish ASAP!

Buenos Aires was a bit of a whirlwind trip for Sam and I because we were still coming to grips with what we are actually doing. We’ve quit our jobs, sold up our lives, and set off on this adventure, and now we are actually here. We are in Argentina!

The first two things we noticed when we got off the plane were the beautiful people and the hot muggy heat. Everywhere you look, you just see beautiful faces. Everything you feel is hot and sticky. So, with our grubby faces and sweaty clothes, and lots of eye candy all around us, we set off on a mission to find the local bus that takes you into the city (no luxury taxi’s for us, we are travelling on a VERY tight budget).

If you get the local bus into the city, it only cost $4 pesos (which is about R8.00 and less than US$1). The catch is that it’s a 2 hour bus trip, and after a 12 hour flight, it’s not exactly ideal. For the bus, you need coins, and I’m not sure why, but coins are hard to come by in Argentina. There is a Cambio (currency exchange place) in the airport and you just need to cross your little fingers that its open so that you can get your trusty coins. Then you’re good to go. Bus number 8 takes you right into the city. We weren’t to sure which stop we had to get off at, so of course we ended up going way to far, then having to walk back to our hostel, fully loaded with backpacks, but we made it eventually. All part of the adventure. Let the fun begin.

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graffiti in the hostel

Milhouse Hipo Hostel has the reputation of being a crazy party hostel, and one of the most highly rated hostels in Latin America. After a couple drinks with some new friends, we ended up sneaking off to bed relatively early. In Argentina, dinner is only at around 9pm, then pre-drinks start at 10h30pm, and people only go out to nightclubs at 2pm! It’s madness. So you really have to be on your top game to endure a long night out. I sound like I’m getting old. I’m not I promise. I’m blaming it on jet lag seeming as we did gain an extra 5 hours to our day from the time differences.

On the second night we had our first Couchsurfing experience at an Argentinian guy’s house. His name is Emilio, and he was such a wonderful trusting host and gave us so much advice. He was also such an interesting person to chat to. Really cool guy. Our first couchsurfing experience!

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don’t ever drink the cheapest wine on the menu

We didn’t do any of the typical tourist things while in BA as we are anticipating that we will do these all on our final return flight when we do eventually leave South America at some point. Some things we did do though included going to Florida Ave and the surrounds, changing our dollars on the black market at a cueva (pronounced kwe-va), eating many empanadas (AMAZING!!), drinking mate (pronounced ma-tey), having dinner in San Telmo, seeing lots of beautiful graffiti and just exploring and getting very lost in the streets of Buenos Aires.

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beautiful buildings in the city

Such a lovely city and I will be back to explore it properly, but it was a great way to start our adventure. Next stop, a 10 hour overnight bus trip to Cordoba, where we will be for a month, volunteering at a hostel (this includes free food and accommodation).

Much loves to all. ❤ Oh and one last thing… the men in Argentina are BEAUTIFUL!!!!

For more photos of our time in Buenos Aires CLICK HERE

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