It’s been a travelling day: car transfer across the border to the airport on the Argentinian side; a 2 hour domestic flight into Buenos Aires (with a long wait for our luggage); then an easy Uber to our hotel in Recoleta in time for dinner.
So I’m going to take the opportunity to write about three general themes from the trip so far: language, food and animals!
One of the things I love best about travelling is trying to communicate with local people, however badly. We had a fun start in Rio, getting our taxi driver to teach us some key words - but then it turned out, when we got to Iguazu, than Rio has a unique accent (doish rather than dois), which the rest of Brazil looks down on - “like air escaping from a tyre” one said. So I had to relearn everything…
Coming into Argentina at Iguazu was fun, because we’re very used to Spanish after visiting Mallorca so much - it felt very familiar and easy! But this turned out to be a false sense of security - our waiter in Buenos Aires last night spoke with an incomprehensible accent, and reassuringly said that, yes, Argentinian Spanish is much more difficult to understand - apparently they pride themselves on speaking specifically Castellano, which is from the province of Castile (where the Spanish kings were from). So we’ll see how the rest of our communication attempts go! (Even if they fail, I still love trying…)
As I do with food! Eating is another major joy of travelling for me (and life generally). This is something we really enjoy - when Kevin and I first met in Thailand, we had a wonderful two days in Bangkok where he took me to a posh restaurant at the top of a skyscraper with amazing views (and a little stool to keep my bag off the floor); and the next night I took him to an open-air side street cafe full of Thai people where we said “we’ll have what they’re having” - and both meals were fabulous.
Our hotel in Iguazu offered all sorts of local Brazilian specialities, from feijoada (bean stew); to tapioca pancakes, fermented Brazilian coffee, and strange fruits we’ve never seen before for breakfast - all fabulous except the coffee which I found undrinkable; to delicious little Brazilian chocolate truffles called brigadeiros, which were Jemima’s favourite. (And of course the caipirinhas!)
And now in Argentina, it’s all about the steak and Malbec! Both of which we had for our first Buenos Aires dinner, and were incredible, as was amazing grilled squid, which Jemima loved (squid was one of the first things she ate). We’ve also had a recommendation from our Uber driver as the best place for empanadas, so that’s on the agenda for a lunch. It’s a good thing we’re doing a lot of walking…
And finally, animals (and birds)!
If I lived in Brazil, I’d become a birdwatcher - the Parque des Aves was great, but wherever you look there’s a flash of something colourful, or enormous, like the vultures over the falls, or the flocks of frigates high up over Copacabana Beach which looked like pterodactyls.
We saw a toucan in a tree down by our falls, and the hotel was regularly visited by sparrow-sized birds, except they were bright blue and green; and what looked like Brazilian magpies, except they had bright yellow eyes and flashes of yellow on their belly and wings. So much more interesting than English birds!
But birds were not the only hotel visitors - on our way to the pool, Jemima nearly tripped over the biggest lizard I’ve ever seen, making its way determinedly across a path towards a bush; and most excitingly, our final breakfast was raided by a large group of coatis, which look like raccoons with anteater noses.
It started with one large coati managing to get on a table and drink milk from a jug; and then about twenty arrived, mostly babies, to drink out of the pool. (One baby was startled by another while drinking, and jumped so much it fell into the pool, which was hilarious - thankfully it turns out they’re good swimmers.) Extremely adorable (but I’m sure very annoying for the hotel).
Less adorable but equally impressive: the biggest ant I’ve ever seen, the largest catfish, and the widest spider webs - walking back from the our sunset trip to the Falls we felt like we were regularly walking through them.
I’m not sure Buenos Aires will have much nature in comparison, but let’s see!
Tapioca pancake with banana and doce de leite:
Argentinian sirloin:
Catfish:
Tiger ant:
Hotel visitors:
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