Hi from Buenos Aires, and forgive me any weird errors due to the strange Spanish keyboard.
I think when Rhia left off we had just crossed into Argentina. We had a pretty quiet evening in Puerto Iguazu on account of the steady rain, though we splurged for a comfortable hotel to spend it in. Our plan for the following day was to get up at the crack of dawn, eat and get to the park on the Argentinian side of the falls when it opened.
Our alarm went off at 6:45 and it sounded like a tropical storm outside, complete with thunder and lightning, so we decided to go back to sleep and see if the weather cleared up a bit.
It didn´t.
We got dressed, went and had our breakfast and hemmed and hawed a bit. Finally we decided to heck with the downpour and went to see the falls. I went in my swim trunks. Rhia bought a garbage bag style poncho. The hitch here was we had to go straight from the park to the airport--our flights didn´t leave us a lot of time in the region--so we wanted to minimize the soggy clothes we´d have to pack. Sure enough we did get pretty wet; the rain didn´t ease until we were ready to catch the bus to the airport, naturally.
But the trip was worth it. On the Argentinian side you can go on catwalks out over the falls themselves. Again, the water was lower than usual due to lack of rain, but it was still pretty amazing to stand right over the precipice where the water goes craching over, sending up this heavy mist. You can hear and feel the power of it. I think it`s impossible to be there without getting cuaght up in big tour groups, and they were kind of annoying, and a little dangerous with their umbrellas, but we escaped with our eyes and another sight we´ll remember for ages. We did get into dry clothes and onto our plane and arrived in Buenos Aires (I´m working on a computer that inexplicably closes the browser every few minutes...thankfully, this is autosaving).
It´s been gorgeous weather-wise again, so we landed from a clear blue sky to what seems to be a dazzling city.
We hopped a cab to our hostel in the San Telmo district--an old part of the city and touted as the home of tango, though we´ve yet to take in a proper show. We have a nice penthouse´´unit with a kitchenette and a bit of a living room and a terrace. It´s quite lovely. After another long day full of travel, we took it pretty easy on Tuesday, getting settled and getting our bearings. I got to enjoy a great Rhia-cooked meal for the first time in ages.
One of those weird coincidences that make travel a lot of fun: a friend from Saskatchewan, whom I haven´t seen in years was also in BA this week. We´d hoped to connect for dinner or a drink...but somehow connections didn´t quite work out that night or the next morning. We´ll have to catch up in Canada I guess. We did discover this morning, though, that Rhia´s uncle Howard from the U.K., currently of Miami, is in town at the moment and we´re going to meet him for dinner tonight!
We´ve also had random meetings with people we don´t really know at all. For instance, there were these Irish girls we shared a water taxi with on Ilha Grande in Brazil. We met them again at the bus station on the mainland when we were trying to get to Sao Paulo...ending up in Paraty. At the moment, they seemed to be having some credit card crisis and were a little upset. Then when we were killing time stranded in Paraty, we ran into them again. Then, several days later, I walked out the door of our hotel in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina and bumped into one of the Irish girls again. Bizarre.
Anyway, I´m getting off track here.
We´ve gone out in several-hour stretches at a time here in BA and tried to siesta in the mid afternoon.
Rhia´s Spanish makes life a lot easier here and we´ve found the people extremely friendly. She keeps getting into conversations with old men at newsstands. Yesterday we headed in the direction of Palermo and saw an interesting but uncritical museum on Eva Peron, walked through several large parks--trying to dodge ubiquitous heaps of dog poop--and to another museum of contemporary latin American art. They had a Frida Kahlo and a Diego Rivera and several great pieces by a guy whose name is escaping me now.
We wanted to go to a tango show in the evening and set out for dinner beforehand. We were both too early and too late. At about 8:30 I think we were the only people actually having dinner in the place we chose, but we lingered too long over it to make the tango show.
Oh well, the Malbec was great. You can get good wine for about $3 in grocery stores here.
This morning we took another long walk to the Boca neighbourhood. The stroll through a working-class neighbourhood was pleasant and then we arrived at a colourful but rather touristy market area where we had lunch at a place with a pleasant but kind of running-through-the motions tango show. I got my picture taken with a dancer with her leg halfway up my torso...I was hoping to upload some photos now but I can´t quite figure out the set up here. More soon I promise.
After lunch we got a city bus and eventually managed to pay our fare and got down to the Plaza de Mayo, where for 30 years now mothers who´ve had children `disappear` in political turmooil here and their supporters march in front of the government building asking for justice and answers. They´re few in number today but their protest is still powerful. One woman was obviously still deeply pained by her loss and wept and cried out during the march.

So tonight, dinner with relatives! We´re here at least until Saturday and we may stay Saturday night too if we´re really in love with the place. There´s a lot we haven´t seen yet.
We plan to get to the city of Cordoba some time next we but we´re thinking we might head into Uruguay over the weekend, just to see another country and maybe take advantage of their beaches if the weather holds.
Peace everyone.