Argentina Posts

In 2011 I spent three months living in the beautiful country of Argentina in South America. I enjoyed my trip so much that in 2012 I went back and spent another two months there. From the steaks and tango in Buenos Aires, to the vineyards of Mendoza, to the rolling hills and epic landscape of Patagonia, the Argentina scenery all around the country is absolutely amazing. If you’re thinking about taking a trip to South America, then definitely make sure you visit Argentina, one of the prettiest countries that I’ve ever been to. It’s also a great place to eat steak, if you’re a meat eater. Here are a few of the photos I took during my two trips representing some of the beautiful Argentina scenery. All in all, I had an amazing five months in Argentina, with the highlight being a four day trip to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost […]

To be honest, it still feels a bit strange to be using the “Argentina” category on this blog again. When I left in March of last year, I wrote my final entry and had not envisioned coming back so soon. But as I mentioned in my previous post, after being away for a while I started to miss some of the better parts of this city, as well as some of the friends that I have here. Buenos Aires was my first trip that I set out on in January of 2011. I was still a very green and naive traveller, not really knowing what to expect or how I would deal with new situations. Back then many of my experiences seemed frustrating, and the first six weeks or so were a bit hard since I didn’t know anyone really in the city. After a year of travel I thought […]

In just a few days I’ll be leaving for the city of Buenos Aires again. As people who read this blog know, I started off this great travel adventure of mine last year in that very city. At the time I was a pretty green traveler, and struggled with the language and figuring out how the city worked for the first month or so of my trip. I was frustrated a few times, and a little disheartened with how hard it was at first to meet people. But I eventually overcame most of those obstacles, and probably grew as a person in the process. When my three months were up in Argentina, I was looking forward to heading to New York and to Ireland. But I really enjoyed my time in Argentina, the people I met, and the culture I got to experience. Over the last year or so I’ve […]

Six months ago I was sitting back in my apartment in Chilliwack trying to figure out where the first destination on my big adventure would take me. I immediately thought of the Caribbean, since it was an area I had been to many times and I was familiar with. Since the goal of my trip was to also work while exploring the world, that meant wherever I ended up would have to have decent access to the internet. That took Cuba off the list, as well as most small towns. I was actually homing in on the Dominican Republic when, out of boredom, I started thumbing through The 4-Hour Workweek, a popular book on vagabonding and extended vacations, once again. In the book, Tim Ferris discusses his love of Argentina, and in particular, the City of Buenos Aires. Often described as “The Paris of South America”, Buenos Aires is a […]

I´m currently at the Antarctica Hostel in the city of Ushuaia, Argentina, affectionately called the city at the end of the world. This is officially the southern most city in the entire world, so it´s pretty amazing to be here. I´ll do a proper trip report when I´m back in Buenos Aires, but since I have a few hours to kill before my penguin tour later today, I thought I would do a quick update. The keyboard I´m using in the hostel is prety funky, and many of the keys are out of place compared to a normal keyboard. So, this entry is pretty slow going! But I´m having a really great time here so far. Unlike Buenos Aires, I don´t feel out of place here, probably due to the fact that many people in Ushuaia are tourists. The town reminds me of a cross between Whitehorse, Halifax, and Haines, […]

Yesterday some friends and I decided to make the journey over to Tigre, which is a little town on the Delta about an hour outside of Buenos Aires. On a normal day it may have been a lot of fun, but the weather turned sour on us and pretty much ruined the trip. No matter though. We rolled with the punches and found humour in crappy situations. The Journey The train to Tigre leaves from the Retiro train station. I had thought we would be able to use the subte (subway) to get part way there, but would have to taxi the last part of the journey. Once we got on the D-Line though, we realized that we could simply transfers at the 9 de Julio station and catch the C-Line to Retiro station, which is what we did. Somewhere along the way we had learned about a scenic train […]

When I first started planning this trip, the thought of spending almost a full year in perpetual summer seemed like an amazing goal to shoot for. I mean, who wouldn’t want sunshine and warm temperatures all the time? Truthfully though, I would love nothing more than to have a serious cold snap down here in Buenos Aires. It’s been around 28C or higher pretty much since I arrived. If that were a dry heat, it wouldn’t be too bad. But it’s very humid here, and it makes the heat seem that much worse. In fact, we’ve had 45C days here since I arrived if you factor in the humidity into the equation. And because of that, you can’t really leave a window open here otherwise the apartment instantly turns into a mini-sauna. Which basically means the air conditioner is running non-stop, and the windows are always closed, so there is […]

This last week was a weird week. I met up with a few friends and had some great times, but it was also the first real time I’ve been homesick in any capacity. There was nothing really that happened to make me feel that way, I was just sitting around and realized I was a long way from home. So I spent a day or so of being a bit melancholy. Thankfully the feeling has past, and it’s business as usual again. Weekends always get me excited, mostly because I have more opportunities to get out and explore on Saturday and Sunday than during the week. My Mac widget says I have 26 days left in Buenos Aires, so three weeks and a bit. A friend of Rebecca’s, Henry, is flying in from Chile at the end of the month and I’ll do what I can to show him around […]

I’m not sure why, but the internet in all of Buenos Aires seems to be on its knees. It’s definitely worse in my apartment, but it’s sporadic all over the city right now too. The first two months I was here it was slow, but reliable for the most part. It would take me 10 hours to download something that would take me 1 or 2 back home, but you could always get online when you needed to. It’s been getting worse over the last two weeks, and these last few days have been pretty brutal. The internet in my apartment went down this afternoon for a while, so I went across the street to a coffee shop. It worked better there, but it was still a bit spotty. I left there and went to Starbucks, where the internet didn’t work at all. In fact, Starbucks probably has the worst […]

Last weekend I flew up to Puerto Iguazu to check out some of the most impressive waterfalls in the world, Iguazu Falls. Here is a breakdown of my visit to Iguazu Falls in South America. Flight From Buenos Aires To Puerto Iguazu I booked a flight on LAN airlines from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu. Round trip airfare on the weekend is roughly $380 CAD, but thanks to some points on my credit card I managed to get about $300 off, ultimately costing me only $80 or so. Unlike most international flights, domestic flights within Argentina usually leave from the Aeroparque Jorge Newbury, which is a small airport in Northern Palermo. It was a 30 ($7 CAD) peso cab ride from my apartment to the airport, and took about 10 or fifteen minutes. Checking in was a breeze, and the line-ups were basically non-existant. Everyone at the counters speaks english, […]