The first couple days of the family trip, we stayed in Buenos Aires.
The first day we just walked around the city for a bit. We took a tour of Teatre Colon. After the tour, we went and ate empanadas and pizza.
The second day, we took a city tour with a private guide. It was a pretty good tour. We went to La Boca,
San Talmo,
the Recoleta Cemetery,
Café Tortoni, and a few other places as well. Our guide was pretty great too. He showed us the narrowest apartment in the city.
This is where slaves would live back in the day. Once it was made illegal to have slaves, owners started building these really narrow apartments and would tell people that their slaves were actually tenants. Pretty crazy! After the tour, I went and showed some of the family the big metal flower, and we walked around the market place. Only a few venders were there, but mostly everybody was able to find some good stuff to buy.
I took the family to Antares, a bar/restaurant where they brew their own beer. The food wasn’t the best, but the beer was wonderful, which everybody loved, so I was glad I found that place. I also introduced Argentine ice cream to the family, and of course everybody loved it, especially the banana split flavor, which is clearly superior to all the other flavors.
The next day, we had a half-day tour of Tigre and some of its suburbs. We had the same guide as the first day, so day two of touring was good as well.
Our hotel was in the business part of BA. We were walking around one day and noticed that there was an abnormal amount of paper on the ground (normally there is trash everywhere, but we were seeing a lot more than usual). Then we would see that the paper was falling from the sky. We were so confused, but we were told that the last day of the year that people work on, at the end of the day they throw paper out the window. It’s an interesting way of celebrating the New Year.
We had an unfortunate incident at our hotel though. Long story short, a maid stole $100 from Jason and almost stole my passport, along with all my credit cards and driver’s license. Jason and I had left our room for not even 5 minutes to go give something to my mom 3 floors down, so we had left our safe open, but figured since we were coming right back we would be fine. NOPE, we were wrong. We walked in on a maid in our room with the door closed. Since we surprised her, she had slid all of my stuff under the bed, near where she was kneeling on the ground. It sucks that Jason lost $100, but I’m really thankful that my passport and credit cards were found. Those are a lot harder to replace.
Our first trip outside of BA was to Patagonia, and oh my goodness, those few days in Patagonia were incredible! Our first day, we just walked around the town and relaxed.
That night the kiddies all went to a bar to celebrate the New Year. We didn’t stay in the bar till midnight, but stayed till about 10:30-11:00.
The bar was filled with people from all over the world, and whenever it was midnight in their home country they would celebrate. Kind of neat. We went back to our hotel, which had a really good view of the whole town, and drank some wine till midnight. Once it was midnight, there were fireworks going off for like an hour or so. It was so great. AND is was the first time Jason and I got to spend New Year’s Eve together, so that was really special ☺
The second day there, we went hiking on a glacier. It was unbelievable! The drive to the glacier was beautiful as well.
As we were riding in the bus, to get to our boat that was going to bring us to the glacier, our bus driver slowed down, put on some music and as soon as the glacier came into view for the first time the music was turned up and the climax of the song was playing. It was awesome and hilarious! The bus driver was smiling the whole time.
The next day, we went on an all day boat ride to check out various glaciers. Again, it was pretty cool! We saw a couple different glaciers and a bunch of big icebergs. And yes, there were Titanic references, naturally. I really recommend taking a trip down to Patagonia to see the glaciers. It’s so incredible!
After our Patagonia trip, we made our way to Iguazu. We flew from Patagonia, to BA, and then we were suppose to fly directly to Iguazu, but again we had another little hiccup along the way. Basically, the airline kicked us off the flight, even though we booked our tickets 4 months ago. They overbooked the flight, and gave our seats away without asking us. The told us they were putting us on another flight that landed in Posados, a town that was a 90-minute drive from Iguazu. They said they would provide the cars for us to pick us up at the airport and drive us. Obviously none of us were too happy with this, but there was nothing we could do about it. We get to the airport in Posados, get in our cars, and find out that the trip is nowhere close to 90 minutes, but 5 hours…and yet another lovely Argentine surprise.
The next day we had an all day tour of the falls. Incredible! Jason could not have said it better, “That’s a lot of water.” Haha a wonderful and true observation! It was pretty amazing.
At the end of it, all the kiddies went for a boat ride to get soaked by the falls. It felt great!
My sister and her husband went to Mendoza for two days, and the rest of us went back to BA. These next few days we all just kind of relaxed and all the couples did their own thing. My brother and Elizabeth went on a bike tour, my mom and dad went and bought malachite pieces, and Jason and I just enjoyed our last few days together (6-7 more months till we see each other again).
There were a few speed bumps along the way during this family vacation in Argentina, but overall it was a really great trip! I’m glad I got to show my family and Jason where I had been living the last 3 months, and it was truly amazing to see some of nature’s best work. I had so much fun seeing everyone, and was sad to see them leave. However, now I have a new chapter ahead of me, a six-month long adventure in Chile. Here I go!
Until Next Time,
Liz
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