sarah. on the run.

Que Tal?

We've been staying in Buenos Aires throughout March, our last month abroad before returning to the States. When we made the bittersweet decision to book our plane tickets home, we decided to reward ourselves for a trip well done by relaxing. No long-distance buses. No customs. No 10 a.m. checkouts. So we rented a little apartment over the Internet, brushed up on our Spanish (well, one of us anyway. Brendan still spells it "ola"), and got our asses down to Argentina's capital to wind down in style.

Buenos Aires is great! I love it here. It's an easy city to "live" in for a month. Lots to do. Good public transportation and cheap taxis. Insultingly affordable food and vino. Tons of shopping. Parks. Museums. Tango. Futbol. And we couldn't have picked a nicer time of year. From November-February, Buenos Aires is hot and muggy (reversed seasons, remember). But by March, the air starts cooling off, leaves change, and midday gets a little more pleasant for people like me who love wearing tank tops but don't want to sweat through them.

As our plane landed, Buenos Aires looked to me like a huge metropolitan city teeming with high-rises, but the vibe is different from the ground. Split up into a dozen or so different "barrios", the city is defined by its variety of neighborhoods, all of which have their own community feel. We're staying in Palermo, one of the most popular areas to shop, eat, and drink. Seriously, there's a parrilla, pizza joint, cafe, or sushi house at every other awning. I'm in heaven.

A word about the sushi, now that I've eaten at three different establishments. It isn't anywhere as good as California's. Argentina has access to deliciously fresh salmon, but that's pretty much it. You can find tuna, crab, or shrimp rolls, but they're offered sparingly and usually dressed up with cream cheese (blech!). Most of everything else is salmon-based. We're delighted to satisfy our raw fish cravings (and loving the reasonable prices), but it's not quite world-class.

What is world-class, though, is the steak, and so plentiful that prices are insanely low. Brendan's been overdoing it. I hope he doesn't give himself a heart attack get stuck down here forever. Although that sounds just like something my husband would do to keep from having to get a job back in the States. Slacker.

Some BA highlights so far:

1. Recoleta cemetary - If there's a cooler cemetery in the world, I want to know about it. I realize that "cool" is a weird adjective for a cemetery, but trust me - this one is. Eva Peron's buried here, along with famous presidents, war generals, and people who had enough money to buy themselves a plot.

2. San Telmo street fair - I'd be buying up a storm in antiques if I had anywhere to put them. Awesome finds from a million different vendors.

3. A Boca Junior football game - A totally weird experience. Fans sing throughout the game, and clap when a player tries, and fails, to score a goal. Rabid, these guys (and the fans are mostly guys). There's also no alcohol allowed inside the stadium. I'm sure it helps keep fights to a minimum, but when I go to a ball game I want to drink beer. Period.

4. The parks of Palermo - We live literally steps away from several parks that include botanical gardens, a zoo (what IS this adorable creature???), running trails, and paddle boats for rent. Life is good.

5. Shopping - Argentina isn't the cheapest country in South America by a long shot, but the quality of clothes is high for what would be bargain-basement prices back home. I'm loading up on staples that I know I'm going to need eventually anyway. Or at least that's what I tell B.

We're here for another week or so, during which time I hope to get into some more trouble worth blogging about. Stay tuned.

Oh, and if you've visited my Flickr page recently, you know that I'm in the process of uploading and organizing all my favorite photos from our entire trip over the past year. It's kind of a pain, but I'm almost done! Man, I love Flickr. I'm the biggest idiot for not embracing it sooner.

Oh oh, and for those days when I don't update anything here at sarah. on the run., I'm updating sarah. snippets. with lots of useless information even my biggest fans will probably find pointless and mundane. You're welcome. :)

That's a Lotta Water!

After 10 days in Salvador doing little besides drinking, dancing, and eating aipim drowned in pimenta, it was time to do something outdoorsy and mellow. We'd originally planned on heading north along the Brazilian coast to the town of Olinda, but Carnaval had wiped us out financially and we couldn't find any halfway decent accommodation under $50/night on such short notice. Take note: Brazil is expensive. Granted, we came from India. After India, every price tag seems magnified and laughable. But we had assumed the largest country in South America would be a little easier on a backpacker budget, and it just isn't so. Unless you're camping. Which a lot of travelers do here. But not this traveler. I have my limits, you know.

Anyway, Brazil was killing us (quite literally, if Brendan's swollen belly of beef was any indication), so we made the difficult decision to forgo our dream of lazing on a northern Brazilian beach for the country of Argentina, where our dollar goes a little further. But not before we took a little side trip to the world's biggest waterfall.

The Iguazu Falls reside right on the borders of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, so they're both a tourist destination and an obvious place to rest for a few days on your way to somewhere else. Even though all three countries can claim a town chock full of accommodation choices conveniently located to the waterfalls themselves, we chose to stay in Brazil's Foz Do Igaucu, the largest of the three.

Our hostel was our first real "hostel" on our entire trip so far, full of backpackers bunking in dorm rooms, a communal kitchen and living room (where at any time of day at least three guys would be passed out on the couches during an encore presentation of "Gladiator"), a dinky swimming pool most often used as a base for flirting, and a little bar that blasted techno music after 9 p.m. while hoards of kids sat at tables smoking cigarettes and browsing their Lonely Planets. Kind of like college. A little too much like college, actually. We paid for our own a/c double room and felt old.

You have some choices when you visit Iguazu Falls, which is inconveniently two separate national parks, one in Brazil and one in Argentina. The problem is that never having seen the falls you have no idea which one is better (guidebooks will say that the view is better from the Brazil side, while the Argentine side is better for getting up-close), and so everyone inevitably visits both.

Our first stop was the Brazil side, which is basically just a mile-or-so walk through the jungle with various views of the countless falls along the way, edging closer and closer to Devil's Throat, the biggest of them all. Pretty cool. I don't know what it is about waterfalls, but they're always a crowd pleaser, aren't they? I doubt anyone in the history of the world has ever said, "I hate waterfalls." I was actually even more impressed with the abundance of butterflies in the park and was able to give my macro setting a nice workout.

After a few hours spent watching water lose to gravity, we headed across the street to the neighboring bird sanctuary and spent the next few hours chilling with an amazing number of different South American bird species, many of them rescued. I love birds . Brendan doesn't love birds at all, but even he agreed the park was well worth the $10 entry fee.

Going to the Argentine side of the falls is kind of a hassle if you're staying in Brazil because you have to cross the border and do the whole passport thing, which took us an hour and a half on the way in. But the park itself is much nicer than Brazil's. There, I said it. If you are ever in a town near Iguazu Falls and only have time to visit one park, go to Argentina's. What's great is that you're right up alongside everything. Waterfalls of this volume are pretty from afar, but they're spectacular up close- and you're so close on the pathways here that it's impossible to stay dry. You can also do stupid stuff like ride a boat into the falls themselves, which is tons of fun. Save Devil's Throat for the late afternoon on a sunny day if you can. The rainbow's a nice bonus.

After four days, we said goodbye to the hostel crew, crossed the border again, and boarded a plane from Argentina's Puerto Iguazu airport into Buenos Aires, where we'd rented a studio apartment for the month of March (the same studio from which I'm writing this very blog, coincidentally!!!).

It's good to hear Spanish again, even if they sort of lisp it like those crazy Europeans. More on this fantastic city in a few days...