12/16 & 17: Home via Feasting in Buenos Aires!

After spending a surprisingly fun, fun week in Paraguay, we flew back to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and one step closer to home. We'd first explored the city known for tango, Evita Peron and so much more on our initial trip to South America back in 2017 and were really happy to make it our first and last stop on this six-week jaunt to Antarctica, Patagonia and Paraguay. I admit the primary reason we wanted to fly in and out of Buenos Aires was to see if our memories of a mouth-watering dinner we'd had at Parrilla Pena were really as good as we thought!

Just behind Steven's bald pate, a waiter used what we could only call a 'wine grabber' to get a bottle of wine down from the shelf above our table. He must have had lots of experience because the bottle never wavered as it moved inches above our heads!

If you love a big slab of fork-tender meat, simple mashed potatoes, washed down with a delicious Malbec, all at rock-bottom prices by North American standards, look no further than this restaurant if you're in the Southern Hemisphere! 

The tables were very close to each other which we didn't mind as we were able to chat with a French couple celebrating a birthday. This was their first time dining there so they didn't know that the servings were so humongous, they needn't have ordered an entree and vegetables for each of them!

Since our flight out wasn't until late that night, a good chunk of our last day was a delightfully lazy one spent hanging out in the Plaza Lavalle. The pretty square was just a two-minute walk from our hotel and we'd walked through it oodles and oodles of times in our previous visits to Buenos Aires in 2017 and before we flew south to Antarctica. Since it was a gloriously sunny day, we took advantage of relaxing in the sun for as long as we could, knowing we would be back in snowy Denver in a matter of hours!

After hours reading and people watching, we finally went for a walk to enjoy the city one last time.

We had one last supper, or very late lunch, really back at 'our' restaurant where even one of the waiters recognized us from our frequent visits!

I was drawn in by the classical lines in much of the city's architecture. 

A final view of Teatro Colon, the opera house located just across from Plaza Lavalle, that we'd had the pleasure of touring on another visit.

The guitarists playing tango music entertained not only the cafe's customers but passersby like us, too!

As Buenos Aires was a tremendously exciting and vibrant city, and it had our favorite restaurant anywhere in the world, it was sad to bid 'Adios' to it and the fabulous time we'd had exploring more of the continent.

Next post: I never had a chance to finish writing the posts on our six-week trip to Ireland and the UK that we took shortly before leaving for South America. I left off with our trip to Belfast way back on September 21st, so the next post will be to the Boyne Valley.

Posted on February 27th, 2020, from a sunny but windy day in Denver, a few days before leaving for our extended trip to Asia and the Middle East.  I hope you will bear with me as I try and finish blogging about our all too brief time in Wales, visiting some of the Scottish Isles and a few days in London interspersed with our adventures in Asia!

11/12: Pilot Strike so Extra Day in Buenos Aires

We arrived at the domestic airport in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at 8:45 am and checked in for our flight to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the country. When the agent told us he didn't have our gate information, we didn't think anything of it and went through security. There, an official had to smell the loaf of banana bread I had brought from home to make sure it was safe to bring aboard the plane!

We checked the monitors only to discover that none of the earlier flights had left and watched in frustration as our 10:15 flight to Ushuaia kept getting pushed back and back. 

The waiting area, as you might imagine, kept getting more and more crowded with more passengers arriving and almost no one was departing because only one airline's flights were leaving. We were lucky enough to find seats but not together as we played the waiting game hoping we'd hear some good news about our flight leaving. 

We finally found out that the reason none of the Aerolineas Argentinas flights were leaving was that a strike had been called by the pilots but that they and the airline were in negotiations to settle the strike. After four hours, we got the definitive news that our flight had been cancelled and not just endlessly delayed and our only recourse was to get a refund and book with another airline. 

After waiting for well over an hour to speak to an airline representative, we discovered the strike was over but there would be no flight to the southernmost tip of Argentina that day. When we were told we could get seats on the flight leaving before 5 the next morning, we said yes because at least it meant we still would be able to board the ship in two days for Antarctica which we'd first planned over 18 months ago!

Fortunately, we were able to get a room back at the same hotel we'd just checked out of that morning so that was a relief. After grabbing a taxi back to the hotel - for some reason the cost was more than double we'd paid from the hotel just hours earlier! - we checked in and changed back into warm weather clothes and took a taxi back to the Ecological Reserve as it had been closed yesterday.

The day before, we had so wanted to enter the park figuring the views of the reserve would be far better than simply walking parallel to the reserve along what amounted to a boardwalk. We never figured the path in the park would be as boring as this with no views of the reserve and any animals.

On the glass-full side, though, one couldn't fault the reserve's proximity to the city center.

We both expected to see some wildlife in the reserve and didn't realize that we'd been so fortunate seeing wildlife the day before from along the 'boardwalk' next to the reserve. The flowers, however, were remarkably striking.

After walking along the dirt path for about an hour, we reached the Rio Plata or Silver River, the widest river in the world.

The sign said Buena Vista and it certainly was a pretty view!

After exiting the reserve, we began walking along the southern part of the 'boardwalk' where we were fortunate seeing some beautiful birds so that was a treat.

What a shame there was no sign indicating the birds that frequented the reserve or that we didn't know a thing about birds.

The path in the reserve was on the other side of the trees - thus the reason we couldn't see any of the animals after entering the nature park - a fact that totally escaped us the day before! I figure we had the best of both worlds over the two days experiencing the park - seeing a variety of birds up close on the first day and then, on the second, satisfying our curiosity entering the park even if it turned out to be less than what we'd expected. 

Buenos Aires: A city of contrasts.

While grabbing dinner that night, local TV news had a blurb on the airline strike which had the effect of almost shutting down the whole airport. We counted ourselves among the lucky ones as at least we'd been able to snag seats leaving bright and early the next morning so we didn't have to worry about missing the Antarctica cruise. 

Next post: Ushuaia, here we come, one step closer to touring our last continent, Antarctica.

Posted on November 29th, 2019, from just outside the spectacular Torres del Paine National Park in southern Chile.