My First Time in Argentina

Argentina with Nicola We landed in Buenos Aires with Air Canada; it's the first time I set foot in this great nation, where many Italians emigrated, without however making their fortune the way Italian-Canadians and above all Italian-Australians did. Here the peso has by now changed to one to the US dollar, which is why everything is expensive. We rent a Renault Twingo and set off towards the north, out of the chaotic city of Buenos Aires, which is so big that it even has 10 football teams in Serie A. We soon discover that the traffic wardens are corrupt and that, to avoid giving you a fine, they want a bribe, especially if we're tourists. We sleep the first night in a red-light hotel, meaning a place that rents rooms mainly for....., but we chose it for the low price, even though we liked the room, all red with a mirror on the ceiling.

Posadas is the name of the town; the next day we head further and further north, until we reach the magnificent Iguazu Falls, where we also visit what was at the time the largest dam in the world, Itaipu. On the way back we stop at a few more small towns for the night and approach Uruguay, but at customs they won't let us through because of the rental car. We reach Buenos Aires after a week and with a flight we find ourselves in Tierra del Fuego. There, at the dock, we see the icebreaker ship Marco Polo, bound for the South Pole; we try to board for a week in Antarctica but they give us no hope — we should have booked in advance, so no luck, everything postponed to another time. We spend a few days visiting the surroundings and then back to Buenos Aires and on to the city of Mendoza, at the foot of Aconcagua. Here I go rafting down the rapids and also take a horse ride.

Then, with an overnight trip, we return by coach to Buenos Aires and then take Aerolineas Argentinas to Miami and then Toronto. bye