Adventures after the merger
We’re starting to feel like pros at the whole night bus thing. Our next destination was Puerto Iguazú, the Argentinian town next to Iguazú Falls. It’s twelve hours away from Concordia, and we thought that amount of traveling should definitely be done over night. The discounted bus tickets we acquired three days ago in Concordia had us leaving at 8pm and arriving in Puerto Iguazú just after 8am the next day.
Continue reading “Night Bus # 3”
We left our Airbnb in Termas del Daymán to catch the public bus to Salto. We figured it must stop at the bus station we had been dropped at the day before, so we went back there to wait. We knew the bus came once an hour on the hour, so we were waiting for the 11am bus. At 11am on the dot, a bus arrived and drove right past us! Continue reading “Hot and Sticky in Concordia”
Our original plan had been to spend a couple days in Colonia del Sacramento and then head to Salto, Uruguay, for a few days before crossing back into Argentina to go to Iguazú Falls. However, that itinerary was going to put us at Iguazú on the weekend which we figured would be the busiest time of the week. The logistics of going to Colonia del Sacramento were also complicated. There were no night buses from CdS to Salto, so we would end up having to go back to Montevideo (3 hours away) to catch a night bus or spending all day on a bus just to arrive in Salto in time to pay for accommodation. We are also trying to avoid arriving in new cities after dark. As a result, our new plan had us on a midnight bus to Salto directly from Montevideo.
Continue reading “Termas del Daymán”As we settle into the long haul, we’ve started taking the budget quite seriously, so it’s time for a progress update.
TLDR; budget was broken but we’re good at being frugal. 🙂
The goal is $50 per day per person, so $100 per day total.* We’ve been tracking our expenses on a really neat app totally geared towards budgeting in this way. It lets you record expenditures in any currency, and does the conversion and tracking for you. This has been super handy, and dare I say fun, when it comes to actually precisely tracking every single thing that gets purchased. Jess is our accountant, and she’ll tell you more about this awesome app later.
Before we left Buenos Aires, people kept telling us we shouldn’t spend a week in Montevideo because there’s nothing to do there. If they’re talking about nightlife and comparing it to Buenos Aires, they might be right; however, we have loved having time to explore.
We spent the week in a funny sort of hostel we found on AirBnB. We chose it over the other most promising option because the other one mentioned they had cats. We decided we shouldn’t spend a week in a place where Eric would suffer from allergies… only to show up and find two cats and two dogs in the hostel. Continue reading “Montevideo: “Pretty Much A Success””
Although we walked fewer miles in Montevideo, we went further afield than we did in Buenos Aires because we had time to master the bus system.
Our free walking tour with Rodrigo from Free Walking Tour MVD was great. We met him at the Plaza Independencia at 11am, and as is characteristically Uruguayan, he was holding his guampa piled high with maté leaves and a bombilla sticking out. He explained that Uruguayans take their maté very seriously, unlike the Argentinians who just like to drink it. There’s a specific process one should use to make sure the maté retains its flavor for the whole thermos full of water; otherwise, you are just drinking warm water.
Continue reading “A Walking Tour of Old Town Montevideo”A Tale of Two
Bus Rides
We took an overnight bus to Montevideo, Uruguay. Not only is it nice to sleep as much as possible during an 8-hour trip, but it also means that you don’t need to pay for a night of accommodation. We booked a Condor Estrella bus leaving at 22:30 (10:30PM) and getting in at 6:30 the next day. Everything basically went according to plan, but Jess and Eric had very different rides.
Continue reading “”
One of the things we love about Buenos Aires is that there are tons of things you can do on a limited budget:
Continue reading “Exploring Buenos Aires on a Budget”
We arrived in Buenos Aires late on Wednesday night and our first introduction to the city was through a taxi driver from the highly recommended Tienda Leon taxi company. We discovered that lane lines are just a suggestion. If there are only two lanes, why not make three? Turn signals are definitely only for turning – why waste a good signal on a lane change? Our taxi driver pulled out a magnifying glass to read the address of our apartment, and then definitely went through a red light before stopping at a handful more. There are some places where stopping at red lights is unsafe late at night, but this didn’t appear to be the explanation here. Apparently some red lights are optional.
Continue reading “Our Life in Buenos Aires”