Iguazu and back to Cochabamba

Buenos Aires was almost the last part of my little roundtrip. From there I took the bus to the north to Iguazu at the border to Paraguay and Brazil, with its magnificent waterfalls...it's hard to find words to describe this experience, so just have a look at the pictures :-)

distant view of Foz do Iguazu

Here you could aproach the falls to 2-3 meters and get completely wet...that's fun :-)

Parque nacional de Iguazu

On top of the falls

Wow!!!

After one day in Iguazu, I headed homewards to Cochabamba. Actually I wanted to stay in Asuncion for one or two days, but I've heard that there were heavy rainfalls in Bolivia and some of the roads might be impassable. Therefore I decided to go straight back to Bolivia, which meant crossing Paraguay all at once from the south-east to the north-west, which took about 30 hours. From the Bolivian border, it was another 10 hours to Santa Cruz, where I arrived at 9 pm, just in time to buy the very last ticket for the night bus to Cochabamba. After a total of 56 hours in the bus, I finally arrived at the Bus terminal in Cochabamba...

Can you imagine how pleasant it is to drive on
such a road for more than 10 hours?

Cochabamba bus terminal...after 56 hours on the road

Crossing the border to Bolivia

Buenos Aires

The boat trip from Colonia to Buenos Aires took a bit more than an hour. It is really impressive when the skyscrapers of the puerto madero come closer and closer. Buenos Aires is the most 'European' of all cities I have seen so far. Many buildings from the 19th century are strongly influenced by french architecture. I found an inexpensive hostel in the city center which was, however, pretty noisy. At the first night I went to a Tango show of the Complejo Tango, which also included some tango classes. I learned the Cruzada, the Ocho and how to pose with a 'Tango face' :-) The subsequent show was fun with good music and excellent dancers, however a bit too touristic, not as natural as the people you see occasionally dancing tango in the streets.
In the hostel I met more chilean people, Gabriel and Carla from the La Serena region...that's great, more people to visit during my trip to Chile in April :-) We spent an afternoon together in Recoleta and the beautiful parks of Palermo.
Unfortunately, the 4 days in Buenos Aires went by way too fast, I could have stayed one or too weeks more. On my last day I did a historical walking tour through the center of Buenos Aires. Two political science students brought tourists to historically important places of the city.
The Plaza 25 Mayo, where the 'Madres de Plaza de Mayo' - mothers whose children disappeared during the military dictatorship in the 70ies - have been meeting every thursday, from 1977 up to now, to commemorate their children and claim to know what was their fate,
the Casa Rosada, the pink hous, from where Eva Peron was talking to the people in the 1940ies, or some courtyards in San Telmo, where European immigrants were the first to dance Tango, back in the 19th century. A really informative tour, I learned a lot about the last 70 years of Argentinean history...

Uruguay

Beach Resort of Punta del Este 

From Rio I took a flight to Uruguay, where I stayed for about 1 week. My first destination was Punta del Este. Normally Punta del Este is  full of partying students, but in the end of february, in the late season, it was quite calm. It was also much colder than Rio, so I got a bit too careless with sunscreen at the beach. The result was a huge sunburn on my back...ouch...
My next stop in Uruguay was Montevideo, where I got the first contact with Tango, which originated here in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata. Whether on this side in Montevideo or on the other side of the Rio in Buenos Aires is still heavily debated. There are plenty of cafes and bars in the alleys of downtown Montevideo, where bands play tango music and the guest are dancing on the streets.

Downtown Montevideo

Mercado del Puerto, Montevideo

The last stop, before i crossed the river to the argentinian side was Colonia del Sacramento, an old contrabandist town from where the British and the Portuguese were smuggling all kinds of goods to the spanish territory at the other side of the river. Going to Colonia is like traveling back in time. Beautiful ancient houses, narrow cobblestone streets with antique cars.

Streets of Colonia del Sacramento

Brasil 2

Ipanema Beach 

The 3 days in Rio were great, but way too short. I spent most of my time (both days and nights) at Ipanema beach, at 35-40ºC the only reasonable thing to do. Unlike Copacabana, the beach of Ipanema is really safe even at night, and after midnight temperatures drop to 25-30ºC which makes it really plesant to sit there and have a beer or in my case some Pisco. In the hostel I met Carlos and Macarena from Santiago de Chile, who brought a few bottles of this brandy-like Chilenean national drink. This caused some heated discussions with Martín from Lima, who claimed that the only original Pisco is the Peruvian one...obviously the import of Chilenean Pisco to Peru is forbidden (and vice versa)...
I met some more people with the same ATM problem, which made me confident that my debit card was ok.

Laguna and the top of the sugar loaf mountain seen from Rocinha 

Rocinha

On my third day I decided to do Marcelo Armstrong's Favela tour. In the early 90ies Marcelo was the first one to offer tours through some of the almost 1000 favelas, with the goal to show people that favelas are more than drugs and crime. We visited Rocinha and Vila Canoas in the south of Rio, close to Ipanema and Copacabana with magnificent views on the laguna and the sugar loaf mountain...
Rocinha is the largest of Rio's favelas and, according to the tour guides, very safe as long as you don't take pictures of the people. They might work for the drug mafia and in this case they would not be very amused to be photographed.
Vila Canoa is one of the richer favelas. Due to a government program, which started in 2005, most of the kids can go to school, all houses have electricity and TV and the unemployment rate is around 10%.

TV and electricity supply for Rocinha 

Alltogether it was a great tour, very interesting and informative...I can only recommend this tour to everyone who is coming to Rio...and the best: two third of the 75 Reals you pay go directly to school projects for favela kids