Christmas Eve in Argentina

Our day started with yet another flight, this time taking us to Buenos Aeries, Argentina.
We said goodbye to Peru as well as our guide John and in a weird way it felt strange to be leaving, in such a short time trekking around Peru became our norm. Nevertheless we were excited to be leaving and ready to see our next country.

After arriving in Argentina and meeting our new guide we were quickly driven into the city and to our hotel. The hotel was exceptional, a real five start job and by far the nicest place we stayed at for our whole trip. The city however was dead, a ghost town due to it being a public holiday which did make it hard to get a proper feel for what Buenos Aeries actually felt like. We managed to find a small convince store that was open and purchased some snacks and drinks for our Christmas eve celebrations. Christmas was already kicking off in Australia and the kind Christmas wishes were already rolling in. We all gathered in our hotel room, struggled to pop the wine as these bottles actually had corks, and were soon celebrating.

Card games, food and drink flowed in our nice hotel room between the six of us and we started to feel very merry. We had planned, by suggestion from our guide, to head into the city close to midnight as that is when and where the locals would begin their Christmas celebrations. At around 11pm we headed to the hotel lobby and were told that we wouldn't be able to get a taxi for at least 2 hours! This obviously destroyed our plans and other ones needed to be made. We talked to the hotel receptionist who told us we could walk to the river about five blocks away where there were numerous restaurants. We did just that and walked through the still very dead city and finally came across people and the river.

It was surrounded by the cranes you see above and was quite beautifully lit up. As we hadn't had dinner yet we strived to get into a restaurant but weren't having much luck as they were all full. Eventually we can across a more simplistic burger place and got a table. At midnight the fireworks went off and we ordered dinner. At 2 am our dinner arrived. Through a series of mishaps and and some shoddy waitressing skills our food got severely delayed. However it was now Christmas and we were in Buenos Aeries so I really can't complain. With food digested we headed back to the hotel and our very comfy beds.

- Damian