We toured around for the day, went out to see a traditional dance show, had far too many bottles of wine and eventually hit the sack at 4am.  Argentina is notorious for its late nights.  Restaurants don’t open until late so we ended up going out for dinner at 11pm – mad isn’t it!

A late rise the following morning so nothing got done other than  chill out at  the hostel and play around on the internet.  Some days you just need some chill time.

Sorry for the lack of and quality of photos.

A hectic day getting around the park, 6 hours pretty much non stop.  So much to see: the Upper and Lower Circuit Trails, San Martin Island and the mighty Garganta del Diablo Trail which hosts the mother of all waterfalls and it’s what people are referring to when they say the Iguazu Falls.

Water aside, the 55,000 hectare park is a natural wonderland of sub-tropical rainforest with over 2,000 plant species, 400 bird species and many mammals and reptiles.  We got a fair few out of focus shots of some unusual animals but seen plenty plenty more on our way around.

The boffs take in the waterfalls from both the Argentinian and Brazilian sides. Not us, one was enough.  At the end of the day you have pictures of waterfalls from every angle, as you’ll see below, do you need more?  In all it was a great day out and well worth the £6 entrance fee.

UNESCO World Heritage Site #35

I just installed a wee plugin that reformats the content to a mobile theme when viewing with an Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch, Google Android or Blackberry Storm touch mobile device.  This pretty much covers the more popular devices so you have no excuse for not leaving the odd comment while on the go!

I have also updated our travel map on the front page (not accessible via mobile)and it now has over 100 locations with some nice pics.  It’s scary looking back at just how far we have travelled in 10 months, good times though.

I’m bored really and just wanted to play or tweak the site.  I have some great ideas for a complete overhaul when we we return from our travels.

We are actively looking for our return flight out of Columbia in or around 18^th July. We’ve put together a rough return schedule from arrival in Dublin, a few weeks over seeing family and friends in the UK and then back again to Ireland for my brother’s wedding in August.  It seems we’ll be on the go for a full month when we return and we’ll most likely need a holiday refresher come the wedding.

We’ve just read Jonathan’s facebook status which made us both chuckle, he has just returned from a year in Australia, it read “After a belly full of Irish Sausages and Barry’s Tea I can finally say it’s good to be home!” 

The thought of Irish sausages is making us drool, big time!

Right, best get on with enjoying our last two months!

We chilled out, had a meal and a few drinks and soaked up the atmosphere.  Sadly only two or three of these photos are actually ours, our camera battery died within minutes of arriving so we had to borrow a few shots from our rommies in order to write this post.  Yes, bad planning on our part.

We would love to go back of a weekend when supposedly the streets are ram packed with performers, musicians and the like.  It was great while we were there, but you can only imagine the atmosphere…

La Boca is also known throughout the sporting world as the home of Boca Juniors, one of world’s top football clubs.  We could have gone to a game, but neither of us are all that interested in football so we decided against forking out half our monthly budget for two tourists tickets.

An amazingly colourful area. 

The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums – it is gigantic!

Each grave bears the family name etched into the facade; brass or bronze plaques are added to the front for particular family members. It is one of those cemeteries where the tradition of engraving a death date but no birth date has been maintained.

While many are in fine shape and well-maintained, others have fallen into a state of disrepair.  Several can be found with broken glass which allowed us to take photos of the inside.  Strange to see how they stack the coffins.  The underground chamber seems to go down some distance and could possibly hold up to 30–40 coffins.

Evita’s grave is the one decorated with flowers.

They say that the city can get under your skin – in a good way – and it certainly did for us, well and truly.  Although we did spend the majority of our time in the hostel, we did venture out and about and take the odd snap which we’ve included.  It’s difficult, you want to take photos at every turn, but cannot take your camera out for fear of it being snatched.

These are just some random pics.

On the outskirts of Rosario there stands a four metres four tonne tall bronze replica of ‘el Che’ – depicted in his combat fatigues and characteristic beret.  The story behind the stature I think is so interesting.

Thousands of people donated some 75,000 pieces of bronze to Andrés Zerneri, the Argentinean sculptor. Old candlesticks, padlocks, decorative objects and even relics were sent from all over the world – particularly bronze keys of houses abandoned by Argentineans who fled the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina in the ’70s.

While in the course of time their lives have returned to normal, the keys remained an important token of the past. The monument of Che provided them with the right opportunity to give the key a new place: it was melted and became part of the ‘new’ Che. Che Guevara’s statue is filled with memories of its donors and thus became truly a people’s statue.

I don’t quite understand the government’s stance on the legendary figure, I get the feeling they regard him as a deserter and not this great revolutionary.  For years the nation cried out for a monument and eventually they buckled under the pressure.  But when finished it was erected 1.5hrs walk outside the city centre in a run down park amongst the litter and graffiti.  A complete travesty and disrespectful in my opinion.  One would wonder why it wasn’t it erected in the park of independence in the city centre.

Would you believe it – I swapped a book for Motorcycle Diaries but somehow (in a rush no doubt) left it behind at one of our hostels.  Absolutely gutted.  Getting hold of such a good book in English is rather difficult here!  

San Martin was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America’s successful struggle for independence from Spain.  There is reference to his great achievements at almost ever turn, not just in cordoba but throughout Argentina, Chile and I’m sure the rest of SA.

The lovely lady in the last picture is drinking a Mate, the national drink of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, but I’m sure common in the rest of SA.  Basically, it’s an infusion based on an herb called Yerba Mate – just tea really.  It’s unreal to see the sheer number of people carrying their thermal flasks’, there are three in this picture alone.  We tried but just couldn’t take to it, gives you a real caffeine hit.  Sorry folks, no alcohol in it!

Yeah he killed people, in battle and execution, but no where near the thousands claimed.  He saw how capitalism raped the indigenous people of Latin America and took a stand against it.  If we had more people like Che today we would never have been subjected to the Bush Administration, who’s foreign policy killed 100′s of people a day in Iraq.  In my opinion he is there with the best of them: Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. 

The museum gave a thorough account of his life. Pictures, letters and explanatory panels telling the story of his childhood, his youth, the revolution and his role in international affairs.  Books, gifts, his old bicycle and motorbike (famous after the book and movie ‘Motorcycle Diaries) which I got to sit on are on display.  There were also many pictures of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro’s visiting in 2006.

A quick overview of his life from a combination of sources:

The South American revolutionary idol Ernesto Che Guevara was born in Rosario in 1928, but moved to Alta Gracia as a child after doctors diagnosed him with asthma.  Guevara lived here from 1935-1937 and 1939-1943.

The story of this obscure Argentine doctor who abandoned his profession and his native land to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth began with a voyage.  In 1956, along with Fidel Castro and a handful of others, he had crossed the Caribbean in the rickety yacht Granma on the mad mission of invading Cuba and overthrowing the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Landing in a hostile swamp, losing most of their contingent, the survivors fought their way to the Sierra Maestra. A bit over two years later, after a guerrilla campaign in which Guevara displayed such outrageous bravery and skill that he was named comandante, the insurgents entered Havana and launched what was to become the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the Americas.

The images were thereafter invariably gigantic. Che the titan standing up to the Yanquis, the world’s dominant power. Che the moral guru proclaiming that a New Man, no ego and all ferocious love for the other, had to be forcibly created out of the ruins of the old one. Che the romantic mysteriously leaving the revolution to continue, sick though he might be with asthma, the struggle against oppression and tyranny.

By the time Che Guevara was murdered in the jungles of Bolivia in October 1967, he was already a legend, not only in Latin America but around the world.

Inspirational.  Where do I sign up…