16th – 18th February 2015 – Side trip to Buenos Aries

Monday 16th FebruaryToday we are scheduled to drive north to Purmamarca however Casper and us are staying in Salta, so we waved good bye to the other 6 MGs this morning.  Casper needs repairs to be done to the rear which will take a couple of days to organise.  We prepare to fly down to Buenos Aries for a few days as we’ve lost our passports and need to visit the Australian Embassy to have temporary ones issued.  We discovered last Friday that we no longer had our passports and contacted the hotel where we had them the previous day but they couldn’t find them. We contacted the Embassy in Buenos Aries immediately to be told it takes 48 hours to generate new temporary passports and Monday & Tuesday are public holidays due to Carnaval and the embassy wouldn’t reopen till Wednesday. So we started the process of canceling our passports and applying to have new temporary ones produced on Friday over the phone. The helpful lady we spoke to promised us that we would have them on Wednesday.  We continued on our trip driving up to Salta as we could get a direct flight from there to BA on Monday night.  On Monday we packed the car, fueled up and are ready to leave Salta first thing Friday morning.  We had to get a police report done in Cafayate to say we had lost our passports and the Police were concerned that we were traveling around with no identification documents and in particular catching a flight, so we were told to report to the Salta Tourist Police as soon as we arrived, which we did. They made arrangements to drive us to the airport and accompany us to the check in desk to explain our situation to the airline. They were very good and we were allowed to board our flight.  When we arrived at BA at about 7:30pm we took a taxi to our hotel which wasn’t very far away and we went out in search of a nice restaurant to have dinner and hopefully find some Carnaval celebrations. We found both not far from our hotel. The Carnaval celebrations are carried out by region in Argentina and there are many celebrations going on in different places. We were lucky to find one that was full of families with young children all having fun, dancing & singing, not that we know what they are singing about, but it was fun to watch.Tuesday 17th FebruaryWe took a bus into the city & then walked to the cemetery which is the resting place of Buenos Aries rich and famous including Eva Peron. The mausoleums are fascinating, some of them are huge and others are very much dilapidated. One of them was lovely as it was for a young women in her 20’s who is portrayed in a statue with her dog.

We left the cemetery and wandered through the adjacent park where there are enormous trees that look like Moreton Bay Figs.We walked for kilometers down the Avenue Belgrano and the popular Florida Street, which is a mall where the fashionable shops are, including many leather goods shops, then on to the Plaza del Mayo with the President’s pink palace on one side and a fabulous mausoleum of General San Martin on another. Nearly every town we’ve visited has a San Martin Avenue, so he must have been very important. We ended up down on the docks for lunch. The main avenues are very wide with 5 lanes of traffic in each direction, huge lush green gardens and buildings with a European influence about them, all making this a beautiful vibrant city of 17 million people. We’re pleased that we’ve been able to see it despite the circumstances.  Tonight we had a quick meal in a cafe then visited a Tango show something that BA is famous for, it’s a bright & lively show but it did go quite late. Wednesday 18th FebruaryWe arrived at the Australian Embassy at 8:30am it’s only a 20 minute walk from our hotel. We did the necessary paperwork, had new photos taken around the corner, took them back to the Embassy and were told our new passports would be ready at 3pm. When we left the embassy to go and kill a few hours it was pouring with rain and of course our wet weather gear was in Salat in the car, so we got drenched. We managed to take refuge in a cafe for a while and sorted out some paperwork that we got copies of in the shop next door.  We need photo copies for the Bolivian border crossing.  We walked back to our hotel and had lunch on the way.  We arrived back at the Embassy at 2:45 (very anxious to collect our passports) and then took a taxi straight to the airport for our flight back to Salta for the night. When we arrive at the airport we discover our flight is delayed by 1.5 hours so we just have to wait & read our books.  Our flight finally took off at 9 pm, 3 hours late due to the storm and winds. Once we were in the air we were treated to an electrical storm which bounced the plane around nicely. We eventually got to bed at. 12:30 am very tired but with passports!