Andrea goes exploring again!

My last post on Rosario was written during my time in Córdoba where I spent a very happy few days taking in all that Argentina's second city has to offer. I took a bus, as usual, from Rosario to get there and say 'a bus' and not 'the bus' purely because the bus I got was not the one I was meant to be on! I've discovered that hostels in Argentina are bizarrely very strict on their check-in times (or at least the ones I've been to are!). Up to that point I'd been using Platform 10, a bus schedule website to check out bus times and as most of them from Rosario to Córdoba were in the very early hours of the morning they arrived by 7.30am at the latest and would have meant me hanging around for ages. As such I chose the 1.30am bus that got me in at 8.45am which was the latest possible arrival time. However, best laid plans and all that... Buses Lep, the company I was travelling with had a 1.25am bus and a 1.30am bus, the former which arrived at 7.30am and the

Between my stay in Buenos Aires and Córdoba (where I currently am) I spent a few days in Rosario. I travelled up there on an El Rosarino bus, Ejectivo class which is the lap of luxury! But more about the buses later. Rosario sounded like it would be a really fun place to visit from the write up in my guidebook and I have to say, it was a lovely town. However, although I'm in South America during peak season, being the summer, it does mean that the universities are closed and seemingly most of the theatres too, so the buzzy vibe that these establishments bring to a place is somewhat missing at the moment. I arrived in Rosario in the early evening and took a cab to my hostel. In the three cities I've been to so far in Argentina, they all have systems similar to Oyster for the buses where you charge up a card and then touch in on the bus to deduct the fare. It would be amazing if this system were joined up so that the same card worked in all cities, but sadly it's not, so yo

They say time flies when you're having fun and so there is no more apt phrase for the time I spent in Buenos Aires. What an amazing city! Bloody expensive, but it was so cool it can be forgiven for that. I was originally intending to stay there for a week but I decided to take some Spanish lessons which meant I ended up staying for 10 days instead. It was no hardship. I found the city to be diverse, friendly and incredibly vibrant. I was really fortunate in my choice of hostel too. I stayed in Portal del Sur in Monserrat which was a perfect location and I met some wonderful people there, whose names will pop up throughout this post. As it's taken me ages to get round to writing this post, and given the length of time I spent in Bs.As, there is a risk that this will become a monster post so I'm going to give you the highlights on each day rather than the more descriptive posts of my days away that some of you will have been used to from my European Adventure. On my first day