This one time, in BA

As Amelia so rightly pointed out in our last post, I’ve really not banged on about going to Buenos Aires whatsoever. As you’re all clearly not sick of my stories yet I’m going to talk about it once again.

While Amelia and Jack took a romantic trip to La Serena, I accidentally ended up on my own couple’s getaway to Buenos Aires. Due to unforeseen circumstances I left for Argentina with just Charlie, readily prepared for assumptions from everyone that we were a couple, despite having met only twice before.

BA is amazing. The city has so much character and atmosphere; it’s like a shabby Paris with all its beautiful architecture and wide boulevards lined with outdoor cafes. The place is huge and each of its districts are extremely different, in terms of both character and wealth. The night life is also great, or all 30 minutes that I experienced of it before deciding I needed to finally end my 44 hour streak of no sleep. I spent the next half day awkwardly making trips to the 8-man dorm bathroom to be sick. Shout out to the cocktail Possible Seizure for making this possible.

On that note, we really weren’t that safety aware in general. On one of Charlie’s nights out, he ended up leaving the club temporarily for some air, falling asleep against a car for an hour and a half in a backstreet, then waking up at about 4 and re-entering the club until 8. Strong.

We roamed through some more dodgy streets as obvious tourists when we went to a match at the Independiente stadium – the atmosphere for this was unbelievable, especially given that the result was 5-3 to Independiente. The entire stadium jumped and fist pumped in unison, and fans were climbing the fences around the pitch.

I also woke up one night to two fellow dorm-dwellers having sex next to my head. So that’s good.

Upon returning to Chile, I had to persuade (lie to) the authorities to let me back in the country, given that I knowingly left without sufficient documentation to re-enter. So I’m now technically an illegal immigrant. Despite all this we finished the trip pretty much intact, having gained a severe amount of weight from Argentinian steak and alfajores (these are a kind of chocolatey cakey biscuit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOKKPJzr-4w), and lacking only a bank card, some stolen clothes, and a fair amount of money and health.

Plaza de Mayo

Power couple

Very inconspicuous tourists

EVERYONE LOOK HOW MUCH FUN WE'RE HAVING

Here are some of the ACTIVITIES we’ve been doing in Chile (it's making our heads spin), so we can now justify our all-too-frequent imitations of the following video clip for the past half a year:

Hiking in Parque Aguas de San Ramón

Nip slip

Pensive and at one with nature

We are not in the peak of physical fitness and we are not Bear Grylls. However this hike only takes 3 hours and gives you an awesome view of the city, the mountains and a waterfall.

Horse-riding in Cajón del Maipo

Our little tour guide

Given that we’ve never really done a lot of horse-riding before, we expected there to be some initial basic instructions on how to ride a horse before trotting up steep mountains. There was none. Not to mention our tour guide was an 8-year-old boy. Not to worry though, there was the reassuring safety reminder that a girl went to hospital with a broken rib the day before. For the purposes of putting relatives’ minds at ease, we had extremely comprehensive insurance, we definitely had all our contact and passport details to hand for case of emergency, we had efficiently planned the logistics of the whole day before turning up and getting on a bus, and we didn’t hitchhike back *. All this aside, we had the best time and the view speaks for itself.

* We cannot guarantee the validity of the aforementioned claims.

Zip wiring in Cajón del Maipo

Zip wire man checkin' out the goods

Parque Bicentinario

Tours 4 Tips

La Vega Central

So happy together 

Each of these can hold up to 12 bodies

Meeting bright and early on a Saturday morning (special mention goes to Ally lasting the 4 hour tour on an hour of sleep), we began our ‘Offbeat Santiago’ trip around the lesser-known areas of the city, sampling the sopaipilla and the terremoto as we went. From there the tour led us to the oldest, biggest and most important cemetery of Chile. Currently there are some 2,200,000 bodies buried there, which only fills 3-4% of the available space (an area the size of 117 football pitches). 

Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos

Cheers Elle

The museum of memory and human rights was an incredibly moving insight into some of the events which occurred during the Pinochet dictatorship. Interviews with torture victims and letters written by children were two of the most hard-hitting, in a museum that was amazingly modern and well put together. This is, however, just one particular outlook on that period of time. It’s very interesting to hear Chileans arguing their separate cases for both sides.

Skiing in La Parva

Amelia pooed her pants

That's pretty much the final thought we'd like to leave you with there.