What’s with the title you may ask? Adding “guay” to the end of words, especially in informal contexts, is a common and recognizable slang expression in Paraguay, meaning “cool” or “awesome.” The word “guay” itself is a Spanish borrowing from the Guaraní language, which is spoken by the indigenous people of Paraguay. (Google and YouTube)
So, anyguay, I really wanted to dedicate my last post just to Patagonia so here is what we’ve been up to during our time in Buenos Aires, and our first weekend in Asunción, Paraguay. The day after we got back from Patagonia we took a tour to the Tigre Delta. It is hard to not compare and it wasn’t as good as our other tours we’ve taken with Viator. We took a bus to the Town of Tigre about an hour from Buenos Aires and after taking some pictures of the Museo de Arte Tigre we boarded a ferry to visit the Paraná Delta. Which is a vast river delta where the Paraná River flows into the Río de la Plata. From the ferry we got to see the Buenos Aires Rowing Club which was founded in 1873 and is the oldest rowing club in Argentina. We also saw Puerto de Frutos (Fruit Market) and Costa Park which is the largest theme park in Argentina. The tour to Tigre was only a half day so when we got back to Buenos Aires we went and visited Recoleta Cemetery which is very large, has several famous people entombed there, including Eva Perón, and has some of the most beautiful stained glass I’ve ever seen.
On the 24th our friends from Ljubljana, Slovenia that we met in Patagonia came to Buenos Aires for a couple days before they returned home. It was so nice to have friends to hang out with! On the 25th I got to explore La Boca with them during the day, and then we met up with Dave after work and had some amazing provoleta fundida at El Refuerzo, which ended up being our favorite restaurant in Buenos Aires. So much so that we visited two more times before we left. The second visit was actually the next night because our amazing server Olivia invited us to come back and do a food and wine pairing. Very serendipitously she just happened to have two open spots and it was only $30/ per person. It was fun to drink good wine, try some unique food and meet people from Brazil, Argentina and Australia.
Overall we found that the food in Buenos Aires really isn’t that good unless you are a huge carnivore, which I am not, and was pretty flavorless too. I’ve never used more salt in my life. That wasn’t the case at El Refuerzo. We returned for our third and final visit the night before we left and were able to bid our new friend Olivia hasta luego! Getting to know her was definitely a highlight from our time in Buenos Aires.
In the past two weeks we also went to a Tango Show, which was even better than we expected with singing and performing in addition to some incredible dancing. We visited the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, Teatro Colón, the History and MALBA Museums, and the Botanical Garden.
On March 31st I took my first South American solo trip to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Colonia is just an hour and 15 minute ferry ride across the Río de la Plata estuary from Buenos Aires and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site “Founded by the Portuguese in 1680 on the Río de la Plata, the city was of strategic importance in resisting the Spanish. After being disputed for a century, it was finally lost by its founders. The well-preserved urban landscape illustrates the successful fusion of the Portuguese, Spanish and post-colonial styles.” (whc.unesco.org) It was fun to get a Uruguayan stamp in my passport and the town was super cute! Being on the tip of the peninsula you can see the water from most places you look, the architecture is quaint and well preserved and the streets are lined with gigantic, what Google says, cross bred Sycamore trees, very reminiscent of some I’ve seen in France. I’m glad I went.
We were glad we got to spend time in Buenos Aires and we’re ready to be in a smaller city for a while after being in three huge cities in a row. We are also happy for things to finally be less expensive as well as they were quite pricey in Argentina comparatively. This past Saturday we moved to Asunción, Paraguay for three weeks. We didn’t really know much about Paraguay before we arrived and have enjoyed getting to know more about the people and their culture. Most of the cities we’ve visited so far we have needed to use quite a bit of Spanish. There aren’t a lot of English speakers that we’ve come across and that is even more difficult in Asunción. Their official language isn’t Spanish, it is an indigenous language called Guaraní and is quite different from Spanish. It just adds to the adventure! We are also so happy to have our new friend Tanya living here. We met her though a friend of ours and as you can imagine my heart is very full to have someone to hang out with. I’ve been missing everyone a lot lately, and being able to have a friend to celebrate my 46th birthday with was such a treat! We went and had a delicious meal at Restaurant Su a Korean restaurant in town and having tasty, non-beef, options to choose from, was the icing on the cake! I went to bed that night very content.
Yesterday we went and explored the botanical garden with Tanya in the morning and visited the interesting little History Museum that was in the park. We got to see goats and ostriches and several different species of birds. It was really fun. In the afternoon we explored around our neighborhood which is also called Recoleta. We discovered this cute pedestrian area called La Cuadrita that has several different restaurants and a El Jardín Lunar, which is a cute little alley that has lunar globes attached to willow branches. After that we went to find the colocation place that Dave was hoping to go to while we’re here and actually met someone who was working there and they gave us a tour! It felt like the Universe was taking care of us yet again.
I think we’re going to like it here. Our Air bnb is pretty nice, there are some cool things to see and good food to eat! We did book a trip to Iguazu Falls for next weekend. We’re going to spend two nights in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil so we are excited to be able to go to Brazil after all, and we booked a tour to see both sides of the falls on Saturday. Everyone that we have talked to about being in this area of South America has mentioned needing to add this destination to our list and we’re grateful that it worked out.
We miss you, we love you and we hope that you are well wherever you are!
Love, Alison
