Podworld - Exploring interesting places

A day trip to Uruguay from Buenos Aires, it was an opportunity too good to miss. Okay not all of Uruguay and not even the capital Montevideo. Instead a one hour ferry ride to Colonia de Sacramento from BA. And here's a tip. You can join the throng of tourists at the Buquebus terminal and buy your ticket for your journey: Or you can buy your passage via Seacat Seacat Website  . For some reason this is much cheaper and yet still gets you aboard the Buquebus service. I bought directly from the Seacat, saved a lot of money, walked upto the terminal and boarded the service. From the ferry terminal in Colonia walk to your left and within ten minutes you are entering the old town, a world heritage site. You are greeted by cobbled streets and buildings which date back to the late years of the 19th century or early days of the 20th. To one side of the central square is a lighthouse (faro) which you can ascend for a couple of dollars. Do not worry about getting your money exchang...

It rains in Buenos Aires. Not always but when it does it can be heavy. On such a grey day it seemed appropriate that a visit to a cemetery was planned. No ordinary cemetery though. This is the resting place at Recoleta. I had read about this place before leaving for Argentina. It was where the body of Eva Peron was interned. It is probably fair to say that among the skillful footballers, notorious presidents and celebrated writers, Eva Person is the most famous Argentinian in history. Yet her light shone only briefly. She was the second wife of Juan Peron, helping lead a popular uprising to secure his release from prison and subsequent elections as president. She died soon after at the age of 32. Family Duarte tomb Her infamy and myth was no doubt enhanced by the Lloyd-Webber/Rice musical Evita, later developed into a film starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas. I don't propose to go through her life and times in this blog. More scholarly writers than me have written elega...

It is one of the great capitals of the world with a rich and controversial twentieth century history. Buenos Aires was the launching pad for all of the other journey's made in Argentina. Because of its vastness and diversity, it would not be right to sum it up in a single post. Instead, it will be broken up into episodes with later postings covering other aspects of this great city. Post one here will deal with the central area, what the Americans might describe as downtown. The first impressions of Buenos Aires, once one had negotiated the astonishing traffic chaos, was that despite travelling 13 hours from Europe to get here was that it still felt like a European city. For me, Buenos Aires most resembled Madrid. In terms of layout and architecture the two cities, certainly in the metropolitan areas, felt like twins. With the high number of immigrants from the Iberian peninsular and native language being Spanish, this was not a huge surprise to me. The old Naval buildi...

It has to be one of the most dramatic natural sights I have ever seen. There was no real hint of it before hand. Then suddenly piece by piece a glacial wall collapsed in front of me. Quite astonishingly I was filming the event at the time. A wonder of nature. The base for the glaciers is the southern Patagonian town of El Calafate. There are frequent flights to the nearby airport from Buenos Aires and Ushuaia.The nearest glacier is Perito Moreno which is a little under an hour's drive from the town. There are plenty of organised coach trips too. Reaching the base of the  glacier is easy along one of the best roads Argentina possesses. There is a small charge to enter the National Park area. It is worth it. At the end of the road the visitor area is well laid out with walkways allowing tourists to many vantage points of the glacier. The first thing you notice is the noise. Quite frequently there will be a mighty groan. This is the compacted ice moving within the glacier. ...

Argentina in foreground and left, Brazil to the right and Paraguay ahead I will confess to knowing little about the Iguazu falls before booking my journey to Argentina. In fact all the travel books I was reading before climbing aboard the plane had images of Patagonia and most particularly, Mount Fitzroy on the cover. That is not to say Patagonia or Fitzroy is not deserving and that will be covered in a later blog. Getting to Iguazu was simplicity itself. I took a LATAM (formed from the LAN TAM merger) to Iguazu airport from AeroParque (Jorge Newbury) the city centre airport in Buenos Aires. Latam Argentina  It was my only LATAM flight which did not under go a schedule change. From Iguazu it was a 20-30 taxi ride to the hotel, the Panoramic Hotel . It afforded views of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay from the swimming pool. The falls can be reached a number of ways. The most popular is by taxi or emis but you can also book a tour. It is also possible to view the fall...

In one of the earlier postings I mentioned that the initial motivation for travelling to Argentina was to see football. That is not to say the other natural wonders did not stimulate and amaze but it was football that drew me there. My first exposure to the seemingly extraordinary nature of Argentine football was from my sitting room as a child watching the 1978 World Cup hosted and won by Argentina. I loved Mario Kempes and his flamboyant playing style Mural of Diego Maradona If you are a visitor to Argentina and would like to see a game read the blog carefully as I guide you through the a few pitfalls. Going to a match in Argentina is not like visiting your local game in Europe or the USA. First a little background. Our trip was in the Argentine spring or northern hemisphere autumn (fall.) Reading up on the Argentine league I learned that the authorities had decided to move the league to run in parallel to the major European leagues, i.e. during the Argentine summe...