Tag Archives: Argentina

A week in Buenos Aires

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Another business trip did bring me back into Buenos Aires this week. I had last been here in 2013, so – even with the focus on business now – this was a great opportunity to come back, retrace some of my steps from previous stays and to see, what had changed since then.

And clearly things are changing in Argentina … the new president and government are going a different route as in previous days under the Kirchner family. Most obvious is the ongoing investment into infrastructure; the public transport infrastructure has clearly been improved (from bus lanes downtown to upgrades at the airport), the traffic in the microcentro is more relaxed – and based on the construction everywhere, the city is finally again drawing in investment money – – seems Argentina is on the move (again); I guess, it helps to have a president with an engineering background.
My colleagues also confirmed that in discussion, they are really happy about the country moving forward and away from the old ‘corruption-based’ model. They however also mentioned, that all that good is not coming from nowhere … it seems taxes are on the rise – and that these are really turning to a point, where it starts to hurt the population. So Argentina is certainly a country to stay tuned on.

Final Impressions

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As we had landed at Cape Horn, we now had to continue to Puerto Williams to officially clear into Chile – and the out again. Final port of call was at good, old Ushuaia on the Argentinian side of the Beagle Channel. It was here, where we left the Hanseatic (after many good-byes to the staff) and jumped on a plane to Buenos Aires.

We had another 24 hours in Buenos Aires – (what happened in Buenos Aires, stays in Buenos Aires) – before flying back to Germany – and into normality.

Salta

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Today I had to get my bus ticket for the drive up to San Pedro a few days later; so I decided to stay in and explore the town of Salta.

Of course I had took the opportunity to take the Teleferico up Cerro San Bernado to get up St. Bernard mountain for a different perspective the city; my walk around also covered the churches in town, as well as a number of museums.

Boarding “Akademik Ioffe”

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Four o’clock in the afternoon – – finally … we were picked up by bus from a parking lot next to the harbour to make the remaining 300 meters (sounds odd, but helped to bypass the security screening, so saved loads of time.). Once on board (and after checking into the cabins) we went through all those introductory briefings (team introduction, safety briefing etc.) and finally had dinner around 20:00.

The ship was originally scheduled to leave at around 18:00, however due to some problems (from customs to wind blowing into the wrong direction) we could not leave until around midnight.

Back to Buenos Aires

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I made it back to Buenos Aires for two more days in town.

I continued my explorations, basically visiting those places I had not seen when I stayed there before – including La Boca and Puerto Madero.

Rafting …

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After two days of winery tours I had enough of wine and went for another day of outdoor fun – Rafting it had to be this time. Three others from my hostel and myself signed up for a full day rafting trip and therefore had – as the only ones doing the full day tour – a boat for ourselves.

We were on the water for around two hours before we had a lunch stop at an abandoned train station in the middle of nowhere (it felt a bit like  in a horror movie…).
After lunch we had a further two hours on the boat back to the starting point … photos were taken on the way …