last tango in Buenos Aires

OK, we're gonna publish this damn entry cos it's got way past ridiculous! I guess it was just too hard to actually put a full stop on the whole thing, sob... But this is the FINAL entry. xx
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Adios Querido Buenos Aires... in fact, adios querido Suramerica!! We're now back in London, and it's time to wrap this all up. The last few days in Buenos Aires were fairly hard to deal with - in fact you could definitely say that we didn't react too well to the realisation that our adventure was coming to a close!

After a tearful goodbye to Buenos Aires (and the thought hitting me that I never got round to calling a blog entry "San Telmo's Fire", much to my dismay), we also got a chance to - albeit briefly - experience being in Brazil again, as we had a two-hour stopover in Sao Paulo. At our favourite, great value for money airport, Guarulhos! It was nice for us to hear Portuguese again and have a last guarana on the plane. And now... London. Time to readjust, I guess, though not before we have a quick reminisce (if only for ourselves, hehe!) on the high and low points of our trip...

Best place:

It's practically impossible to come up with a definitive list of our favourite places, but we had fun trying (by means of a complex points system and totally inconsistent judging criteria):

joint 1st - Rio de Janeiro AND Buenos Aires (surely no-one's surprised at this)

3rd - Salvador (Brazil)

4th - Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia)

5th - Salta (Argentina)

joint 6th - Mendoza (Argentina) and Cochabamba (Bolivia)

8th - Arequipa (Peru)

9th - Valparaiso (Chile)

10th - San Pedro de Atacama (Chile)

joint 11th - Pipa (Brazil) and Lima (Peru)

13th - Iquique (Chile)

14th - Puerto Octay (Chile)

15th - Olinda (Brazil)

Best ice-cream:

The overall winner is Scannapieco in Buenos Aires - an Italian joint (in our favourite barrio) that's been in the family for generations and hasn't changed a bit. Best dulce de leche ice-cream (and variants) ever! An honourable mention goes to the Brazilian chain Glacial that we discovered in Manaus, with its mind-boggling array of tropical and Amazonian fruit ice-creams (including my other favourite, acai).

Hottest hot sauce:

Accompanying dishes from Patagonia to Bahia, the hottest hot sauce was probably in Lima... no, Salvador... no, in a Bahian restaurant in Rio... No, the hottest was definitely in La Paz! (In a Chinese restaurant, of all things)

Best hostel:

Another tough one, I'd say our favourite lodgings, in no particular order, were in Puerto Octay (Zapato Amarillo), San Pedro de Atacama (La Ruca), Lima (El Patio, Miraflores), Rio (Casa 579), Pipa (Pomar do Pipa), and Huaraz (Albergue Churup).

Best sunset:

It's probably the one that turned our boat-ride through the Amazon river into an impossibly beautiful picture-postcard jungle scene. But then it could be the one in Huanchaco, Peru, minutes after Mauro said "Shall we go and watch the sunset on the beach?". (Though it was slightly marred by a bunch of pissheads trying to hit us up for more drinking money)

Best sunrise:

We didn't see too many of these. The best was supposed to be in the Salar de Uyuni, when we'd got up at 5am to see the sun rise amidst bubbling geezers. But we were so tired and slightly sick from the altitude that we kind of missed the whole thing.

"This next one's for best Christ":

There really are a surprising amount of Christs adorning the hills of Latin America. Clearly the winner is Rio's Christ the Redeemer, although there are some other notably strong Christs., namely Cuzco, just outside Iquique and Santiago.

Worst journey:

Probably would have to say Cochabamba to Sucre, in that it involved the woman with the breast hanging out sitting in the aisle next to me, and talking to the guy behind me through the night. (And then a breakdown before we got to Sucre.) Though for inappropriately high air conditioning when everyone had had a soaking from the rain that afternoon, plus getting stuck in traffic, and then being dropped nowhere near our hotel, the trip from Joao Pessoa to Natal rates quite highly too...

Worst place:

...that we saw and travelled through would have to be El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz (Bolivia). Grim, filthy and utterly miserable. Made you feel lucky you didn't actually have to get out of your bus (and say, live in a tent like much of the population), though the bus managing to get out of there was quite a challenge! In terms of anywhere we stopped off at and say, had a meal, Trelew was pretty unappealing...

Worst meal:

The culinary disaster in Valdivia (Chile), where we had the toughest machas a la parmesana and the most eye-wateringly salty seafood soup, was never topped. We did throw a considerable amount of my pork chop in Monterrey, Peru, to a nearby dog, but probably still ate more of it than we did that legendary meal in Valdivia...

Best meal:

From the steaks at La Cabrera in Buenos Aires to the ceviche at Chez Wong in Lima, we enjoyed some magnificent meals throughout the six months, as anyone who read this will attest to! Absolutely impossible to choose even a top five, but we should definitely give honourable mentions to the lamb tortelloni in Bariloche, the spicy north-eastern Brazilian highlights in Mangai (Natal) and SENAC (Salvador), Chicha in Arequipa, the one-off, opened-specially-for-us-as-they-were-feeling-kind barreado place in Paranagua, the salteňas in Sucre, the outrageous alpaca steak with five Andean cheeses and quinoa risotto in Cusco, and the seafood extravaganzas at any number of Chilean places, notably the Mercado Central in Santiago.

Best menu translation:

Well, Gaucho's restaurant in Rio took an early lead on this front, with their "rice to the campaign" and "rice to the crazy, crazy rice" (sounds a bit like a Kiss song), but the Cruz del Sur terminal cafe in Lima had "bistec a lo pobre" as "bistec to the poor thing", so that probably wins it the crown!

Best word/phrase:
Between "ruimzinho" ("ropey"), "tudo beleza" ("it's all good", or literally "it's all beuaty") and "bem gelada" ("beer" or literally "a really chilled one") - all in Brazil. We were really seduced by that language and the Brazilians' way with it.

Best beach:

Praia dos Golfinhos (Dolphin Beach) in Pipa is just pipped to the post by the paradisiacal Ilha do Mel (Honey Island). Both in Brazil (obviously).

And that's it. Lovely, lovely memories. Sigh... xx