Our last hours in South America

It's hard to believe, but in just a couple hours we will be packing and heading to the International Airport in Buenos Aires for our 13-hour flight to Auckland, and the next leg of our journey, which includes our wedding in three short weeks. The past four months in South America have been filled with many incredible sights and people, the highlights being the wildlife (the Galapagos Islands and the Pantanal to be specific, not a night out in Buenos Aires). With only a few exceptions, the travel here has been relatively easy and problem free, if a bit more expensive that we had planned. We´ve experienced only a couple bad bellies, three flat tires on buses, and a few problems communicating in Spanish and Portuguese, but all-in-all the countries we visited were diverse in landscape and tradition and were very interesting.

We have spent the past week and a half in Buenos Aires, with a short visit to Uruguay. In Buenos Aires, we caught up with an old Argentinian friend of mine, Andres, who I had met in Chiang Mai, Thailand over 8 years ago, and also a German friend, Diego, who we first met in August aboard the Sagrado Coraçao de Jesus, on our journey up the Amazon in Brazil.

Buenos Aires is a huge city of almost 14 million "porteños", filled with distinct neighbourhoods or barrios. We stayed in the slightly run-down but charming San Telmo and visited Recoleta in the north, where the rich and fabulous live (and are buried in the beautiful Recoleta Cemetary - pictured right). We spent hours strolling up and down the cobblestone streets from our hotel through the shopping pedestrian walkway of Florida Street (dodging touts handing out flyers for leather and restaurants), to the Plaza de Mayo where Evita charmed the crowds from the balcony of the Casa Rosada in the 1951, to the rich parks and plazas of Recoleta. Last Sunday we went to the famous Mataderos Market for handicraft shopping, and visited Plaza Dorego in San Telmo for the antiques fair and to view the locals dancing the tango.

We made a short visit to Uruguay, catching the ferry across Rio de la Plata followed by a short bus ride to the capital city of Montevideo. Neither of us knew much about Uruguay other than its reputation for very friendly people, which proved to be wonderfully accurate. Every person we encountered wanted to chat, and to help in any way they could. For me, the traffic lights summed up the mood of the country - the green lights had a happy face in them. Within a very short time of arriving in Montevideo, we learned the other thing that Uruguay is famous for - futbol! Winners of Olympic golds in 1924 and 1928 and winners of two World Cups - in 1930, when the very first football world championship was celebrated in Montevideo; and in 1950 in Brazil. We also visited Colonia, an historic town and UNESCO World Heritage site that was founded in 1680 by the Portuguese.

Our return to Buenos Aires left us with two days to shop for Christmas presents and figure out the best way to organize our backpacks so as to keep to the 20 kg limit for checked baggage. We´ll see in a few hours if we were successful.

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina