Verdeta Journey

We are doing nothing the whole day. I’m catching up on my blog diary. It’s lovely sunshine outside. We cooked lunch and dinner, had little walk outside and spoke with our nice new neighbours from Brazil (Gabriela and Fernando) and Argentina (Barbara and Javier). 

After our breakfast, we walked 45 minutes to the omnibus terminal where also local tour minibuses are. Stopped for some water and snack in La Anima and then joined few more people waiting to be picked up by tour guys.   One of the tour people caught us and asked where are we going. She said 350 pesos per person return ticket and told us to wait for her driver to pick us up. The way to Laguna Esmeralda takes about 10-15 minutes and the driver drops you off at an unpaved car park next to the road. He told us that he will pick us up at 4pm. It was 12 o’clock sharp.  From the car park, we followed blue signs to the Laguna Esmeralda. The path is easy, going from woods to plains to woods to plains and then you reach the small lake with lovely light blue colour. It started raining when we reached the lake. We walked 1.5 hours. There were many wild dogs running around and it was not pleasant to us as we don’t like dogs, especially not wild. So we walked 1.5 hours back, had our snack

30/12/2017 Glaciar Martial Morning we stayed at home and trained Spanish and English with Cristina. We had to wait until 11am to walk to pickup our washed laundry.  Walked 30 minutes, paid 160 pesos, walked 30 minutes back and hanged the clothes to dry in our room.  Then we got out and slowly walked towards the city centre and trying to catch a taxi on the road. After 5 minutes we caught one and he took us up the hill to Glaciar Martial. We paid 230 pesos, taxi meter was on showing tariff 1.  The hike up the hill from the car park was about 1.5 hours and 1.5 hours back down the hill. It was mostly sunny. Time to time rain, snow, cloudy, windy. The views were okay. Nothing special. We took few photos and walked back to get a taxi to terminal omnibus in city centre.  Yesterday we spoke to our neighbours staying in the same flat as we are. Nice Austrian couple, so we are having a dinner with them today. In a restaurant they went to two days ago and recommended. The on

29/12/2017 Flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia (Aerolíneas Argentina) We are getting up early and packing our rucksacks. I’m always a bit stressed before another journey so do I am also now. Everything is done quickly as we prepared majority in the evening and heading down from the 9th floor to the reception to catch a taxi.  The reception and the streets are still quiet. It is not that early. My watch leaning to 7am and I’m opening BA Taxi app on my smartphone. All works fine, good internet connection, location service located us precisely and I can enter the destination: Aeropuerto Jorge Newbury. I got the price back straight away and it says as I expected - 120 pesos. So I can hit the order button and wait for a driver. Buscando... buscando for about 2 minutes now. So I’m going to cancel and order again. Buscando... waiting a bit longer, about 4 minutes and nothing. All the taxi drivers busy? Too early? And as we are deciding if to ask the hotel reception to call us a taxi

How to get local Argentinian mobile phone number in Argentina To start with. Make sure your phone runs frequency used in Argentina. I think every phone made in last 5 years can be used worldwide so will be fine. Maybe the maxinum data speeds will vary. I can confirm that my Motorola Moto E gets fast mobile internet and my second phone Motorola Moro G catches only Edge here. Even the specifications looks almost the same.  Someone asked me: why do you need local numbet? Well. I probably don't really need it. But if I want to post to Instagram or check my email, or get a taxi in Buenos Aires using BA Taxi app or even find something in Google maps, I need internet. WiFi is not always available, and roaming to Argentina is really expensive. Plus I noticed that some of the mobile operators here are offering WhatsApp even when you run out of standard data allowance.  For some reason I decided to go with mobile network provider Claro. Probably because I did see some billboards

We took the bus 27/12/2017 at 19:15 from Puerto Iguazu. The bus company is Via Bariloche and we bought the tickets online in November. Type of the service we chose was Cama and we booked seats 1 and 2 (first row, top floor). The bus tickets we printed out from the email we received from Busplus.   Before we boarded, our rucksacks got labels with numbers and we got the same number stickers to keep. Also they checked our tickets and passports. The passport number on the ticket should match with your passport. Mine didn’t (as I got a new passport since I bought the tickets), but I just said I have a new passport.  The seats were big and comfortable and you could make almost a flat bed from them (160 degrees). There is also a USB charging port for each seat and headphones jack to listen what is on the TV screen and also a speaker which some people leave on quite loud. Also a pillow and a blanket were provided. The toilet was on the lower deck and whenever the toilet was occupied

Packing in the morning and we kept our rucksacks at the reception in our hotel so we can get them later, as our bus is at 7:15pm.   Then we walked 4km to Güirá Oga, which is a animals refugee kind of thing at the edge of Puerto Iguazu town. The walk to that place is not so pleasant, as you walk right next to the road.  The entrance fee is 200 pesos per person (cash) and they only do guided tours. They have also tours in English, but only when available and we didn’t want to wait till the afternoon. So we waited about 40 minutes and then sat on a trailer behind a small tractor. Our guide was excellent, spoke English as well and he knew what he was talking about exactly. There is a lot of birds to see and some mammals as well. The tour takes 90 minutes and it is very enjoyable. Every animal they have there has a story why it is there.  After we finished, we were thinking how to get back to the town and two older guys who were on the tour with us offered a lift in their car