October 16, 2018
Visiting Encarnacion, Paraguay, where I'm almost alone everywhere, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I, for the first time this trip, have to book a hostel in advance as they're pretty much fully booked, and for one of the nights even overbooked. I'm visiting, among other things, old ruins, colourful neighbourhoods, and a pretty impressive cemetery.
Before leaving Paraguay I had one more stop on the agenda, Encarnacion. Encarnacion is a small city just on the border to Argentina and is really popular among locals for the beach and the carnival celebration, making it a touristy place by Paraguayan standards. Good thing, they have a good set-up of hostels, bars, and restaurants. Bad thing, I’m way off season so everything was pretty much empty.
When I got to the hostel I was the only guest there the first night, and there were only two other backpackers the second night. And when I went to a place for dinner I was the only customer for the time I was there. But at least the staff was nice and friendly and even spoke a little English in both places.
The Encarnacion waterfront and small beach is pretty nice though and you get a good view of the Posadas (the Argentinian city just across the border) skyline. They also have an old silo just by the water with a funny shape which, depending on your imagination, could be Paraguay giving Argentina the finger, or possibly something else…
But the actual reason for visiting Encarnacion was a bit outside the city; the Unesco-listed Jesuit ruins of Trinidad and Jesús. Again with Paraguayan tourist infrastructure this was a little bit of a challenge including local buses and hitch-hiking.
The ruins are well-preserved and pretty interesting to visit, but there was not much information at the sites so it’s a good idea to read up a bit beforehand. I was the only person here as well, but I did see some local tourists entering just when I left the Trinidad ruins.
On the way back I asked the locals about when the bus would pass and the only answer was ‘in a while’. But there turned out to be plenty of buses, especially as you can wave done pretty much any long-distance bus passing by. Pretty convenient in this case, but it also makes long-distance bus travel in the country pretty slow and annoying when you actually want to go between the cities as locals are getting on and off everywhere.
By now it was time to leave Paraguay and head over to Argentina, straight to the capital Buenos Aires. So far this trip I mostly researched hostels beforehand but never booked in advance just to keep everything open. When researching Buenos Aires I realised that most places were fully booked, especially for the weekend so for once I booked a few days in advance. This turned out to be a pretty good move as the hostel I went for was completely full and even overbooked one night. Quite a contrast to being alone at the hostel in Encarnacion.
Buenos Aires is one of those cities where you just wander around and see a lot of things everywhere and I did several guided walking tours in the city, including a walk through the Ricoleta Cemetery. It might seem a bit odd that a cemetery is one of the biggest tourist attractions of a city but this place was absolutely amazing to walk around in. It’s full of mausoleums of all sizes, many of them several meters high, and it is almost like walking around in a miniature city. I’ve never seen a place fitting the word necropolis so well.
Not far from the cemetery is a pretty interesting bookshop, El Ateneo, an old theatre revamped as a bookshop and once voted the second most beautiful bookshop in the world. A really cool place to visit, but their selection of fantasy and sci-fi leaves a lot to be desired.
One of the most touristic areas of Buenos Aires, and also one of the prettiest, is La Boca, and mainly the street Caminito. It used to be a very poor area but with some colours it got really popular and it’s now full of souvenir shops, tango shows on the streets, market stalls, and parillas (Argentinian barbecues).
And the parillas are everywhere. Argentina is known to have really high quality meat. A bit pricier than in Paraguay but still cheap and delicious.
Before leaving the country I went on one final walking tour, the graffiti tour in the Palermo neighbourhood. There were some pretty impressive pieces and the guide was really good at talking about each piece as well as the history of graffiti in general, but in the end it turned out that my favourite piece of street art in Buenos Aires was far from Palermo and just a few streets away from my hostel.
One week is definitely not enough for Argentina and barely enough just for Buenos Aires. But I want to spend some time in Uruguay too before departing for Antarctica so it’s time to move on.