Rosario

22/04/13 to 23/04/13 - As we have a Couchsurfing account, we left an open request on their website in case some people could host us for a night in Rosario. We didn't expect much, but we quickly had a couple of offers from people living in Rosario who were willing to host us for a night. Even before we actually arrived there, we got the feeling that people were going to be very friendly. We arrived early (well not as early as originally planned, as our bus got delayed by almost 2 hours the night before).

We stayed at Julieta's place, who lived with her lovely parents and brother. She was still a student, but was planning to live in Germany next year and to travel around Europe. Julieta was very nice and showed us around the main sights of the town. We had a picnic in Parque de Espana near the river Rio Parana with some of her friends and then went to the Monumento a la Bandera (monument of the flag) where the general Belgrano first raised the Argentinian flag in 1812. At the top of the tower, we had a good panoramic view of the town.

We were invited to eat for the evening with all the family and only spoke in Spanish the whole night. After a couple of glasses of wine, we felt fluent and even managed to speak about the current political tensions and scary inflation. We’d seen the large protests against the Peronista government on the news and the real inflation rate was around 30% per year, despite the government saying it was only 10% (they got a telling off from Christine Largarde for that). As tourists we felt Argentina was cheaper than we were expecting due to the devaluation of the peso, but the Argentinians are being crippled by it. Our hosts spoke very slowly so we could understand them, which we were very grateful for. They also gave us some tips on where else to visit in the country, and we finished the night by sharing a cup of maté (as is the rule) before going to bed.

The next day, we also had a walk around the Cathedral de Rosario and visited the Museo de Bellas Artes which was near the Jardin Frances in Parque de la Independencia (of course). There were some huge fish in the lake there, and the park is also home to Argentina’s league leader’s Newell’s Old Boys FC (unfortunate acronym).

Finally, we had to go to Che Guevara's house as Che lived there from his birth until the age of 2. A couple of blocks away from the house there was a big portrait of him on the wall... Flora felt a bit emotional. We picked up our bags and thanked Julieta for her kind hospitality, before going to the prettiest bus station we’ve seen so far to board our bus to Buenos Aires which, true to form, was also very late.