World Argentina Buenos Aires Mar del Plata

Granstedt's Big Trip Granstedt's Round the World Trip 2009

Mar del Plata - the freezing beach resort... Nov 1, 2009

Today we are making our way to the beach resort of Mar del Plata. We felt like we can do with a relaxing mini beach holiday as we haven’t actually had one so far in this trip. The only beaches we have been are the ones in West coast US and Lima - all have been too cold and too dirty for a swim. Lonely Planet makes this place sound reasonably attractive …

Founded in 1874, this most popular of Argentine beach destinations is 400km south of Buenos Aires. First a commercial and industrial centre then a resort for upper class families. Mardel now caters mostly to middle class vcacationers…the city also has charming older buildings and neighbourhoods left over from its elite days. The wide and attractive beach bustles with activities during the summer…

We woke up about 7/8am in the morning. The previous night has been Halloween and a lot of people in the hostel has went out partying. When I woke up by some guy’s snore, some people in our dorm has still not got back from the night of partying yet. According to Marcus, our roommates managed to stagger in, half drunk, from 3am and have been making all sort of noise but I have slept through those.

After having a good serving of breakfast with crème de leche (some sort of fudge) and a couple of nice cups of English breakfast tea, we went back to our room to pack and head off for the Buenos Aires underground (which is called Subte) We are pretty good at packing our bags nowadays and it normally won’t take more than 15 minutes for us (unless we try to surf the internet in the same time of course…)

I must say the Buenos Aires underground is extremely well run. It’s very efficient and the trains are pretty fast. The carriages look a bit old but spacious. The fare is very cheap as well at 1.10 peso per journey. Equates to approximately 15p. It’s much easier to use then their buses although the coverage is of course not as good as buses.

When we were waiting for our train to arrive at the platform, we were approached by this friendly guy from Columbia who seemed keen to either practice his English or just to chat to foreigners. However, we don’t think his English can be too great after he did not understand the word London in English and we have to tell him in Spanish. He was pretty entertaining for us for the short tube journey towards the station as he pulled out his set of chess and try to explain to us the name of each piece.

We arrived at the bus station more than 1 hour before departure as we didn’t realize how efficient the transport will be but fortunately we manage to get our tickets changed for an earlier bus.

This bus is definitely the most luxurious we have been on this trip. It’s pretty new with AC and very wide comfortable seats and generous legroom. Instead of having 2 seats on each side of the aisle, there was only 1 seat on the right and 2 on the left. This makes the seat very spacious, pretty much like a business class airline. The journey was also very smooth on the Argentineans lovely paved motorway, looking just like the ones in the US.

After five and a half hours, we have arrived at our destination Mar del Plata.

Mar del Plata was a disappointment. To begin with, the weather wasn’t on our side. We were greeted with 13C cold instead of high 20s we were expecting. Apparently, it has only turned cold today… Looking at the weather forecast, it looks like tomorrow will be equally cold and will be rainy as well. L

Instead of looking forward to a middle class beach resort, the place looks pretty much like a mix of Brighton and Blackpool. Definitely a cheap working class resort with ugly grey high rise buildings. There was quite a few people dancing salsa on the wide pavements next to the beach though which was pretty fun to watch but it is definitely not the place we would like to stay for too long even if the weather is nice.

We checked in a private room with en suite in a hotel near the bus stop. Prices are cheaper here somehow and we paid only slightly more than our dorms in BA and we got a private bathroom too although the place can benefit with a new bathroom suite. The lady at the reception spoke very fast Spanish and was somewhat dumb. When she registered Marcus’ name from his passport, she thought that his name was actual “Sverige Sweden Suede“, as labeled on the top of the front page of his passport. Oh dear.

For dinner we went to a nice Grill house that does set menu for about six pounds that includes a three course meal with a huge piece of Sirloin steak as main and a drink. It’s such a bargain. However, such deals seems rather common in Mar Del Plata, probably to cater for their own holidaying tourist. The meal turned out to be very nice and again, the steak cooked to perfection. The pudding was some special form of ice cream which was amazing. We understand that Argentina is meant to be very good at making ice cream, mainly from their German influence and that cows are so plentiful in the country!

One thing we didn’t quite get in our head yet is that how much more south a 6 hours bus can take you. We are used to that in Peru and Bolivia, five to twelve hours or bus can take you merely to the next city when the roads are windy and in poor condition. In contrast, six hours can take you pretty far here in Argentina with their good straight motorway styled roads.

We decided to head further south tomorrow afternoon. We have already enquired in the station that with two long buses we can arrive at Puerto Matryn Wednesday morning. There we will expect the weather to be much colder. The attraction of the place is that you can watch whales and penguins in the reserves nearby. Should be fun! After that, we will head straight down to the southern tip to see whether we can pick up some cheap tickets for the Antarctic!

Iris