Rosario will always be most memorable for being the place where we spent 8 hours hanging out at the bust station, at the tail end of which my day pack got stolen. But let me start at the beginning....
After Iguazu, we decided to head to the city of Rosario. Why? No real reason, just that it was another city we'd heard about that was a reasonable bus trip distance from Iguazu, with a bus service departing at a convenient hour. So several reasons really, just none specifically relating to why this city might be a good place to visit.
We spent the first two days just wandering around the city. Nothing too exciting to see or do, except for the Monumento de los Banderas (monument to the flag), which we discovered on the first day and liked, but didn't have the camera, so we went back the next day to get some pics.
We also had our first Che Guevara encounter. You can find the building where he lived when first born. It has a sign out the front that tells you so. And that's all. Thrilling, Here is a picture of Mick, excited as he was.
On the first night, although obviously a big and well-serviced city, it managed to keep all its supermarkets hidden from us so that we spent an hour or more walking around looking for one - frustration no. 1.
On the second night, on the advice of the hostel notice board, we went to check out a classical guitar performance at a cafe. Dinner options transpired to be a range of over-priced toasted sandwhiches, but we thought "hell, the entertaiment's free, we may as well stay and make do". Half way through eating, still waiting for the music to start, we were informed that if we wanted to stay to watch the music, we had to pay $12 each. Otherwise, could we please hurry up and finish and leave (well that's probably not exactly what she said in spanish, but the message was clear enough). How hard is it to put a sign out the front?? Of course, we just accepted that we had to pay, seeing as by that stage the prospect of enjoying the music was the only thing left to save the night. In the end, the music was alright, but a short performance, and the cafe didn't have a good atmosphere, the few other people there were obviously all just friends of the performers. And it was once of our most expensive dinners so far on the whole trip. Frustration no. 2.
Had reasonably sunny weather these first two days, so by the third we were ready to jump on a bus and check out the rather popular river beaches to the north of the city. They looked nice in the tourist publicity photos. Of course, our luck held and this day dawned cloudy and cold. We stubbornly got all ready to go anyway and were literally standing at the bus stop where we made one last useless survey of the rapidly worsening sky and admitted defeat. Spent the rest of the day hanging around the hostel. At least I can say I made something of the time by learning to play chess. Frustration no 3.
On both days, we'd tried to go out for a coffee in one of the many numerous nice cafes we'd noticed whilst walking around at other times. On both occasions, similar to the supermarket incident, the city managed to hide them away when we actually wanted to find them, so we'd walk for half an hour and end up in a fairly uninspiring establishment with stale croissants. Frustration no. 4.
We'd pretty much decided by that stage Rosario wasn't going to work for us, and decided to leave the next day. On the last night we headed out to a jazz bar, thinking we might get one good experience out of this city yet. And it wasn't too bad, but it was far from great. The 'trio' advertised turned out to be a guy playing classical jazz guitar, mostly with one other guy on bass, and a few songs with a guy singing which were more tango in style. Not really the kind of jazz we're used to. This headlining act was followed by an unadvertised act consisting of another guy on acoustic guitar, a double bass and a female singer who was, quite frankly, awful. She sounded like a farcical Barbara Streisand impersonation, and the tight, low cut black number on middle-aged figure didn't help. The locals seemed to love her.
So the next morning it was with some relief that we headed to the bus station, which was a fair way out of the town centre, only to discover that all services to the place we wanted to go, Mendoza, were not until 7 or 8 that night. Long storey short, we spent a very boring, tedious day killing time at the bus station. At around 5.30 we headed into a phone/internet place to do our second web session for the day. We were at a computer right by the door, it was really busy, and Mick's mum ended up calling so I answered the mobile and after handing over the phone to Mick I realised that my day pack had disappeared. It was sitting right by my leg, but somebody obviously saw me momentarily distracted by the phone, the quick exit straight out the door and took their opportunity. It could only have been a few minutes afterward that I noticed, so Mick immediately had a look around, but they'd successfully disappeared. Luckily, there was a police station at the terminal, so I was able, using my limited spanish, to explain what had happened and get a report out of them in time to still catch our 8pm bus. It took a while, but there was plenty of action to keep Mick entertained while he waited - we don't know what exactly went down, but they caught some poor smuck doing something and brought him in. He made the mistake of hitting the female officer who first caught him. Once safely in the police rooms, the male officers clearly felt they needed to even the score.
The good news is there was really nothing valuable in the back pack. Let me give a taste of the thief's spoils:
- 1 rather weighty hardback volume of Hemingway classics, taken form the hostel we left only that morning after much deliberation as to whether it was worth carrying around. Fortunately, in order to fit in my pack, many more important items had been removed and were safely in Mick's instead, including the Lonely Planet and our recently acquired and much loved thermos.
- 1 grapefruit
- 1 bottle of tap water
- half a packet of crackers
- a mate, the special cup used to drink the herbal drink that everyone lives on here, and a packet of the herbal stuff. We bought it in a mood of "let's do as the locals do", but we'd only managed to use it twice and can't say we've missed it yet. They're a dime a dozen, I'm fairly certain the theif would already possess one if not many.
Obviously there were a few items that were of more importance to me, made more annoying by their lack of value to the theif - spanish course notes and phrasebook, for instance, as well as my personal diary, which I'd been really enjoying putting together and had saved some good stuff in. I've already replaced it and started again, but that's 6 weeks worth of memorabilia gone.
So I can tell you it was with some relief that we finally boarded our bus that night and said goodbye to Rosario.
