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Hi lovelies! Today I’m sharing Part 1 of my much-anticipated Travel Diary of our trip to Buenos Aires and Chubut with my boyfriend.

Perhaps I anticipated it way too much and I’m afraid the actual post will kinda disappoint you a bit because it’s not full of high quality National Geographic kind of pictures, but phone-taken  (and slightly app-enhanced) candid snaps from both of our phones. I hope you still like it.

For the ones who don’t know, my boyfriend and I traveled to Buenos Aires and the Patagonian province of Chubut for the first two weeks of February. This trip was particularly special because during that time we were able to spend his birthday and Valentine’s Day together. Given the nature of our long-distance relationship it felt like a real blessing spending those days in the same place. Plus, it was his first time visiting Argentina and my first time visiting Patagonia, oh and last but not least, our first road trip together! So you can imagine how excited we were for this trip.

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I divided this Travel Diary in two parts: The first part of our stay in Buenos Aires was in the neighborhood of San Telmo (although some of the photos you’re gonna see are part of our walk through another neighborhood called Palermo). I didn’t realize until I saw all my photos together that I missed taking photos of many cute places during our first days because I was too excited to even take my phone out lol. But oh well, this is more or less what we’ve got from there. We explored Buenos Aires’ downtown, la Calle Corrientes (which is a famous Broadway-like street), the Japanese Garden, the Botanical Garden, and we went to a really cool place called Atlantico which is a flower shop with a “hidden” pub downstairs. The drinks come in the coolest presentations and they all had a theme in common: herbs and flowers. We loved it!

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View from our room at Unique Hotel San Telmo (sorry about the mess on the bed)

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1,Typical tourist-y photo next to the Obelisco, in downtown Buenos Aires. 2. Casa Rosada 3. Is it a giant bench or am I a real life hobbit? 😉

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Exploring the Japanese Garden.

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1.Japanese Garden 2. Random group of palm trees in Palermo 3. Botanical Garden

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Our drinks at Atlantico flower shop/pub. Do I remember the names? No. Were they good? Hella yes! (Check mine, it has rose petals in it! <3)

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Waiting for our lunch at El Refuerzo, a small authentic and typically ‘porteño’ restaurant in San Telmo. We stumbled upon it by chance yet had and what was probably the best meal of our whole trip! Along with another one in Palermo we can’t recall the name of.)

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That Saturday night we just headed to a British Pub to have some drinks and snacks cause our flight to Chubut was very early the next morning. That funny sign, tho (for decoration purposes only… I think 😉 )

 

This 1st Part also includes our visit to the town of Trevelin, in Chubut. We flew from BA to Trelew and there we rented a car for an epic road trip of 628 km to the West of the province, where Trevelin is located. I think I speak in behalf of both of us when I say that this town was the highlight of our whole trip for many reasons. The landscapes were by far the most charming ones we’ve seen. Surrounded by mountains, pines and lakes, Trevelin seemed to be a Welsh-look mountain village mixed with the Hobbit’s magical shire.

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1.Plane time! 2. Trelew’s welcome sign in Spanish and Welsh 3. Starting our epic road trip.

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Bf cameo 😉 lol

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The views along our road trip were simply breathtaking.

 

We stayed in a lovely cabin called Nuestra Vista. The place was perfect and exactly what we needed after those days in the always-busy Buenos Aires. The sights from our cabin were surreal and you could almost feel the peace of our middle-of-nowhere little place in the air. Near our cabin there was the owner’s cabin, Eric. He had a lot of animals that would visit us all day when we least expected. Bf loved the dog, Julieta, but I’m a cat lady at heart so I preferred playing with the two cats there: an absolutely mental ginger kitty and a mother cat that was actually too busy to play cause she was constantly feeding her newborn kitties. We spent the simplest but most special days there at the same time, whether it was cooking dinner, listening to music, playing with the pets or just talking and talking and talking. That place felt like home, our home for at least a few days.

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Our adorable cabin <3

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1 & 2 The locals 😉 3. View from our cabin

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Peaceful sunset as seen from our cabin’s windows.

 

As for Trevelin itself, it obviously has a strong Welsh mark due to the Welsh settlers that immigrated in the late 19th century. You can see signs in Spanish and Welsh, many streets named after different Welsh settlers, a red dragon in the town’s shield, little Welsh flags here and there, the famous Welsh tea houses and the best part, Welsh descendants who are proud of their heritage and pleased to tell you about the tough story of the original Welsh settlers that crossed and ocean and came to Argentina in order to preserve their language and culture from the English (no offense). Some of these stories were surprisingly moving, not only for my Welsh boyfriend but also for myself.

If there happens to be a Welsh person reading this or someone who’s simply interested about this part of Welsh Argentinian history, I’m gonna recommend the same as my boyfriend recommended to all his friends and family in Wales. You should visit Chubut, and when you do, go to Trevelin, take your time to talk to the people there, and if you want to experience the same strong emotions I was talking about, then you should definitely pay a visit to the Museo Cartref Taid where the host Clery, direct descendant of Welsh settler John Daniel Evans, will passionately tell you the loveliest and bravest story about a Welsh man and his horse, Malacara, who ended up having a lot to do with Argentinian history.

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Touristic Information Office in the main square of the town.

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1.More views from our cabin. 2. This was actually in Esquel, a slightly bigger town near Trevelin. From this chocolate and souvenir shop we bought our souvenirs for our families.

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1.On our way to Los Alerces National Park. Those tiny brown spot are cows!! 2. Arrived to the lake! <333

Endless blue in Lago Futalaufquen. One of my personal highlights from the trip.

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In the Welsh tea house ‘La Mutisia’. Yummy things but we couldn’t eat it all 🙁 The place also had old photographs from the Welsh settlers and direct ancestors of the owner who was kind enough to talk to us about them.

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Last day in our cabin 🙁 But at least we got this cute pic, and all the memories. <3

 

I hope you enjoyed reading this Part I of our trip, I normally don’t write that much on my posts but this trip has been really special for me. Stay tuned for Part II with our days in Gaiman and the neighborhood of Recoleta, Buenos Aires!

xoxo

Deb

 

PD: Pido disculpas a mis lectores de habla hispana por no traducir este post. Consideré que se iba a hacer muy largo y una vez más tuve que optar por un solo idioma asi que elegí el de la mayoría, mil disculpas en serio! 🙁