Leaving back Pascal (returning slowly to Panama) and Katerina (heading to Rio do Janeiro) in Iguazú was quite hard for Pascal's sister Marion and me. However, saying goodbye was still possible without crying because we promised to visit each other in the future which made it less painful. You also have to know (if you don't know it yet) that the type of saying goodbye when travelling differs from the "normal" one. Travellers come and go, as you do yourself. You could share extremely funny or sad or intimate moments with people you may hadn't known 15 minutes before. You may have even told them things you wouldn't dare to tell your best friend at home. Still, it's not very probable to stay in contact with a person you only spend a few hours or days with, just because you don't have a real constant base you can refer to e.g. work, studies, hobbies, neighbourhood… Furthermore, it's also likelier to tell a stranger you will never see again about a secret than a neighbour with whom you may be confronted every day even if you don't want it. And after all, I can't deny that it's easier to stay in contact with people you like or love if they're near and not a few hundreds or kilometres away from you.

So Marion and I both had to take the bus to "B'aires" where we would fly back to France or in my case to Austria "with a two-day stop" in Lima, capital of Peru. Two-day stop? Due to a very stupid administrational regulation it was not possible to rebook (due to an earlier comeback) the return ticket directly from Buenos Aires so I had to fly extra from the Argentinean capital to the Peruvian one in order to catch my flight back…

Anyway, after a 16 hours bus ride along the eastern border of Argentina being constantly amazed by a beautiful, lively scenery we returned to the Tango, the demonstrations, the "Mothers of Plaza de Mayo", the Obelisque, Río de la Plata and multi-cultural chaos. At arrival at Retiro, the notorious central bus station in Buenos Aires, I was happy to pick up my jacket forgotten at the "beerbrewer couchsurfer" Gabriel in Mar del Plata who was so kind to send it to me to Retiro. From there we took a taxi to our pricy hostel in Palermo, the most touristic, expensive and safe part of the city.

The three days left we spent wandering around in San Telmo (the "Tango district"), breathing fresh Oceanic air in the National Park Costera del Sur, crossing streets in relaxed and stylish Palermo and buying some few souvenirs for example a Mate (the "tea cup" for the Mate tea) with an iron Bombilla (the straw used for drinking Mate). Unluckily I couldn't buy much for my friends and family because my backpack already tortured my shoulders with its weight and had let me think about the weight limits in planes. Miraculously it had gained six kilograms weight during my journey although two kilogrammes consisted only of the Mate tea leaves.

However, we enjoyed visiting the poorly organised Museum of Modern Art and some cool but too expensive shops as well as witnessing a demonstration on the broadest street on earth (which actually scared us a bit), cooking a lot together, getting fascinated by an unconventional Origami shop (Origami = Japanese paper folding technique) and spending my last Argentinean evening in a weird but funny Indian restaurant in Palermo.

With the taxi driver taking me to the Ezeiza airport bus shuttle I talked a lot about Spanish, travellers, Argentina, Austria and what a boyfriend should do or not. Like nearly all chats with taxi drivers until now it was more than a relaxed conversation. I learned very much by talking to them, not only about their countries but also about my own home. I realised that not every single person on the world knows about Mozart (although it surprised me how much actually really know him!) or that you won't find kangaroos nor English to be an official language in Austria. Sometimes I found myself describing Austria as a European country with grey (!) mountains and a lot of cows but sometimes I was surprised that people know about Stiegl and Salzburger Festspiele. In comparison: what do you know about, let's say, Bolivia where about the same number of people like in Austria live? (~8,300,000)

I got way too early to Ezeiza airport and ruined my trousers (which I had worn two months without having washed them) by turning a cartwheel (dt. Rad schlagen, russ. кувыркаться, esp. hacer una rueda) because of boredom. Fortunately my boredom was repelled by a Czech business man with whom I talked in English and Russian about the Internet, the Czech Republic, Austrian skiing regions and Southamerica. The six or seven hours flight to Lima was only to that extent interesting as I could overlook the lights of Argentinean cities by night which present an interesting contrast to the urban organisation in Europe. Additionally we crossed the huge Andes but didn't see much as it was late at night and only the moon made the snow glitter.