Buenos Aires, Argentina

Apologies for not blogging sooner but we been struggling to find the time to do it. This place is just too good. It´s crazy, hectic, hot, polluted, beautiful, cosmopolitan, cheap and a lot of fun.

So we arrived on Monday after an exensive, but nice high-speed ferry from Montevideo. We were the only backpackers on it. Just lots of families, businessmen and nuns. We had booked ourselves into The Millhouse which is the party place, and perhaps the most famous hostel here. We had been staying in pousadas or hotels up to that point so I was pretty sceptical about moving into a massive hostel. They can be quite cliquey and often dirty but as soon as we checked in and were shown to our room, any fears I had immediately went. Especially when we saw that we had our own bathroom (unheard of in other hostels I have stayed in). The room itself is the cleanest and best out of all the places we had stayed. Result. And we bumped into Shane as we were going up to our room - he had decided to hang around and wait for us.

On our first full day here we went on a tour, organised by the hostel, to La Boca. It is one of the poorest parts of Buenos Aires, and it is a bizarre neighbourhood. It is right next to this stinky river and the locals have painted the outside of their houses to brighten the place up. It is also the home of tango so there is a lot going on there. And it is the home of the Boca Juniors, so there is even more going on. Part of the tour involved going into the stadium and museum so I was well chuffed, H not so. Diego Maradona is God here.

























































Boca played River Plate on Sunday, which is the biggest football game in the country. I was gutted to have missed it (1-1, 3 sendings off) even though it was pretty fiery. Apparently a dead chicken (presumably alive when thrown) and water balloons of wee rained down on the Boca fans from the River Plate fans, who were seated in the top left tier of the stadium in the picture above. They also broke a barrier and wanted to throw the piece of scaffold fifty feet onto the Boca fans below - they were stopped by someone who told them they could easily kill three or four people. Diego has his own box there and the crowd sing for him more than the team sometimes. There is a game on Sunday and I hope to go.

We ate out at a superb steakhouse (allegedly one of the best in the world) that evening with Shane. It cost us a tenner each for our meal, and we all ate huge steaks (that melted in the mouth), potatoes, salad and three bottles of fine wine. Eating out here is fantastic.

On Wednesday we got up too late to go on the hostel tour to Recoleta but we did it off our own backs when we finally left our room. It is one of the poshest neighbourhoods in Buneos Aires and it is the home of the "Cementerio de la Recoleta" (the City of the Dead), which is where all the rich and famous are buried. Some people here spend more money on dying than when they are alive. Evita Peron is buried here. It´s a bit of a strange place as far as cemeteries are concerned. There´s loads of crypts and mausoleums and you are no more than a few feet from the coffins in some of them.

Madonna!



















We walked back to the hostel via the main road that runs through this city, which claims to be the widest street in the world (14 lanes of traffic, not that the drivers stick to the lanes).











































We met up with Jay and Chloe (from Rio) that evening and went out for dinner in another part of Buenos Aires called San Telmo. It turned into a real all-nighter and before we knew it we had to the ´taxi of shame´ back to the hostel in rush hour on Thursday morning. This involves not speaking to the taxi driver, just handing him a hostel card because the address is too difficult to pronounce.

Yesteday was a right off and after an hours kip H and I left the hostel to have a look round and to try and clear our heads. It wasn´t long before we were back in the sanctuary of the hostel bar and shithead. H now leads this competition by 63 games to 78. There had been a 19 point gap after I had a real pasting on the ferry over here. We were both asleep by 10 and after a quality 12 hour sleep (for me, 14 for H) today arrived.

We have decided to go to Bolivia next week so I made the early-afternoon mission to the bus station to get our bus tickets (H was still in bed). We leave on Tuesday for Salta, a 22 hour bus ride to the north west of Argentina. From there we will get a bus to La Quiaca and the border. At this point we are at the mercy of the Bolivian public transport infrastructure which, I am told, doesn´t really exist. Our plan is to see the Salt Plains via a three or 4 day 4x4 trip, then mission it back into Argentina, and end up in Mendoza, before we cross into Chile and fly to Australia.

When I got back from the bus station H was up and we headed off into town. We walked to the waterfront via Plaza de Mayo. This is where all the political protests take place, including the weekly parade of "The Mothers of the Disappeared" (30k people were "disappeared" under the military government who tried to fight Thatcher in the Falklands). They wear white handkerchiefs around their heads and hold their protests on Thursdays in a bid to find out the truth about what actually happened to their children (we saw a few of them yesterday). The image on the handkerchief is drawn on the ground. It is also the place where Evita did her thing.

Don´t Cry For Me Argentina!














There was a cow parade at the waterfront, just like in Prague.














The Waterfront. Looks a bit Bristol but without the chavs.














So the weekend is now here. It should be a good one.....