Moving on from BA

I´ve been here around 6 weeks now and had a fantastic time. I´ve been lucky enough to meet a good crowd of people and have many, many fun nights out. My liver´s probably not as happy with the place as I´ve been, but such is life. This week I´ve had a couple of quiet nights in to try and get my body clock sorted out so I can be awake in the afternoons to get things sorted. It´s been a complete failure - I´ve been getting to sleep later than I would if I´d been out. My room´s so hot! My advice to you if you should find yourself here in January and February is to make air conditioning a Must Have......



So for the next few nights I´ll be out again, partly because (honest) I´ll get better sleep that way but also because these next few nights will be my last in BA.



It´s been interesting talking to the locals ("Portenos") about their city. They´re intelligent, relaxed, friendly and fun people, at least the ones I´ve met. But when you talk to them about what it´s like for them living and working here, almost without exception they´re really down on the place. They tell me making a living´s hard, the government´s fucked and the police are corrupt. I can see what they mean, and some or all of those criticisms apply to many places, but that doesn't help the problem.



Inflation is a big problem here, with prices rising much faster than salaries, which is always a recipe for social unrest if played out over a long period of time. It reminded me of so many of the eastern European countries I saw which got burned by the IMF and still bear the scars.

Argentina had a painful period of military junta rule from 1976 until 1983. During this period aggressive economic reforms were pushed through (as they had been by Pinochet in Chile not much earlier), and Argentina´s "Dirty War" played out, with leftist and opposition groups being "disappeared" - 30,000 people snatched from the streets and tortured, and often killed or never heard from again. That kind of relatively recent history is bound to leave traces of mistrust and cynicism among a population. So in a way it´s amazing that people are as friendly as they are, even if just superficially.



Where next for me? I was thinking of going to Rio for Carnaval but checked hostel prices yesterday and they're pretty steep. In any case I fly back to London from Rio so I´ll get to get see it. So I´ll go to Iguacu Falls next week, come back for my birthday and take it from there.



I´ll probably end up in a float in the Carnaval and wake up with a sore arse and no kidneys.

Punta del Este

After another big night we left BA at the crack of dawn and got a 3 hour ferry to Montevideo, and a 2 hour bus from there to Punta del Este. Having had no sleep to speak of, we were pretty shattered so we got to our (not very) luxurious hotel and slept all day.

Our room must be around the smallest twin room in the world. We affectionately called it the match box as it wouldn´t make the grade of a shoe box. Not that it's on my to-to list, but there wasn't enough room to swing a cat.



Got up a bit groggy and went in search of a place for eats and drinks before a club. We took advice from the dude at hotel reception and took a map from him to help us on our way. The area we were after was only around 6 blocks away, by the port. So we left the hotel and started walking..... and kept walking..... and walking.... and decided that the map was a bit misleading.... and kept walking..... until we thought we might try and catch a bus. Another guy was waiting for the bus too, so we showed him the map and asked where we were. We were on the completely wrong side of town, half way to an area called La Barra on the end of the peninsula. So we crossed the road to try and catch a taxi or bus, but none came so it was an hour´s walk back the way we´d come. It was harder to get it that wrong than it would have been to get it right.

Eventually we got back to town and had some food and a laugh about our self inflicted misfortune and duly headed to the port.

A year ago we´d been to Thailand and happened to be there the same time all the Aussie school kids finish their final year and jump on a plane to Thailand to get wasted for a week. This area was strangely reminiscent of that. It was weird - I expected there to only be people around our age here but in the port area we were like granddads. Again.



Had a couple of beers until the sun came up, dropped into a cafe for breakfast on the way home. Good eggs.



Next day we decided we´d try out a club we´d heard about called Crobar, in La Barra. So we got a bus out to La Barra (or somewhere close to it) and had a few looseners at a quiet bar. We asked the waiter where Crobar was and he told us it had closed for the season. I heard the best time for parties in Punta runs from Christmas to the 2nd week of January so it was a shock to hear that "best time" was really "only time" and it goes from all on to absolutely nothing overnight. We´d missed it altogether. I think crestfallen's the word. So we were fed up with Punta at this point. Nobody our age and no clubs. Full of shit apartment blocks and schoolies.



So we went for an empanada and considered our options, and decided we´d head back to BA early. There was another bar we´d heard about, so we decided to head there and see, on the off chance, if it was any good. And it was. Real good. We tucked into the cocktails. The crowd was still younger than us, but at least not schoolies. We invented a cocktail consisting of champagne and coke. In BA a few nights before, Jason ordered a Jim Beam and Coke and was given a champagne and coke. The bargirl was looking at him kind of funny, on reflection. But anyway, it´s actually a tasty beverage. So it´s France meets the US, and we called it a Sarkozy Obama.



I'm not sure if anyone ever told me how beautiful Uruguayans are but that was a well guarded secret. I forgot to get my camera out for the most part because I was just staring open mouthed at the local beauties.



So Punta came good in the end, but if we hadn´t found that bar I´d have had a very different experience of the place. Maybe I'll try going during that now-apparent very fixed window...

....and Buenos Aires keeps entertaining...

Man, what a place. I´ve been having a blast here every night since new year. I continued lessons for a couple of weeks, in those afternoon classes, and they were pretty good. I´ve finished now as I have learned all I´d reasonably need to know for the rest of my time here, and just need to practice that. If I was going to be in South America for longer I´d probably take more classes and work a bit harder at it generally, but it´s not necessary and I´ve paid enough out on classes already. I still get compliments sometimes on the amount I can speak and understand in the time I´ve been learning, so that´s encouraging.

Buenos Aires (literally, Good or Fair Winds) is the 3rd biggest city in South America, which makes it pretty damn big. In 1536 a port was founded where the district of San Telmo now stands, called Santa María del Buen Aire, which translates as "Our Lady of the Fair Winds"). The indigenous folks, naturally, didn't take kindly to the newcomers and attacked the settlement, which was abandoned by the would-be settlers in 1541. Then in 1580 Juan de Garay sailed down the Parana River from Paraguay and successfully re-established the place. He kind of kept the former name, but opted for the elaborate Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Aire. Try saying that ten times fast. It translates as "City of the Most Holy Trinity and Port of Saint Mary of the Fair Winds" but inevitably good sense prevailed within 100 years, bringing the more convenient name we use today.

The city's divided into barrios. There's the microcentro, which is far from micro but undoubtedly centro, and is where I live in the heart of BA. To the north is Recoleta, another busy commercial area but not as intense, and with a few tourist attractions, and beyond that Palermo, more affluent with wider streets, bigger parks, nicer bars and beautiful people, in both the positive and negative sense. On the western side of microcentro is artsy San Telmo, where I spend many lazy evenings before the big nights, in Plaza Dorrego sipping the local beer - Quilmes - and sometimes spying on the tango dancers. Puerto Madero is like a big dockside development where lots of office workers go after work to unwind. South of centre is colourful La Boca, home to the famous Boca Juniors that Diego Maradona played for. Those are just a few central ones, there are many more but these are the areas you're more likely to come across. There's areas within areas too, like the street that's got a cluster of Irish bars. The Guinness costs almost double what it does in Dublin or even London but it tastes soooo goooooooood.......

The apartment continues to entertain. This is the view from my bed......


And this is the view from my balcony.....



I´ve had a little luck with the girls here too. I wasn´t sure whether it was just a myth that they like western guys but from what I´ve seen it´s true. One in particular I´ve been seeing a fair bit of the last few days and I´ll miss her when I do decide to move on.



My mate Jason from NZ is here for a few days, so we´ve been hitting it pretty hard and having plenty of fun. Tomorrow we´re off to Punta del Este, in Uruguay, for 4 days. It´s supposed to be like the Ibiza of South America and it´s where loads of models and princesses hang out, so it should be, uh, interesting.



After that Jase will head back to the Caymans, where he´s working, and I´ll need to start getting my head and body together for life back on the road. I´ll probably have another 2 weeks in BA and plan a little more. After that I might go to Rosario for a few days, then check out Iguazu Falls and then push up into Brazil towards Rio for Carnaval. Not that that´s gonna be a massive party or anything.....