Steve Goes Global: 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.