Hola Buenos Aires

Eventually we make it to good old BA and get settled into our lively hostel in the centre of town, with warnings galore ringing in our ears!! You´ll never guess who we bump into in our hostel - none other than Mr Sickie Ozzie - though apparently he doesn´t recognise us, must have been the drunken haze!!!
We venture outdoors in search of food and come face to face with a full on demo - practically outside our hostel door!!! As if we weren´t scared enough already, when you´re confronted with a full on demo, with a line of masked guys at the front holding batons, it doesn´t actually help make you feel safe!! But we walk on and find sanctity in the nearest McDonalds - i must quickly add that i had salad, after all i´m trying to get rid of the goon belly - got to make room for all this South American wine and Argentinian steak!!!
We stop in on our first night and discover the 80p bottles of beer! But these are no ordinary bottles of beer, not only are these bottles of beer 80p but they are 2 and a half sizes bigger than a normal bottle of beer at home - thats what i call value for money!!! And they certainly help put us to sleep - its either that or the heating in our room, yep thats right we´ve got heating, we´re no longer cold, its a miracle!!

Recoletta

Next day we´re up bright and early and make breakfast and head out on the hostel walking tour to Recoletta - the well to do area of BA (Buenos Aires!). Experience our first Argentinian bus ride on a rather loud and old bus and manage to make it in one piece to the starting place! We start the walk around, walking past all the moste expensive designer shops - yes Jo and Karen another shopping heaven you girls would adore!! Walk past the Armani store, which was built in 2001 a time of massive economic decline, many thought the store wouldn´t last but in actual fact the year it was built it had a massive sucess and is still stading there today - and i´m not too sure but the prices in the window did seem to be a hell of a lot cheaper than at home, but you´ll be thankful to know we didn´t have enough time to go in and have a browse!!! We walk past the oldest and most traditional hostel in BA, apparently every single room has its own butler, shame we couldn´t afford to stay there! Then we walk past the Cartier shop, which has a rather surprisinging neighbour upstairs, that has a dark dark secret!!!
Next stop are a few more statues - its Chile all over again!!! Then we stop in at the oldest church in BA, the prettiest little white building. Theres only two ways you can get married in this church, one if you have lots and lots of money or two if you can marry someone with lots and lots of money!! Inside is beautiful, all decked out in gold and outside they´re selling candles and rosary beads. So i buy a guardian angel candle and light it for someone special. Next door to the church is teh cemetary. Now this is no ordinary cemetary, in fact its quite a tourist attraction. All the plots here are now taken, but to have been able to buy a plot you had to be extremely rich and its easy to see when you get inside. The cemetary itself has an actual map so you can walk around but each plot is a family vault and outside are the biggest memorials and sculptures you´ve ever seen! Some are bigger than others, some you can see the stairs that go down into the vault, some are really old and some are so new they look like the front of a designer D&G store!!! Apart from the amazing vaults there is one more reason this particular cemetary is such a tourist attraction, and thats because Evita Peron is buried here! It takes a while to find her vault as its hidden away towards the back of the cemetary, but we do and its surprising because compared to some of the memorials in this place, hers is really nothing that special!! It has a few flowers on it and a handwritten message, but there are no angels or sculptures, infact if you didn´t know it was her grave you would walk straight past it! After a few photos its time for lunch! While Michelle tucks into her first Argentinian steak i settle for pasta!
Then its back on the walk and we pass a few dog walkers! Here if you own a dog you don´t walk it yourself, you pay someone else to do it for you! When you´re walking around you just see people with about 15 dogs attached to them, its no wonder theres dog crap everywhere!! We walk through a park and find one walker not taking his duties seriously - he´d tied all of his dogs up to different trees and was sat on a milk crate having a cigarette!! We cross the road to another park wheres theres a huge sculpture of a metal flower, but this flower works on solar power. When its sunny it opens the flower and when it gets dark the flower closes - we didn´t stick around long enough to see it close though!!! On through the streets we end our tour at the American Latin museum, we decide not to take a peek as the guide is heading back to the hostel and we don´t exactly know our way round here just yet!!! We get off the bus and its a mission to cross the road! Our hostel is just off the main mian road in BA and it takes about 10 minutes to cross it - why? Not only is it a very busy street, but it has 20 lanes of rushing traffic! Thats right 20 lanes and the traffic lights don´t exaclty give you enough time to cross one set of lanes let alone all 20, so it takes to sets of crossing lights to get across!! And yes they are manned by police, who whistle at you if you´re crossing at the wrong time!!!

Quiz Time
In true Haycock fashion we settle in the hostel for the evening with a chicken madras and gather together a quiz team in preparation for tonights quiz - intelligence being a must! But we can only come up with 3 ozzies and a canadian - its no wonder we lost, thought the fact that the 2 winning teams had at least 20 people on there teams i think meant they were destined to win! That and the 80p beers helped us forget and certainly helped us sleep in preparation for tomorrows adventures!!!

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