Buenos Aires part 2

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Once again - it´s been a while since I updated so I´m going to have to dredge the memory banks for this one (it´s the heat that makes it fuzzy, not the beer). Unfortunately there is a lack of photos from Buenos Aires as after about a week and a half my bag containing everything useful and valuable was stolen in the two minutes it took to select a table outside a cafe and decide to move to another one - got to hand it to the ladron - they are bloody quick! It gave me a chance to practice my spanish in the police station however😊 Anyway despite someone having found the passport and ringing dad I wasn´t able to get hold of them as the number retained on Dads phone was two digits short and his phone company couldn¨t get it either so after a week or so I got a replacement from the embassy - as luck would have it - now I´ve left Buenos Aires and I got facebooked by a girl who found it which is great to know some people will go out of their way to help. I managed also to replace the camera like for like for pretty much the price that I´ll get back from insurance. The underwater housing is a different problem but I´ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I didn´t let it ruin my time in BA however. I stayed in the Garden house Art factory and spent plenty evenings on the roof terrace chilling late into the night (though I´d have to admit to frequently being the one who headed to bed early (it´s hard to go to school for 9 (its harder than getting to work for 9ish 😊) when you are up til 5 or 6 though Angie managed to do it - (she is however crap at spanish 😊))) Sorry Ange! I spent most of the time hanging out with Angie and Sheryl (from the hostel and class respectively) and we managed to get to do most of the major things in BA while murdering the spanish language. Prior to meeting them I went to see Boca V Racing at the Boca ground - it was an amazing spectacle and Boca won thankfully. Sorry lads the stolen camera had all the photos of the cheerleaders but they are gone ;( Bocas first goal was a penalty so I had plenty time to shoot a video and capture the response of the crowd but that too alas is gone. Suffice to say they went wild - the chanting was amazing and we threw ourselves into the dancing and bouncing around on the teraces - I managed to pick up most of this one mira mira mira sakale una foto , se van avellaneda con el culo roto - with which the Boca fans taunted the racing crowd after the game which means look,look take a photo go back to Avellaneda with your red arse - the Boca fans aren´t the smartest as they were taunting the top terrace who had all sorts of bodily fluids with which they could retort. You wised up as soon as you entered the ground and they gave you clean wipes - as a result i buried myself deep under the top terrace out of the firing line.
Other highlights were finding the Bombo de Tiempo night on mondays in Saramiento 3131 which was so good it became a regular night. This is one of the earliest starts to a BA night ever as you have to get there before 7 to avoid the legthy queue. It´s a percussion night starting with a less experieced drum circle follwed by a something like twenty professionals accompanied by a invited musician (singer, accordionist or saxophonist on the nights I was there). I don´t think I´ve ever been to something that grabs you on a such primitive level and gets the whole crowd fired up. It was a complete sweat bath but amazing fun. The next highlight was taking a pair of canoes on the rivers around Tigre - very tranquil in the backwaters and fairly lively on the open waterways tackling the wakes of the collectivo boats - too lively for me and Sheryl when we capsized at the side of one major thourougfare when two collectivos passed by us in opposing directions! We managed to get back in but it didn´t really matter that we got wet as all of us got in for a swim in a side lagoon to combat the heat. Elegant midwater reentries into the kayaks were performed by all, but the girls seemed to have the skill of straddling the canoes down better than I 😊 I really missed my camera 😊 and later again when there was a huge parade on Defensa when several afrocultural groups paraded down it for miles with drums and dancers a la Rio carnival mode.
and then there was the steak - I think I may have eaten a full cow in BA - no joking. Massive Bife de lomos and even bigger bife de chorizo mariposos (less than 10 euro). I´m done with it for a bit - but not long and i´m not fully done with the MAlbec( often around 4 euro!) either. Other nights out included the Museo after work bar in the biggest bar I´ve been in in a building that Eifel had a hand in designing. There was a debate as to whether Wednesday night or Thursday night was cheating night - they have a name for it - something like noch de trampas or something 😊 Then there was the night in the burlesque club, another great night at cecis (hostel manageress) birthday party and then that´s about as many as I can remember. It was cool to settle in one place for a while and get used to how the city worked and make a circle of friends for hanging out. Spanish class with Chris and Sheryl was a good laugh - true to form I never had my homework done. The two lads were worried that they´d have to do a lot more talking in spanish when I left as I would ramble off in to a long story ( not about tomatoes) with out having any of the vocabulary and hog the class with translation time. The staff in the hostel were really cool - I had intended to move around the city while I was there but it was too comfortable to move on.
Towards the end of the stay Graham and Magda rolled into town so we hooked up for a few evenings though it proved really difficult without mobiles, we wrecked Joses head with the number of messages he had to take behind the desk.
Well that was BA, the valdes peninsula is next followed by Christmas in Bariloche - its bloody boiling 😉 No camera no pictures ;( I am struggling to get Angies photos off a dvd that I burnt as the disc is scratched

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