Day 2 - Buenos Aires

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First I must say that it's sooo nice to be somewhere hot and sunny!!! Spent the day exploring BA, which today is a national holiday to mark the start of the Guerra Sucia (Dirty War). 1000's of people lined the streets armed with banners, drums, firecrackers and guns! (An unexpected welcome as we stepped outside our door!). 30,000 people died during the Dirty War, after a military coup took control of the government and begun a brutal dictatorship. The date was not marked as a national holiday until 2006, but now the Argentineans can commemorate the tragedy and hope it never happens again, the theme is "Nunca mas" (never again). Whist we encountered relatively harmless marches and gatherings of people, things can and did escalate into violence.

Spent the majority of our time in Palermo (the park district), where we contemplated how long 5 months really is... it still hasn't sunk in yet that we won't be hopping on a plane home again in 2 weeks time. All this thinking made us hungry, so we tried out the traditional empanadas (basically a Cornish pasty) and hunted down the Lonely Planet's recommendation for the best steak in BA, which sadly had not yet opened for dinner when we arrived. We settled for a few glasses of our first Argentinean wine and headed back to the hotel to dump our day bags with the intention of going to San Telmo for the evening a district (known for its lively, colourful atmosphere and of course, Tango! However the combination of strong wine, the long journey the day before and the prospect of waking at 5:30am for the start of our "Patagonian Panorama" tour the next day forced us to settle for a pizza up the street and an early night. We will have to return to BA later in our trip to see it properly, and we are eagerly anticipating our first Argentinean steak!

Chris’s corner

Sophie’s first Spanish conversation stood up to the test, finding the hotel for the second night and Kumuka to join our tour... mine not so much: suggesting I spoke little Spanish ("poquito") and saying "piquito" which means a small kiss, much to my new Latin American friend’s amusement!

There was also some excitement when exploring Palermo we came across what was quite possibly Argentina’s "Next Top Model", no sign of Tyra though.

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Photos

Protests in BA
To commemorate Argentina´s ¨Dirty War¨

Palermo parks
Writing my first journal entry!