Buenos Aires baby!

The plane touched down in BA thursday morning, 16 hours after leaving the sniffer dogs and scary policemen with big black guns at Heathrow. Trust me to fly on the day people were planning on blowing up all the planes from london! Still I made it to Argentina without incident, nicely full after 3 (surprisingly tasty) British Airways meals. And I'm proud to say my backpack weighed just 14.6kg! Go me and my light packing!


The first thing I noticed about Argentina was how similar the landscape looked to Britain, with all the grass and trees we drove through from the airport, I don't know what i was expecting exactly, but I was expecting it to be different somehow! Of coure I started seeing the differences pretty soon after that. Half the cars on the road are falling apart, literally rusting away with bits hanging off them, and thats normal here. The driving here is terrible, and in town must junctions don't have pedestrian crossing lights, and those that do, when the little white walk man comes on, it means 'most of the traffic is going the other way; some of it is still going to come tearing round the corner straight at you, but this is the best you're going to get so take your chances and cross'. About 40% of Buenos Aires' population lives in poverty (or so Lonely Planet tells me) and day and night you can see people towing large square canvas trolleys and rooting through all the bins, even in the middle of Florida Ave (an expensive pedestrianised shopping street). And there are policemen everywhere, which I'm not sure is comforting or worrying.


I'm staying at the Garden House in San Telmo (a nice quietish district, full of old colonial buildings and antique shops), a really friendly hostel with quaintly named rooms (I'm staying in 'Love') , but a lack of English speaking guests.
So far I've spent my days wandering round Buenos Aires, sight-seeing and exploring. (and taking lots of photos as you can see!).
Okay, the best bits of Buenos Aires so far were:
General San Martin Plaza to the north of the city centre, which is really relaxed and elegant and full of leafy trees, and much nicer than Plaza de Mayo (in the centre of the city, and the first stop for all the tourists and their cameras.)
Going to a Milonga (tango dance hall) on Friday night with some girls from the hostel...Even the couples that were beginners looked amazing, and then when it got later they turned the lights down and started playing what I can only describe as drum and bass tango, which is totally surprising but actually pretty damn good - i'm thinking of importing some to Britain...
El caminita in La Boca (the safe tourist part of a rather rough neighbourhood) which is full of amazing coloured houses and great little restaurants where you can eat your lunch seranaded by an old Argentinean singer and his band and with a couple dancing tango around the tables. They made everyone get up and have a go with the dancers, and I'm blaming my poor footwork on the fact I was wearing hiking boots!. It was great fun, but perhaps suspiciously so, as the streets had an air of fakeness like they were there just for the tourists.
Saturday afternoon (after La Boca) I visited Recoletta Cemetry, quite literally a city of the dead with a large grid of streets and thousands of 'houses' (mausoleums), and mysteriously populated by hundreds of cats! In the entrance way was a plan of the city where they had helpfully numbered and named the most popular crypts. I had a good wander around, including visit to the cemetry's hotspot - Evita!
My last day was a Sunday so I visited the weekly San Telmo antiques and craft market and managed to pick up a few bargains, whilst admiring the section of painting by local artists (mostly of tango dancers and tastefully posed naked women) and marvelling at the random stuff some of the stalls were selling.


Tonight (Sunday) I'm off to Cordoba. It´s a 10 hour overnight bus journey, but i splashed out on a 'coche cama' (bed) ticket (all of 12 pounds!) so hopefully it won't be too bad.

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