34. 17-24th Jan 09. Buenos Aires giving me a scare then holding me close!

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17&18.01.09
So a new journey always has to start with one of the hardest things you will ever face. Saying goodbye to family and friends. But after all that was done Duncan drove me to the airport and sat with me till it came to the time where i had to book in my luggage. We said our goodbyes and then i was on my own. Which i have to say was a strange feeling. Last time i had my good friend Matt by myside but this time I was a loner! But still, it felt good and the excitement started to kick in and my travelling head started to re-appear. It started off by having a laugh with the customs lady scanning my luggage. She told me she was going to look for a hair brush in my bag (as i had to take off my cap) then warned me she could see everything when i walked through the metal detector. I replied, "i want one of them!" I waved her farewell and walked through a very impressive new Terminal 5. My flight was at 9.10pm and i got seated next to a man who spoke no English...typical! I tried to speak Spanish but after i mentioned a few words that was me finished! Should have learnt more Spanish! I was speaking to the other lady on our row and asked if she was Canadian, she replied with a confused face, "Im Irish?" Whoops! I had a bloke infornt of me who reclined the seat right back ans seeing my seat didnt work i had no leg room the whole flight. Another bloke in the row infront wore in sunglasses the entire flight along with his long leather black jacket...ok then?! We did land in Sau Paulo for an hour so i got to breath in some Brazilian air. At customs in B.A i started talking to a bloke from England called George. What sort of name is that! Sorry Dad!ha He had no plans to where he was staying so i said he could share my taxi. A taxi that my good friend Paula who i met in Mexico last year had arranged for me. So out we walked to be greeted by a man holding up a sign saying "Barrie Craig!" A strange feeling. They even spelt my name right. Something that even some of my close friends struggle to do! You know who you are!ha So we arrived at Tango Backpackers and the driver refused to take my money. Paula had even paid for my taxi! George and I got some lunch then booked into our 6 person dorm. We then got the underground tube to the main bus station as George need to get prices etc. After taking a photo, i alomst got my camera stolen by three young lads. But i managed to slap one of their hands away as the other stepped infront of me to deter my attention. He had managed to unzip my pocket but i realised just in time. That wouldnt have been the best start. Funny though to look back on though! On the underground tube, with Georges and my hair blowing around with the windows being openned, we joked around saying it looks like we are in a Wash and Go advert! We were getting many looks and thats when i decided to wear a cap from then on. We walked to the park, saw a few monuments, a Falklands Remorial with a huge flag blowing in the wind with the ´English Tower´in the background. Which i thought was very strange. After some food shopping we cooked dinner and I somehow ended up sharing my plate of food with an Indian girl called Karishma. Not to sure how that happened?! Come night time a load of us spent the night drinking wine and beer on the rooftop of the hostel. Mostly English lads. Richard, Nigel, Guy, Andy, Matt, George, myself and a few others. I was knackered and went to bed about 1sh after getting hardly any sleep on the flight! A good eventful first day though!ha

19/01/09
The boys took great pleasing in telling me they met a porn star last night and how she got them into the club. They got VIP treatment once in and had a great night out. I have to admit i was a bit gutted i didnt go out with them. But im sure there will be plenty of more going out opportunities ahead. Andy, Nigel and I headed to the supermarket to stock up on fruit etc and then spent a very hard day with a few of the other lads lying on the hostel rooftop being fried in the sun. I only lasted 20 minutes at a time before jumping into one of the showers on the rooftop. It was too hot! We were lying on bed matresses that were left out and it wasnt till later on in the day that we found out they had been left outside to dry. They had been cleaned as they were infested with bugs...great! Patrick, George, Nigel and I went shopping for a load of meat to chuck on the BBQ we had planned for later on in the evening. We ate like kings. The meat in Argentina is amazing. I tried my first blood sausage, very tasty! We spent the night on the rooftop eating and drinking before heading out to the pubs about 1am. A Dutch girl called Panda joined us and luckily they was about 10 of us because it was dead. We had a fun night though and got back around 5am.

20/01/09
I got up about midday and cooked pasta for George and I. We planned on watching the Obama speach but it was dubbed in Spanish so we shortly gave up on that idea. I said goodbye to George as he was travelling to another part of Argentina to meet a girl who he had a fling with. What us boys do for a bit of female attention! Later on Andy and I were in our room talking to our friend Matt when we noticed smoke drifting past our room. We poked our heads around the corner to see smoke pouring out of the room next to us. We both looked at each other and rushed to the door. We could hardly see a thing and started shouting out, "Anyone in there?!" And, "fire, fire!" I had visions of running in and finding some hot bird lying on a bed past out, putting her on my shoulder and running our of the room like a true heroe. Instead, Andy and I heard laughing behind us so we turned round and there was the cleaners laughing their heads off. They were pestisiding the room. Didnt we feel like idiots!ha So after all that Andy and I (who is works in Southamton!) went for a long walk to one of the many cool parks they have in the city and ended up sunbathing next to some gilrs in bikins...purely accidental of course! We did get a bit of a fright though as a young kid came running out of the bushed behind us and scared the s··t out of us! He was playing hide and seek with his friends and when he hid in the bush in front of us he turned round, put his finger to his lips and told us to be quite! On the way back to the hostel we thought it would be rude not to have a beer so we stopped off at a cafe and sat outside with a cold beer watching people carry on with their lives. I cant express how many amazing girs we saw in the space of half an hour. One thing i knew i was going to do when i arrived in B.A was to try the Argentinian famous steak. So Andy and I asked around for the best place and ended up eating at a restaraunt called La Cabrera. We got there for 9pm and got the last table. Which was lucky as people stood outside for hours wating for a table! Andy and I both ordered a steak with tomatos and cheese along with some red wine. I know what your thinking and i agree, it does sound gay but we had a awesome evening. The food was the best i have ever tasted (apart from my parents cooking obviously!) and we talked away to the tables next to us. It took us both about two hours to finish our steak but we did and that was the main thing. The awesome side dishes and dips on the other hand were far from finished but they were fantastic as well. Just wish i had a bigger belly! In all we both spent 100 pesos which is about 20 pounds. Back home an evening like that would cost 5 times that atleast. Needless to say we felt exhausted afterwards and i think i fell asleep within two seconds of hitting the pillow!

21/01/09
Andy and I had breakfast on the rooftop then decided to have a real sight seeing day. We walked to the Recoleta Cemetry where Evita is burried and on the way we visited an art museum, i had my picture taken next to an Owen Wilson poster, we passed a huge metal flower which opens then closes at night and even gave money to the red cross. The bloke we gave money to took us to the cemetry as we were a bit lost and on the way we started talking about football. At the time we were thinking about going to see a Boca Juniors V River Plate game. We told him and he said, "Boca bad!" When we asked him why he replied by pointing to his face and saying, "Negro!" OK then, and we just gave you money as your from the red cross?! Anway the cemetry was amazing. That might sound a bit wrong but i have never seen anything like it. It was the size of a village and the tombstones were huge and amazingly stunning. Many of the graves consisted of whole familys. Even pets. We could have spent the entire day there taking photos but we managed to narrwo it down to two hours. Amazing though. I had to rush back as i had arranged to see my friends Paula and Agustina who i met in Mexico last year. They only worked two blocks away. It was great seeing them again and they took me to a part of B.A i hadnt been to yet. We went sight seeing together. They took me to see the Pink House, the Cabildo (which i got told is the most important building in Argentinas history), the May Pyramid and Circle. I also saw the widest road in the world...oh my god!ha After that we headed to San Telmo whish is the origional center of B.A. The streets are cobbled stone and the buildings look old but beautiful. It was there where the girls got me to try their local drink, Fernet. Let me just say it tastes like Medicine!ha We had dinner with all types of cheeses and meatand then finally got back about 1am. The girls did say i kind of stood out as a tourist which strengthened my thoughts of always wearing a cap when walking around. Paula said that her family wanted to meet my and her mum was desperate to cook for me so maybe that will happen after visiting The Patagonia region in a few weeks. Today had been an amazing day and seeing old friends from my last travels was just awesome. I am the luckiest man in the world!

22/01/09
I was having breakfast on the rooftop again where i got talking to two English girls. We got on the subject about tanning and i joked by saying how white i was. They replied, "But thats because you Ozzies are always careful about the sun!" I just laughed! Since we had an eventful and tiring day yesterday (im not looking for sympathy!ha) we thought a day by the park would be a nice treat. Plus i needed to work on my tan! We walked to the park with the lake and spent a very relaxing day there. Thats when i noticed how dominent the men are in Argentina. Back home you might see the girls lying on there partners lap while the bloke strokes her hair or rubs her back. Not here baby. The exact opposite. The men have their ladies well trained!ha On the way back we bought some beers and suprise suprise we ended up on the rooftop. About 20 of us. Karishma and her two local friends took control and organised our night out. We ended up a a club called Club 69 where there was a Transvestite show. It was a good laugh. At one point though i turned round to see Andy looking behind me in shock. I turned round to see some bloke dressed like Boy George dancing up rather rudely behind me! Andy did get started on by two blokes who followed him around wherever he went. I told him i had his back which he appreciated as one of the blokes reminded me of Shrek. He was a big lad and im glad nothing happened in the end. He would of eaten us both for breakfast! Five of us managed to talk a taxi driver into taking us all into his taxi which was a squeeze and the police ended up pulling us over just outside our hostel but once again nothing really happened. We all just stumbled out, smiled and headed off to bed.

23/01/09
All of us were comerised till about 2pm when an America gril called Megan moved into our room. At that point Karishma also came into our room to tell us she had her purse stolen last night and in her purse was her dads bank card details...whoops! After introducing ourselves to Megan she joined the three of us for lunch at a vegetarian buffet restaraunt. Very good considering there was no meat! Megan plans to spend a year in B.A working so was going to start looking for a flat to rent. How awesome would that be! Andy and I had problems at the hostel with booking our bus tickets so we had to get the underground tube to the main bus station. The place i almost got robbed last time! This time i took the bear minimum and wore trainers just incase i had to chase some little squirt!ha We had to get the tube at rush hour and i have never seen anything so busy before! We bought the bus tickets to Peurto Madryn for the next day which cost 260 pesos. We chose to get a taxi back as we were both exhausted. As many of the taxis in B.A are illegal we got told to choose our taxi wisely. There was a line of taxis to choose from and straight away we singled out one or two we would definately not go in due to the state of the car and more importantly, the size of the driver!ha We went up to the smallest driver we could see and after a lot of hand comunication and a few words in Spanish he finally understood where we wanted to go. He told us, "this way," so we followed. Where did he take us? To the most beaten up taxi with King Konk being the driver! Andy and I got in the back, looked at each other and both started laughing! Typical! We got to the hostel in one piece and gave him a tip for not eating us!ha We all ended up on the rooftop again playing a few drinking games and was in bed by 1am. An early one as we had a long day ahead. On the way to my room though i nipped into the toilet and imagine my suprise when i was staning by the basin to see some blokes head on the floor under the door to one of the cubicles. He looked dead so i poked his head. He opened his eyes, i asked him if he needed any help and he replied in a very polite fasion, "no thank you but thanks for asking." Then fell back to sleep. The place did smell of sick so i was kind of happy he didnt want help! I then walked past the common room where i started talking to an Irish girl. Within a few minutes two blond Ozzy girls ran out shouting in their PJs. One of the blokes in their room got out of bed and started weeing on the floor! Obviously very drunk. The two girls though had a great sense of humour and i ended up giving them my contact details as they were doing the Inca Trail before me and i wanted to know how they got on. They got moved to a new room but i was going to offer that the three of us could share my bed if need be. Im nice like that!ha So a very funny end to the night!

24/01/09
Andy and I were packed and checked out by midday. We killed a few hours swapping contact details with people at our hostel and saying goodbye. We got to ther bus station an hour early and waited and waited.. The bus was late and we were lucky to see it. We thought it was arrivig at gate 14 but the ticket meant any gate up to 14! Anyway the bus was awesome. We had full bed chairs. Luxury baby! I was so looking forward to getting to our destination in the Patagonia region where nature itself and landscapes is why people come this far down south. On the way though we got cought up in a traffic jam since there had been a horrific car accident. The choice of movies were a bit bizzare though. A film called Riegn on Me staring Adam Sandler playing a very depressed disturbed man and then...The Mist by Stephen King. Now bearing in mind there were children on the bus we both thought it wasnt exactly the best choice of film! There were limbs flying all over the place, blood gushing everywhere, monsters ripping people apart and we were not in the least bit suprised that the children on the bus started to cry! After the films they played pure cheese 80s music to calm the children down! Come night time we watched an awesome lightning storm which lit the sky purple.

So it had been a great first week. I had seen some awesome sights, been in some crazy situations and most importantly, i had met some awesome people. Buenos Aires is an addictive city and i think the longer the longer you stay, the more your love grows for this beautiful city. If it carries on this way i can tell its going to give South East Asia a run for its money. Bring on the happy days!

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Photos

Enjoying a beer watching the worlds go by.
Look at the name of the shop in the backgound!

Comments

[Ann Hiskey]

Have a great time
Hi Barrie So sorry I missed you before you left. Just want you to know that I will miss you and wish you lots of luck and safe journeys on your travels. Have a wonderful time Barrie. love Ann x