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Published: April 13th 2011
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Lisa's lovely students with big old giraffes in Pirata Our last weekend BsAs stylies...early Friday night drinks with Lisa’s students in Pirata, a pirate themed bar which involved her lovely students begging her not to go (booooohoooooo!), then, after a massive downpour, onto Sugar for some raucousness and dancing with good friends in one of the first bars we frequented in BsAs before heading home to bed at a respectable 5am. Although the late bed time did mean Ian missed his last game of footie unfortunately and didn’t get to say good bye to his teammates.
Saturday was pretty uneventful, food and naps, before a parilla of no food (greedy bums) and stolen wine (thieving toerags) at Joe’s hostel. The night did improve though as we moved the party downstairs to the hostel bar and proceeded to get quite drunk in a hot and smoky atmosphere (won’t be doing that in the UK anytime soon I suppose!) This then continued on into Mud, the first club Ian, Tom or I had actually been to in BsAs. Excellent cheesy music to dance to, expensive beer to drink (15pesos for a small can of beer!) but fun none the less. And then home at 6am! (why did we save it to
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Ian and Paula F our last night??)
So it was a late start to the day on Sunday, the day when we really needed to get things sorted...but no, of course, in typical SoodPav style, we managed to get the shopping done and a bit of sorting things out before we had to go to our third and final despedida (leaving party) at Stefi’s beautiful new pad. Neither of us really felt up to it, especially knowing how much we had to do, but it was the last night, the last parilla, with our closest friends and of course, we had to, and wanted to, go. We planned to leave earlyish anyway to get back, pack and get some sleep in before the mammoth 24hour train ride...those good intentions were completely shattered however as we finally said an emotional goodbye to each other on the street at 5am! I think it was a massive case of putting off the inevitable on all our parts as everyone else had to get up for work the next day, but we just kept the party going until the last possible moment. It was a great night with tasty food and beautiful company. Travelling circus we will
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Las chicas! miss you!!
So, the packing was done early doors on Monday morning as the sun came up and Lisa managed to get an hour’s kip in while Ian stayed up playing footie, paranoid (with good reason) that we might not wake up if we both fell asleep. The morning proper passed by in daze of showering, sorting out last minute things with Norma, the owner’s Mum, and rushing out to get a taxi carrying a stupid amount of stuff (much to Ian's dismay but as per usual for Lisa!) We got to Retiro with time to spare, after TC’s scaremongering text message to HURRY! We got to our seats in Primera class (which is actually third class strangely) and were pleased with what we found – pretty comfy, spacious seating, plenty of room for baggage overhead (which had always been a problem on South American buses) and a not fat, not smelly lady sitting next to Tom – result! And all for 70pesos, about 10quid!
And so the epic journey began...we slept for a bit and then watched the world go by, quite slowly (think the tracks are not up to much speed so you crawl along a
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Dancing time lot of the way). The land passing by was flat flat flat and after 6 hours we got to Rosario – on a bus it takes less than 3! Oh dear, what have we let ourselves in for we thought! But we did get to experience being able to change the direction your seat faces as we backed out of the station and the whole train had to face forward, so all the seats were turned about – excellent invention we thought! But then with a mass influx of mosquitoes as the sun went down and people refusing to close their windows, we really started to doubt our decision to travel so cheaply and started to believe why our students had reacted in the way they did upon hearing how we were going to travel to Tucuman. This also left Ian with a cartoon effect bite on his forehead that looked like he’d been hit with a hammer, which we all found hilarious of course! But it really does make a difference travelling on the tracks as opposed to the tarmac- you can get up, have a stretch, go for a wander, check out the dining carriage, there seems to
be a community feel on board, the toilets were cleaned religiously every hour so no nasty messes or surprises there and the seats were fairly comfy. Saying all that, only Ian had a good night’s sleep! But 26 hours later we arrived safe and sound in Tucuman, over 1000 kilometres to the north. The adventure had truly begun...
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Shez
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Hey guys!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! It's so nice to be reading the travel blog again. Happy tavels and keep writing. I'll be green with envy when you meet up with N&R - but make sure you post loads of photos - the funnier the better. Big sloppy kisses xxxxxxxxx