festermower

Geo: -34.5843, -58.5251It all seemed so simple. After queuing for 40 minutes or so to get into the Parque de la Costa theme park in Tigre, Argentina, a big sign told us that there were three types of entrance ticket. There was a Passport Promo, a Passport Plus and a Gold Passport. The Passport Promo seemed to include nothing of interest, whereas the only extra included with the Gold Passport was the shows they laid on for little kiddies. We didn't want the shows, just the roller-coasters, so... Sebastián: "Two Passport Pluses, please". Levi: "Oh, wait, for just 30 pesos extra, I can upgrade my Passport Plus to a Winter Passport Plus, which means I can come back as many times as I like this winter. I might come back with a friend when she arrives ... read more

Geo: -34.4771, -57.8386Today (14th July), it is exactly a year to the day since I first arrived in Buenos Aires. Happy anniversary to me. I am also just over three weeks away from returning to the UK, with feelings as mixed as my hairstyles have been over the past twelve months. (The fact that the "News of the World" is no more makes me a little more inclined to come home, I have to say.)I had to renew my 90-day tourist visa one last time a couple of days ago, so I went across the river on another day trip to Colonia, in Uruguay…this time with a friend who was getting over the same flu that I was recovering from. We figured we wouldn´t be likely to cross-infect each other if it was the same flu. ... read more

Geo: -34.9751, -54.943Text being drafted... read more

Geo: -34.6118, -58.4173After leaving a job in the UK higher education sector a year ago, and from my current vantage point in Argentina, I have been rather fascinated by the tuition fees announcements flowing from the @timeshighered Twitter feed. With my redundancy payment, I travelled to Buenos Aires for a while to learn Spanish. My Spanish might not be fluent but I am now very capable of following my usual "I worked in higher education" with a statement of how embarrassed I have since become by the English HE sector.It is a sector that seems to be blissfully unaware of how ridiculous it now looks to those outside it, with universities making cringe-worthy references to “student affordability” as part of their £9k (per annum) fees announcements. So warped is the new regime that it seems to ... read more

Geo: -31.4, -64.19Yesterday, the 24th of March, in Argentina was 'el Día de la Memoría por la Verdad y la Justicia' (Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice), a national holiday marking the beginning of the country's last military dictatorship in 1976. A massive event took place last night in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, although I decided to visit Córdoba, another city deeply affected by the events that took place in the seventies and eighties. In November 1975 in Córdoba, Marta Rosetti de Arquiola wrote the following: For 21 days, I was detained by the provincial police force's Department of Intelligence (D2), the first two days with my daughter Virginia. During this time, I suffered torture, humiliation, physical exhaustion and death threats against my d... read more