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Published: January 30th 2007
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Argentina map
our plan of where to go. its all very loose just now for the north part and what we do depends a lot on how much time we have left. Claire:
buenos aires is a beautiful city and really bloody hot. we arrived on the 20th and it was 30 degrees. the next day was still about 30 degrees. i hear you lot have snow in bathgate. hahahahahahahaha.
we havent actually done much yet, just wandered about the city centre and eating and drinking. ross loves it here because all the women are gorgeous with as he puts it 'generous assets' and the adverts are more than a little sex based and explicit.
we have been steak hunting, eating fantastic ice-cream and rock climbing (badly). basically we spent a few days here relaxing and planning what the hell we're going to do in argentina for the next 6 weeks. its a hard life. we didnt do much shopping (that was really hard) and havent actually seen many of the sights but we're coming back here to fly towards home again so we're saving all that for then. cant wait for the shopping. definately going to have to look into what our duty free allowance is going to be....
from here we head to viedma (south of buenos aires) to catch a train west to bariloche in the lake district. the
Me and a really big tree
I practice my catalogue poses in the Plaza Libertador General San Martin. general plan is to head south to the southernmost town in argentina (and possibly the world), ushuaia. we want to take in some natinal parks, lakes, sealions and calving glaciers on the way. then we fly back up to buenos aires to get to mendoza, in a more northwesterly direction, and see a few other towns around there (san juan, cordoba, etc). after that we'll work our way to the iguassu falls (the widest in the world), which sit on the argentinian/brazilian/paraguayan border. we will dive across to the brazilian side of the border for at least a day to see the falls better and if we have time we might spend a few days in brazil. then on the way back to buenos aires from the falls we'll cut across uruguay and spend some time on the beach. then we'll spend all our money (if we have any left) in BA before flying back to santiago in chile to catch our flight to london via dallas. we should (in theory) be home on march 9th.
Ross:
Well so far Buenos Aires (BA) is spectacular and probably the best city we’ve visited so far. As Claire says it’s scorching
Claire looking pretty with a little piece of home
The big tower (Torre de los Ingleses) in the back ground was a donation from the cities British community. here. Santiago was cool but is completely eclipsed by BA and I’m in heaven there’s enough steak to eat myself to death and its dirt cheap. Had the best steak of my life on Sunday night in a place called Estancia, a juicy T-bone bigger than my face cooked to perfection and it only cost £4.50. Buffalo grill take note. Not really done much so far because we arrived at the weekend and they don’t seem to do weekends here so everything (apart from the restaurants and pubs and stuff) has been shut. Had planned to go climbing on Monday but once we arrived we found out the wall doesn’t open on Mondays. (lonely planet might have mentioned this. Grrrrr)
Met up with Geoff and the Aussie girls (Lauren, Ana, Larny and Morgan) from our GAP tour (the Aussie girls had left our group back in San Pedro and Geoff the night before our tour finished) and headed out for more amazing steak. Can’t remember what this place was called but it was quite a walk and the place was packed also done some very good black pudding which is a bit different over here than I’m used to as
Me & Claire
We seek shade in the leafy Plaza Libertador General San Martin. its more like pie filling (really moist and lose) than the solid stuff we have. Still not as good as the stuff from Stornoway. It was good to catch up with them again as there off in the opposite direction from us into Brazil for carnival.
Went to the arms museum today got wet as we found out that not every day in BA is glorious sunshine. Seen some guns and stuff, seen some stuff about the Falklands (sorry the Islas Malvinas, remember don’t mention the war) from the losers perspective and a random collection of samurai armour that seemed a bit out of place next to the mortars and gatling guns. Met up with Geoff again as he fancied coming climbing with me and Claire. The guide book lists “Boulders” (don’t know if this is what the locals call it) as the best wall BA has to offer, if this is the best I’d hate to see the others. This judgment might be a bit harsh if I didn’t climb at either Alien Rock or Ratho back home I might have a better opinion but the fact is I’ve been spoiled by great climbing walls back home that
General San Martin 1
There's statues of this guy all over the place and some kind of monument to him in most South American countries. He's credited with gaining independence from the Spanish, with some effective PR, single handedly pretty much. make the best her look substandard at best. There’s a lot of country still to see and the Argentines are meant to be mad for climbing so this view could change.
Anyways the walls them selves although a bit rickety feeling at times were set out not to bad with plenty of bridging and overhangs if you’re leading but with no set routes and only 3 top ropes set up it made things a bit limited. As did the fact you couldn’t rent any shoes as they only had 4 or 5 pairs in dwarf sizes or bigger sizes with no front or held together with duct tape. We thought about getting a lead rope which we could have hired but not knowing the condition of it and (this probably isn’t essential but when it comes to climbing I like things like you get them back home were you know safety standards exist) their not being double clips at the top of the routes put us off giving it a shot. We spent a couple of hours climbing and Claire nearly swung through a window her path of destruction luckily prevented by a metal girder that left a very colourful
Lights, camera, action!
We blunder onto a film set on one of BA's streets. We hung about for a bit, didn't see anyone famous and watched some guy roll over the bonnet of a car and make a total meal out of it. You'd think he was doing something dangerous. reminder of their encounter on her bum.
Headed out for steak (the place with the stuffed cow outside that you’ll see in the photos) again but this time we were to be disappointed by a very substandard meal. Claire got a very poorly prepared tenderloin (it had been left to go cold while the rest of the dinner was prepared) served with vegetables that were almost grey they had been cooked so much, and I got what can only described as a slab of donkey. What was supposed to be a rib eye steak was a fat ridden, chewy piece of the most tasteless meat I’ve ever had and only half of it was cooked the other half being almost total raw. Don’t know if cuts are different here than back home but can’t see why they would, but what I got served was nothing like the rib eyes back home.
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