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Published: February 3rd 2011
FOOD BABY!
LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING!Be warned I forgot to post my last blog before we left Buenos Aires so I am combining the last few entries on the together and posting them as soon as I have internets( I’m on a bus between Buenos aires and Pathegonia right now), be prepared for much more qwerty diarrhoea then usual.
I have some interesting news to tell Bronagh, John, David and Lillian, Niamh is expecting. Now before David begins to clean his shotgun I can explain. You see I was not the course of this predicament. In fact to make things a bit more controversial the man who was responsible for this is not her boyfriend but an unnamed gaucho, a South American cowboy In South americia 2 weeks and she’s already given me the p45 and eloped with some grizzled macho man of the ranches and disappeared into the sunset, she’s some floozy isn’t she?
Well, not exactly, Mr Gaucho you see has supplied Niamh with a steak as big as her head and as thick as a yellow pages and Niamh has managed to defy the laws of physics and fit the entire thing into her tummy and she is now referring to
Argentinosaurus
Only his head and neck but still impressive it as her "food Baby". I’m going to have to roll her back up the Julio and into the hostel, a difficult task considering I have a similar size chunk of Lomo threatening to break all of Newton’s laws as it begins its descent through my digestive system.
The steak was top though, melts in your mouth and seeps juicy pink watery gore as you cut the behemoth sized portion into more manageable edible chunks with your steak knife.
We are taking some timeout from Red meat from now on.
At the foot of the last entry I mentioned we were off to see dinosaurs and that we did but unfortunately the journey got a bit out of hand. Far too hangover to bring such useful paraphernalia such as the city map I led the way using our tourist map, its big, has bright colourful illustrations and the concept of scale is completely alien to it. The 30 minutes "up the road" walk I promised a very hung-over and "WATTERRR" craving Blondie ended up taking over an hour and a half and the incentive of seeing both the largest herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaur respectively didn’t seem to
Carnotaurus
Fact: In the lost world novel he was able to turn invisable like the predator. motivate her as much as it did me.
South American Dinosaurs aren’t as well known in film or books as the likes of T rex but they were the largest that ever lived. The biggest was nationalistically named Argentinasaurus, an 100 tonne long necked plant eater, The museum in question was only displaying his head and neck as well as one of his vertebrae, the vertebrae in question was as large as my trusty Corolla back home.
As the herbivores were as big as a medium sized stadium the meat eaters of the continent had to suitably geared up to actually be able to hunt and eat them. South American meat eating dinosaurs were as far as palaeontologist could tell as vicious as our own Irish politicians are incompetent, so they were no doubt downright deadly. If Spielberg had decided to populate Jurassic park with these Latin American Saurons instead of well known crowd favourites it would have cut the running time a good 2 hours and we wouldn’t have any crap sequels. The big daddy of the carnivorous dinosaurs was Giganotosaurus, larger then Tyrannosaurus, with large powerful forearms rather then the title dinky ones the rex
San Telmo
Paintings, Knives, Tango, Borat...it has it all! has. To make matters worse, he hunted in packs. As the dinosaur obsessed child who never grew up the prospect of seeing the remains of such a beast. As you can imagine my sources from the internets were false and there was no promised giganotosaurus on view, the Skelton in question is residing in Neuquén several thousand miles south of us!
Despite this there were some impressive specimens on view a tyrannosaurus skull and a complete Skelton of a Carnotaurus, a decent sized meat eater who featured in Jurassic Parks Sequel novel, The Lost World and accompanying arcade game, eating a minor character in the former and lots of myself and Niall O Muire’s school lunch money in the later.
We returned dehydrated to the hostel to find out that I had missed a day of rugby in Buenos aires arranged by the Hostel. For a small price you get transport to a local clubs ground, some beer and food to enjoy while watching them play a rival team. My only rugby news from home comes from excited texts from the family during the recent Heineken cup games and while it’s great to be away I’d love to
MY NAME A BORAT!
Not selling gypsy tears unfortunatly watch a good game. I completely forgot that Argentina is quite passionate about ball games that don’t involve their players falling down and faking epileptic fits upon receiving a tackle, although being the home of Maradonna they love the “beautiful” game as well.
After making Niamh follow me around on a hung-over fossil hunt I told her she had complete control of the following days itinerary, promising her I would dutifully stand looking dazed and confused in an as many shoe and accessory shops as she wanted the following day, if she was inclined to go to such places.
Thankfully Niamh decided we should go to the market in San Telmo that day, the market consists of a mile of stalls that culminate in an antiques fair in the square at the centre of the district. Along the way street performers and tango musicians entertain the crowds, San Telmo being known as the Tango district of Buenos aires.
The market in short was an excellent call by Blondie and I urge you to attend if your ever set foot in Buenos aires on a Sunday, its impossible to describe the varity of wares on offer, ornaments of
Eva's grave
They cut out the scene at the end of Evita when Madonna dies and is eaten by feral cats solid silver, replica weapons, jewellery, gaucho memorabilia, star wars figures, animal skins and all sorts of souvenirs representing two chaps in Argentina who appear to be bigger then Jesus, Che Guervara and Diego Maradonna.
While nimah was checking out the necklaces I found a man selling Aztec, Incan and Mayan ceremonial masks, One such mask I was informed was the of the type worn when carrying out human sacrifices and the vendor offered to throw in a replica of the Obsidian knife used for the aforementioned sacrafices to go with it, I unfortunate had to decline his offer as the mask was too delicate to carry for the next 5 months and the thoughts of having to explain the reasons for possessing a cutting implement designed to remove the still beating heart out of human being to the airport staff of several countries was going to be somewhat troublesome.
Other Touristy things we did were check out Eva Peron’s grave, the belated lass is buried in a very creepy crematory filled with very gothic tombs and feral cats outnumber the tourists 2 to one. The inordinate amounts of feral cats was particularly unnerving, feral cats that seem remarkable well feed despite the lack of obviously available foodstuffs, rather tellingly a lot of the more distended tombs had small cat sized holes knocked in them. Good job on Whiskas trying to put a brand on that flavour!
The most alarming thing happened on the last day when we learned that no less then three people in our hostel were mugged on the last night, two of them in close proximity to the hostel. All week myself and Blondie had been pottering about the capital on foot and not once did we feel in any real danger, we even had forgone our Brazilian tradition of keeping a stash of sacrificial mugger money in my pocket. On our penultimate breakfast an Australian friend of our Tomas had his backpack along with his passport swiped quietly as we were having breakfast, we only knew it was gone once we were cleaning up our trays.
On our way to Bariloche now, the original plan of heading to Uruguay is no longer on the cards as carnival has started and every hostel in Montevideo is packed to the gills.
Bariloche is in Patagonia and filled with sky blue lakes and surrounded
by some of the most impressive mountains on the planet.
It’s a 22 hour haul on the bus but we’ve splashed and gone for a 1st class full “cama” bus or “The Boulla Bus” as I’ve dubbed it, which means completely reclining seats, regular meals and in drive movies. We’ve also got chatting to Ted from New York who is very kindly being generous with his hipflask.
I’ll post this in 24 hours!
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Biggs
non-member comment
That's no steak....
Its a space station!