Buenos fxxxing Aires

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Hola everybody! 😊
Just want to update you on what i've been doing the last few weeks..
First of all happy 21st birthday to my sister, Sarah! I hope you get completly wasted so that no one can recognize you, you're so funny when you get pissed, like at my farewell when you sang that song from Ghost, oh it gave me shivers... and by the way, you have so many fans! I am your biggest, of course... 😊

So, I eventually left Mendoza, had an incredible time there and met so many cool people. On approaching my last days there, Dave and I went on a day trip to Puenta Del Inca and Uspallata. Only four hours away from Mendoza, we decided the night before that we were going to catch a bus at 6am, so we were out the door by about 5:30 and caught up on some much needed sleep in on the bus. Uspallata was extremly cool, it's the same place that they filmed the movie, Seven Years in Tibet with Brad Pitt. It had some awesome scenery and we took many photos. While we were walking, we saw a small family of four in a run down little house. They were extremly poor and dirty, but they let us take some great shots of them, I showed the little girl a photo of herself and she was incredibly excited and was giggling and pointing at the camera and showing her mum. I was so happy to get in such a great shot and hopefully I will have ore opportunities to get shots like this in Bolivia and so forth.

Puenta Del Inca was just a bridge, not too exciting really. It was built only 100 years ago and used to be a hotel apparently. It is a natural stone bridge, underneath it are rock walls and the ruins of an old spa that are stained yellow by warm, sulferous thermal springs. Haha, I got that quote right out of the Lonely Planet book 😊

I met an Israeli girl named Ella at the hostel and saw her again at the bridge, I agreed to accompany her the following night to Buenos Aires. It was very spare of the moment but I'm glad I did it. I'm getting notorious for being flakey, I keep changing my plans every two minutes and i'm sure it's getting on people's nerves...

On my last say in Mendoza, I was still suffering from the bed bug bites, and the hostel I was in , Wincas, called for a doctor to come visit me. Half an hour later they showed up and for only 8 Pesos gave me an injection in my ass. It was so painful and in only 20 minutes the itching and swelling had stopped and I was now ready for the 14 hour bus trip to Buenos Aires with Ella.

The bus trip was bloody awful, the seats were only semi cama, which means they tilted
back but not far enough for you to sleep and stretch your legs and the temperature on the bus went from extemely hot to extremly cold, aside from this some jerk ass decided the isle was the best place to throw up, so the top deck smelt so godam bad. So me and Ella decided to move to the bottom floor of the bus where it was much better.

We arrived in Buenos Aires the following morning and it wasn't what I was expecting...
we got in a taxi and I lit up a ciggarette and looked outside the window. The streets were flooded with cars and people. The streets are long and wide and noisy and conjested with traffic. They drive like maniacs here, the taxis attempt to stream though the streets and dodge buses and speed up when someone is crossing the road.

I really think BA is very similar to Sydney, except people don't try to kill you when you cross the street and believe it or not, compared to BA- Sydney is dead. The nightlife here is huge and it only starts getting busy after 2am. This is the city that never sleeps.

Newspaper stands, beauty salons, cafe's bookstores and chemists are everywhere and are always filled and above the shops are apartments with people hanging out of them and dangeling a ciggarette betwen their fingers and swinging their legs lazily from the verandas. There are clothes hanging outside windows and balconies as well as flower pots stacked on top of eachother.

The buildings and apartments are very old and very beatiful, you find yourself constantly stopping to admire some building. BA is also a place to trip over a lot, so watch your step. The pavents change at every corner from cobbles stones to ceramic tiles and are often sticking out and put together badly. I recently sprained my ankle from these streets and have been walking with a limp for the last three days.

I am staying in the city centre, very close to the Obilisque, this tall, useless tower that divide the city, it was built in the 30's and was the first monument in BA and apparently, it was built just for the sake of having their owen monument. On either side are 10-lane roads and Ave De Mayo and Ave De Julio, it's an excellent place to meet someone, because you can see the tower a mile off.

After changing several hostels and ditching several people who were getting on my nerves. I eventually found The Lime House Hostel, where Karen, whom I met in Santiago was staying. For the next week I stayed at this hostel and loved it! It was no Winca's but it had something about it, but the annoying thing was, that right outside my room was the bar and pool room, and I would constantly hear music and this annoying Israeli girl laughing and talking absolute rubbish all night, all day and all morning long, she would not shut up and she was way too forward, without even asking my name she would ask me if I would come with her to Recolleta or she would ask me if her hair was sexy and if boys would like her hair or something like that.. bargghh! go away! be gone! The power of Christ compells you!!

On the first day at Lime House, Karen and I went to Recolletta and La Savelle, to buy tickets for the Bocca game on the following day.

Recolleta is a very ritzy neighbourhood and home to the famous Recolletta cemetary. It's incredibly beautiful and eerie at the same time. We got their and the sky turned grey and it started to rain and all these cats appeared from nowhere. It reminded me a lot of that place, Midian from the Clive Barker movie, Night Breed. It was set up like a tiny neighbourhood with small streets and was dotted with small to monumental graves filled with families and important people, such as Evita.

Karen and I met up with Seamus, whom I also met in Santiago, as well as Maria who was staying at the Lime House too and the four of us went to the Bocca game the next day.
The stadium was packed with thousands of Bocca fans on one side and La Savelle fans on the other. The crowds were totally riled up and it was so exciting to watch these calm Argentinians let go and scream their hearts out. Bocca won 3 to 2 and one the way out of the stadium the crowds were stopped by four policemen.

They wouldn't let anyone leave the gates, we suspected they wanted the players to leave first. After a grooling 40 minutes or so, the crowds started to swirl and it was becoming really tense and aggrevating. Eventually, the police let us all go, but if this were to happen in Sydney for instance, four petty policement wouldn't stop anyone, they Sydney fans would go crazy and start causing fights and throwing anything they could get their hands on, but suprisingly the Argentinians remained calm and we watched them and were totally amazed at their patience.

The next day Karen and I headed for La Bocca. La Bocca is only really one block filled with touristic shops, art studios, tango street dancers and brightly coloured buildings with cartoony statues hanging out of the balconies. So many times, I would just be walking and a strange man in a hat and suit would grab my hand and start doing the tango with me. We walked past a small cafe and this drag queen pulled us inside and told us that we must eat there and gave us some inside goss about Madonna cheating on her husband with her producer. He showed us photos of all these celebrities who have visited his cafe. It was very hard to say no to him, but we eventually got away.

Again, as we were walking a friendly man pulled us into his gallery and showed us around, I was looking around and noticed that there was something really familiar about ths place. Then looked at the old man head on and realised he's the guy from the Lonely Planet DVD on Argentina! He said they never sent him a DVD but everyone recognizes him from the show. For a living, this man is an artist and a tango dancer, he paints the soles of his shoes and dances the tango on canvas and sells them, I thought this was very cool. He then showed us all his awards, certificates and newspaper clippings, as well as a CD of his daughter who is an opera singer. Very quirky character, he invited us to watch his new show where he dances and performs magic tricks... I don't know how that would work exactly.

As I was walking home, I went into a bookstore to find a Dickens book because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I bumped into Maria from the hostel, she had moved into an apartment in Buenos Aires city and knew that I was interested. She told me that she had changed her mind and was going to go to Mendoza instead, so we arranged to meet the following day so that I could inspect the apartment.

That night the four of us went to a traditional Tango show which was really cool. The guy did this cool trick where he flipped the girl over his knee and she was dancing in mid-air somehow.

Karen left the following morning to go home, to England and I was very sad to lose a friend, but just when I thought I couldn't meet any new cool people, I met these two Israeli boys, Eyal and Eitan who were staying in my dorm, probablly the funniest two boys I have met so far.

Eyal accompanied me to check out the apartment and it completly threw me! I was expecting something dodgy with crumbling paper walls, but this place was so cozy and ritzy I couldn't say no! The doors were glass and covered in green curtains, the kitchen was clean and so was the bathroom, very different to a hostel! I was very happy with it. My room, was quite large, with a single bed in the centre, a cable tv and a small balcony overlooking the city.

Viera was the owner, she's a beautiful Russian lady who teaches maths and english and she looks even more beautiful that Angelina Jolie. Her Argentinian boyfriend, Erik lives there too as well as his mother (the cleaning lady) Maria. Maria is probablly the cutest thing I have ever seen, she laughs from her heart and carrys her crosse-eyed cat in her arms. Her cat's name is Vishnu, he's extremly cute and is always meowing and when he's near Maria he meows "Mummy". When I was standing in the kitchen one morning, Vishnu came up from behind me and threw his doll (that he, how do I say this... "plays with") at my back. I don't know how in the hell he did this but he threw it so hard, I got the biggest shock and realised there was no one else in the room, so it must have been him.

That night, the Israeli boys took me to an Israeli restaraunt close by. We ate falafells and Humas and they taught me how to dip it propelly, with a flicky wrist thing, kind of way. We listened to live music and had beer and was very fun.

Then when we got back to the hostel, Eitan and I sat on the roof listening to my ipod till the wee hours of the morning, and being on the rooftop, we could here this god aweful israeli girl talking about rubbish... loudly (of course) and this gave us access to the top of her head through this glass window ceiling thing...
So, I noticed that I had some tic tacs in my pocket, so we snuck onto the roof glass thing and we started pegging them at her head and this dense israeli girl didnt even realise things were being thrown at her head!
We did this for a while, and in between we were talking about the funniest and the stupidest things, like idiotic ways to die.. like this guy who ran out of coke or alochol, i forget, and he mixed coke and gasoline and then it made him feel sick of course so he threw up on the fire place and was incinerated... hehe (idiot).

And so it went on and on, we eventually got tired of games and headed for bed. We must have been quite noisy because this other Israeli guy, Tal woke up and said in his very Israeli accent, "Hey guys, why are you whispering? I'm awake, are we having a party?" and instead of going to sleep like planned, the four of us ended up talking and giggling all night and doing funny accents and telling me all about this Israeli sauce mango spew thing that you serve with falafells, .. this went on till eventually we dropped like flies..

I woke up at 12 in the arvo, and i was making noise, Tal- the sleepy israli guy turns to me and said, "so deborah, what are u doing? u know its early huh, why dont u go back to bed?"
and i said, "no ive got stuff to do, i gotta get moving..."
and he said, "no for serious now, just climb back into your bed, dont go anywhere, i promise you have nothing to do.."
and i was half asleep and ended up laughing in such a cackle I accidentally woke up this german guy in the room. It reminded me so much of our Moriah camp days 😊

So anyway, the next night me and the Israeli boys went out again, this time to the Santa Fe/ Florida area of the city where we went for drinks and on the way played video games and air hockey, which was fun. On the way back, Eyal and Eitan decided to recite the Monty Python's Holy Grail to me and I don't think I've ever laughed so hard, yes I may have peed a little 😊 hehe. That night was pretty cool, just a lot of lying around in different rooms of the hostel, they have a pretty cool pool room and a TV room and I think I spent most of the night in there.
The next morning I moved into my apartment and Eitan helped me get settled in, before he and Eyal had to leave to Iguazu... sigh 😞

I had a week left of Buenos Aires and I spent it mostly with Seamus, exploring San Telmo on a Sunday, as well as Tigre on a speed boat and visiting the fantastic Buenos Aires Zoo... eating and chilling out in my apartment watching tv and writing in my journal. I have become very used to Buenos Aires and can easily say I have fallen in love with the place... and i'm very glad that I am coming back in December-ish. That is, if my plans don't change for the hundreth time 😊

I know this blog is long and not that interesting, but it's everything that i've been doing up until now. I was meant to stay in BA until Wed, but decided to leave at the last minute so that I can do my brazilian visa in Puerto Iguazu, which takes only one day as opposed to three in BA.

I'm in Iguazu falls now and have met up with my mate Dave from Mendoza. We spent the day on the Brazilian side of the Iguazu falls (illegally) and I have to say it was probablly one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. Apparently there are about 275 waterfalls to see and we only saw the one side, tomorrow we are going to see the Argentinan side and after that, Brazil for me.


Check out my photos at http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/debsi_photos/my_photos


Until then,
cioa, Deb
mwa :p

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Photos

Tango
Tango in BA

Street performers
freaky street performer guy in San Telmo on Sunday

Street art
Cool funky street art in La Boca

I heart Argentina
got this top from Sant Telmo, I'm never taking it off, they also have a Buenos fucking Aires top, but this one's better I think..

Comments

[LINZICA]

Hummus? DONDE?
Hey Deb. Im jenica, from Canada. I really loved your blog. Sounds like you had a great and wild time in Buenos Aires. I am studying here now and would like to know, if you remember the Israeli restaurant´s name. ??? I love hummus and falafel, please let me know! Have fun! Besos - Jenica [e-mail]

[jay]

food
it is not kosher but Sardi's near thames and cordaba is great jay

[Eliana]

from buenos aires!
Hello Debo (as we say here) im Eliana from buenos aires arg. i was born in Mendoza, and it was so nice to see pics from there and read that you liked the place so much, becouse i miss mendoza so much too!!! hope to see u again here(or read about it, he-he-he) take care!!