¿Porque Non?

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We found our hotel pretty easily in BA and after dumping our bags headed to the Spanish school to enrol. We had been in touch with them over email (having realised that we we certainly in need of some assistance on the lingo front) but wanted to find out where it was and what was the easiest way of travelling to it so that we knew for Monday. Having felt a bit jaded after the bus it was good to take a stroll and get our bearings!

The hotel was fine and being cheaper than a lot of the hostels we were pleased to find that we were in the Palermo area close to the Subte (underground) and close to lots of reasonably priced steak houses and bars. We enrolled in the school, had a quick Siesta and headed out to eat.

We had been recommended La Cabrerra by Liz who lived in BA for 6 months. On arrival we couldn´t get a table so we went to the bar next door and waited. Well it certainly was worth the wait as the steak and the side dishes were out of this world. You don´t need to order anything else as they bring you so many other delicious things to try and the steaks are the size of a not so small child! We waddled home from there just as Palermo was starting to get lively. I think we fell into a steak enduced coma and woke late the next day.

We decided that it was time to see some of the sights so after a quick breakfast of medialunas (as the name suggests half moon shaped croissants which are sweet) and coffee we headed off to the graveyard where Evita was buried. This was over the other side of town and it might sound quite morbid but it wasn´t. We walked to the Recoleta area of the city and went to the Recoleta Cemetry the graves are almost like small churches. All we needed to do was follow the crowd to find Evita´s grave. It was however slightly bizarre that in such a place of respect there was a South African rugby team on tour with inflatable dolls and hammers which made the whole experience slightly surreal! BA is such a cool city and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay there, it is definitely of the cosmopolitan variety and has stunning parks and wide leafy green spaces. We spent most of the day walking round and needed a siesta when we got it. Since arriving in South America we eat late, not say at 9pm but 11-12pm mainly because if we go any earlier there is no one else in the restaurant and so it is very difficult to gague if that is because it is rubbish or just too early!! On the Saturday evening we went to Lo de Jesus, ate steak again and were unable to go out to a bar afterwards as we were so full.

On Sunday our plan had been to go to Uraguay for the day on the ferry, when we arrived at the ferry terminal it was going to be too expensive for a couple of hours trip so we decided to sack that off and explore more of BA. We walked along by the harbour and the front where the ferry port is and then walked along to La Boca area where Boca Juniors football team´s home stadium is. The area was pretty sketchy to say the least and this was confirmed in our guide book which suggested avoiding the place even during the day. Following this we headed back to the square to get some lunch. I was really craving salad at this point after all the steak so we shared a steak and a salad! We had a quiet evening as Spanish lessons were starting in the morning and we needed to be fresh.

We made it to class in the morning by using the Subte, this mode of public transport actually makes the Central line in London look spacious. I was screaming out for someone to call the Invasion of Personal Space Police, as that didn´t happen we were thankful to get off and walk the rest of the journey to school. There were 6 of us in the class: Steve and Bec a couple from the UK who were starting out on their travels, Joff and myself, Alex from London who had literally walked off the plane that morning and straight into class and Melissa a Psycologist from Chicago.

The classes were quite intense, 2 hours of grammar to start the morning, a couple mins break followed by 2 hours of vocab and joining up the grammar, also known as speaking. Alex, Joff and I have all studied languages before and had a habit of saying a french word with an "a" or an "o" on the end much to the teachers annoyance. Luckily the grammar is quite like french so it was OK to pick up we had a long way to go though. In the afternoon I had to pick up a new credit card and we went to the BA office to try and book some flights, which turned out to be a huge waste of time.

I won´t go into too much detail but basically we wanted to cut out travelling on buses and were told that we could book these flights. After about 6 days of trying we were finally able to book a South American airpass through LAN airways. Definitely worth it from a time saving perspecitve and value for money.

Being at school was a bit like a cross between a French exchange and being back at Uni. On Monday evening we sat in the communal area of the hotel and drank a bottle of Malbec whilst going over our notes. This type of studying was certainly better than being at Uni (well for me anyway! I think Joff may have had an alternative method). On Tuesday we went for lunch with Alex after school and having walked in we decided to walk back Alex asked if he could tag along and see Palermo so we agreed to meet for a drink later. When we met him he had bumped into Lindsay a girl from the US taking a sabatical for a month to learn Spanish in BA. We immediately recognised her as we had seen her in the tube station the day before trying to buy a 15p ticket on Amex and not having much joy! Small world! We had a great week, socialising with new people, eating great food and learning Spanish. We also watched a lot of football. The Copa America is on at the moment and it is a big deal here! Especially as it is being held in Argentina!

At the end of the week on Thursday Sylvina our Spanish teacher took us on a walk of the city. The Portuguese group decided to sack the walk off and go shopping so we decided to be typically British and sit down and have a beer. It was a beautiful afternoon and we sat in the square having rearranged all the chairs and tables to accommodate us all. We had also picked up a random dog on the walk so he settled down with us. Sylvina had to cancel her lesson that she was supposed to give that evening, we are such a bad influence. We continued into the evening and ended up in a steak restaurant, for a change.

The next morning feeling a bit jaded we got a taxi to lessons and did our homework on the way. No one had done the homework except for us and the others were wondering how we had managed it. Steve had been up the whole night drinking so I felt quite normal when I had seen him :-) We were having quite a bit of banter at this point as we had bonded a bit more as a group, so when Alex asked what the word "vida" meant and I said "life, as in La Vida Loca" Joff said "is Ricky Martin gay" anyway this lead to Sylvina teaching us that "salidar de la amoira" means to come out of the closet, I love it when translations are so literal like that. Joff also realised that when he had finished eating in a restaurant he was saying "mucho gusto" thinking it meant it tatsted nice. It actually means "pleased to meet you" this had the class disolved into a fit of giggles. When he should have been saying "mi gusto". Joff also came out with a sentence, trying to ask for the bathroom but was actually asking "Where are your Serbians?" I had visions of a whole load of illegal immigrants running out of the back of a restaurant in BA, just because Joff needed to go to the toilet! It was a shame to leave the class as I felt that we were starting to gel a bit more as a group and get on well with each other. Anyway these things have to come to an end I guess.

We met up with Alex and Lyndsay on Friday evening for dinner and went to a Mexican place we were late as it took me a while to dry my hair, Although I do know the word for hairdryer now so it is in fact easier to communicate. We ended up eating at 1am and going to sleep about 6. It was amazing that as we were heading home people were still out. We managed to have a lie in the next morning and I wanted to do some shopping. I had decided that it would be good to buy some winter wardrobe items to send home so that I didn´t need to worry about that when I returned. They would be in the right season and would mean that I had stuff straight away when I got back.

I had noticed that although our teachers looked nice, they would wear something like a blue skirt, a cream poloneck with blue jewlery and accessorise with blue mascara. As this is a look I am not too accustomed to I sacked off the shopping trip after a couple of hours (Joff had left me after about 25 mins of umming and ahing) and wandered home. That night we completed our week in BA with a another round of steak and malbec. Well they might not have food in Iguazu!!!!!!

We were due to get the bus at 7pm on Sunday evening so we spent the day wandering round the Botanical Gardens, the parks and had a nice lunch before picking up our bags and heading to Retiro for the 17 hour bus journey. Luckily before we left Penny had written down the names of sleeping pills that we should get for long bus journeys. After what I can only describe as an under the counter transaction with a pharmacist - him implying that we needed a prescription, but as he was slipping the packet into a brown paper bag, adding that as long as we didn´t mention where we had bought them from whilst winking at us - we managed to sleep for about 8 hours on the journey. This is a first for me on any form of transport. I think that the guy thought if anyone did ask us we wouldn´t be able to respond in Spanish and he was quite safe!

The journey wasn´t too bad and if you book full cama, you also get food and drinks, there is a film and you can stretch right out. Well I can, this again is the advantage of having extremely short legs! We managed to get a bit more upto date with our spanish revision and watched a film. We arrived in Iguazu refreshed and ready for the next part of the adventure!

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Photos

Botanical Gardens
You can see everyone in the photo is drunk or drinking!

Last night in BA
... it had to be meat didn´t it?