Buenos Aires

OK first entry. Hello hello. Buenos Aires - kapow!

I´ve just spent the last 3 weeks (almost) in Buenos Aires. I guess the beginning was always gonna go one way or the other and I would either escape somewhere quiet to acclimatise or get stuck into the city and enter the travel mindset through familiar city-break style living.

As it turned out the latter was the case and rather than sliding gently into the new culture we nose-dived right to the bottom of a big barrel of red wine and drank our way to the top, or at least drank it to the bottom.
We: Myself, Jimbo, Rahul

The intention on arrival (reading the plans in the rough itinerary that I wrote months ago) was to find somewhere cheap to live and enjoy Argentineann culture while undertaking a language course and meeting new people.

Commendable, I think you´ll agree. And I think that´s kind of what happened. We´ve been to Tango shows, Flamenco, dined out with the locals we´ve met. We lived in an apartment in the centre for two weeks and spent the days ambling round the streets and going to classes in Spanish, eating out and meeting folk for tapas, pool, darts(!), poker, coffee, a beer or two. We´ve been to antiques markets (ok, one antiques market - but several times), many steakhouses, strange clubs, a chess club... However, most of all we´ve spent the last 3 weeks drinking and touring the city´s bars. That and faffing in a sweaty stupor in Internet cafes (there´s one about every 3 yards on every road in Buenos Aires).

It might have been different if Rahul were not there when I arrived but there he was. On the back of 4 months coming down through Central America and South America he seemed pretty settled and intent on really cutting loose. So that´s pretty much what we´ve done - it´s been a relentless and sorry cycle of self-abuse as we pushed ourselves further, harder, later and longer. I´d now have to trawl through the emails that I´ve been sending over the last few weeks to rediscover how I´ve spent the time as I´ve a really fuggled memory of it. All the days blur into about a week and while I can distinguish being in so many curious, different places with random and familiar people, I couldn´t fix the memories to a date or all of the faces with a name. It´s been fun but on some level Rahul must be responsible - his thirst for alcohol and entertainment has been unquenchable.

And another thing - why does everyone think I´m gay? OK so I bought a yellow unbrella. And I didn´t immediately master the art of attracting a waiter´s attention by raising the hand rather than waving it. But I don´t think that´s any reason for such undivided consent on the matter. The only potential pick-up on this holiday so far has been a 41 year old man who isnsited, despite my assertions to the contrary, that my sexuality was dubious. Where are the dusky latino temptresses begging me to salsa with them? I think Rahul and Jimbo have been colluding to secretly tell people I´m gay but not to mention it to me. I´m pretty sure Rahul did that at the language school. Mischevious git.

Anyway, putting that rant aside, I don´t mention all of this boozing as any kind of boast... it´s easy to sit around drinking and getting fat (I´ve gained a chin in the last few weeks and half of the carefully packed clothes no longer fit me - I´m not kidding). Neither is it a cautionary tale because we´ve had a lot of fun. I can´t say that we´ve managed it that well. It´s tough to get into the habit of going out until 4am on week days, being in class for 10 and then sleeping all weekend (in between late nights in clubs).

In hindsight I wish I had applied myself a little more to learning Spanish (they don´t speak too much English here). It would have been good to visit the cemetry in Recoletta where Eva Peron is buried - apparently it´s stunning. Also, we missed out on a Boca game because we were too hung-over. But hey, what can you do when it´s 75p for a decent bottle of red. We reckon we had about 30 each in the 19 days we spent in BA. Yeah. And all in all, I´m not sure that we didn´t actually get the best out of the place. It´s a great city to party in, there are so many different things going on (mostly seeming to revolve around Tango - but that might just have been the people we were hanging around with) but there aren´t exactly hoardes of museums to visit. I think that we landed and started living pretty much as the locals though they seem to handle the late nights a fair bit better - probably because they don´t hit the booze so hard.

Feeling totally ruined we left Buenos Aires, with Rahul in it, on Monday.

Now we´re in Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay which is a pretty little place (UNESCO world heritage site or something similar) and we´re drying up and eating only mixed salads and fruit. I feel a world better. Did some press-ups this morning.

This feels more like the start of the travels proper and we´ve a hell of a lot planned over the next 4 weeks including Iguazu falls, Patagonia, climbing a mountain in the Andes, cruising round the coast of Chile, the Lake District (Chile-Argentine version thereof)...

Thus far it´s not exactly been hardcore, roughing it among jaw-dropping wilderness. And I´m looking forward to that - if you´re not the stereotypical back-packer, braided and tatooed then you´re almost the stereotypical smart-casual tourist with all-seeing camera and frequent expression of "that´s so quaint". I´ll be damned if I´m going to walk some middle ground. So far the closest I´ve come to feeling on the road was in having to get the medical kit out to fix my big toenail after some marauding kid trod on my foot in the main street (Florida) of BA. Toenail split up the middle and needed plastering and antiseptic and all that. Much better now since half of it came off but it struck me as odd that it wasn´t until I had to use a pair of tiny travel scissors, suffer some minor inconvenience, that I realised I wasn´t at home anymore and perhaps should be enjoying further incovenience and hardship and unusual experiences. Having said that, I´m not wishing trials upon myself.

We´re going to Montevideo tomorrow for the first proper adventure of trying to secure onward travel north to the Argentine border with Brazil and Paraguay (maybe more of a challenge than it sounds without much Spanish and as we can´t get any information on busses - not sure there are any). If, in the event, that´s all too easy, well my hair is already becoming shaggy so I´m gonna get a couple of facial piercings then I´ll definitely be like a real traveller (suggestions for tattoos welcome).

Anyway, this blog isn´t supposed to be a place where I write loads, it´s more of an interface through which friends and family can keep broadly in touch with what I´m up to and see the photos. Hmmm.

A couple of notes on the photos:
1/ I still haven´t quite worked out how to use my camera so a few of them are underexposed
2/ I was drunk when I took most of them so a few of them are lopsided and/or blurry
3/ I didn´t take my camera everywhere and have missed some of the more interesting events so most of these photos are dull.
4/ Heading home from a bar one night the light as the sun came up was amazing so I went out and took some photos of the route that I usually took through the city if heading to school or over the Rahul´s apartment. Reviewing them later in the day they had failed to capture the light unfortunately. So I went back out and tried again - hence all of the repetitive photos of Lavalle and Florida. Sorry.

I intend in future to only take interesting photos that Sebastiao Salgado would be proud of. Or maybe Helmut Newton.

If you follow this link then you´ll have to sign in to view the album.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.7e9grah6&x=1&y=-5f3hcx

You can even buy the photos if you want! Don´t hold back. And you can post comments on the photos or on this blog (though do remember if you´re making them public that my mother will be accessing it and she´s terribly reserved and delicate).

I hope all are well. Comments and criticisms on words and photos are welcome - don´t sugarcoat it please.
Seriously, just keep in touch.