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We took a taxi from the bus station to the hostel we had been recommended in Buenos Aires clled the Milhouse. I was a bit worried though as it had a reputation for being the party hostel with tales of people setting their alarms for 1am to get up and go out! I needn´t have worried though as we seemed the keep up with the best of them and were the last in our dorms in bed every night!When we got to the hostel it was full for that night so we went to another one around the corner called The Clan. The staff here were really friendly and we had a really good room but it was pretty noisy. Kate's friends' brother had been travelling the same route as us and we finally caught up with him and his friends here in Buenos Aires (they were staying in the Milhouse). We met up with them all that evening and wen to a really cool drum show called Bomba which was on until 10pm. We then went back to the Milhouse for the Monday night party and quickly got into the Buenos Aires swing of things by going for dinner at midnight! We ended up at this amazing and cheap steak restaurant and I was surprised to see that there were still families in there at that time with small children. After this we headed back to the hostel and then to a club opposite.The next day there were free beds at the Milhouse so we checked out of the Clan after breakfast. After leaving our bags at the hostel we went for a wander round the city. We were pretty shattered that night and intended to go to bed early but we met some really cool people and two bottles of wine later it was 4am… We still managed to get up fairly early the next day and went with some friends to the Evita museum. We had been told it was free on Wednesdays but when we got there, there were two men outside who told us it was shut as they were changing some of the exhibits. After begging and pleading with them (we had come all that way after all!), they let us in but told us we had to be quick. The museum itself was all in Spanish and so we were happy when a huge group of English speakers appeared and were being given a guided tour (think this was the real reason we weren't allowed in). We tagged inconspicuously onto the back of this and the museum became a lot more interesting after that. I might even watch the film now!After the museum, we headed to Recoleta, one of Buenos Aires richest neighbourhoods, to visit Evita´s grave at the famous cemetery there. It is such a strange place, with row upon row of tombs and statues where the elite of Buenos Aires were once buried (there are no more burials allowed in this cemetery now). The tombs were huge and some of them have been extremely well maintained inside and out. They have exquisite marbled facades and several floors for all the family coffins to fit into. Others have been left to deteriorate with dusty cobwebbed interiors not touched for years, and roofs caving in. Apparently a new law has been passed to allow the Argentinean government to tidy up neglected graves (they were previously classed as private property), as Recoleta is such an important tourist attraction. There are a lot of stories from the cemetery, I´m not sure how true they all are but they are interesting. One includes how a girl was not dead when she was buried (The family noticed the coffin had moved the next day and there were scratch marks on the inside of the coffin when the family opened it), so the law changed to say that burials can only take place after 48 hours of death. There was also the story about the family who sold their plot for a ridiculous amount of money and had to move all of the coffins elsewhere….We followed the crowds to find Evita´s grave but the plot itself was unremarkable and it would have been very hard to find it if it wasn't for those people visiting it and the fresh flowers that are constantly put there by fans.In the evening we all went to a Tango night, which included a free tango lesson but there were too many girls, not enough male dance partners and we were all really hungry so we were looking forward to it finishing! We then had a three course meal with as much free wine as you wanted until the tango show started. The actual tango show was incredible and the dancers were all really talented. All in all it was a really lovely evening and I finished it off by going to a really rubbish nightclub with some people from the hostel. It was a bit of a con as the ticket promised "queue jump and a free drink!" … There was no queue and the free drink was water! We did pass the Floralis Generica though, which is a very cool giant metal flower structure whose petals close at night! They were open again by the time we went passed it for a second time on leaving the club!On Thursday I didn´t intend to do much as I was shattered and Kate had gone shopping. In fact I was going to mend the beads I had broken in Iguazu (in fact a very embarrassing moment - they broke onto atile floor and went everwhere but I still made everyone run around picking them up!)Anyway I saw a friend who talked me into going for a walk with him to the Puerto Madero area (the port). We had lunch there and wandered around, which was really nice as the weather was lovely. On the way back we tried not to walk too close to the stand where Falklands activists are renowned for hurling abuse at anyone who looks remotely British. We also stumbled across a fashion shoot, which was cool to see. That night was the last we would have with some of our friends so we decided to splash out and go to one of Buenos Aires´ best steak restaurants in the cool neighbourhood of Palermo. We had to wait nearly 2 hours for a table but got free champagne and home made sausages whilst waiting. The steak was definitely worth waiting for and even though we were all ridiculously full on leaving the restaurant we decided to go over to a club called Culture Club for a hip hop night. They had a amazing break dancing show going on with people taking it in turns on the dance floor to do their thing!I loved it in there as it was my kind of music, in fact it´s probably one of the best clubs I've ever been too.On Friday we checked out of the hostel and headed over tto the Embassy to meet Simon (my cousin who lives and works in Buenos Aires). He drove us back to his house in Martinez, the suburbs about 45 mins from the centre. His wife Lucy and their son Oliver were waiting to greet us and after playing with Oliver for a while, Simon showed us around the area. We then had a lovely dinner and had our first taste of the Peruvian dish ceviche, which is raw fish marinated in lime, chilli and spices. It was really nice to stay in someone´s home without having to share a room with complete strangers and having carpet and an ensuite was definitely a luxury!On Saturday Kate and I went to look around the famous market in Palermo where all the young fashion designers have this one tiny section in a room to display their designs. We had planned to be back at Simon and Lucy´s for 7pm so we could go out for dinner with them and Oliver before Oliver had to go for bed. Unfortunately we managed to miss the train stop and ended up having to get a taxi back to their house. We just made it for 7 and went to a lovely restaurant in Martinez. Kate and I then headed out to the hostel to meet up with some friends before we went to the nightclub Pacha. Nothing gets started in Buenos Aires until about 1am so we told Simon and Lucy to expect us back very late. The club was good and we got VIP entrance but it was pretty expensive. We got back at 5am and then got up at 9am to go out for the day with Simon, Lucy and Oliver. I had a snooze in the car on the way to a typical traditional gaucho town. It was really lovely, we went to a silver museum then for some delicious home made pasta (Kate and I passed on the wine!) in a traditional small restaurant and finally onto a gaucho museum. When we got back I spoke to Dad on skype for the first time, which was very strange (but lovely!) as we had the video set up but at least it was proof I was ok! Simon cooked for us that night and we had a fairly early one as we were unsurprisingly very tired! We headed back to the Milhouse hostel on Monday as some of our friends were there also that night. There was a party on in the hostel so we just stayed there and then headed out for some food. When we'd arrived at the hostel earlier that day, there was no one else staying in our room and we were hoping it would stay like that. However, when we got back there was a guy in the room from Brazil. He was a bit strange and when Kate was in the shower the next morning he came and knelt next to my bed and started to stroke my head…Then when Kate got out of the shower he told her she should leave her hair down as he liked it like that. He then asked if he could spend the day with us but I made up some excuse as to why he couldn´t. We were going to ask if we could swap rooms but luckily the other beds filled up that day and we told the other people to be a bit wary of him. That day we arranged to meet up with one of my friend Alice´s friends, Ernesto. We met him by the law courts (he´s a lawyer don´t you know!) and we then went to lunch in a lovely restaurant in Recoleta then for a Submarine (warm milk with a submarine shaped chocolate to drop into it) at a really nice coffee shop. It was really interesting talking to him about life in Argentina but after a very long lunch break he had to go back to work and we headed back to the hostel. In the evening, it was ´ladies night,´ which basically meant girls got a couple of free shots and the lads hoped they had a better chance of pullin! We had ours then quickly scarpered to Palermo. It was pretty quiet but there was a fairly big group of us so we still had a lot of fun. There was also a crazy Argentinean woman in the bar who was really good fun so I befriended her and we chatted for a while. She even managed to get me to fix her up with a random German guy who was in the bar! We decided to give Palermo another chance the next evening and bought an even bigger group with us but it was still disappointingly quiet. The next day was Thursday and we went with some lads from the hostelfor a wander around San Telmo, home of BA´s tango culture. It is full of cobbled streets and ageing mansions and once used to be home to the rich elite before the plague drove them all out in 1870. It has a famous antiques fair and lots of tango street shows in the Plaza Dorrego, which we sat and watched for a while. We´d arranged to meet Ernesto that evening for our last night in Buenos Aires but he´d been working until really late so instead we decided to head to a restaurant called La Brigada in St Telmo with a guy called Evan. It was recommended to us by Simon and Lucy and even though it's a bit touristy, the locals still go there as it is so good. Whilst waiting for a table we got chatting to two Mexican guys who were also staying in our hostel so we all decided to sit together and had the most amazing meal. They cut the steak with a spoon it was that tender. We had a really lovely waiter called Coco and it turned out it was one of the guys birthdays who we were sitting with, so we got free dessert too! We were too full to go out for our last night so we just went back to the hostel. The next day was spent packing and sorting ourselves out for the 3 day bus journey to Lima. Neither of us was particularly looking forward to it but we kind of hoped it would be a decent bus…how wrong could we be…!