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Hello! Sorry it's taken a while but I'm finally getting around to post something. I'll start at the beginning (which seems sensible), so this post covers Buenos Aires and my overnight excursion to Uruguay.
I think it's fair to say it took a bit of time for me to warm to Buenos Aires. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with it, it just didn't feel like the reason I'd travelled half way around the world. This first week in BA almost felt like a seperate holiday, a bit of a warm up. BA is a big, hot, dirty city - I'm really not selling this! - but it surprised me in many ways, it felt very European, in fact throw in a bit Gaudi architecture and it felt as if I could have been in Barcelona. It was also a lot less edgy than I expected. Clearly my mind has been warped by famous Buenos Aireans such as Diego Maradonna and Calros Tevez and I guess I thought it might feel a bit more dangerous, but no it all felt very safe and I found all the people very friendly. Most of my time in BA I just spent wandering around, although there aren't really any famous sights, it's a big city and there are plenty of nice neighbourhoods to stroll around. After a few days in BA I decided I needed to get away to somewhere a bit more peaceful so I took the ferry over to Colonia in Uruguay which is just over the big brown channel of River Plate.
After a slightly odd ferry journey. I could have sworn the ferry actually stopped for an hour in the middle of the journey, some bloke looking like a Uruguayan Tom Jones got on a mini stage, whipped out his guitar and starting blasting out Uruguayan hits of yesteryear. At least I presume they were classics, from the crowd that had gathered and the way they were singing along perhaps this guy was at the very cutting edge of the Uruguayan music scene, I guess I'll never know.
Anyway I had a really nice night in Colonia, which is a former smugling town. It's a bit touristy now but still a lot more relaxing than Buenos Aires. After a night there I headed back to BA. Rather than compiling a list of things I've did in BA I thought I'd just put some observations below, which hopefully should be more fun for me to write and less boring for you to read.
Lonely Planet Latin American Spanish Phrasebook is not very good!
I know it's a bit of a cliche to make fun of phrasebooks, but I cannot recommend the Lonely Planet Spanish phrasebook, certainly not as a reference book anyway. However as a comedy diversion in moments of boredom it certainly delivers the goods. As is often the case with these books, essentials such as food and accommodation are breezily glossed over in the first few pages so the author can get onto more interesting but far less useful translations. Favourites so far include:
I am a member of the communist party
Does this area have a toxic waste problem?
And...
'She's a virgin and pround of it' I cannot imagine under what circumstances you would need to use this. Even if someone said it to me, do the authors really think I would whip out my handy phrasebook, scour the index and then upon finding the translation reply? Madness!
Dogs
There were a lot of dogs in BA and teams of people to walk them all around. It was a fairly regular occurence to see a hapless dog walker being dragged through the streets by a pack of 10 or 12 beasts. This amount of dogs also leads to considerable amounts of mess on the streets so you constantly have to watch your step. It sort of reminded me of how Britain (or certainly Donny) used to be 20 years ago, when as a kid I seemed to be forever standing in dog crap. Leaving your dog's s*** on the pavement is one of those things like smoking, which seems to have become socially unacceptable in recent times in the UK and a very good thing too. Makes you feel proud to be British!
Food
Argentian food can be divided into 3 basic food groups:
Beef and Lamb - Steak of various quality, but always big and much cheaper. I'm not quite sure what would happen if they ever had a BSE style outbreak in Argentina. At a guess the economy would collapse within a week and as anarchy spread cannabilism would quickly take over and that would be the end of that!
Pizza and pasta - a fallback if you're tired of eating cow or have herbivorious inclinations
Other - by far the smallest food group made up of chips, green leaves (generally rotting) served as salad and weird minature sweet croissants that they seem to like serving for breakfast and empanadas (like Cornish pasties) for lunch. Incidentally I recently saw the news from the UK which seems to be dominated at the moment by whether Greggs are going to have to tax their Steak Bakes and other culniary delights, I'm not sure if empanadas are taxed, perhaps I should investigate...
In fairness perhaps I'm being harsh on the range of food available, there might be a lot more choice on menus, I'm just unable to read them because my phrasebook is so woefully inadequate.
PS
I cannot pass this opportunity to get out the begging bowl, particularly as I've failed to raise any money so far. The day after I get back from South America I'm signed up to the Keswick to Barrow 40-mile charity walk. Any contributions would be very much appreciated. Donations can be made on my sponsorship page which can be found here:
http://www.keswick2barrow.co.uk/sponsor/welcome.asp?ID=1093
Many thanks
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