Day 2

Today is actually Day 8 or 9 and I'll write down as much as I can remember.

I believe on day 2 we went to Palermo. We took a bus there from San Telmo, it was a very long bus ride, like 1 hour or something. There was a funny story, we didn't have enough coins (we thought we did) but we found out that the bus fare was about 6 pesos (shocking right), and put in all the pesos we had, and the locals on the bus had those bus cards. So some friendly local paid for our bus fare with their card. I don't remember if we gave him paper money or not in return, think we did but he refused to take it.

So we arrived in Palermo, and as usual, we hunted for food because Rob woke up quite late and it was nearly lunch time by then. We ate hamburgers from this stall outside the Buenos Aires zoo. It was sooo greasy, but delicious. I vowed to eat more healthy after that I think.

We had the burger in the nearby botanical gardens, then afterwards crossed the road to find a bank for me to exchange some USD but it was closed (as it would be, on a Saturday, 23rd Nov 2013). So we walked around to explore some more, and got to this place that had a massive almost 50 metre line of people trying to get into this place that seems to be some kind of convention. There was a bicycle hiring place and we decided to hire some bikes, or at least try to. Apparently you need a copy of your passport and also the visa stamp. So we walked around trying to find a place to photocopy. After gathering that, we took back our photocopied paper but it was nearly 3pm and they were closing, but they told us to go to the next bike renting spot, 15 minutes walk.

We walked there and they were just about to close too (I don't know why they told us to walk). By then we were tired so we sat nearby to read lonely planet and the map to see what to do. There were a bunch of poor looking people nearby. This old man came up (dodgy looking) and tried to give us directions and point where we are on the map. Afterwhich he asked for money/small change. Rob said we didn't have any, then we decided to move on before these people started s*** on us. So we took an alternative root back to the zoo area. After much hesitation and dwadling around, we went to the zoo.

Buenos Aires zoo was surprisingly good, we saw all kinds of exotic stuff. Meerkats were great. The male lion tried to hump the female lion but he didn't get lucky that day, at least while we were there. The grizzly bear looked a little distressed as it walked around this pond in a circle round and round and round. The bears didn't look like they're in good shape in general because they did some weird stuff. However it did offer us some entertainment and eyes opening from seeing all these different animals. The llamas were quite fun. The camels looked very very out of shape and gave me the feeling that they shouldn't really be alive. But it's a zoo and what can you expect. Also saw some beavers, which surprised me because i thought they would be the size of a cat. They had these animals called Mara running freely around the zoo, they were quite timid and shy. It tripped me out a little bit because I thought Maras looked alot like kangaroos.

The zoo closes at 7 but stops letting people in at 6, i think. Entry was 75 pesos.

After the zoo we headed back to San Telmo and I collapsed almost straight away onto bed, once again, from exhaustion.