Hi all,

It´s been ages since we did the blog... sorry! To be honest, last week was very quiet in Villa Geselle, we spent as much time on the beach as we could and caught up on sleep. Our great cheap and cheerful hostel turned out to be a madhouse for Argentinian rich kids, so we were out on one of our morning accomo hunts at 7am the next morning! We moved into an adorable little guesthouse run by an old couple, all floral sheets and tablecloths, was like heaven after the last two kips.

We got a five hour bus journey to Buenos Aires on Friday evening, was so strange doing such a short trip after all our marathon ones! We got to our hostel at midnight, and right into their Valentine`s traffic light party (you get a green balloon if you´re available, yellow if you´re up for offers and red if you´re taken... just explaining for those who´ve never heard of one, Jay hadn´t, think Irish colleges must be different to English ones!). We grabbed a burger and came back for the party. Hostel is fab, more like a hotel with a massive lobby, so they pushed all the furniture back for a dancefloor. We moved onto a club afterwards, which turned out to be half gay, half straight, so the music was fab - first pop we´ve heard out since we got here! Everyone thought Jay was my Gay Best Friend, hilarious.

Then Saturday we went to see the Boca Juniors play again, this time at their home stadium (we saw them away in Mendoza). The hostel had a package that got us transport there and back, and a guide, and they said they would strongly advise me not to go unless I got the package, as it was very unsafe for girls. So we shelled out the cash for the guided tour and about twenty of us headed to the stadium in the Boca neighbourhood. Guide disappeared the second we got to the turnstiles. The crowd was totally fine, much quieter than the Mendoza one, and we didn´t get to do the big flag this time! Boca were beaten two nil, they were atrocious. The match kicked off at 5pm, and it was 35 degrees at 6pm, they have massive water guns that they spray people with to cool them down, so everyone was screaming and whistling for water, but they didn´t do it for some reason, we were dying to see it! We got there early, so our whole group was in shade, phew - we actually would have fried.

The away team´s supporters were let out of their sections first, so our crowd were held back for a good hour by the police, who just stood there having fags - it´s unreal how much they smoke over here. In shops, taxis (as in taxi drivers ignoring their own `no smoking´ signs!). We didn´t get back to the hostel until 9pm, so we decided to postpone V Day until Sunday...

We went to the San Telmo neighbourhood for the Sunday markets that day. It´s the centre for tango dancing, so there were street shows with live music on street corners, such a cool atmosphere. It was the most varied market we´ve ever seen, everything from vintage tango costumes to cow hides to antiques... everything! We walked halfway across the city then to Recoleta, which is like the Knightsbridge or Ballsbridge of BA. All leafy streets, super fancy apartment blocks, super glam little old ladies with their pampered pooches...

The big tourist attraction is the cemetery there, bit strange, but fascinating to see. They build little mini houses (almost like porches) for the dead, so incredibly ornate stone buildings, with glass windows and the caskets on show.. very strange and eerie. Each building just had the name of the man of the family on it, but we saw up to six coffins in some of them. It struck us as being really impersonal, you didn´t get a feel for who the person was like you would when you read an inscription or see their photo. It´s where Evita is buried (or interred?? don´t know what the right term should be!), so we followed the crowds to her resting place.

We walked back to the hostel then and passed out after all our walking, literally walked nonstop for something like seven hours! Then we got glammed up for our Vday dinner and headed to Palermo, which is the yuppy/up-and-coming part of town. We tried to find a restaurant that Roisin raved about, but I completely mesed up the map reading, so we didn´t make it... (Ro it´s on the itinerary for tomorrow!). We found an Irish bar instead, so we had a drink in there, I was morto, but it was called Sullivan´s, so we kind of had to go in! Then we went to probably the coolest restaurant I´ve ever been to - it was built in a beautiful old mansion, and each dining room was themed a different colour, and had a totally different feel. Eg, the red room was all low couches and dark lighting, the yellow room was really bright and looked into the kitchen, etc. We picked the blue room cos we got it to ourselves! The food was AMAZING, fab fab fab. They even had Irish-ish bread! Jay took pics of our dinners (he´s turning into me..). We had a full-on splurge, but still only managed to rack up a 30 pound, 40 euro bill... We had a power blackout on our floor that night, so Jay got to use his windy-up head torch and was thrilled with himself.

Monday we planned a day in the park soaking up the atmosphere, so we navigated our way on the subway to a big park just south of Palermo. Second we got there though, the heavens opened, so Jay headed to a museum and I went to check out the shops. Shopped for four hours solid and didn´t manage to get anything... Usual thing, I´ve been seeing loads of stuff I´ve loved for the last six weeks, but then when I go to actually buy something, I couldn´t find anything.. Jay walked the park in the rain until he gave up and came back to the hostel.

We booked a tour with the hostel for last night, first stop La Bomba, an amazing samba group that played in a huge warehouse. We passed four blocks of queues on the way, we had our tickets beforehand from the hostel, so we were like proper VIPs. There were about fifteen in the group, and they drummed solid for two hours, don´t know how they did it. Atmosphere was brilliant, the crowd was huge and everyone was loving it.

The second half of the night was the BA Pub Crawl, so about half our group met up on a street corner near the club and we got picked up in a school bus (oh the irony) and headed to another hostel for free beer and pizza. We went on to two more hostel bars, each time you went in you got a shot and drinks were college cheap. It was 90% guys, and most of the 10% of girls were American college girls, who got messy drunk, hilarious to see, tears, the works... they weren´t able for it at all. We were actually fairly well behaved, there were so many new people there, so you were talking more than drinking. We got to bed at around six, and we were up with the others in our dorm at nine, so pretty dead today... We tried the park again, sun held out for us, but we actually got too hot and came home to pass out for a few hours. We´re just heading out for a quiet one now, going to wander down around the docks area and have a coffee or something. We´ve discovered liquados con leche (fruit juices with milk), they just whizz up strawberries, peaches or kiwi or whatever with milk. Yuuummm, we´re both addicted to them.
We´ve loads to fit into our last few days, a tango show, Palermo lakes, etc. I´ve booked to get my hair done tomorrow, fingers crossed it´s ok.. So cheap to get it done here, roots are horrific, so hopefully there´ll be no disasters..

We fly to Sydney on Saturday, so we only have three more full days in South America.. The second half of the trip has just flown by... can´t believe we´ll be away seven weeks on Sunday, crazy. Mad excited about actually getting to Oz now, after talking about it for soooo long! We´ve booked into a hostel for the first week, which has ´mixed´ reviews online... some mentions of cockroaches, aagh. Latest few on Trip Advisor are v positive though, so fingers crossed... We´ve started registering with estate agents in advance, ideally we want to get a dinky little studio for just the two of us, but most places in Oz come unfurnished apparently, so it might be easier and cheaper to house share. We´re going to go for both options anyway, and see which one comes good first. Hopefully the jet lag won´t hit us too hard, we´re going to be fast forwarding fifteen hours.

We´re dying to have a place now, just to have places for all our stuff, I´m dying for a wardrobe, and an underwear drawer, rather than a backpack wardrobe and zip lock bags for drawers! Just staying on the sofa with a nice dinner and the TV seems like the biggest treat EVER to us now, after something like sixteen hostels. Nikki´s invited us out for an all you can eat $25 seafood buffet on Monday night, so that´s our first social engagement down under sorted. Then we´re going to commandeer Katja and Ben as tour guides, and meet up with Roisin and Dave... woo hoo!

Better get going here... this has been a mega entry to make up for not writing for a week!

Hope everyone´s really well, Mark and Charley hope you enjoyed good ol Dublin... Sending fixing vibes to my house phone, miss my updates from home!

Lots of love!