Let me start by saying happy new year to everyone and I hope you had a fantastic Christmas!

Our festive period was spent in Buenos Aires, and as it was Christmas and new year we decided to splash out a little bit and stay in a good hostel, the milhouse, which turned out to be a good decision! There were loads of people staying there and there was a bar downstairs and a party every night at either our hostel or the sister hostel just down then street, and we had some cool roommates, 3 Irish girls and a Dutch girl.As we arrived on December 23rd and pretty much everything is closed Christmas eve and day we didn't really do that much until after Christmas.

Christmas day we celebrated with a lunchtime meal at the hostel (courtesy of father Armitage!) with the Irish girls. The meal came with two vouchers for wine, but as everyone was feeling a bit delicate form the night before, there came the dilemma... everyone wante to go up for a siesta after they'd eaten, but the wine vouvhers could only be exchanged then, not later on that night... slowly people began to go up to sleep and leave their vouvhers with those who'd stayed until I had 5 vouvhers and a full glass of wine in front of me! Never one to turn down free alcohol I remained down in the bar, as those who hadn't had the meal were getting out of bed and coming down to join me, until eventually we reached happy hour (7:30-8:30) and then later me, Ben, the Irish girls and a group of Australians we'd met the days before headed to the party at the other hostel. So my happy Christmas was spent drinking for 16 hours... I did not feel well on Boxing day!

We did actually then spend a few days seeing the sights with a friend Phuoc who we met. We visited a few of the MANY parks in BA, which are full of people walking, cycling and rollerblading! (They are mad on rollerblading here!) The obelisk and the casa rosada (where Evita lived I believe) a giant metal flower sculpture which opens in the daytime and closes at night. Recoleta cemetary houses some pretty impressive mausoleums of rich families of Buenos Aires as well as being the burial place of Evita. La Boca is a pretty cool old immigrant neighbourhood where the houses were painted with the leftover ship paint by the italian shipworker immigrants. We also visited MALBA the museo de arte latinamerico de Buenos Aires, which was full of pretty cool modern art, and in particular an exhibition of 'moving art' where the pieces had been made in such a way that they seemed to be moving and changing colour as you walked past them!

One notable night was when we went out to meet up with a guy that Ben had met. He gave us the address and time of where to meet him, but as we only could contact him when we had wifi (a recurring problem here) by the time we had made our way to the bar (a subway ride to nowhere and then a taxi ride) it was an hour after we were sposed to be meeting him and he was nowhere to be seen. Having been such a pain in the arse to get there we decided to stay for some drinks and found ourselves in the middle of some kind of event... there were people having photos taken with people and a big screen up on one of the floors, and lots of sheets saying '4 ambientes'... Turns out 4 ambientes is a tv programme sort of like the argentinian equivolent of queer as folk in the UK, and we were at the preview screening of the first episode of the second series, and the 'people' that everyone was having photos with were the actors (and that we were sposed to pay to go up but we didn't know and just went on up anyway!) Then after the screening we found the guy we'd been looking for and it turns out he's the best friend of one of the actors, and they were all going out for beer and food, and thats how we ended up gatecrashing the celebration preview dinner with the actors, actors partners, director, producer, cameraman, screenwriter.... but hey I've just given them publicity on my blog so they can't complain!

The hostel also organised nights out at the clubs, with tickets and transfer after the parties finished at about 2am (clubs in most of SA don't open til this time) and although we'd resisted so far due to the price of the tickets, I relented one night when we met two cool Australians, Ella and Elliot, and went out with them whilst Ben was out with some other people he'd met. They were leaving our hostel the next day for a different one as they had 5 more friends coming and there wasn't space at milhouse, but I bumped into them a coupleof days later and hung out with them for a few days of getting drunk! (Nothing is open on new years eve or day either!) So we ended up celebrating our new years eve with 7 crazy Australians at a party at our hostel, where we did the new years countdown, then afterwards at Pacha! (which was so far away that we had to walk to the domestic airport to find a taxi back!)

All in all a pretty good christmas and new year! new years resolution - to not be ill or have any injuries. so far not succeeding!