¡Hola amigos!

Gemma here doing the first blog. Well it´s our fifth day in Argentina so I will bring you up to speed on our experiences so far. Firstly we are all well and having a great time (parents this is aimed at you!). We arrived at 1520 local time (they speak in 24 hr time) to a near deserted Ministro Santorini airport. The intial impression I got was of stepping back in time to the 60´s because the decor and facilities are pretty retro. We got our first taste of basic spanish by changing our money to pesos (1 NZD = $2.8 pesos) and got straight into a taxi headed for our hostel in the CBD. The city is packed to the brim with apartments and it appears most people live in these, I guess with 7 million people suburbs would be ridicluous. Our first hostel was a soft landing because it was very westernised and staff spoke good English. The guy on the desk, Paulo, had actually lived in Chch for 6 months and took to calling us ¨my kiwi´s¨.

We stowed our gear in locked cages in our rooms which seem to be standard here. We haven´t had any bad experiences with this side of Buenos Aires but have heard a first hand account of our German roommate being given fake pesos. We compared the real and fake so we know can tell and always check our change, esp from taxi drivers. It´s also wise to use reputable ATMś like Banco Patagonia.

We have been walking around quite a bit and it´s a real urban jungle that is always busy with thousands of pedestrians and hundreds of streets filled with loco motocyclists, bus and taxi drivers. The traffic seemed chaotic at first but we now have the hang of the road rules and can get around pretty well. The main street through town is four roads side by side going in alternating directions with 17 lanes in total!

We have seen a few sights including the presidents house in the Plaza del Mayo and on a walking tour with a fiesty little Argentine called Heidi we went to the public University, saw a huge metal art flower which opens and closes every day, went through an Arte Museum which had a great selection of old and new Argentinean art work. A highlight was the cemetary which is a slightly unnerving place. Imagine thousands of huge (4m high) monuments above the grave-tomb things that you can look into and see the spirals of coffins going up to 10m underground. To up the creep factor there are stray cats everywhere to eat the rats, all in all not a place to go at night!

Our hostels provide breakfast and none of us have been very hungry here so we usually only eat twice a day, b´fast and a lunch-dinner combo at around 6 (huge serving sizes here). It seems like every 6th or 7th shop is a cafeteria and these have basically the same everywhere. We have eaten out twice and managed to make our orders understood somehow. The menus are mosly very North American style dishes like pizza and hamburgers so we try to order something unknown - I ended up with a dish consisting of 2 pork chops with 2 fried eggs on top, fries, tinned peas, ham (very common) and capsicum. Random but yum (and only 26 pesos). Cervaza (beer) is around the same price as gaseaosa (fizzy drink) so we have that quite a bit and it´s served in 1litre bottles. We´ve eaten a few meals with stuff from supermercado´s (supermarkets, obviously) and enjoy trying different, unknown things. Actually have yet to have a steak!

Everywhere we go there seem to be lots of staff ready to help although the level of english varies wildly (doormen in most buildings for instance). I am guessing this is a product of low wages and a focus on the tourist dollar? Guinny and I went zapato (shoe) shopping yesterday on Florida near our new hostel in Recoleta which is a much nicer neigbourhood. We bought leather flats as we have found neither jandals nor walking shoes are very appropriate for going out to bars and restaurants. This was a real test of our spanish when trying to ask what they were made of, different sizes etc. I paid 160 pesos which isn´t too bad. I think the store would compare with Overland (there are not really any department stores like hannah´s or glassons here).

We have been out with locals twice which is a real treat. They are both Guinny´s brothers friends and have lived in NZ before so speak great english (puts our spanish to shame!). Val took us out on Weds night for a drink at a trendy neighbourhood filled with locals. We drank white wine with ice, sugar and fruit and chatted about the diffs between here and home. She says Buenos Aires people are smart asses who are very clever at circumventing laws etc but not so great at moving the country forwards. They love to brag and exaggerate which is something i noticed our guide Heidi saying too. She would tell us the truth - not what all the other guides tell tourists! Val drove us to the waterfront which is a modern area of town and it was nice to see the sea here for the first time. Home at 4am!

The next night was even worse - home by 5am! That is very much the lifestyle here. People work til 8 or 9pm then go to afteroffice parties 4 nights a week and come home in the small hours. Dinner is usually around 10pm and afternoon siestas are common. Thursday night we met Caro (another of guinnys brothers friends - thanks Liam if you´re reading!) and her friend Clara. They spoke less english and it was funny trying to communicate the type of animals we wanted to se like sloths, google came to the rescue for the spanish translation but neither girl had heard of them before! They are all part of the large middle-upper class (the other class is dirt poor) and have unbelievably never travelled to other south american countries except Brasil. although they have been to most continents. They can´t understand why we want to go to the Amazon and think zoology is a very strange degree. They have free public uni here and the most common degrees are the familiar law, business, marketing and engineering as well as administration. Val is a concierge at the Hyatt (prob helped by good English), Caro is a nutritionist who also works with undernourished kids and as a travel agent and Clara works for a company which makes smells i.e. air fresheners.

We went to a proper local´s nightclub with them and it seemed like most clubs you get in Auckland. We tried a variety of new drinks like Fernet which i think is a liquer that is drunk with Coke and tastes incredibly bitter - apparently it aids digestion and doesn´t give you a hangover. We managed to get talking to the only other foreigner there who was born in South Auckland and now lives in oz! We could basically pick each other out as he was about twice the size of the small Argentinean men and not dressed in a suit! We stand out too as much taller (Aspi and Arna would be freaks!) than the local girls and Mike is tall in NZ so fairly ridiculous here! The blonde hair is a giveaway too of course.

Hopefully I´ve managed to give you a good idea of what we´re experiencing. I tried to upload photo´s, even navigated the spanish computer to put them on here but couldn´t get them on the net sorry. They will follow when we can get to a better computer. Today is Sat and we were hoping to go to Caro´s family farm tomorrow but there is a bachelor party on so that´s off the table. We are currently at the Recoleta Hostel on Libertad for those on Google maps and are planning to head to the wine-growing Mendoza region at the foot of the Andes tomorrow night. Yay, a 14 hr bus ride! The buses look pretty good though, although the roads leave a lot to be desired apparently.

Will get on here again hopefully in another 5 or 6 days time- someone else can have a go writing this then! Hope you are all well, we miss you all and send our love.

Adios amigos (it´s awesome to be able to say things like hasta la vista and un momento, gracias for real here!)

Love Gemma