Chapter one

We arrived in Buenos Aires on Friday afternoon after a 12ish hour flight. The time difference was was challenging in that we left at 8pm on friday on Friday night New Zealand and airlines like night flights so we were feed dinner, the cabin was dimmed for sleepin and we were instructed not to open our window shades. Not that James or I could since we lucked out and got the middle seats of the middle row. Then of course we got breakfast right before we landed at close to 5pm Argentinian time. It was a strange and confusing time which is probably why we immediately blew the budget by getting an overpriced taxi to our hostel. Which was in the old barrio of San Telmo, with narrow streets, many still with cobble stones; nice to look at, not nice to walk on.

We got invited to a party by someone we worked with at Cardrona who was only in town for one night but we were so exhausted we had to turn him down. Instead in an effort to not go to bed at 7pm we went for a stroll around the city and found ourselves in the fancy barrio of Puerto Madero and decided to eat our 6th meal of a very long day. Unfortunately all the restaurants were a bit out of our price range and also our Spanish is really, really bad but James managed to get a slab of meat, no sides, and i got a caprese salad. Lucky caprese salads seem common, have a non meat protein and caprese isn't translated into Spanish so i see a lot of them in my future. James was excited by his slab of meat but at the risk of getting bowel cancer in the next two months he's learning Spanish as i type this so he can order a side salad.

I found walking around BA at night fine, its not a well lit city but there are lots of people about and we definitely were not in the dodgy suburbs. James was not as convinced either because he's more paranoid than me or because he has more street smarts than me. Either was we made it through 3 days without getting mugged, only another 62 to go.

The next day we got up eary, possibly because jet lag has us waking up between 4 and 5. We went on a free city walking tour, learning a bit about the history of the city and seeing some of the sights on the fancy Northern side including the memorial to the Falklands war and ending at Cementerio de la Recoleta. This cemetary is full of creepy old cyrpts were you could see stacks of coffins and could probably reach out and touch them if you were brave enough. We checked out the crypt of Eva Peron and then left quickly because it was 3pm and we only had 3 hours to get safely home before the vampires came out.

Having made it safely home we had a late lunch, steak for James

which he managed to get with potatoes this time and pasta for me.

Then, because we can't handle the late nights we had to take a nap before heading out to a tango show that started at 10pm, way past my bed time but its really only dinner time over here.

On sunday we checked out the San Telmo markets which we though would be a quick half hour look, they are so huge it took more like 2 and a half hours but we managed not to buy anything! In the afternoon we went on another walking tour because they are free and interesting. Over the three days we managed to walk over 50km and saw hardly anything of the city but its still been interesting and atleast we have lots to do whrn we come back here in 62 day. (We had to move our flights forward because of work.)

Today, we discovered that coffee in Argentina sucks but if they serve it in fancy old, ornate buildings with waiters dressed in tuxedos you don't notice as much. The other thing we discovered was that even domestic flights require you to be at the airport 2 hours early so while we missed out on another walking tour I did have time to write this

blog.

Next stop Patagonia.

The mountains are calling...