More notes but mostly some photos from BA

   Here are a few more photos from our last days in Buenos Aires.  The first is of Kizzy looking nervous as I posed her in front of the Obelisk and a hefty contingent of oncoming traffic in the widest avenue in South America – Av. 9 de Julio.  22 lanes wide, evidently, although I can only count 20 (and not because I ran out of fingers and toes!).  The second is of me enjoying the sun in front of the art museum in Tigres, a waterfront suburb of Buenos Aires up in the delta of the Rio Parana. 

   The next one is in a bookshop called “the Grand Splendid”.  It’s part of a chain of bookstores, but this one is a destination because it used to be an opera theatre and fell out of use.  The seats and the internal doors have been removed and filled with books on the three main levels, and the stage has been replaced with a coffee shop.  It’s all very decadent to have the boxes as comfortable reading areas. 

   These two are taken in front of the Floralis Generica in the Plaza de la Naciones Unite (United Nations), behind the Museo de Bellas Artes in Recoleta.  As of Saturday it has been a month since I last shaved
(or as Kizzy pointed out, a month that we've been away).  

   And these two are of Kizzy in La Boca, which is evidently a bit of a rough port-side neighbourhood that’s just outside the main centre of BA.  As well as being the home of Boca Juniors, I guess it’s the Brixton equivalent, noted for its atmosphere but a bit edgier.  That said, I can’t imagine a concerned resident in Brixton telling a backpacker to get on the next bus back to central London because it wasn’t a safe neighbourhood.  We went to the bit for tourists – the colourful block around the Caminito.  It’s very touristy and very heavily policed.  The statue is of a gentleman who had something to do with building up the area – hence he is holding a trowel.  But Kizzy thinks that given the area, it‘s more likely he was going equipped for an armed robbery. 

   On our last day in town we took a free walking tour from Congresso (near our hostel) to Plaza de Mayo and then back up to the Obelisk.  We tool almost no photos as we´d done the same walk twice a day since arriving in BA to and from school.  However, we did find out (pretty late after being here for two weeks!) that the tour of the Casa Rosada - the President´s Palace - was free and only possible on weekends.  What a wonderful opportunity for Kizzy to pose on Evita´s balcony and for me to get fashion inspiration from important figures in Argentine history.

   There were two things we noticed that were funny in both odd and amusing ways.  The first: there is a little cottage in amongst all the high rise buildings on Av. 9 de Julio - actually, it´s perched on top of one of them and we didn´t notice it until Saturday when it was pointed out to us by our guide, Virginia of BA free tours.  The final two are part of the quest of the President, Christina Fernandez, to be an icon, chasing comparisons with Evita at every turn.

   We´re now in Uruguay - more photos to follow soon.

Notes on the city

   It’s hard to write about a city when you’re staying still for any length of time.  The observations can seem inane, or overly personal, or heaven forbid: preachy and self-righteous.  After all, how many comments does anyone want to read about the jolt I get every time I see a toddler living on a traffic island?

   Most of our time in BA has been light and amusing.  It has been easy to perplex our Spanish teachers through a combination of bad grammar and terrible punning (which seems to be a very English brand of humour).  Both Kizzy and I are improving - we successfully changed the booking for our bus journey and avoided the penalty charge - in spite of some ongoing frustrations.  We’ve not yet learned the past tense so all our conversation is about the future.  In fact, we’ve now finished our two weeks of lessons so “no vamos a hablar Español en el past-a tense-io”. 

   We have learned a lot of the marvellous ways of Buenos Aires.  They do do good steak here but you need to go to the right places.  We found a simple test last night at the wonderful El Desnivel (I know it’s raved about all in the guidebooks but it really is very good food): when you ask for your steak vuelta y vuelta (properly rare) the waiter thanks you, nodding his approval.  It’s a really nice touch and it was one of the two best steaks I’ve ever tasted. 

   The locals have a love of queuing that far surpasses the British.  This photo is of a queue for a local bus.  That’s right, 65 people (we counted, what else do you do in a queue?) patiently waiting in a precise single file line with no cutting-in or encroaching.  And when the bus arrives they all wait their turn patiently.  It helps that buses are plentiful and cheap.  But the bus queues are nothing compared to the Sube queues.  The Subte is the subterranean metro train system.  The Sube is the new magnetic payment card for Subte and bus travel in the city.  In order to pay bus fares, people horde loose change here (evidently there’s a shortage).  The Sube brings freedom from this, but the queues are madness.  We went to the bus terminal yesterday to buy our onward tickets to Patagonia.  On our way back, no more than 20 min later, a Sube card application point had set up and already had a queue 300m long.  That is over 600 people who have stopped whatever they were going to do in order to queue for a long time to get a bus pass that they plan to use some time in the future.

   Everywhere in central BA has air-con.  Scratch that.  Everywhere in central BA except our hostel has air-con.  (That’s fine, the hostel is roasting but it’s like getting a sauna experience every evening.  I’m so decadent I’ve started indulging in an invigorating cold shower before bed.)  However, it’s all single units that hang off the side of the buildings, generally just below or often through a convenient window.  A 15-story apartment building will therefore have about 45 units hanging off the side.  What this adds to the BA experience is an irregular pattern of dripping water that you encounter as you wander the streets.  It’s marvellously surreal.  For the first week I couldn't work out where these big drops of rain were coming from as I sweltered in the 37˚C heat under bright blue skies.  The one day where we did get proper rain it was torrential and it lasted for hours.  There was no need to look around for the source, it was everywhere.  The sort of rain that obscures your vision as you try to avoid the spontaneous rivers on every street and footpath.  We figured it was just one of those things but our mate Sean popped over to Uruguay the next day where in Montevideo “the cataclysmic BA weather” had made the news, so I guess it was worth getting excited about.

   BA has been a lovely home for two weeks (although it is nice to have finished school!).  Tomorrow we sail to Uruguay for a weekend in Colonia del Sacramento and then Montevideo, before coming back to BA on Wednesday to catch the deluxe cama suite bed bus down to Patagonia.  The first leg is 18 hours, but we’re told it’s “better than flying first class!”  Admittedly that’s from someone whom I suspect has never actually flown first class.  Nevertheless, we’re looking forward to Uruguay and very excited about the bus!