Hangover 101

Sunday we headed to San Telmo markets to get overdosed on antiques. People sure do pay a fine price for vintage locks, gramaphones, tins and soda dispensers. I found some local designer shops that sold clothes and bags and Glen was mighty pleased to indulge me. Luckily for me there are plenty of park benches on the street. After, we headed over to a park in La Boca for respite from the crowds and buskers. The afternoon was taken up with espanola study as I had the best intentions of being the A1 student on Monday. However... we became friends with a scottish couple. We went back to the very popular Parilla (steak) restaurant El Desnivel and mixed vino tinto with Mojito, gin and my fave beer in the whole wide world Quilmes. After dinner we headed to a bar and met a Scot looking for a job in "security" (wink, wink- personally I think he was a real life 007 but maybe that´s the cloud of the mojito), and a New York City girl who´s claim to fame was that she´s given Paris Hilton a bikini wax (she´s a brazillian local). We had a great night out and got to bed at about 3 so wagged our 'pay as you go' spanish class. I felt like a naughty school kid so this morning I promptly went out and bought a new english/espanola dictionary and I´m currently trying to read the local newspaper. The spanish equivalent of HJ´s and coke for hangovers is definitley emapandas and coke. I feel great! 1 more day in BA and off to Igauzu! See you there!

Hap Hap Hap B´day Oz for yesterday

I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses and language definitly ain´t no strength. I need to be put in the vege espanole classe. I know it´s only been 3 days but I got told off for not studying and I DID study! The only two words I can remember are Meire and Cagare and they both mean shit- thanks Glen and Scott. Seriously...I´m bad but v.slowly improving. It´s like work, if you don´t know what you´re talking about, say it with confidence and people will believe you. I must look like an argi though as I´ve had many locals approach me and ask me questions about subway destinations. I sometimes know the answer but they look bemused when they work out that I´m a gringo. Must be my tan. A healthy ozone or smog layer is making me very brown with no sunburn. I´ve tried to load up our photos but it´s not working on these argi computers. I´ll perservere. We went to the cemeteria which is ahighlight of the city. It´s like a city of graves built up like houses. The markets below were lovely but all I can think of is what I´m going to have to carry later on down the track. We then went to the zoo which was quite depressing. They had polar bears in 30+ heat and ++humidity. All the animals looked very ragid and badly looked after. I didn´t realise how disturbed I could get but people were chucking food at the animals and you could pat alot of the animals. Not healthy. Came home and had a Quilmes beer- so, so good. Just hanging out for dinner!

day 3? i think. in b.a.

2nd spanish lesson today. dont no if we r getting better or more confused. although we seem to be communicating with a lot more confidence already. helps recognizing the odd word somtimes, is confidence inspiring wen u can understand somthing the locals say and u can converse even just a little. getting better each day anyway.

managed to get on the metro today all but a little paranoid wen the hostel guy told us to put day pack on my front. turns out the gringo is all too conspicuos esp in the big smoke as we saw countless locals with backpacks, but none on their front! but after taking the metro, must say it was a little shakey at 1st, but turned out all good. tok it to the main bus hub and managed to converse well enough in our limited espanole to purchase some tickets for some amazing locations. after iguazu next week, we wil arrive back in b.a at3pm and hop on a bus at 9pm for a 19hr ride to peurto madryn, where we wil stay for a couple of days to see some crazy wildlife on the coast of patagonia. if we r lucky, we mite be in the rite season to see some orcas. penguins, dolphins and all sorts of species ive never heard of also habitat this area.

after this, we r heading to el calafate where we r based to see merino glacier, from wat ive seen on inet and heard, one of the most amazing sites in the world! so thats all booked and now a reality, we r stoked as!

oh yeah, i gota mention how god and cheap the fod is here. had very tasty homemade pasta canelloni and raviolle dishes last nite with una la bottela de la casa tinto (house red!) all for equivalent of around $20!! and the red was so so good! and today i scored yet some more super tasty doughnuts and pastries (custard/jam) and a rather large bag of cheese sticks (adrian would go crazy over these) all for about $2aus!! quite insane.

well, im off to to taste some of la bottella de cerveza ($3.50pesos/$1.8aus) that faye just bought from the hostel.

adios...............

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hola! We arrived in BA after the flight was diverted due to thunder storms to a wet and humid city. Our hostel TelmoTango is very picturesque and clean with friendly staff (one of which is a spitting image of Darren Hanlon). We went out for a meal last night at about 10pm to try the meat that everyone raves about. Well, we got meat all right. A plate full of blood sausage, kidney, liver, chops, chicken and ?intestines (they sure did taste like shit). I didn´t get much down but Glen sure tried his hardest. Tonight we´ve done a bit more research into our spanish for our next meal. We had our first spanish lesson with a great teacher called Alice. We´re in a small group of three so its very relaxed and two hours passes very quickly. I´m determined to learn as much spanish as I can whilst in BA as I feel a bit rude when I can´t understand a question or answer a question. Tomorrow after school we´re planning on going on a bike ride round the burbs. Then this weekend its markets time woohoo!

19 hours in Santiago, Chile

We arrived after about 24 hours in transit and about 3 hours effective sleep to Santiago, Chile. We only have a 19 hour stopover so we payed the $56US departure tax and hightailed it to Santiago. Its quite a bleak city with few tourist attractions. We are absolutly exhausted and just biding time until 7pm so we can go to sleep and avoid too much jetlag. We walked around looking for a money exchange and food and trying to work up the guts to try our minimal spanish. All the people seem very friendly, probably because they serve beer as part of the combo meal in KFC (it was nearly a last resort meal but we couldn't bring ourselves to be so filthy sicko). We have got a taxi booked for 630am for our flight to Buenos Aires tomorrow and by the way, there are emo's even in Chile!