Algo Mas?

San Diego and Santa Clause

First post from beautiful Buenos Aires. I'm sitting here in some random posh cafe at 11 O'Clock at night because they have wifi and it's free. Not sure how this is going to pan out.... but sure we'll see. The coffee is absolutely top notch over here by the way. None of your take out in paper cup stuff . If you are looking for take out coffee, you call them up and a lady with a tray walks the streets with your coffee in its real china cup until she finds you to hand deliver your order. Nice. Then theres the guys who deliver pizza on rollerblades - nerves of pure steel are a pre-requisite because they must coexist with the crazy loco local motorists - particularly the taxi drivers who you can see aiming for you as they accelerate to pedestrian crossings.

Taxi traveling at the speed of light

So we're still settling in - despite the fact we've been here almost a week. The heat and the culture shock and the weariness caused by the craziness of the past couple of months in Vancouver are all taking their toll which means we need regular cat naps - assisted by the cheap and delicious local Malbec wine. But we're having the most fun wandering around this fabulous city, eyes agog letting it all soak in slowly.

Avoiding the heat on New Years day by learning another 2 Spanish words

So lets start by wishing you all a very happy and prosperous and adventurous and interesting New Year. New years eve in Buenos Aires was….interesting. We had heard that anything before 1am would be a wipe out as the locals hole up in family or friend’s places and only venture out into the anonymous throngs when they’ve celebrated the coming of the new year in more intimate surroundings. And so it turned out. We got half dressed up (the heat is so intense – it hit 44 degrees on New Years Day - that you literally wet yourself by walking two blocks) – me in a pair of shorts, flipflops and a dress shirt, M in a nice skirt and a tshirt, and went in search of new years kicks in Puerto Madero - an area by the river, teeming with nice restaurants. Well, we walked in the considerable heat and humidity (even though it was approaching 8pm) of a BsAs evening and soon we had verily wet ourselves. I was sweating profusely from the head area and my lovely dress shirt looked like I’d gotten Footlose in it (consult wedding photos for pictures of me sweating in a dress shirt). Even at 8pm all the lovely restaurants weren’t open yet and the staff were still preparing the tables both inside and out on the riverside promenade. Any preliminary pigeon English enquiries (because we have no Spanish, I find you have to talk to the locals as if they were pigeons so that they get the gist of what you’re trying to say) to the waiting staff seemed to suggest that the restaurants wouldn’t open until after 9pm and when they did, it was either reservation only or $300 a plate for a very set and very meaty menu. Hmmmm. At this stage we were getting pretty hungry and almost falling down with heat exhaustion and dehydration so we stopped at a concession (as they call beach front hut shops in Vancouver) and had beers and, wait for it………biscuits! Biscuits is obviously not a Spanish word – they pronounce it like Bithkoo-its. Shamie and Mamie never enjoyed beer and bithkoo-its so much in their lives. We sat for a while, watching the sun go down and absorbing the smell of death coming from the river (one of the most polluted river basins on the planet) and moved next door to grab some icecream. Big mistake. The twilight brings the bloodthirsty squadrons of oversized kamikaze mosquitoes out in force. There’s currently an infestation of mosquitos in BA – we’re watching people on the news every morning comparing bites / scars and flagellating themselves with branches of trees as they walk through the parks. A pleasant New Years Eve stroll through Puerto Madero soon turned into a demented, frenzied, insect obstacle course as we bobbed and weaved, pre emptively swiping at the tenacious hordes of single minded mozzies who were all the more attracted by the sweat we were generating. At this stage our ice cream hit melting point aswell and started dripping in sweet sticky rivers down our sweaty sticky arms. Mosquitos apparently LOVE ice cream. We were fucked. M (who generally attracts far less bites than me) had already been bitten a couple of times on the legs and arms and once on the face. They seem to like my hands and knuckles for some reason – probably because they were covered in delicious melted chocolate and almond ice cream. We had made the mistake of setting out far too early. As we made our way, disoriented, broken, bitten, sweat and ice-cream soaked back towards town we met the dignified and well heeled families of Portenos (these people are big on families) all dressed completely in white (an upper class new years tradition apparently), looking immaculate heading for the expensive restaurants from which we had been silently banished (too much sweat on your dress shirt sir). We must have looked hilariously demented as we rushed up side streets, shadow swiping the humid air to get back to the air conditioned mosquito-free green zone of our hotel room. We felt like Vietnam vets who were returning from a particularly hellish tour of duty – and it was only 9:30pm. This feeling was heightened by having to step over a couple of rancid pieces of discarded raw meat left to rot on the pavement - don't ask, we have no idea. No tidy towns prizes here for a while.

So we regrouped in our hotel room, built a sandwich and opened a bottle of wine to settle our nerves. We turned on the television to try and see could we find the Argentinian equivalent of Mary Kennedy’s Up For The Match (or whatever it’s new years eve equivalent is). We stumbled across a live broadcast of an open air classical concert in Buenos Aries and we recognised the monument in the background (The Obelisca @ Plaza de la Republica – pretty damned recognisable). We figured, despite the stressful and disappointing experience of NYE in BsAs up to that point that we’d venture out again, this time armed with a headful of wine, and give it another try. We walked the 20 minutes to the Obelisco (taxis are impossible to get at the best of times – homeless guys (Sean Marty Lockhards) aggressively offer their roadside taxi procurement services. Why they think they have a better chance in their dishevelled state of successfully flagging down a speeding taxi is anyone’s guess) to find that in the half hour since we spotted the festivities on the telly, the concert had ended and everyone had scarpered back to the bosoms of their familial homes to do whatever it is they do that they cant do in public at midnight. Oh Well. It was about 11pm at this stage. There was a massive digital clock on the wall of one of the buildings opposite the Plaza so we decided we’d sit tight, relax in the gloriously balmy evening (a novel NYE experience in itself) and bed down with the locals and street urchins to herald in the new year. Hanging with the homeless so to speak. We basically did the equivalent of sitting at the Hoor in the Sewer on O’Connell Street with the local howeyas drinking cheap champagne. A marked difference to how we expected to spend it – fine dining in Puerto Madero. But it turned out to be so much fun. Around about 11:15 couples, visiting families and other homesick fellow travellers started to congregate – more because it was a group of people on an otherwise deserted street than because it looked like anything interesting or exciting was going to happen. But slowly the Plaza started coming alive, first with street kids and their cheap penny bangers, then with older more well to do kids and their expensive fireworks. Young drunken Argentinian males are funny – dancing studiously to “rock” music bleating from their cell phones, nodding their mullets and posing for self portraits on their camera phones (seriously). One particularly animated and inebriated vagrant gentleman – an absolute dead ringer for Diego Maradona (post 10 year cocaine binge) - took it upon himself to orchestrate the proceedings and encourage everyone into performing Mexican waves, singing what we imagined to be pretty bawdy street songs. He was absolutely hilarious as he flirted with the young German tourists (completely oblivious to their recoiling in disgust every time he tried to wish them a Felize Ane with his lips) and “borrowed” bottles of champagne from other onlookers. As midnight approached the night became a cacophony of fireworks explosions, with people cheering the more elaborate displays and singing indecipherable songs, mixed with the noise of semi formed Mexican waves not so much rippling as dribbling through the ever more drunken crowd. There was also the hilariously entertaining sideshow of a dim dog attacking the kids who were setting the fireworks in wine bottles in the middle of the Plaza. It became a race against time to see who could set, light and launch their fireworks before Dim Lassie, the playful but determined stray, attracted by the sparks and crackling, could intervene and save the world from the imminent chaos. He got a very painful comeuppance when he successfully managed to reach a firework before it launched (after it had been lit) but was unsuccessful in quenching it as it went off in its mouth. I’ve never seen anything with its tail as firmly between its legs as it quietly excused itself from centre stage and briskly walked away through the crowds to presumably scream with pain in solitude. He returned 10 minutes later even more determined to rid the world of fireworks on New Years Eve. Midnight came soon after dragging 2007 with it, 5 hours earlier than Vancouver, 3 hours later than home and 2 hours earlier than New York. We watched the Times Square celebrations in our hotel room via the medium of Anderson Cooper having walked back through the streets lined with discarded champagne bottles, spent fireworks and BA revellers getting stuck in for the night.

So while it was relatively quiet, it was a vast improvement on last new years eve in Vancouver where we spent it in bed....asleep.

Me finding Spanish journalism very insightful

Rumbled. Tin Tin doesn't speak Spanish!

The Spanish phrasebook which T, L and A bought us is proving absolutely invaluable so thanks again for that. A and P's BA guidebook has kept us hammering the pavements looking for further adventure aswell. We just moved into our lovely new apartment in Palermo yesterday so it feels like we're on a new holiday. We'll keep you posted as often as we can to let you know how it's all going. Chau for now.