Leavin’ On a Midnight Omnibus…..

San Telmo Market

It’s been an eventful week or more since my last confession. We finally ticked our combined life long dream of visiting Uruguay (You-are-gay as Áine affectionately calls it) off our list. Nah, we really just visited this god forsaken country for the stamp on the passport. Mine is smudged and illegible. I’m very pissed that I spent a day in Uruguay for nothing. We got a ferry across the Rio del la Plata estuary to Colonia in Uruguay, a scenic enough spot but I would liken it to a Hispanic Killarney. Our first impression as we stepped off the ferry were the golf carts for hire to ferry fat lazy tourists around the tiny town without having to suffer the indignity of walking.

The ferry company’s (Buquebus) idea of first class travel was interesting. There was a first class traveller’s lounge at the port for us to while away the 45mins until our ferry in complete luxury. We walked out of the main terminal, the air filled as it was with the body odour of a large magazine vendor (A3 size), into an air conditioned room filled with comfy seats. And that was about it. There were 3 computers in the corner, not turned on. I booted up a couple (anyone remember Windows 95?) and attempted to access the net. I was prompted for a username and password and some dollar signs. No free internet here for the busy (but unemployed) executive on the move. My first class “free stuff” radar eyed a bar in the far corner. On closer inspection, the bereft-of-barman bar looked pretty forlorn. The only thing locked at the bar was the fridge with lovely refreshments winking out at me, tantalisingly unfree. There was also an instant coffee machine with gaping money slots and helpfully, no cups, and finally a huge bowl of luxurious, gourmet……..crisps sitting on the counter which had gone half soft in the heat. What hospitality! We were called for our ferry, and lead to a doorway and onto an air conditioned minibus which would take us down the dock to the boat…..50 metres away. Hilarious stuff. Everybody got on, the engine revved for approximately 8 seconds and everybody promptly got off again. The guy in front of me just had time to let back his seat and enjoy the 50 metre dash in absolute comfort. I concluded that, judging by this first class treatment, Porteňos are used to starvation and dehydration, being deserted by all forms of attendant life, but ask them to walk 50 metres in the heat and they’ll flip out.

San Telmo Outdoor Sunday Market

That’s another incredibly frustrating thing – they don’t do informational signs of any description here. Or clocks. M reckons because it would put several uniformed, clipboard endowed people out of a job. Not having the language, this makes even the simplest of transactions incredibly complicated. For example when buying our ferry tickets to Uruguay, we queued for 20 minutes eventually getting to the cash desk to be told we needed to queue at the other counter 20 metres away and “reserve” our tickets first. Then we could queue again at the cash desk to “purchase” our ticket. Maddening. And it’s not just because we’re Spanish illiterate either, we saw several people do exactly the same thing wasting half an hour in the wrong queue with nayr a sign or attendant in sight to direct you otherwise. The other side of the counter however you’ll find several self important looking attendants, drowning in hair gel, twiddling their thumbs or arranging their fancy paper collection in their clipboards, looking incredibly stressed, absolutely ignoring the customers they exist to serve. Catching the boat coming home was the worst though. We queued for about 40 minutes with a couple of hundred rambunctious locals in the heat at the “Departures” gate for the ferry company we travelled over with, eventually got to the counter and the guy smiled helpfully and told us that the check in for our return ferry was, mind-bendingly illogically, in the other terminal labelled “Arrivals” for a completely different ferry company. No signs, no clocks, much spittle launching curses at anyone who crossed my path as I elbowed my way through the throngs to rush to the other terminal 10 minutes before our ferry home, the last ferry, departed. There was no way in Uruguay I was going to get stranded here for the night.

So yeah, it was that good. It’s a little bit disingenuous to say we did Uruguay, spending as we did approximately 10 hours in the place. But we were well bored 3 hours in. It rained pretty heavily in the afternoon which meant we were holed up in some fly infested café people watching people who definitely didn’t like being people watched. Our lunch was probably the worst meal we ever had (think of a sliced hard boiled egg served in dirty dish water) and was pretty expensive to boot so that left a pretty bad taste in our mouth. We returned to the ferry port 3 hours early so exciting was this little town. I took a wander to take photos, we had some dry bread with nice cheese for tea and then we started queuing in the wrong queue to get out of the place. So I’m loathe to damn the entire country based on our very limited experience of one of its small tourist towns, but really I wish I had 4 hands so I could give the place 4 thumbs down. Poor M even had a nervo in the afternoon heat that even chocolate couldn’t fix.

Outside Malba Museum

The next day we did the Malba art museum – modern Latin American and European art. A decent enough half day’s work with some nice Frieda Kahlo paintings, also some Diego Rivera and my first ever F Leger in the flesh. I spent most of my time being told I couldn’t sit on the floor or on any of the exhibits and quickly figured out that the mere act of taking my camera out of the bag, nevermind taking photos, would result in a pedantic security guard rushing to tell me to cease and desist. Needless to say I made those guys raise a sweat that day. Yet another example of lack of signage to increase employment. And before you say that your never allowed take photos in a museum, we’ve been to 3 or 4 other museums in BA where everyone was taking photos – even flash photos of the exhibits, it was almost encouraged. In Malba I saw people being chastised for taking photos of their friends outside in the garden. Wanton idiocy.


Then on Thursday we made our way to the Plaza de Mayo for 3pm where every week at this time for the past 30 years the Mothers of the Disappeared or Madres de Plaza de Mayo congregate for a dignified, silent protest at the arrest, torture and subsequent disappearance of their sons (so called dissidents) during the military dictatorship of the late 70s and early 80s.


It was a pretty moving experience to see these women, now mostly in their 70s and 80s but accompanied by the next generation of relatives, peacefully and with an unearthly dignity walk to the barriers of the seat of Government and silently offer up protest not only to the disappearance of their sons but also to the wall of silence which followed with subsequent Governments, including the current one. No official apology or government investigation into what amounted to state terrorism has ever been forthcoming.

San Telmo Mural

We’ve discovered a channel which shows European Cup rugby (and hopefully the six nations) aswell so we’ve spent a couple of afternoons watching rugby – the first rugby we’ve seen in 18 months, thoroughly enjoying the Argentinean pronunciation of Munster and Leinster player’s names (Peetdur Strindger, Powlo Connellllle etc) and calling Contepome by his first name. Very depressing results though, especially Leicester beating Munster in their own back yard.

We went on an interesting cocktail pub crawl on Saturday night aswell, encouraged by the extensive listings of out of the way bars and interesting watering holes in our recently purchased TimeOut Buenos Aires – an absolute must for up to date information on bars, clubs, venues, museums and restaurants. We started off with Manhattans and Pisco Sours in DaDa, then on for some Mojitos in Zanzibar, next was Martinis in the stunningly atmospheric cellar bar in the gorgeous old Plaza Hotel, then on to Palermo Viejo for Margheritas in Acca and ending up in Omm nursing more Mojitos and Pisco Sours. We wobbled home and only then realised it was 4:30. Even at that late hour the streets outside were still buzzing like it was 10 o’clock of a Saturday night in Temple Bar. Porteňos generally take dinner at 11pm, the bars only start filling up after 1am, then the clubs get busy after 3am with dancing til 6 or 7am considered a quiet night. We’d heard about the local’s working and playing to a completely different timetable, but observing it first hand was very interesting. There are no licensing laws here. None. Alcohol is available 24 hours a day. But interestingly excessive drinking is completely frowned upon. People over here drink to be sociable rather than to get drunk. You see couples sitting over a glass of wine for 2 or 3 of our quick fire rounds. Bottles of beer are shared among 2 or 3 people. Averaging more than 1 drink an hour is considered binge drinking. No queues at the toilets, no fighting in the streets. Very civilised altogether – Michael McDowell would be proud.

We were sitting in the last bar, a converted grocery shop in Palermo Viejo, kitted out in austere white with kitchen tables and benches, and we were soaking up some lovely electronica, the windows rattling with the bass, the door swinging wide open into the streets where people were sitting on the window sills outside sipping their drinks and we both thought can you imagine a place like this in Dublin (or Kildare for that matter)?. It would either be jammed to the rafters with very drunk people screaming at each other over the din, or completely deserted because they didn’t serve a good Guinness. The happy medium of a half empty bar with a constant turnover of people in to say hello or just tap their feet for 10 minutes was wholly refreshing. We weren’t thirsty either at this stage so this fact definitely added to our refreshment. I suppose the weather back home doesn’t permit the fluid overflow onto the street and maybe the shortage of licenses (or the genetic thirst of the Irish) means that there’s not enough bars to comfortably cater to all tastes. But then you think about the cycle of fashionability with the accompanying queues outside certain pubs while a bar across the street is completely deserted and you realise there’s more to it than licensing laws. Culture versus gulpture I suppose. Sophistication versus ossification. We have another pub crawl planned for this coming Saturday night cos we're total culture gulptures.

On Saturday we ventured into a northern suburb of Buenos Aires, close to the domestic airport, to visit the world’s first religious theme park. Yes indeedy, Mickey in Disneyland, meets McJesus in Holy Land. We were expecting – well I’m not sure what we were expecting and I wouldn’t say we were disappointed, but we did leave the place with a numb feeling where our souls should be. First off we arrived 3 hours early (the opening hours listed in guidebooks for museums and religious funderlands etc are generally very very wrong) and had to wait around in some café until the sun sank a little bit so those fried eggs on the back of my neck wouldn’t go on fire. We managed to visit the nearby University of BA while we were waiting.

I wasn't allowed to take photos here either

It was exactly what I imagine Star City in Moscow to be like. Cutting edge about 35 years ago but left to rot and stagnate like a lot of things in BA due to lack of government funding. In the main science block, a fascinating dreary open plan building which, even though there were about a million windows still managed to keep most of the light out, there was a monument to all the disappeared listed by Undergraduate, Graduate and Professor. There were hundreds of names. This was a very scary place 25 years ago and the extensive list of undergraduates listed really put it into perspective how young some of these “dissidents” or agitators were when they were murdered.


But back to the theme park. We turned up 10 minutes after it opened and there was a queue of about 200 people waiting to get in. So straight away the fun factor diminished by a factor of 10. So we waited patiently, paid 30 pesos in (holy jaysus is right!) and were treated to more fibre glass donkeys than any man should have to see in his lifetime. There were plenty of fibreglass sheep, goats and camels aswell. After paying a lady dressed like a fortune teller (I think she was going for the Nazareth 0 AD look but really didn’t pull it off) we then immediately joined another queue to witness the multimedia birth of Christ. Overproduced is one word which comes to mind, the Pink Floyd light show completely ruining the rustic setting. So anyways you wander around the park and you bump into a fibreglass pope (the 2004 model), a fibreglass Mother Teresa, and a fibreglass Ghandi, who’s much smaller than I though he would be :)


There were life size stations of the cross, a load of randomly placed plastic palm trees and all the key scenes from JC’s life, including his first bike, the last supper, the crucifixion and most dramatically the resurrection all realised in magnificently colourful top of the range 3D fibreglass. The resurrection was hardcore – every half hour the park would erupt with a blast of Hallelujah and a huge 40ft Jesus would, very slowly, hydraulically emerge (15 minutes to resurrect, 15 minutes to de-resurrect) from a huge fibreglass landscape, arms spread, hands raised to heaven in thanks for the buckets of oil it takes to make the hydraulic resurrection possible. If JC had mechanical movable arms he cudda been a JCB. I think the place was sponsored, fittingly enough, by Cheesy Doritos as these were the only snacks available at the park sweet shop. The funniest part of the whole thing was climbing the hill at Golgotha and being able to see a water park, complete with corkscrew water chutes with kids doing somersaults and bellyflops, all right next door to the Jesus Theme Park. All in all a very odd experience. There were bus loads of Bolivian and Peruvian families who had obviously travelled a great distance to be exposed to such chintz but you had to respect their admiration and admire their respect.


This Monday past was definitely a day to forget, the first thoroughly, shockingly bad luck day on our adventures. It started off with a couple of incredibly frustrating phonecalls to our leasing company over here. Despite me having provisionally booked the apartment for an extra week, a task itself which took 5 phonecalls the previous week to sort out, they were telling me we needed to be out on the date on our original contract. No exceptions, no negotiations, no alternative accommodation. Needless to say I got very annoyed with the ignorant bint I was dealing with and after some heated circular negotiations I demanded to meet her and her boss to discuss our situation. That was in the morning. I got off the phone pretty annoyed that I had to make my way to their office to sort something out which they should have sorted the previous week. We had a couple of things to do in town, including visiting the Cambio (Bureau de Change) and buying our bus tickets out of BA so we said we’d get them out of the way before trekking out to wherever it was their office was located. The one day I was carrying a lot of dollars AND my credit card is the one day I got absolutely done on the subway. Not once but twice. I’m blaming Ignorant Bint for getting me so rattled that I didn’t don my invisible money belt. Of course it’s totally my own fault but it was the first time in almost 5 weeks down here that I had more than a few pesos on me and wasn’t carrying that money belt. Anyways – we’re on a really crowded subway train 1 stop from where we needed to get off. This motley crew of 50+ year olds got on the stop before our last stop. One fat lady in particular made a big deal about trying to make space for herself. As the train stopped and we were getting off, this ould wan stopped right in front of me blocking my way out of the train. I stepped around her as best I could given her considerable girth and the throngs of people getting on and off the train. Just as I exited the train I felt the slightest of tugs on my pocket. Straight away my hands went in to check for my wallet. Gone. I immediately stopped the fat oul wan as she made her way up the platform and told her to give me back my wallet NOW. She obviously feigned complete innocence.

This all happened in the space of about 15 seconds. I shouted to M that my wallet was gone. An old guy, obviously working as part of a team with the less than nimble fingered grandmother was suddenly in M’s face, frenetically gesturing towards the exit and waving his wallet saying basically that he saw everything and the person who had picked my pocket was going THAT way. M took off at a gallop and of course I followed her, thinking she had seen something, or at least knew something I didn’t. There was also the distinct possibility that I was about to assault an innocent old lady. So not only was I robbed but I also managed to catch and lose the same innocent old lady who robbed me. In retrospect I should have pinned her to the wall and screamed for a Policeman. I’m 100% sure if I could have found a copper in time, that they’d have found my wallet either in her cavernous handbag (this woman would put Aunty Bridget to shame) or in her pocket. A very clever recovery by the old guy I have to say. It completely fooled us. I twigged straight away when I caught up with M that we were running away from the people we needed to catch. In the 20 seconds it took for this to happen, they were completely gone, lost in the criss-cross crowds of the busiest subway station in BA. I was sick. Stomach churningly, feet stuck to the floor, helplessly sick. In a moment of pure enlightenment at the pinnacle of my annoyance when I knew all was lost I tried punching a wall to see would that bring my wallet back, but that only served to make me look like Tom Cruise in a moment of particularly bad overacting circa Top Gun, and also to really hurt my hand.

We didn’t even have a peso to get the subway back to the apartment. So we basically ran the couple of miles back in the searing heat, shoving aside anyone who got in our way or got too close (I wasn’t going to be done a 3rd time). Honestly I must have looked like John Rambo striding through the streets of BA, thick as pigshite, nursing a messed up hand, on a mission to cancel my card before that chintzy biddy could get to a leather goods store and buy a bigger top of the range handbag for herself. How I managed to pull the details out of the laptop and dial Bank of Ireland’s Credit Card department with a very fat and bruised right hand I’ll never know. The one positive to come out of the day was that my passport hadn’t been lifted. You need your passport to change money over here. I still had it in the same pocket from where my wallet disappeared. Luckily I had emptied the wallet of all our other bank/atm/credit cards when we arrived in BA so as bad as it was to lose a wad of money, it could have been a whole lot worse. In the hour after it happened we were both inconsolable, hating every Porteňo we came across, particularly the lazy cops generally to be found on hot days in the shade smoking cigarettes or in the subway on rainy days, chatting to / mithering Kiosk owners. These guys are less than useless – an opinion incidentally already fully formed before our Olivia Twist episode. Anyways – it only took us a couple of hours and some retail therapy to forget our woes and fall back in love with the city despite our unpleasant experience. It’s probably one of the safest cities we’ve been to and as mentioned in previous posts, the people are fantastic. We also had a positive outcome at the leasing company aswell without me having to resort to any masonry impact testing. I dealt with Supervisor of Ignorant Bint who was far more enlightened and smiling – “we hab solution for all the problems……all the problems except the death…..” We were in safe hands again. So all was back on track by Monday night.

El Ateneo Bookstore

Later in the week we also got to visit El Ateneo bookstore on Sante Fe – apparently the biggest bookstore in South America. It’s crowning glory however is the fact that it’s located in an old theatre and all of the interior where possible has been kept intact and renovated to accommodate the bookshelves. There's very quaint mini reading rooms in the private boxes and a café on the stage. Probably the most gorgeous bookshop we’ve ever been in. Then as if that wasn’t enough action for one week we discovered the best pizza in the world – even better than in Naples! It’s in a place called Filo on San Martin, apparently a Buenos Aires institution and there’s no coincidence whatsoever in the fact that we went in there on Sunday hangin’ after our pub crawl on Saturday night. We had a smoked provolone with olives pizza , and a white pizza with potato and rosemary. Hommena Hommena! It’s the one place out of all the places we’ve patronised that we plan on returning to for our final meal on Sunday. Its that good. I know it’s only pizza and in a town with such a dizzying variety of culinary delights it’s probably sacrilegious to elevate pizza to such great heights but you know when Christy Moore is singing he closes his eyes, paying his respects to the song, giving it all he’s got? Well I had my eyes closed in a very Christy (Moore not Brown) fashion for most of my pizza (and half of M’s) such was the extreme tasty taste sensation. I was also sweating pure cocktails. 10 out of 10. It has a gorgeous waiting area downstairs aswell that looks like the circus. On many levels this place wins our Buenos Aires Vegetarian Deliciousness (BAVDA) award for 2007. The VoulezBar across the street from our apartment gets an honourable mention for its Café con Leche and Media Lunas (mini croissants - literally a half moon. No Porteňo starts their day without coffee and media lunas). Cafés with their own bakeries are the way of the future.

Downstairs At Filo Pizza

So we ship out on Monday at midnight on a magic omnibus heading for Monte Hermoso a small town on the Atlantic coast 9 hours south of BA. We’ve heard good things about it, nice beaches, quiet, great for a relaxing getaway and just far enough from BA that you don’t run into the hordes of holidaying Porteňos. We plan on spending 4 or 5 days there in our air conditioned tent before we head further south to the Penguins and Patagonia. It’s all feckin go. So expect less posts on here and probably less phonecalls aswell. I’ll have my laptop but wont have regular access to power or internet so it’ll be a bit hit and miss. So bye bye BA hello chaos. Or maybe that should be bye bye chaos hello chaos. Ciao chaos, gracias chaos.

Buenos Bizarres 4 :

Homer Simpson Garden Gnomes

Books We’ve Been Reading :
We brought a couple of books each with us on our travels and swapped them between us, but even so we were both bookless after 3 weeks. That says a lot about how easy we’ve been taking it I suppose. That said, it’s a nice change to actually have the time to read a book in just a couple of sittings (or lyings). Unfortunately, getting your hands on decent English books is a bit of a nightmare over here. Most of the large bookstores have a “Pocket Book” section with really trashy pocket size English novels – if Danielle Steel is your bag then you’re in. Otherwise you’re most definitely out. We looked up book exchanges in BA on the web, places where you can bring your dog eared books and swap them for other traveller’s cast offs. Sounds great in theory but most of them operate on a 2 for 1 deal – ie you’ve to hand over 2 books to get one in return. We read about this “Buenos Aires Clubhouse” place in San Telmo, an organisation set up by Americans with clubhouses in Cusco, Lima and somewhere else. It looked like exactly what we needed. They had a library of English books you could borrow and also a English book exchange facility. We wandered down one afternoon to this faux bohemian tenement/ marble floored “hostel” in San Telmo saying we wanted to exchange some books. We were told we needed to be members and that would cost us $80USD EACH! for the year. That’s one expensive book swap. There was no negotiating on a daily rate or even letting us in to take a look at the selection. So I’d advise anyone to stay away from the South American Explorer’s Buenos Aires Clubhouse (apparently a not for profit organisation) unless you’re a rich American looking for a cotton-wool boho South American “Adventure”. As luck would have it there’s an excellent Second Hand book store up the street selling exclusively English books with a great selection of all types of books. Walrus Books, 617 Estados Unidos, San Telmo, BA where we stocked up on some stinky literature for our travels. We would never have found it if it wasn’t for the eejits in the BA Clubhouse. So thanks to them.

Catch22…………………………………....Joseph Heller
Elementary Particles………………....Michele Houellebecq
The Tenth Circle……………………....Jodi Picoult
Ludmila’s Broken English……….....DBC Pierre
The Alchemist………………………….Paulo Coelho
Me Talk Pretty One Day…………...David Sedaris
The Handmade’s Tale……………....Margaret Atwood
Selected Writings of………………....Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Bonfire Of The Vanities……..Tom Wolfe