Hello Everyone

We arrived in Buenos Aires early one sunny morning at the beginning of May, and were very pleasantly surprised by first impressions. Luckily, our stalkers Rob and Chris are also staying in BA for a month, doing a Spanish course and kindly invited us to crash at their plush apartment in the centre of town. How cool. Sproat´s parents had also come to visit for 2 weeks, before taking him home with them, so we spent a fun night with them, eating steak, drinking red wine and watching Tango in an old ballroom. We have met lots of cool people through Robbie and Chris´s Spanish school, and we´ve been out on a lot of do´s with them. On our second day, they took us to a Salsa class, which was excellent fun (although Z was the only girl, which wasn´t much of a problem)! We´ve had far too many late nights. The Argentines eat really late, often after 10pm, then drink until the early hours and then are up at the crack of dawn for work. All the teachers at the Spanish School are also studying, and so after teaching in the morning, have to go to uni, and then do their homework and preparation for teaching the next day. They then go out and get drunk again, and all seem to be able to survive on 4 hours sleep. We, on the other hand, have not been able to make it out of bed before the boys get back from school at 1pm. Whatever, we´re on holiday! Due to all the partying before and after the 10th May, we had a relatively sedate one on T´s 28th birthday and had a slap up meal in Palermo (Fat steak and excellent red wine, of course).

We have made the most of our afternoons though, exploring the different neighbourhoods. Recoleta is the classy, upmarket area to the North of town, with lots of fancy shops. It´s also home to the famous cemetary, housing Evita´s grave. This place was incredible: full of ornate tombs as big as houses where all of Argentina´s elite are buried. It was like a small, very morbid city. Puerto Madero is Buenos Aires´version of the Albert Docks but a bit bigger and classier. San Telmo is full of cobbled streets and antique shops and has an amazing market on Sundays. It´s also famed as the home of Tango culture, which is huge. La Boca is an arty, working class district by the port, which has lots of brightly coloured buildings, and is home to Boca Juniors football team (Maradona´s team). We stopped for a cafe con leche in a little place with an old man singing and a couple dancing tango. It was all really cool, until they made us get up and have a go in front of the whole place. It was like India all over again!

One of the highlights was going to La Boca to watch Boca Juniors play Arsenal in the league. The game ended 1-1, and the football was pretty good, but the atmosphere was incredible. Every single person in the kop was singing their heart out for the duration of the match, never failing, to the beat of jungle like drums and whistles. They didn´t even stop when Arsenal scored. It was like being in a club and Z was rocking out, oblivious to the football match going on. It was cool to see Riquelme, but he wasn´t on best form, and Maradona´s abscence was marked by his empty seat on the halfway line.

We had a little side trip to Uruguay from Buenos Aires - another stamp in the passports. Colonia, a pretty, cobblestoned Uruguayan town is only an hour´s boat ride across the Rio de la Plata from BA. It was founded by the Portugese in the 17th century to smuggle goods to Buenos Aires, sneaky devils. It was very picturesque, and quite a wealthy place. Everything was a lot more expensive than we anticipated - this is a place where rich Argentinians come for a break. We then had a 2.5 hour bus ride to the capital, Montevideo, which is a cool, compact capital, and we were able to see most of it in a day. We had a very pleasant walk along the river to the beaches to the East of the city in the morning sunshine. The Uruguayans are possibly more friendly than the Argentinians (and their steaks possibly tastier)?!

We had another side trip to an Argentinian town 4 hours north of Buenos Aires called Rosario. This is like a chilled out BA, with lots of interesting colonial architecture. It is also the birthplace of Che Guevara. Felt a bit uneasy walking past the huge plaque saying "Falklands belongs to Argentina forever" (in Spanish of course, but can´t remember how to write it), and the Falklands War Memorial.

And now we´re back in Buenos Aires. We love this city - it´s like New York, London and Madrid all in one, and we´ve been really surprised at how friendly and helpful the locals have been, especially with our pathetic attempts at Spanish. Thanks to Robbie and Chris, (who have been extremely kind hosts and put up with our slovenliness), we have spent over a week in BA and keep coming back! Wish we could stay for longer, but Iguazu Falls call(s).

Don´t be strangers......