Donde esta our car?

Greetings from Buenos Aires. Still Buenos Aires... That’s right, we are well and truly grounded. There is an extremely strong suggestion that are ship did in fact arrive on Thursday (several days late) however the Argentine approach of casual nonchalance means we cannot be sure, about anything. Having called everyday for non-updates they finally contacted us yesterday morning to say we needed to be at the port (half way across the city) in 15 minutes and so after a fairly frantic journey we rocked up, foolishly optimistic that the necessary haste might mean that we were going to get our car... Not so. Our contact at the port said hola, introduced himself, and then suggested we go for a beer, at 11am. Iḿ supremely confidant it was not his first of the day.... Anyway, after much tooing and froing between our agent, our agent’s agent, the agent’s agent’s port contact (aka Fat Tony) and Fat Tony’s customs officials, we still don’t have a car. They told us we can pick it up on Monday, though I suspect they’re fairly casual about that, perhaps even nonchalant.

The upside to this inspirational ineptitude is that Buenos Aires is brilliant. I’m sure the boys (who are currently shlaffing after a fairly heavy night on el towno) may have more to add but I’ĺl give you a quick brief.

We spent the first 3 nights in a nice little apartment in Palermo Soho, a very trendy area of Buenos Aires exactly 2 hours walk from the city centre (2hrs, not the 45 mins my map reading skills expected)

We have since moved into a backpackers just round the corner as this area and Palermo Hollywood next to it are definitely the coolest places to be. The nightlife is excellent but does not get started till late, around midnight is a good time to go to dinner and then hit the bars afterwards. Dinner, as you can probably imagine, is mostly cow related, although you can branch out with some bovine if you’re feeling a little risqué. The first night we had 750g T-Bone steaks, and we have now covered, chorizo, lomo (the best for me), cow cheek and cow intestine. Actually there’s probably more but the meat sweats are making it hard to concentrate.

On Sunday we went to see Boca Juniors play. The atmosphere is unbelievable. The fans don’t stop singing and the noise is incredible. We were in the less rowdy of the two (all-standing) stadium ends, with the away fans in the tier above us. We were warned not to go to the front of our mostly covered stand as the away fans have a tendency to throw missiles. And when I say missiles I means plastic cups filled with, errr, let’s just go with not-coke. Nice. Apparently it can get very dangerous but with a guided tour you feel completely safe, the opposite end had a massive drum and trumpet band that kept the fans bouncing and singing for 90 mins.

Anyway, I’m going to go work on my tan and bone up on my Spanish. Stay classy planet earth.