South American Sillyness

My first weekend in South America literally brought blood sweat and tears. After the relative calmness of a few casual Friday night drinks in Post and some other bars in Palermo, Maria promises me a night of serious Argentinian partying on Saturday night - apparently [i]the[i] night to go out in Buenos Aires as people don't eat until midnight or so, the clubs don't get full until 3.30/4am and close at about 7am. We check out the Palermo Market which has lots of cute little stands. I thought the prices would certainly be lower than the high street shops here (clothes are REALLY expensive here - even more so than Dublin - where's Penneys when you need it!) however, the market prices were just the same. Which is probably a blessing in disguise as I didn't buy anything as my rucksack is already full to brimming and I can't be lugging a whole load of GHDs, bikinis and flipflops up Macchu Picchu now can I? The pubs we had been drinking in the night before turned into market stalls during the day at the weekend - you could see all the tables and chairs folded and hanging off the walls on the side.

We eventually find a bus stop where we can begin the Buenos Aires City Tour on a big yellow bus. This tour lasted almost 3 and a half hours and brings you everywhere in Buenos Aires Capital Federal. BA is sub-divided into lots of districts, and they are all quite different in their own way. I was lucky enough to have a fairly well off Argentinian friend who owns an apartment in one of the nicer parts of town. During the tour, we travel up to San Telmo and on the the southern-most part of town, La Boca. Which turns out to be the most interesting, colourful and my favourite. It's known to be a dodgy part of the city, and you can tell by the delapidated buildings that things are different here. We pass an overgrown local football pitch beside the home stadium (painted bright blue and yellow) of the famous Argentinian football team - the Boca Juniors. The pitch is brown and overgrown but filled with Argentinian boys playing football. Apparently they're just a little bit passionate about that over here.... it's unbelievable the pride they take in their teams. La Boca is filled with multicoloured small shanty houses in bright blues, yellows and reds. It is in this part of the city that the Tango was born. Kids wave at us as we pass on our big yellow bus, the bus is only new so the locals still find it amusing to see all those tourist twats staring down at the poor folk of the local neighbourhood. I felt weird about taking photos but loved all the street art in this part of town. We turned the corner and saw 3 young boys shouting at their big flatscreen tv which was set up with an X-Box in the middle of the footpath. Hilarious.

We were driven to the far side of the city, through Puerto Madero which is a brand new neighbourhood right beside the docklands. This is the home of the rich, and the brand spanking new apartment buildings and parks with new playgrounds make a big change from La Boca which we pretty much just left. We drive through Recoleta, the richest part of town (which holds the famous Recoleta Cemetary) and on to Belgrano, which touches the outskirts. Despite the tour, and a week of being in this city, the place is a complete maze and lots of the streets look exactly the same. It's difficult to get away from the hustle and bustle and people.

Saturday evening was Maria's kind attempt to impress me with Buenos Aires nightlife, and she didn't have to try very hard. I'll omit the details but Argentinians like their nightlife. One thing I will say though - the attempt to merge Latin-American music with European dance [i]does not work[i]. They need to stick to what they know and leave it at that. I spent the night trying to decipher Spanish conversations and trying to figure out why the hell Latin American music a la Ricky Martin is so popular over here. I still haven't figured it out. It made my poor music snob ears hurt.

Sunday I spent lounging in the sun drinking cold beer in Palermo with one of my friends Kate O'Riordan and her husband Paraic - they came to South America on their honeymoon, but were only in BA for the day as they were travelling up to Iguazu Falls later that day. It was good to see some familiar faces, and the Irish accent FOR ONCE was music to my ears. Staying with Maria is amazing but I can't help but think it would be so much easier to meet people if I was staying in a hostel.

Today was spent planning the rest of my stay in Argentina and trying to figure out a good way to get to Bolivia from here. From talking to the myriad of people I know who have been to South America, there are plenty of ways and directions to travel, I think I just have to find one that suits me. But the information and tips people sent me has been, and will continue to be for the entire trip, amazing. Myself and Maria are going to travel to Mendosa for a few days from Thursday - this is the famous wine region of Argentina and is supposed to be lovely. I will travel by overnight bus (13 hours) but Maria will fly as she has a bigger budget (and has to get there quicker as she works). I will return the following Monday and fly then up to Iguazu Falls which is probably one of the reasons I came here in the first place. From there I will fly to Salta (north Argentina) which is also meant to be very pretty, and travel by bus to Bolivia.

Today was probably the hottest day here so far, I think it got up to 35 degrees. And there aren't many parks around which makes things fairly sweaty and painful. We went to La Bomba de Tiempo this evening, in an outdoor venue called Konex. This is in a fairly crappy part of town, but the venue is great and the gig was Argentinian drum players - I'll see if I can upload a video of this onto this blog - they were absolutely amazing. About 15 guys standing around the stage with one guy in the middle 'conducting' them - the venue was jammed with tourists. Maria told me no one used to know about it (it happens every week, with guest musicians each week) but tonight it's all tourists - it must be one thing you have to see in BA.

So on to the topic of the title of this blog entry - apparently I am seriously allergic to mosquito bites here. I have around 15 bites and one of them in particular (on my ankle) got so bad and red and swollen today I thought my ankle was going to explode. My legs are covered in them, but this particular one on my ankle, not even the local non English speaking pharmacist knew what to do with. If it doesn't go down soon I may have to resort to more serious measures.....

Arrived on Wednesday morning to a lovely spattering of rain on the window of the plane as it touched down. Lovely, I travel across the Atlantic Ocean only to be greeted with rain. My first glimpse of South America isn't too impressive, and as I wait bleary eyed and exhausted from a 24 hour trip in the Immigration queue, I wonder how many other people felt the same way I did at the beginning of their adventure.
Luckily, Maria has organised a driver to take me from the airport to where she owns an apartment in Palermo, a fairly upmarket suburbian part of Buenos Aires. As we leave the air conditioned airport, the humidity strikes. Mother of god! I haven't felt that kind of heat since I was in Brisbane in 2009.

The driver doesn't speak any English, and I'm too tired to try to think of the few phrases of Spanish I've learned to make much effort - so we sit in silence as I look out the window at the rain and the crazy Argentinian drivers on the main highway into the city. Listening to the radio, they babble on in Spanish at a crazy speed.

After about an hour, we arrive at Oro 1908 - 2b in Palermo and I'm greeted by Maria's sister who doesn't speak much English. She leaves me in the apartment and I try to take in the fact that I am finally in Argentina - a place I'd wanted to come to for as long as I could remember (or since watching the Motorcycle Diaries - hopefully I'll see Gael Garcia Bernal somewhere on my trip and bring him home to my mother).

Maria brings me to the supermarket later - it's about 7 times the size of the average supermarket at hom, and this apparently is fairly normal. The choice of food, fruit, vegetables, wine - it's unbelievable. We then go for something to eat, and it's the beginning of what I fear will be a regular occurrence on my trip. We struggle to find anywhere that has anything vegetarian on the menu. These Argentinian folk seem to really like meat....eventually we find somewhere and I sit down to the worst vegetarian lasagne I've ever eaten. This is the first time I consider eating the steak. I'll keep you updated as to when that happens.

Thursday I went on my first lone adventure, I tackled the Subte, the tube system in Buenos Aires. A fairly hilarious experience as I try to explain to the ticket lady where I want to go in seriously broken Spanish. I find my way to the Avenida de Nueve Julio which is apparently the widest street in Southern America. Buenos Aires is huge, absolutely massive and there are people everywhere. I then go to the Recoleta area of the city, which is the richest and prettiest. This is where the Cementerio de la Recoleta is - a cemetery filled with huge sarcophagus - for the rich Argentinians who can afford to be buried there. It's a little bit creepy but nonetheless beautiful. Eva Peron is buried there. Brimming with tourists of the fat American type (the worst) but worth the visit.

Eventually found a vegetarian restaurant that serves nothing but organic food of the non meat kind (including their wine selection) and I dragged Maria along. I felt a little guilty making a born and bred Argentinian go to a veggie restaurant but she seemed to enjoy it.

Friday was spent being chauffeured around the city by Maria - she showed me the more un-touristy places, the 'real' Buenos Aires - a huge advantage to having a friend who is actually from here. Some areas of the city are very poor, and people spend their days/lives routing through rubbish bins for recycling material. Their sole income is finding bits of rubbish to recycle from the public bins on the streets. They go around with their big trollies full of stinking bits of trash. Tourism is a completely new concept in Buenos Aires and last year the city invested in 30 big yellow tourist buses - we tried to go on one but the English tour was booked out.

I got myself a tourist map of the city and it's quite hilarious - there's not much in terms of history or beautiful buildings to see - there is the 25 Mayo 1810 monument which is in memory of the beginning of the state 200 years ago, there is also the government buildings and an 'Evita' statue - but not a whole lot else. The museums are sparse - we visited the Malba museum 'Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires' and there was an exhibition on of South American artists. You ever heard of Carlos Cruz-Diez Colm? He likes lines.

There's a lot about Buenos Aires bars that have a distinct Berlin feel to them (which I love) - BA likes it's street art and we went to one particular bar in Palermo called 'Post' which was covered in famous drawings/graffiti by street artists from all over the world. A-mazing. Absolutely loved it.