Monday, March 28, 2011

Argentiiiina

After skipping the boarder over to Argentina from Brazil we spent the day exploring Iguazu (different spelling for different country/language) falls from the Argentinian side. The Argentinians actually own the falls so you can get right up over them and around them and such. We paid a little extra and did a speed boat ride up the river and they take you right in under some of the falls, moist. I definitely believe that theory about waterfalls, negative ions and being in a good mood. We were all so crazy happy all day.

I have decided on this trip that butterflies love waterfalls. I´m not sure how this happens. But at all the waterfalls we have frequented this trip there have been huge amounts of butterflies. Particularly at Iguazu. And they don´t seem afraid of people at all. You can pick them up and they´ll chill out on your hand for 10 mins while you walk around. Love it.

From Iguazu to BA is only about 20 hours on a bus. We decided to splash out and get cama class (read expensive, but awesome) seats. On these buses you can recline about 75% of the way back, watch movies and they serve you food and alcohol. Not bad for approx AUD$105. Its the first time we´ve splashed out on one of those but it was totally worth it.

Buenos Aires appears to be another city where we are experiencing it more during the night than during the day. Although we have it on good authority that this is the way to be while you´re here.
The first two nights we stayed in a hostel that could be adequately described as a meat market. Its the kind of place designed for 18-20 year olds on their gap year who don´t want to meet any of the locals or experience any culture and just want to get drunk and have sex. Totally not our scene. We´ve since moved to a smaller hostel in the bohemian suburb of San Telmo, which is still only a short walk from the centre. Our hostel is awesome, doubly so as we have individual beds!! After being in bunk beds for the last 2 months we´re pretty excited about this.

We started doing Spanish lessons last week and lets just say its proving to be a lot harder for us than we initially thought. But we are persevering - so hopefully by the time our 10 hours of lessons are over we can at least say something. Although we have discovered that Argentinian Spanish is different to all other Spanish. For example.. ll over here is pronounced ´sh´ but everywhere else it is pronounced like a y.  Also people in BA speak very fast, so we´ve had to learn the phrase ¨Mas Lento¨- more slowly!
As seems to happen on the gringo trail, there are lots of people in BA who we had met previously in Brazil. Its been good to meet up with people and hang out.

On Weds we went to a psy gig in the city. It said that it started at midnight, but we forgot that that would mean 1am ´Argentinian time´- you can NEVER rush an Argentinian. So after rocking up at 1230am to find them closed we decided to go to a bar close by for a few cheeky beers while we waited for the club to open. We didn´t realise the significance of its name ´The Dark Bar´until we were well and truly committed to being in the venue (had already ordered beers). Much to our surprise we were in a goth and emo bar...and really stuck out like sore thumbs...hilarity. But as we were already committed to being there until the end of our beer and tried not to draw attention to ourselves...which didn´t go to plan as i dropped the beer bottle (Litre beer bottles are huge! and thus hard to keep a grip on!!). This resulted in the people next to us not so sneakily taking pictures of me and Bianca laughing her head off. Face Palm. The rest of the night was pretty great. The psy gig was lots of fun and for the first few hours the music was great.

Friday night our friend Nacho, who we met in Paraty, who lives in BA. Took us to a house party his friends were having. It was funny because we were expecting to meet a whole bunch of Argentinians, however it turned out that 90% of the party were also foreigners -French, German, Cuban, Bolivian etc.  It was great talking to a whole bunch of people who lived here - even if they were foreign as well.
Yesterday we went to the antique markets around the corner from our house, which are held every Sunday. Soooo many pretty things! There was so many street performances going on as well. Bands, street theatre and artists giving our senses so much delight. I really wish i had an audio recorder so i could keep with me the wonderful mix of sounds i heard. Maybe will need to invest in one of those for the future....

Anyway, i have to do my homework before my next Spanish lessons
¡Hasta Luego!
xxx

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