I felt a bit what most 'north-of-Brazil' south americans feel when touching down in Buenos Aires, and which was a bit surprising to me, given that I have been here before: it really feels like a European experience in South America. It seems like everyone is walking a big dog on a leash; there are numerous cafes and bistros on every block; the architecture of course is a Franco/Italian mixture and the skin tone - now in comparison with everything north all the way to Guatemala, decidedly white, with plenty of blue and green eyes on display. I even had plans to go and watch the polo semi-finals! with my good friends from Insead, Sam and Maria. Well, the polo rained out, which allowed the three of us, joined by Thavashan, now working for Anglo American in Rio, and - again and predictably courtesy of Aerolinias Argentinas arriving six hours late at 3h30 am the Sat morning - to have a fantastic typical Argentinian meat fest on Sat afternoon in one of the more famous parillas (La Cabrera) in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. It was one of those lunches that started at two pm and ended at 11pm, in - perhaps predictably - an Irish bar in Parlermo, where Thavashan and I became instantaneous old and true friends with a proper Irishman, who regaled us with his tales of living in Buenos Aires, and his take on the psychology of this fascinating city. Fascinating, because it seems to me that the Argies are somewhat (or more) caught in the past; they have yet to regain the glory years of the early 20th century; for all the sophisticating on display, it is rather skin deep and most of the city clearly poor or at least struggling to make ends meet; politically, they seem confused and prone to lurch from one crisis to the next, and, now having been to both Colombia and Chile, I think they are falling back into fourth place on the economic pecking order behind these two and of course power house Brazil to the north. But they certainly party right through the night; serve excellent beef and wine; have an aesthetically very pleasing city and I would say it seems cleaner and better functioning than when I was last here (although I am prone to being a 'glass half full' type of guy, as you know ...). There was an additional bit of excitement closer to home for me, in that the World Cup draw was televised live and was on on every TV in the city on the Friday morning just before lunch - it generated much excitement, in this country that struggled to qualify, but as always consider themselves real contenders for the crown. It was great catching up with my friends from Insead, and the very city itself seemed like an old friend that I was re-acquainting with. However, by firm decision, the two weeks in Argentina would be essentially dedicated to Patagonia, and so it was that Thavashan and I set off with humongous hangovers early on Sunday morning for El Calafate - 3000km to the south, in decidedly chillier climes.