After leaving the icy winds of Patagonia behind, the first thing that hit us when we exited the Buenos Aires airport was a wall of heat. The sun was out, the skies were blue and the massive Rio de la Plata river was just across the street! So we jumped into a taxi with the plan of following a tip we received about exchanging US dollars into Argentinian Pesos at one of the many 'cambio' shops on Florida Street. Basically you get double the amount of pesos for US dollars at one of these places than you would in at a 'legitimate' money exchange or ATM. It had dodgy and disaster written all over it! When our taxi driver realises what we want, he pipes up and says he's got a mate who "only sells Pesos to friends, and you are my friends. How much money do you have?" So we decide to trust him, and having no other real option we visit his 'friend'. We walk into this small shop, hand over $1,000 US dollars in exchange for $9,000 pesos, we're shown into a private room to count it all, meanwhile all of our belongings are in the taxi outside. This could all go horribly wrong…. but luckily for us it didn't. It was one of the strangest situations though. We then headed to the apartment we booked where we were to be living for the next 5 weeks. A cute 8th floor air conditioned studio apartment with a balcony overlooking the zoo in the trendy, leafy suburb of Palermo. Clare and I quickly fully unpacked our backpacks and settled in to a slightly more relaxed lifestyle where we weren't being woken up by a drunken roommate at 3am, didn't have to wear thongs in the shower, could leave our toothbrushes and shampoo in the bathroom and we even had a couch to sit on!!

The next day we had a mini Evita festival… it just had to be done. We watched the Madonna movie (which I thought was a bit crap) then walked down the road to the Evita Museum. It was all very pleasant, but New Year's Eve was better! After another interesting cab ride (where neither the driver nor us knew where to go) we ended up walking around semi-empty streets looking for any sign of crowds or action when we found a night club. We walked to the entry and the guy told me it was $300 US each!! I laughed at him and did a quick 180°, grabbed Clare and double-timed it to try to find somewhere cool to be for midnight… which was in 15 minutes! Somehow we stumbled onto a park with loads of families who'd set up camp there, sat down on the ground and cracked another tinny. A gulp or two later fireworks started exploding, dogs started barking and car alarms started going off. Some of the fireworks seemed very close, and then we realised this was because some of the families were letting off their own! Then a large amount of fireworks started banging away just behind us, then off to the left, then right. We were completely surrounded by fireworks and bits of cardboard and embers were raining down on us! Afterwards we wandered through the streets and found we were only minutes away from Puerto Madero, which was where all the action and crowds were… better late than never, huh?

The next couple of weeks were so great, just getting the hang of this amazing city. It's not a city with loads of large scale tourist attractions, it's a city packed full of cafés, restaurants (with the most amazing meat and wine), lush green parks and grimy, colourful suburbs… all of which we explored thoroughly! We even hired some bicycles so we could cover more ground. Less running around like a tourist and more relaxing and enjoying the city like a local. We had a sunny Saturday bike ride with some locals we made friends with, went to a steamy Tango night, had a few late and messy nights on the town and explored the incredible Recoleta Cemetery (where Evita and all off Buenos Aires richest families are buried) which was more like a mini city for the dead. You could get lost in the maze of streets as every grave is twice as high as you are. Most were spectacularly over-the-top opulent, but some were a little run-down. A few times the coffin was fully exposed. One was even a little ajar! There may have been a zombie inside, desperate to escape. I touched it, Clare freaked out…

We also did another free walking tour (though you always tip them) which was good, but the best thing about it was how he gave us a crash course on how to use the local bus system. It requires you to buy a pocket-sized book, cross-reference numbers with locations then choose your bus from the over 120 privately run bus companies all with differently coloured and decorated buses. I felt I needed an intensive 2 week course to really understand it, but luckily there's an app for that! Also, standing outside the Casa Rosada (the big pink building where Evita gave all those speeches in the movie… and in real life too) our guide told us the bizarre story of Evita's corpse, the strangest bit of which being how her husband Peron and his new, night club dancer wife kept Evita's corpse on the dining room table… and the dancer combed Evita's hair everyday hoping to get some "Evitaness" off her. I don't think 'messed-up!' quite justifies that story!

A couple of nights later we had dinner and beers with a nice Canadian couple we met at a Trivia Night, that ended up with more beers had in the San Telmo square where they have sexy Tango dancers dancing on street corners for tips until the wee small hours.

So far Buenos Aires has been a refreshing change to our normal routine off 'speed-dating' style of international traveling, and I'm looking forward to Part 2… as no doubt you are too!

Daz