Argentina - Buenos Aires We've been in BA for just over a week now, after a much more enjoyable bus journey than our first one. We found accomodation pretty easily in a hostel from the same chain as the one we stayed in in rio, and were pretty pleased. We began sharing a room with a young lady named Mel, who is from Jersey and immediately asked us if we wanted to see X.Men3 that night, a very plesant start indeed. Since then we've been mainly trying to get used to the porteño (the name for the people of BA) way of life. This basically includes not eating dinner until 10pm, having a drink about midnight, and then staying up/out until maybe 5-7am in the morning.... it's mad but true. It's been a challenge, but we're just about adapting now, tho i'm not sure how well we'd cope if we had to go to work as well, like the porteños obviously do! It's a mystery how they manage. The hostel is really nice, it has a bar underneath which is handy, tho the tab goes straight onto our room bill which is a bit dangerous! They're promising us a big screen for the world cup matches too, so we'll be spending perhaps a bit more time here than we really ought over the next few weeks... Buenos Aires as a city is very cool, it is very european, in appearance especially but also in the way it works, and the people. The weather, sadly is more London than Rome. It's getting into winter here, so it's cooling down quickly and raining a bit. We're starting to feel a little TOO at home! By the way thanks for all the talk of sunshine and barbeques, it's helping us a lot. ;0p The one thing you wont make us jealous about with a barbeque though is the food. The food here is amazing. Well, the beef here is amazing. Virtually every place to eat does steak, and they are really wonderful pieces of meat, exactly as good as everybody says. And so so cheap! To give you an idea we went out for a pretty posh meal the other day, starter, wine, all that, and it set us back about 80 pesos, which is maybe 14 quid... that's not each either. As well as food they're barmy about the Tango here. It's difficult to explain it really as there's nothing to compare it to at home. BA is the "home of Tango" and the people take it pretty seriously. There are shows on all over the place, we've not taken one in yet, but it's on the agenda for hopefully this week. We have seen a bit of dancing though. After the antiques fair up the road on sunday, we had some food and walked into the square, and there was a bit of a crowd around a little band playing Tango music. There were no official dancers, but instead randoms from the crowd would just wander into the middle and start dancing the Tango. And beautifully at that. It was so cool, there were teenagers and old folk and all sorts all just dancing. Apart from all that we're still trying to sort ourselves out some spanish lessons, we've been doing pretty ok so far with ordering and buying stuff, but our conversation is not great and there are so many people to talk to, so we're keen to get going on the language skills. Keep the messages coming, it's always good to hear from you all, hope you're all well, and COME ON ENGLAND!! Till next time, Lisa and Gem x x x