Since i sat in the seat first and andrew will tell you im too fat to move, ienjoyed the andes as we flew over. the reasoning for this being fair is that andrew saw the same thing on hisd plane over from sau paulo and he fell asleep before the plane started taxiing and didint wake up unil we?d landed.

stunning plane journey, because the mountains are so high you can see the white peaks and rolling mountaisns the whole time and then it suddenly falls into flat dark plains as you get over argentina, like a big white wall seperating argentina from chile.

got to buenos aires around lunch time on sunday, we thought we only had the one night there before we set off on the trip up to riuio so thought we best make the most of it. see the city during the dsay and head out for a good night in the famous buenos aires that open on thursday and dont shut until tuesday. (just going to apologise for typimng again. another horrific computer, but worst of all, everytime i get used to where the keys are in one country, another puts them all in differetn places)

we were told there were some nice mareket only open on sundays so we headed to one of them. it was the sort of placed you could easily buy everything, really funky hadmade things, alot vewry randmo but mostly cool. very concius of my weight (baggage weight) i treid tohold back but we both bought the odd thing in the end. andrew got a nice leather coverd notebook to right his "Journal of the in search of iguassu trips so that when it is found someone will publish them as my memopirs because computers are for paedophiles and geeks" - if you say so andrew

attemp`ted to find some good food but we seemed to be getting a pattern of things reccomended to us to not living up to it. had a pretty raknk meal near the market. went back to the hostel and kipped for a little bit. what a joke the hostel was, very very thin and very very tall, the doors and the room. just not me at all really, especially not with three bags and she said our room was on teh second floor, still six flights of stairs to get there. no worrys, my bed wasnt broken but andrew was a bit lopsided, ha!

got up and made for the bar downstairs, not much going on but when we spoke to the peopel there apparantly were on the wrong night. what went from the city that never sleeps t oan election was on sat so everywhere was shut then, sundays is the closed night and then when monday bcame that was also the closed night and it doesnt kick off until thursday. typical. nevermind, we didnt do too badly in the end.

went to a grille that had been reccomended which turned out to be not all that but it was a busy bplace and killed some time and filled us up to hit the bars....what bars. got a taxi to palermop which is the main club/bar district. compltely dead. found someone in mcdonaldfs that spoke english so they pointed us in the right directions, still nothing there realy but an enlish pub but the only english thing about it was it was expensicve and not really that friendly. certainly noticeable sdifference between here and chile. we stood out more in chile, everyone is latin, no blondes, not as many tourist and so generally pretty curious and friendly peope. here, people die their hair, there are loads of tourist, people are richer and more wordlyt i guess so not as interested by foreigners and strangely, they are in fact still bitter towards us becasue of the falklands. half f them werent even born but thats the case.

did find it interesting however to find that chile is one of the mnost expensive countries in latin america, although there is Buenos Aires, as a nation, argentina s one of the poorest and has the wekaest economy (our peruvian tour guide went to argentina for two weeks with $100 and came home with bags of clothes during the recession 5 years ago). and, uruguay´s edcuation is second only to cuba and is one of the most developed countries in latin america, economically! and apparantly brasil has teh 8th largest ecomnomy in the world, but i dont think thgat can be right?

so we left teh english bar and heasaded for some other names wed been told.

since we both have Mug written across our foreheads, we obviously are going to get fleeeced repeatedly. since we couldnt find anywhere to go, we ended up in a strip club. the big con proceeeded where your second drinks free even though the firsdt was 4 times more tha n everywhere else, then apparantly we´d paid for a girls company (yeah good company, she didint speak engish) all she sadi was "brr, im cold" i think she wanted a hug cos she looked at me a buit funny when i offered my coat! then they got another a drink and suddenly we owed more money. went on like this with andrew already paid one part but unwe had to pay for the ful round. basically, we left about an hour later, 40 quid down each and i got a massage (just a massage) and andrew got some wierd dance and she wouldnt give him a  mesasage unless he paid more. so we left giggling pretty loudly leaving two poor argentinians saying "no, sex" probably a wise move!

we had to meet at the ´hotel splendid the next day for teh tour to begin at 2pm so we thought wed do a few things that befre had. we pretty much ended up trying to post al  my crap home. there was a post office at teh end of the road but on my thrid attempt at getting to a cashier, explaingin what i wanted, having my passport....thjey finallly decided to tell me that you can only post 2kg from there. so we had to go right across town to the big central postoffice.

the most ridiculous queueing system left us waintg hours but there was a nice lady who with the help of pen an dpapewr manmaged to communicate with us. eventually sent half my life off and made back to teh city to meet the group. checked into the hotel, yes a hotel, how amazing. no dorm, my own bathroom, its great! and its lik,e this the whole trip.

so we checked iun to find a letter saying to meet at 7.30pm and we have two more nights in BA. so we didint need to meet at 2 at all. we wentr next door to eat a the hotel and wqerew getting worried by the amount of americans around. please dont be all on our trip. andrew ordered veal which turned out to be four squares of burtned meat, like rib meat and my opasta weas nice but was in a saucer full of ooil. not good!

aftyer ythat we just had a bt of a walk around the city until we had to meet the group.

the group-all english, two guys from liverpool. a guy and a girl from newcastle and two girls from bedford. perfect, no couples and no old people. although we are the babies. and the guide is from lima and is fluent in portuguese as well so all will be well in brasil.

went round to the hsotel where some of the others had been staying which was the lively place to be apparantly. did seem it but we were hungry so four of us went off to eat, when we came back, teh dj had started the pace was full ad they wouldnt let you in unless you stayed there. great. it was about 1 by this time anyweay and i couldnt be bothered trecking round again looking fro somewhere so we went to bed. got up and did all the proper toursity things in BA. did a full city walk, some really stunning buildings, parks, down at the bharbour front etc. and then got a taxi over o teh cenetry.

not just any cemetry, thisd place is amzing. from teh franciscan cathedral next door you can look out over it and it looks like a little viallage with lots of buildings and naroow street. then, at ground level you go next door and its just tomb aftert tomb, each one bettwer than the next. they go deep into teh ground with glass viewing windows, room for whole families and plaques showing so over the generations. some of them open, some with pctures and flowers, cascitts inside. big staues and monuments at street junctions, trees and plamnsts..and stragest of all, lots of cats, like guardians of the dead or something. this graveyard im guessing is filled with either national heroes or the super rich. Eva 'Evita' Peron is buried here but shes either extra speciall or her whole family has the same name becasue there were several plaques no the family tomb that said evita in some form or another.

so, it was now our last night in BA, tuesday night, closer to thursday but not quite there. nevermind, it had to be good. sick of crap food we decided we werent going to eat anywhere until we found somewhere full o. went down to the waterfront adn found the strip of all teh nice restraunts. flooked at every single menu before weighing up between atmosphere and food. turned out we picked the perfect one. the food was gorgeous, the service 5*, we both had two courses, wine adn beer and we left a decent tip and it cost us 15quid each, in the nicest resteraunt we could find. yuo also have to pay table service over here, which isnt a tip, its literally like a table tax. literally trrasnlates as cutlery. but is for the bread and the use of the table, so even if you dont eat you have to pay it. a bit wierd but thats the way it is!

after that we went and found a club that had been reccomended to us. it was still early doors and the only place nearby so even thought it was quiet we gave it a go. a few drinks in and a group of women came in. could tell they werent latin so thoguth we may as well talk to them as chances are theyll understand us. american, so asll was good. got to chatting and it soon emerged theyd been on the same plane as us from santiago, sat right in front of us. and they recognised us. because...of the argumeent. when i was sat down, andrew was still drunk so the argument pretty much involved him shouting at me for ascting teh mature one yet i wont move and so on which is probably right but he was making the scene, when i tiold him he said it doesnt matter no one can understand me. no one apart from thje americans sat in front of uds, oops!

so we stuck with them for the night adn moved onto another club. turned nito a really good night, got chatting to some locals which is always good. thought we were specialy when one invited us to his party in teh back, turned out he meant come and join his friends at teh back of the club...bit lost in translation i think.

andrew eft with his new friends getting a lift home, i was stupidly stubborn and stayed for all of about 45mins before it closed and then had to walk home. navigating with the mapo in my back pocket. made it back similar time as andrew so we got our stuff and went downstairs to start the in search of iguassu trip!