¡Hola!

Argentina is fundamentally likeable.The people are among the friendliest in the whole continent, the place is attractive, organised, not particularly expensive, the girls are drop-dead gorgeous, and it is full of all sorts of natural wonders that I didn´t have either the time or the money to see.I am definitely coming back here to see the sights down south in Patagonia and, like everyone else on the planet who has been there, I would drop everything if I could get a job in Buenos Aires (BA) - the place is electric!

BA is probably the biggest city I´ve been to, with 13 million people (hmm... actually, ok, Kolkata has three million more), but the city blocks are just seemingly endless, full of 20-storey high apartment buildings, and the streets are buzzing.The architecture is really quite attractive, considering how much of it is modern, and there is obviously a bunch of really grand colonial buildings around, for example in the Plaza de Mayo (pronounced ´Majo´ here of course).The accent here is nice too.Chilean Spanish is so messed up that it is essentially incomprehensible, but the Argentines have some neat peculiarities with their language that I really liked.For example, they have a whole other conjugation to replace the second person singular, using vos instead of tú, and they use sos to mean eres (you are).They also pronounce y´s like English j´s, and they pronounce ll´s like ´sh´, instead of ´y´, like everywhere else in Latin America.No-one had forewarned me about these differences, so I was extremely confused when I arrived in Salta; but, I liked the way it sounded and had picked it up by the time I had reached BA.

Ok, so, my first night I stayed in a huge backpacker place called Milhouse, right in the centre, and actually I continued to use this place during my stay in BA to freeload internet from, to watch the World Cup in, and to clandestinely dump by big bag in whilst I went off couch surfing around the city.By lucky coincidence, Martin and Lene were also in BA, so we met up and had some drinks and went to a French bar called Cigale to watch a live band.Afterwards, Martin and I went out with a bunch of people from the hostel to a bizarre, and quite trashy, club called Club 69.The place was teeming with gringos and it was all a bit incestuous, and the music was awful, but they did had a great live show on with various craziness going on, including a break-dancing show, which was very, very impressive.The novelty wore off eventually though and I went back to get some sleep before the animal noises started in the dorm.I woke up at about 6am to find two people having drunken monkey sex in the bunk next to me, which was really quite disturbing, but mercifully it didn´t last very long, bless him.

By the next day the place was really starting to get on my t***, so, after a steak lunch with Martin and Lena in San Telmo, I contacted my first ´couch-surfer´ host - a wicked chica cochabambina called Fatima, who offered to take me out with her friends that night in BA.They were going to the cinema first so we didn´t meet until after midnight; in the meantime I hooked up with some girls from New Zealand and drank far too much red wine.I was pretty wasted by the time I met with Fatima and co, but my Spanish was flowing and we had a great night out somewhere in Palermo.The next day I did some shopping for bits and pieces I needed for Costa Rica, and then met up with Mariela, the Argentine chica I met in Iguazú.We headed about 45 mins out of the centre to her house, which was in a suburban city called Quilmes, and I stayed there for the next two nights.

Afterwards, I went back to the city and met up with a couple I had met before in Salta, during the silly drinking game night, and we went with a few others to the district of La Boca, where there are lots of brightly-coloured houses, bars with tango dancers and the La Boca stadium.The bits of the district safe enough to walk around were very nice, if ultra-touristy, and we stayed there for the afternoon to watch Spain play Honduras.Afterwards, I headed over to Fatima´s place and we went out straight away to a music night called ´La Bomba´ (well, actually this was a replacement night for La Bomba, but was excellent all the same).The show featured a mini-orchestra conducted by some crazy guy (also, apparently a genius) who led the group and added various loops, scratching and live drumming.The whole thing was such a great idea that it has inspired me to put together something similar one day... now all I need is the orchestra.We all got very drunk on Fernet and coke (Fatima especially:) and we met up with some cool people, including a dreamy Canadian DJ chick, called Miryana, whom I immediately wanted to marry.

In the morning, with a few sore heads, Fatima fixed us some lunch and I headed out to buy a ticket for the ferry to Colonia, in Uruguay, later that day.Then, during my final few hours in Argentina, we went to watch the national team beat Greece 2-0 on the big screen in the huge plaza at San Martin.There must have been 50,000 people there, and it was such an awesome spectacle, made even more great by Argentina winning so convincingly.By 6.30pm I was on a boat to Uruguay, trying to reflect on the last two week´s whirlwind tour of Argentina.What a rush!I could have done with at least another week in BA alone!

R

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