Cordoba & Buenos Aires ("we estimate your compression")

Hosting no less than 5 universites, and having been crowned the 2006 capital of culture for the Americas, Cordoba had a lot to live up to; and it didnt disappoint. Not that we saw THAT much of the city itself. Let´s just say (sorry still havent found the right symbol for apostrphe on these spanish keyboards duh) we finally got into the pace of partying in Argentina, as the Argentinians do... Start late, and finish later.

One observation I´ve made here is that Argentinians (and apparently latin Americans in general) are not in any great hurry to do anything. Often you´ll be left waiting in a restaurant for a seemingly quick to prepare meal, although when it comes, the food will be amazing. People here eat dinner around 10pm usually. I´ve been told there is even a phrase in spanish used when orgainising a meeting; a la hora ingles ("english time", used when its a formal meeting and punctuality is expected) and a la hora latina ( meaning " on latina time"...for more social meetings, when you are almost expected to be up to half an hour late. I think Ali is on this time) Here a party will typically start around 1.30 to 2 am, and thats early. People will slowly make their way to night clubs around 3 or 4, dancing till well past sunrise, finding some breakfast and then head to bed for the day. Good times alright, but a physically exhausting and sometimes frustrating routine as it pretty much rules out doing anytihng useful for most of the next day and sleeping through all that important sunshine we are bereft of in Ireland... Having said that I did pretty well with it for a good few days in Cordoba.

We spent a lot of time in our hostel because thats were the banter was mostly, and soon we met a great group of people who we would spend the rest of our time with there. Most of the time we were on the rooftop, sunning ourselves during the day, and singin songs with the guitar at night. Or else we were in the bar downstairs playin cards or pool. We met some really nice English girls and a group of crazy Israeli´s - yes Machel Im talking about you (side note: there are an incredible amount of israeli people traveling in S.America, and BA in particular...have to say always cool people to hang out with)

But the Cordoba good times couldnt last forever, and last week we all said goodbye (teary eyed of course) and went our seperate directions. (sad face symbol... :( is that how you type it?) It seemed that everyone left the hostel that night, half to Salta and the other half to Buenos Aires.

And so here we are. The big BA, all up to date. Been here since last Friday and, even though it was hyped up to the last by everyone I have met, I do still think its a great city. A huge city, actually, but always something to do here. We strolled around posh Palermo with its old colonial architechture, ate at piano music steakhouses in San Telmo, watched random people tango on avenida de florida, and of course, the "must do"; attended a BOCA Juniours games in La Boca...So many different people, different cultures, and a great place to spend some time and many imrove your spanish. Unfortunately we dont have to time or money to hang around here too long, and very soon we will leave for Rosario and then onwards and upwards, where the countries get cheaper and hotter. We´ve spent a lot of time in the last few days looking into how exactly to go about traveling to Brazil and on up to Bolivia, Peru and Columbia (on land!), and which route to take. And we concluded after looking at our finances; it will be a challenge... But thats what were here for! "Nobody said it was easy..."

So on we go keeping our ears and eyes open for anything that can help us find the best way across this continent...Yes, we did have a plan. But plans change, isnt that what its all about? Next stop, Rosario... and then... eh... who knows? I´ll tell ya next week.

Slán a chairde

Brian

Mendoza wine tour - April 09

A few days into Mendoza we took a tour around the local wineries. This day I think was one of those highlights of the trip (for me anyway) and will not be forgotton about quickly. We took a bus about an hour out of the city to get to the wine country area. From here we rented bikes (bicycles) from Mr Hugo and spent the day cycling around the various wineries in the area. In each winery there were tastings and areas to sit under the sun and "appreciate" the wine. "yes, this one has a fruity overtone, but a definte body with a subtle hint of antelope mixed with incidious oak textures, and an aftertaste that reminds one of a lone deer crossing the plains of alaska on a winters day..." blah. blah. wine. blah. As the day wore on we tasted a great variety of grapes. Tasted some olives. Some chocolate liquor also. Moving between the wineries in a bike convoy sun on our backs...handlebars a bit shaky, legs burning and eyes bleary but laughing all the way down a windy lane between vineyards.... Great Banter.

As the sun set and we made our way back to drop off our bikes with Mr Hugo we even recevied a police escort in the form of la policia on a motorbike driving beside us. Initially (and in my slightly intoxicated and impaired judgement) I thought maybe we had done something wrong. I turned to the cop as he flanked us, at a speedy 15km/hr, and gestured innocently shrugging my shoulders, lifting one hand off the handlebar, wobbling a bit and slurring "¿hay una problema señor?". He just shook his head and slowed back behind quinny looking confused. Found out later from a local that apparently they do that for all the tourists after sundown to discourage theft or muggings. Place seemed pretty safe to us but a nice touch all the same.

As we approached our final 100 metres of the day on bikes, the inevitable happend... what we all had dreaded, but managed to avoid all day. Luckily it was nothing serious at all. In this case it was Pablo, poor lad. He was in front off me and all I remember was seeing him attempt some sort of bmx bandit manouver onto the footpath from the road. Next thing, handlebars went sideways and our Pablo was diving face first towards the tarmac, gloriously unaware of what was happening. He slid a bit on his face and arm, but luckily was going very slowly and was only a bit scratched. After checking he was ok we all had a great laugh for about 10 minutes, then finally made it to Mr Hugo to drop off the bikes. Of course it didnt end there... Mr Hugo himself being so hospitable took pity on Pablo who looked a bit worse for ware after his fall, and treated us to a kind of "lock in" at his house. The gates were locked, food was offered, MORE wine was pored...and we stayed another while.

Nedless to say I good day and night was had by all, and so far, Argentina had been treating us pretty well. A day or two of recovering later, we said our goodbyes to Pablo (whose scratches had already began to heal) and Mendoza, and made our way to Cordoba.

(photo above left to right; Ali, Graeme, Quinny, Me, Pablo)

Sudamerica

Well now, here we are... I´ve had to force myself to sit and write a blog entry as i´ve just been having too much craic to get around to it. Either that or I´m just lazy... I´d say its more of the latter to be honest, but plenty of the former also. ANYWAY where was I?... oh yes, South America, we made it. All great so far. All yappin in spanish and sunny weather and chica´s and amigo´s, wine, empanadas, tango and all that jazz... By the way I apologise in advance for the dodgy punctuation marks or misspellings that can occur. Among the challenges to be faced here are spanish keyboards (which initially took me ten minues to figure out the @ symbol), usualy slow computers, and at the moment, a loud soudtrack of bad argentinian ´reggeton´ music being forced down my ears and distracting me...But thats only some of the very few negative things about South America so far. We´ve had very little to complain about so far. (i still cant figure out how to type a proper aposthrophe on this computer.. this ´´´thing is all im getting)

So ill try one last time to get to the point... Yes, we landed Chile just under 3 weeks ago. Stayed there for a few days to get over the jetlag from NZ which wasnt easy after a 13 hour flight back traveling BACK IN TIME!! After a couple of days in santiago we took a night bus over the andes which was quite a nice journey at night time; seeing clear starry skies over the silouhette of the andes. Through the border; passport checks, immigration procedures at 4am... and on into Argentina. Our first stop here was Mendoza, a nice city near the andes full of students and famous for its wineries. We arrived at 7am with two additions to team BAD who we´d picked up in Chile; Graeme from Scotland (big G or wee graeme as we dubbed him) and Pablo the Peruvian whose knowledge of Spanish was a big help for the next few days. With no reservations made, and feeling groggy from a sleepless nightbus, things werent looking good as we stumbled out of two taxis on a street where we had been told there were "a few hostels"... 5 people lookin for a bed at 7am with no bookings would´nt usually have much of a chance. As luck would have it; the second hostel we lugged our stuff to had exactly 5 beds ready and waiting for us. Not only that but breakfast was laid out in the common area all for us, there was a pool table, big tv room, free internet, and coffee table area full of books, magazines and a shisha pipe all available for use should we desire. And better still, within minutes of arriving, Rodrigo at reception decided to invite us all to play indoor football that night with his mates. After which of course, a nice and cheap steak dinner would be had. A good introduction to Argentina I think.