...and an odd collection of pics from Marv including one of me in front of a telephone box. Wooo!

grid layouts don't always make life easier

we have had a rather interesting morning, following our 21 hour bus ride from iguazu in the northwest to tucamun in the north east along roads that go straight for hours and hours. the change from the lush tropical jungle of iguazu to the hot, dry bit of the country we are in now could not be more noticable. we attempted to hire a car but failed and spent about 2 hours trying to find the information office in astonishing heat. this is the 4th largest town in argentina and is based on the grid system. but, as marv pointed out, that only works if a. it's in new york where you can't go wrong cos the numbers go up and down or b. if the streets are sign-posted. unfortunately for us, they're not here, and our trusted rough guide doesn't seem to be so up to date on this bit of the country. oh well.

it's a funky kind of town...sprawling, and busy. run down in places but with commerce a quite big deal with loads of shops selling mainly clothes. there's a main square surrounded by a mixture of neo-classical and mock baroque buildings right next to white churches with blue tiled onion dome rooves. it is resolutely not touristy which is great and means we can't get away with smiling sweetly at people and hoping they understand our terrible spanish...talking of which...

Learning the idiomas

for a relatively large city, everyone has been extremely friendly. but no one appears to speak english - our opening gambit is, inevitably, ¿habla usted ingles? (do you speak english) and, categorically, the response has be 'non', with a big smile. excellent - and i mean that - cos it forces us to stop being so lazy and shy. so, we have been learning a few key phrases and words of spanish a day. gratifyingly, most of my phrases have been very useful. for example, los cubiertos is cutlery - trying to mime to a waiter that you don't have a knife and fork makes you look like a prat. asking for los cubiertos is slightly easier and it's also one of those lovely complete sounding words which is not hard to pronounce so gives me confidence that one day i may be able to speak a little more of the language than i can currently. as opposed to zanahorias which is one of marv's chosen words yesterday. it means carrots. it hasn't yet come in handy though i will let you know if it does.

adios!

Veeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooow internet connection, so this won't be a long note as, really, life is too short for 10mbps to do its thing.

We're at the Brazilian border, in the jungle basically, so i should be thankful for any internet connection. trip up - the most comfortable bus i have ever been on. only problem was the dying video played for 6 hours. the first film - and also the point at which i plugged myself into my music and book, was about aliens who had brought a dinosaur 500 times the size of a tyranosaurus back to earth to take over.

but Iguazu is worth the trip a hundred times over. OH MY GOD. I have never ever seen anything like the falls. hundreds of millions of litres of chocolate coloured water tip themselves over several hundred feet every minute. just staggering. so what on earth possessed me to get in a boat that takes you to sit UNDER one of these falls is completely beyond me. some fool aka Marv persuaded me. we got wet. i suffered abject terror. he quite enjoyed it. and now i have a story to tell as well as wet pants. hurrah!

we've just planned the next bit of our epic trek across this enourmous bit of the earth. we head off for tucuman on a 20 hour bus ride tomorrow. then to mendoza for some wine action, and some walking in the andes.

'Suitable Boy' = page 850
Kilometres travelled = 12,000 (Madrid - Buenos Aires) plus 1500 (Buenos Aires - Iguazu) and counting...

xx

Budapest of the Southern Hemisphere?

Although I'm loathe to compare cities (which feels somehow like detracting from their uniqueness, and therefore what makes them special) it's quite hard not to do with BA. It really is like every city I have ever been to in lots of big and small ways, but also just like itself.

There is the usual brand landscape which reminds you your in a globalised world. And it's a capital city so has all the usual infrastructure you would expect. It also has roads with 18 lanes of traffic (I'm not joking) which make crossing them a question of taking your life into your own hands. Several motorways at once.

It's reminiscent of the large Spanish cities in terms of ambiance and certain aspects of the architecture. And it's certainly reminiscent of Budapest with regards the mash of old and new, and the fact that they have a version of pogatcha (small cheese scones which are lovely when fresh and hot and revolting when even slightly aged.) Here they are called panchos I think. I could come up with a few other ways they're similar but I would be fed up with me if I was Argentinian so I'm going to stop with the comparisons. ANd, in any case, it's much more like itself than anywhere else as I'm slowly beginning to appreciate.

What we've seen

We've only had one full day here but walked the length and breadth of the centre yesterday so managed to cram in a lot of viewing. We saw:

1. The Plaza de Mayo which still has weekly demonstrations of manual workers - a hangover from Peron's time apparently.
2. The Casa Rosada - the sugary pink governmental palace. It used to be painted with ox blood which worked as a fixative, but is now covered with the usual chemical stuff which is lurid in the extreme. This houses the balcony which Evita, Peron, Maradona and Galtieri have all waved from.
3. The Obelisco - 67 metres tall, erected in 1936 to commerate the city's founding (for the 1st and 2nd time) the first raising of the flag and the naming of BA as 'Capital Federal' in the late 19th century. Not a lot of significance then.
3. Plaza del Congreso. Rough Guide calls the Plaza 'spindly' - I'm not quite sure why. Oddly it contains another one of Rodin's Thinker statues. ANd the congress building- Greco-Roman and the Congress monument which is a vast series of waterfalls and statues of horses...
4. Cafe Tortoni. Old school mahogany walled cafe. Copita de limon is a neat shot of squeezed lemon juice which makes you pull one of those 'I've just sucked a lemon' faces, but wakes you up. And Te con leche.
5. The Las Malvenas war memorial. Subtle. Moving.

ANd then we went to dinner where I had half a cow with a fried egg on top. I like food, but I was defeated very quickly. It was a fine steak tho.

ANd today we're off to the Recoleto district to see the cemetry, and wander round the Barrio Norte before getting on a bum-breaking 14 hour bus journey to the Brazilian border.

One of those trips - departure delayed till 8pm, bumpy flight to Madrid, plane to BA already left, put us up in the largest hotel in Europe (??) and are now waiting to get taken to the airport for the rescheduled flight. Ah well. Met some nice people, some of whom are only going to Argentina for a couple of weeks so it´s a bit annoying for them to miss a day. Not a lot you can do when faced with the airline staff´s phlegmatism however.