More Buenos Aires

Had a lovely few days in Buenos Aires, ambling around not climbing up hills. Highlights have included:

- visit to the Boca area including walk round the stadium of the infamous Boca Juniors. Our guide must be the only person in Argentina that doesn't like football. Needless to say, she keeps that little nugget of information to herself when she's showing Boca fans round. The stadium itself is tiny. They call it La Bombonnera (eek, spelling, but it means chocolate box). Or, as our cab driver, Jose Luis Casanova, informed us, it's actually 'la gloriosa bombonnera'. You get the picture. Marv then felt it would be a good idea to talk about the hand of god and the like, Maradonna being a former Boca player. Oh, and a 'Super Dios' according to Jose Luis. Boca is gorgeous anyway, colourful and by a very smelly river. All the houses are painted in primary colours which I think stems from a tradition started by boat owners who used the leftover paint from painting their boats to do so. Went to an art gallery of Argentinian artist who painted the port a lot.
- Meal in Las Canistas, the glitzy restaurant part of town. We prefer the slightly more scruffy and funky Palermo Viejo, but the people watching was fun.
- AWESOME meal in a restaurant called Christophe back in Palermo Viejo. The BEST chocolate pudding for desert I've ever had. Then met Michelle - whom we met in Mendoza - and stayed out drinking far too late. Kir Royales and gin and tonics. Ugh.
- Saw 'Kill Bill' because, with our hangovers, the only thing we could face doing was sitting in front of a screen. Good job I'm not squeamish is all I can say. Actually quite enjoyed it - the violence is hammy rather than horrible, and you get a very vivid sense of what joy filmmaking is for Tarantino. Oh, and all the actors are GORGEOUS.
- Then went for a lovely sit down in the faded but elegant Botanical Gardens. It's very hot here.

FLight to NZ tonight. We have booked a car, bought a tent, booked a glacier walk, and a kayak trip. Organised or what? Never mind that we don't actually have a place to stay in Auckland yet...Oddly we miss out on December 20th as we cross the dateline over the Pacific. Someone tell me what happens if we miss anything.

The current plan is to spend New Year's in Christchurch.

Museo de Bellas Artes

Despite not being able to pronounce the above to the satisfaction of the taxi driver, the double ´l´ pronounced differently here to either Spain or Chile, we managed to get to the Museo de Bellas Artes. Very doable, sorry can´t find hyphens or parentheses on this ´puter, in an hour or so. They have nice collection of late nineteenth and twentieth century European stuff, some Argentinan works from around the same time, which are, interestingly derivative of the European works. And they also have some wacky modern pieces that seemed to revolve around the environment, the elements, mainly wind, and evolution. Oh, and three or four really moving Goya. I haven´t really considered Goya much before, but I thought it was more about what wasn´t painted, or rather the spaces around the action that gave the paintings, or at least those that I saw yesterday, real pathos.

Dinner in Palermo Viejo, Borges/Cortazar neighbourhood. Vietnamese food. Very funky, boutiquey area, going back today to shop for the first time in a month!

Most Important Message for my Gran: GET BETTER SOON! Thinking of you, and sending you lots of love. N.xxxx

Up hill and down dale

Well, something like that anyway. Because we hadn't had quite enough exercise in the Torres del Paine, we decided to head off for El Chalten, in the Parque National Los Glaciares in Argentina. Home to Mount Fitz Roy and the Cerro Torre, it's quite stunningly beautiful, she says, running out of adjectives. Just getting there was an adventure. Back over the border from Natales. Arrived in El Calafate, the nearest town to the Perito Moreno glaciar, and a town that is used by tourists as a stopping over spot and not much else. Didn't like it terribly so we stayed for lunch and hired yet another 4WD with some lovely folk we met (Olga and Thijs) to get us out of there.

5 hours and about 150km of gravel track later, we arrived in Chalten. Couldn't see much as it was midnight. Late night pizza and beer never tasted so good. The town has only existed since 1985. Dust roads. Lots of trekkers. Funky restaurants and cafes. Own brewery. Oh dear.

Minor walk to look at minor glacier next day. Following day, walk on bigger glacier wearing crampons and other instruments of torture. Luckily didn't fall down any crevasses. Looked a right plonker trying to get across a Tyrolean rope bridge (attached by a carabina to a rope, you pull yourself upside down and backwards across a river. Not a good look for anyone.) Ate in a 'Cocina Argentina' restaurant (apprently pumpkins are part of traditional Argentinian cooking: who knew?) Next day, Sunday, stupendous walk, and lazy picnic ('twas Sunday after all..) along the valley which runs alongside a good chunk of the Chalten mountain range, Fitz Roy, Cerro Torres etc. It differs as a range from the Torres in that it's frighteningly jagged along it's top (in comparison to the Torres tall column like mountains), like a tear across the horizon. And we even got to see the peaks, which, because they generate their own clouds (wind condensing or something) is quite lucky.

Then a welcome (not) drive back to Calafate, quick peak at the enormous PM glaciar with bits falling off it, making a sound like thunder, and then a quick flight to BA. The urbanite in me is very happy to be back where there are roads, people and buildings made of something other than wood. Also good to catch up on the news - tried to decipher Sunday's events on Spanish telly in Chalten. Failed. All caught up now tho' thanks to a good website I know. :o) And it's warm here - hurrah!

Oh, and you wouldn't know it was Xmas apart from the odd tree in shop windows.