Reached Buenos Aires after 22 hours on a bus from Salta which was fairly mind numbing. The last 3 hours were particularly slow as there was poor road visibility due to extensive grass fires further north in Argentina. Did I mention that the Retiro bus station is more like an airport then bus station with a huge number of gates and buses. Found out on the way to the apartment that the Boca Juniors game we were supposed to be going to the next day was already on so the STUPID football agency told us the wrong date (I did check and it wasnt me getting backpacker dates fuddled) so didnt get to see the footy after all ... doh.
Spent the next week hanging around Buenos Aires with Nan, Helen and Robyn in a blur of shopping, sightseeing, walking, eating and drinking. Did a little walking tour (by ourselves of course but no need for tents on this one!) out to Palermo and Recoleta and also one with Nan down to the Costanera Sur Wildlife reserve near the port which was actually really good. There was heaps of birds down there altho the air quality is still quite poor. We did a trip out to Boca as well. Its very colourful but a bit tacky tourist with everything geared at taking your tourist dollars. The Museo de Bellas Artes Benito Quinquela Martin which is a muesum set up by the guy who the muesum's namesake was really good tho. Good views of Boca from the top as well and some interesting paintings that he did. For shopping we found loads of funky little design shops and markets (especially at the w/e) around San Telmo so managed to buy what we needed without too much pain (altho any type of shopping that involves clothes is always somewhat painful for me). For eating we stayed pretty much local in San Telmo with a couple of trips back to Petanque (French restaurant ... excellent) and also to Parrillo 1880 which was very good. Other then that we ate in the house as the food markets in San Telmo are great.
We did try a few of the local bars as well and even ventured out to a microbrewery - the Cruzat Beer House - in a different burb one night. It wasn't as good as we expected as the beers really weren't too our liking at all. We did a sampler of their 10 beers on tap (got a little minitature pint glass style glass with a taste of each beer on a round stand) and found them all to be very sweet and heavy. Maybe we're just used to the crisp, cold beers of Aussie but most of the beers made us feel sickly. We did order a pint each of Koala's (a local BA beer) but the head went flat in seconds and it was warm and too sweet. Gave up at that point and headed back for a pub crawl of San Telmo which was good craic.
Flew out of BA on monday evening with Iberia and this time everything went much more smoothly then on the way out. We didn't get bumped or put on standby, put in seats on different rows, the airstaff on the flight were really friendly, the food was palatable (seriously it was ok for air food) altho the entertainment still sucked, the seats are awful and the leg room is ample for hobbits (althou their feet would get stuck under the seats). We only had an hour to spare in Madrid so whilst we managed to catch our flight our luggage got left behind. This suited us perfectly as we could now fly to Cork and not get charged 140 euros more for excess bagagge (always a silver lining in every cloud!). Iberia delivered our luggage by courier to Cork the next night - quite impressive really and so much less hassle for us - would recommend losing luggage ;)
So we're back in Cork about 3 days, haven't done much yet except catch up at home and trying to lose the last stomach bug that South America gave me (thankfully it didn't kick in til we reached Cork) so hoping to catch up with everyone very soon so watch out!!
Its great being home and despite all out stuff being in boxes and all over the house (sorry Mum) its way better then living out that pack!
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