Buenos Aires

Due to poor weather my flight from Sydney to Buenos Aires was diverted to Santiago. While being cocooned on a plane for 16 hours is not fun the confinement made me realise a few things. First, time dissolves for travellers. The only thing I have to be on time for are my flights, other than that everything can wait. It's a nice sensation not having time hounding you during the day. The second thing I noticed was how long the fuel pump stayed in the plane, it was a full seventy minutes before the ground crew outside my window switched off the pump allowing us to advance. I started to think about all the planes in all the parts of the world gobbling up that much oil; there has to be a side-effect. The final thing I noticed were the Andes. As we were diverted north to Santiago, my new flight plan was to traverse the continent allowing me to see the Andes stepping up like a staircase from the pampas. The desolation was spectacular and it reminded me that I better get my fill of civilisation ahead of the barren road to come.

Buenos Aires felt European or rather Spanish to be precise. After a few months of travelling through the Commonwealth I found this refreshing. Travelling through Australia and New Zealand was very easy ... too easy in fact. In contrast, travelling through India, Nepal and Tibet was quite hard. Buenos Aires seemed to be the middle ground. The complexion and nature of the people were different while still familiar. The language was different but at least it was legible unlike the alien script of Hindi and Kanji. There was a language barrier but it was not insurmountable. Inded, the lack of English would provide a challenge. The whole point of travelling is to explore 'foreign' lands and since Australia and New Zealand are not that foreign I was quite excited to be in Latin America.

The hostel I stayed in was the best hostel of my trip so far; the most sociable place I have been. It had a 24 hour bar and an amazing roof terrace dominated by an incredible piece of Italian architecture across the road. It was something out of Gotham city and unbelievably it had bats flying around it. For whatever reason, most of the people staying there were a little bit older and were travelling either solo or in pairs. In Oz and NZ the travellers are very young and are usually with packs of friends, so they have no need to make new friends. This hostel was a God-send as the only hard part about travelling is when you are on your own in a city and you see people out with their friends having a great time over coffee, lunch or a beer. Being alone in the countryside is never a problem as you don't feel like you are missing out on anything.

I must have met twenty good eggs during the week, which made exploring the city good fun. As my body was so screwed up from Jet-lag (always an issue travelling east for me) I decided to give my body a double dose by staying out late Buenos Aires style. My plan was to do Bs As by night the first week and then do it by day the following week. While there is no siesta on the East coast they still stay up pretty late. For example, seeing mothers pushing prams at 1am is not uncommon. Whoever was available for selection would be drinking on the roof terrace in the hostel and then the night would just go from there. At 1am we would head to a bar and then at three we would head to a club. We'd generally bail at 5am but the clubs go on past seven. Being the home of Tango meant that the girls liked to dance even if was only to cheesy Reggaeton. Seeing all these hot and sweaty girls was great but not having the lingo was a real killer. Since English is very broken in this part of the world the frustration of my first night out meant that I would enrol in Spanish classes the next day. Anthony Pappa was in town so I made sure to hear his DJ set on the Friday, which was cool. However, the best place was La Bomba de Tiempo. It is like weekly mass on a Monday night for the locals. We knew it was going to be good once we arrived as we had to walk at least a kilometre from the main door to join the queue. Some flame-throwers and a corner shop selling brews meant that the wait was easily passed. La Bomba is pretty much ten dudes on stage with drums and a conductor jamming away in this out of the way open-air warehouse. Up close to the stage the hippy girls were going bananas. It was just electric and annoyingly their encore was their best set.

Bs As is a really cool city. It wasn't easy to discern that it was in a second world country. The cars and buses were a give-away but that is about it. Like any international city it had a nice mix of modern architecture with old world buildings. It was only when I caught the #86 bus to La Boca that I saw the real deal. Being a tourist one generally lives an easy life amidst the convenience of the city-centre but when you get the right bus but in the wrong direction you get to see more of the city than you bargained for. I stayed on for the ride not expecting that I would be taken beyond city-limits to the countryside two towns overs. Three and a half hours later I was back where I started having paid 1 euro for the round-trip and a little wiser.

Talk soon

Marco