First Week in Buenos Aires

After a long flight over, thankfully having had our bikes flown in their boxes for free thanks for Aerlingus and British Ariways, we landed at Buenos Aires Airport and took a taxi van to the hostel we´d booked while on the stop over in heathrow.
Our hostel was slap bang in the city centre, which turned out to be one of the seedier areas of the city. Not the best spot to be a gringo standing on the street with two big cardboard boxes and a load of panniers trying to find a hostel. It looked like a jumble sale.

First week we´ve mostly been doing touristy things, we saw the cemetery of the rich in Ricoleta, where Eva Peron is buried. All of the tombs are over the top, we were walking through all the marble tombs and granite mauseloems half the size of houses when we spotted the 20 foot celtic cross of Father Fahey a missionary priest originally from Loughrea. There were lots of irish names; aparently the Duggan´s are one of Buenos Aires richest Families and the most famous irish man is definitely Admiral Brown, a Mayo Man from Foxford who is celebrated as the father of the Argentine navy. He was pivotal in their war for independance.

We´ve ate well here, the steaks are as good as everyone says, for 12 euro you can get a big lump of sirloin steak, spuds and a beer. I think the main reason they´re so good is the way they´re cooked, all of the places use charcoal grills.

Eating here is a bit odd, as we get hungry for dinner round 6. Actually I get hungry about 5 times a day, but the restaraunts don´t open till 7:30 pm and the locals seem to go out to eat round 10.30 pm and only have desert round 12pm, on a week night. Yet when we talked to a few it seems they keep normal office hours. we were wrecked from eating steak that late for the first few days and definitely had a few dodgy dreams brought on by steak processing. All the late night steak and beers are building a good layer of insulation for the antartic winds down south!

For the laugh we went to the Zoo to see what sort of dangerous animals might try join us in the tent out in the sticks. Most of the bad guys like snakes seem to live in the jungles up north, thankfully, though a few will cross our paths, I know I´ll be checking my boots after seeing the scorpions cage. We did spot a few things that might make a decent snack for some hungry cyclists if worst came to worst.

Walking round the City there is a big divide between rich and poor. In posh areas like ricoletta there are designer shops like Hermes with no prices, where as in the other end of town you see people eating leftovers out of mc donalds bins or sorting rubbish to make a few quid at night. In an area like the Boca where to Boca Juniors stadium is, Maradona´s home club, we saw an excellent tango show but two blocks away were sure to let a local dude know we knew he was following us. One of the girls from our hostel that was with us was robbed the day before down there.

That said any of the Argentines we´ve met are very friendly. We´ve been having a few beers and introduced to a few good pubs and drinks with a few of the local lads. Shop keepers will count out your change for you so you know you´re getting the correct change and we´ve never been short changed.
Nobody minds giving a few directions to two gringos with no mucho espagnol and even the guy on the street hawking measuring tapes was willing to walk us over to a hardware shop so we could buy a spanner and allen keys for our bikes to replace the stuff that was taken from our carry on luggage in dublin by security.

Next week we start spanish lessons, badly wanting at this stage.