Buenos Aires and Congratulations

I've been in Buenos Aires for a few days for a wedding. A slightly crazy wedding between an English groom and a Brazilian bride.

It started on Friday with a football match. England v Brazil. We lost. 4-1 despite the opening goal being scored by yours truly, a stunning 2 yard tap in. I might add that the Argentine referee rather sided with his South American cousins but I wouldn't want to come across as a sore loser.

The actual wedding was on Saturday, starting off in a church in Belgrano and with the reception in the absolutely stunning Palacio Sans Souci in Victoria, Provincia de Buenos Aires. If you're looking to get married then I'd highly recommend the venue, a Parisian palace in South America. Beautiful.




After the pretty decent food and a thoroughly entertaining best man's speech came the music. It started off quite horribly with a mix of cheesy wedding disco songs like YMCA and a horrible amount of unbearable, anti-music stuff by Queen. Thankfully, that ended and on came the live, Brazilian version of reggaeton, complete with girls in bikinis and 10 foot Brazilian dolls. The groom was not particularly excited by this development (exact words, "I'm not getting involved in this rubbish") but the bride was in her element.





All in all it was an exceedingly fun night. Made even more fun by endless free champagne.

So congratulations to Tim and Soraia for getting married.



Congratulations are also in order for another Buenos Aires based friend, Graham (and Caro), whose son Simon was born on Wednesday. 

Apart from the wedding, football and baby visiting I also met up with an old friend from university who timed her visit to coincide with my time in BA. We had dinner in El Trapiche, my favourite parrilla in Buenos Aires, and had one of the best steaks I've had in almost 5 years of visiting and living in Argentina. Sooooooo good. We also went to Milion, a beautiful bar in an old French style mansion. I got a bit bored of it when I lived in BA-it is sometimes lacking in atmosphere- but it was great to go back and to be able to drink champagne in a place like that for under us$20 a bottle you just can't complain (I like champagne if you hadn't guessed).

A fantastic trip.

If you're heading to BA and want somewhere to stay than I'd highly recommend getting in touch with Silvina ( gorostiagarealestate @ yahoo.com.ar ). I don't like staying in hotels in BA as I used to live there. Also, cheap and decent hotels are really hard to find these days unless you're really willing to slum it or do the backpacker thing (again, not going to do it in a city in which I used to live). So I rented an apartment. This one was half a block from Recoleta Cemetery, one bedroom with cable, internet, decent bathroom and kitchen for us$60 a day. Really good value especially as you can save a lot of money by not eating out all the time. I think Silvina has a couple of other places available as well.

England

So my flights all came in on time and thanks to having had about 6 hours sleep in the previous 4 days, a muscle relaxant and a little xanax (thanks, crazy friend) I actually managed to sleep most of the way from Sao Paulo to London. First time ever. I usually dope myself up and sit in a zombie like trance for the entire journey, never quite dozing off.

So, here I am in London at my brother's house, feeling pretty normal apart from a slight edge of tiredness.

Being England, the weather is half sunny, half it's about to completely welly it down.

Upon arriving, I immediately went to the supermarket to buy:

-Thick cut, smoked, sweet cure back bacon
-Pork and leek sausages
-Baked Beans
-Free Range Organic Eggs
-Organic Fresh semi-skimmed milk (not reconstituted UHT foulness as in all South America)
-Innocent Fruit Smoothie

I have missed all of these key Full English Breakfast ingredients this much. I am now a happy, sated man.

*I forgot to mention when I wrote this yesterday that I'm spending most of my time watching the cricket. I love watching the cricket.

Tomorrow I shall be heading to Chinatown to get my hands on some proper dim-sum. On Sunday I'll probably be going for Thai and next week I'll go for an Indian. In two weeks I'm off to Paris for some Vietnamese food. Fooooooooooood. With flavours and spices. All this while catching up with friends and family, most of them for the first time in over a year and a half. Nice.

So going back to my trip to Buenos Aires, here are a few photos:

It was Eva Peron's death day and the queue to see her tomb at Recoleta Cemetery was huge. I've already seen it enough times to not want to wait to see it again.


Creepy vault


Potatoes as art in MALBA, my favourite BsAs museum


A free kid's workshop at a free Picasso exhibit. I'm not sure Santiago would ever put anything like this on, but I could be wrong. The cultural aspect of Argentina is something that's sorely lacking in Chile.


Random, fairly typical BsAs building.

Gun shop "My Friend":


The Education Ministery, one of my favourite BsAs buildings:


The Botanical Gardens-they were shut recently after it emerged that the director was earning a nice little sideline in hiring out the grounds for photo shoots, TV advert filming and...wait for it...burial plots. Yes, you read that correctly. The director was letting people bury the dead in a public park. He's been sacked.


The central building has been refurbished recently and is now used as a mini exhibition centre.


It holds framed original copies of the plans for all of the city's parks, designed by Frenchie Charles Thays:

I'm just going to nip out now and get a few bottles of London Pride. Hmmmmmm...real beer...

That's your lot. Next post will be after I've done something interesting so you might be waiting a while...

Here and Gone Again

So I made it back from Buenos Aires in one piece. Not even a close call. Boring, eh? The city did try to make me ill as I woke up on Monday morning feeling like I was about to get a dose of the flu that seemed to be laying everyone low but I managed to get over that with about 30 clementines and 10 oranges. 

Buenos Aires was, in short, great fun as always. More expensive than last time, quite definitely colder but fun. Being there as a tourist is way more fun than being there as a resident. I'll try and get one of two photos posted at some point.

I'm actually only back for a few hours. At 4am I'm returning to Santiago to take a flight to London (with a fantastic 5 hour stopover in South America's worst airport, Sao Paulo. Yey) for about 3 weeks. I'm going to try to blog at least once a week from back home. (If any of you are worried about my cats-and of course you are-they and the house are being left in very capable house and cat sitting hands :)

I can't wait to go back. It's been almost 19 months since my last time home and I'm really looking forward to catching up with friends and my family (well, most of them jeje). I'm also going to see West Brom v Arsenal and then against Everton, something worth the price of the airfare alone. Boing Boing.

This is possibly the worst blog post ever but I'm too busy to think about writing anything interesting. As I said, I'll try to do some blogging when I'm back. If not, you'll have to wait 'til the end of August.

Dying in Argentina: Let's Hope Not

Tomorrow I'm back off to Buenos Aires for a little under a week to sort out some business and to also enjoy large amounts of juicy, bloody dead cow (now the farmers' strike is over and there's plenty of juicy, bloody dead cow around).

Now I really like going back to BsAs and Argentina. It's such a fun and beautiful city with so much to do and see. I'm really looking forward to the trip. What I'm not looking forward to is the insanity on the roads. Argentine drivers are, by quite some distance, the worst drivers I've ever had the misfortune to have to deal with. They deliberately speed up if they see you crossing the road, don't respect traffic lights or any kind of traffic signals, make 1 lane into 23, deliberately try to knock down cyclists (I used to cycle in BA), drink and drive, text and drive, write letters and drive (I had a taxi driver writing a letter to his mother telling her how much he loved her-I could read it over his shoulder) and generally do anything possible to drive as dangerously as they can. When my brother visited me in Buenos Aires, he refused to get inside another taxi after just 3 journeys. If anyone thinks driving is bad in Chile (it's really not) then don't ever go to Argentina, it's a million times worse over there.

An accident a couple of days ago left another 6 people dead, taking the total for the year to over 4000 people. At the moment, the average is 22 people dead every single day of this year. This will exceed 8000 dead if the current rate continues, beating last year's average by 1 extra person per day. Compare this to England, a country with about the same population as Argentina but with far more cars on the road, where about 1500 people are killed in accidents with a further 1000 cyclists and pedestrians, making 2500 traffic related deaths per year. The Argentine stats don't specify if they include pedestrians and cyclists killed by careless driving-I strongly suspect they don't.

Bear in mind that we're talking only about the people who have died in accidents, not the people who have been maimed or not so seriously injured. That number is probably 100 times beyond the death figure (at least that's the ratio mentioned in the link to the England accident rate).

Luchemos Por La Vida is a non-profit that tracks the carnage and puts adverts on telly in Argentina. There is no government sponsored campaign to stamp out the madness.

This road based insanity is one of the reasons I prefer to live in Chile these days.

Hopefully, I'll be back blogging next Wednesday...if I'm not run down by a psychotic bus driver...wish me luck :)

A Heartfelt Apology to Anyone Who Has to Buy Anything in Argentina

I've just got back from Argentina and i feel i owe everyone over there an apology. It's common knowledge that there's a bit of a problem with change. There is none. There are No Hay Monedas signs in pretty much every shop you go into. Sometimes this is a good thing as you end up getting a ton of stuff for free. Or you don't pay for a phone call as the guy can't give you 1.50 pesos change from a 2 peso note (this happened to me-the guy said, 'oh well, you'll just have to owe me'. Imagine the look of shock on his face when i walked by half an hour later and gave it to him. 'De donde sos?' he asked. I replied. 'Por eso' he said.)

Anyway, i looked into my wallet just now and realised that i had accidentally returned with 43% of ALL THE COINS IN CIRCULATION IN ARGENTINA. For that, i am truly sorry and hope that everyone in Argentina can forgive me. Here are the coins. Please don't drool Argentina based readers.




This wasn't exactly a pleasure trip to Buenos Aires. In fact, i went because i had to pay my tax bill. This will be the last time i pay tax in Argentina, thank god. I believe i am one of only three individuals who pays tax over there. The other two are Felisa Miceli and Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson. Oh, hang on.

I didn't do much else in my short time there. This was mainly due to the fact that i was actually melting. It was 39C and humid for three days in a row. The tarmac was spongy underfoot. Not conducive to doing a lot. Still, on Sunday i managed a 15km-odd walk around town and the ecological reserve. I came back with blood dripping from between my toes-new sandals-and a face redder than Red Lobster. It was fun all the same.

I mentioned on my last trip to BA last month that the hassles of the city didn't affect me as i could just ignore them, not having to live there and deal with them on a daily basis anymore. The same held true on this trip until yesterday afternoon. Anyone who knows Argentina knows that trust just doesn't exist. Everyone is out to get one over on everyone. Family, friends and co-workers are fair game. Anyway, i ignored this until i was just too bloody hot to be able to.

The teller in an internet cafe tried to charge me 1 peso for 22 minutes of internet time, this despite there being a big sign behind her head stating that under 30 minutes costs 75 centavos. When i pointed this out to her she argued with me. I pointed it out to her again and she said, 'Fine, i'm not going to fight over 25 centavos.' I asked her why she was fighting then? I then asked her why she thought it necessary to try to rip me off in the first place. The answer, 'Asi es la vida.' I told her that i thought her life was extremely sad and that i pitied her for having to act the way she did. She called me 'pelotudo'. I gave her the extra 25 centavos she'd wanted all along and bid her farewell, with something about 'la puta que te pario' serenading my exit. Lovely young lady.

And now i'm back in Valparaiso so more blogging about here again soon.

Neruda in Buenos Aires

Next stop on my trip was Buenos Aires. I actually didn't want to go to BA at all but some last minute business forced my hand. And i'm really glad it did. After living there for close to 3 years, i kind of got fed up with the place. I guess this happens anywhere but Argentina, particularly, can be a really frustrating place to live if you're actually working, doing business and really living there (as opposed to living there without getting too involved in the society-in that case it's great). I won't go into the reasons as to why Buenos Aires started to do my head in, but suffice to say...it did.

Anyway, after almost a year of being away, i went back as a tourist. And I fell in love with the city all over again. All the little annoying things were still there but...i didn't care. I was reminded of all the reasons i wanted to move there in the first place. I could focus on the good things, the architecture, the museums, bars, restaurants and just the raw energy of the city...an energy i haven't felt anywhere else in the world. Buenos Aires is AWESOME (sorry for shouting).

The first day back was a bit weird. The bus from Mendoza arrived two hours late due to a massive storm in the night. I'd taken a sleeping tablet and was groggier than a hungover Ricky Hatton the day after getting spanked by Floyd Mayweather. It was kind of dream like-i recognised my surroundings but it felt as though i couldn't quite place them. So i went to the cinema to see Superbad. Now this is a film for film-buffs. A beautiful melange of French New Wave and the best Korean Art-House, Superbad tells the story of two high school friends on the cusp of graduating and becoming adults. It's a wonderful tale of rites of passage and...right, ok, it's a filthy, smutty and downright horrible film that is also freaking funny. Go see it. I was Mclovin it.

I returned to my hotel on the corner of Avenida de Mayo and 9 de Julio just in time to see the inauguration of Krustina Fernandez de Kirchner as Presidenta de la Nacion. I was one of the few who hadn't been bussed in from the city's outskirts and given food and drink to support her. As such, there was hardly anyone there, the "crowds" never being more than one person deep pretty much the length of the Avenida de Mayo. The presidential car was preceded by dozens of the most unruly and poorly behaved parade horses i've ever seen. Some of them almost threw their riders. Most entertaining.



More entertaining still was the fact that Krustina hardly put her head out of the window. It was Papa K who did most of the celebrating. It was his victory after all, i guess.





Next day, feeling more rested and relaxed, I headed down to Puerto Madero and the Costanera Sur for a wander around. I really like Puerto Madero in theory-great location, a couple of really nice parks that are now bedding in, the Reserva Ecologica and the Costanera Sur, but it's still lacking. No one wants to live there so all the apartments that are being built and sold on-spec are empty. There's no supermarket and buses and taxis are few and far between. I think they probably made a mistake. It might have been better to develop the area first as an office location and then attract apartment buyers as the area developed a bit more. As it is, it's a bit of a wasteland. A very pretty wasteland, but a wasteland nonetheless.

Lots of construction still going on. Only idiots buy in Puerto Madero. It has the most expensive m2 real estate in South America (us$4000-5000/m2 at the moment) but there are no re-sales as so many new places keep popping up. If anything represents the Buenos Aires Real Estate Bubbletm the best, it's Puerto "Pyramid Scheme" Madero.



This is the modestly named: The Faena Hotel and Universe. One of the city's priciest hotels in a huge old converted warehouse.



The Costanera is one of the best parts of the area...and i just had to stuff a couple of choripans and churrascos from one of the many mobile parrillas down my neck. Cheap and most definitely cheerful. Good stuff.


The twin towers...look closely about half way up...




I love how they clean the windows in BA...


Walking back up towards town, i noticed a pretty rank smell coming from the water. There were 1000s of dead fish in the docks, rotting away. Lovely. There was also a green liquid on the surface-it looked like brake fluid. It didn't seem to bother the olfactorally challenged office workers eating their sandwiches close by though.





Later that afternoon, i finally met up with Robert of Line of Sight fame, probably my favourite blog about Buenos Aires. If you're looking for a lot of great info about the city and also some cool photos, look no further. It was cool meeting him in person at last and good to have a chat about some shared thoughts. After a quick coffee, we went to have a look around my old apartment and the building.



We headed up to the roof to see the pretty cool views of La Inmobiliaria and the Palacio Barolo, two of my favourite buildings in the city.



Here you can see the four domes from the lovely Pasaje Rivarola, the top of the art-deco masterpiece Kavanagh, the tip of the Obelisco, various other domes and stuff and the crazy house on top of the tower block.





Later that evening, i met up with another blogger. We'll call him Dan (because that's his name). Dan is a free-lance joulnarist with a 'Misters' in Joulnarism but he'll do anything for money. In the past, he's even slapped on a fake 'tache, and worn a poncho and a sombrero to work for less than minimum wage as a fruit picker. He's your go-to man for all you need to know about ice-cream and cheese in Buenos Aires. Although he doesn't know that the very best chocolate africano and the finest frutilla al agua are to be found in Wimpy, on Rivadavia between Parana and Montevideo. That's because i forgot to tell him.

We went out for dinner at La Celeste, a Uruguayan restaurant specialising in the greatest sandwich know to man: the Chivito Canadiense: A heart-stopping sandwich of fillet steak, cheese, ham, olives, bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato. With chips. Best washed down with a cold beer. I hadn't been to this place for a long time-last outing was rather ruined when i saw our waiter come out of the toilet (the stalls) and not wash his hands. And then turn up at our table with an absurdly large bogie hanging from his nose. Fortunately, this time there was nothing like that to ruin the meal and the place was back to its best. Recommended. We then headed over to Palermo Soho (the bar being called Soho Vain-quite a cool place on the corner of Armenia and Costa Rica) for a couple more beers before Dan made his excuses, clearly bored of my fascinating and semi-drunken tales of why I am the greatest human being ever.

So next day was the day i've been dreading for 30 years. It was my 30th birthday. Now, i'm not one to go overboard but MAN I WAS FREAKING OUT. And quite rightly so, as it turns out. Being 30 sucks. Anyone who tells you that's it's just a number and it doesn't matter is a liar. I've been told you're only as old as the girl you feel. But Lorena is 9 months older than me so that just doesn't help.

I took the bus over to MALBA, the best museum in Buenos Aires in my opinion. It's a must-see for anyone in town. I then wandered over to Recoleta Cemetery for an hour or so. Neruda joined me. He was desperate to see Evita's tomb but it was surrounded by a huge group of Germans for ages and i'd already seen it god knows how many times. So Neruda had to make do with seeing Sarmiento's and Bernardo de Irigoyen's graves.





In the evening i met up with some friends at El Trapiche, the best steak house in the city. Really. We used to go at least 4 times a month. Our old waiter recognised me as well and asked how things were going and what we were up to now which was cool. Then a couple of beers at the pub and home to sleep.

Other things i did in the remaining few days:

-Shop like a madman in Palermo Soho. I bought some damn fine shoes in 28 Sport, a couple of shirts in Il Reve and Felix and some Christmas present soap in Hermanos Sabater.

-I had an awesome idea of something we can do in Valparaiso to really put the place on the map. I'm not going to tell you what it is though.

-I finally made it to the Xul Solar museum. I love Solar's work. A clearly demented genius. Great stuff.

-Went 10 pin bowling and won with a pretty crappy score of 130.

-Ate at Osaka, one of the best restaurants i've had the pleasure to eat at in BA. A fusion of Japanese and Peru. One of the few BA restaurants that lives up to the hype. And i've just seen they have a version in Santiago. Woo-hoo!

-Saw Heartbreak Kid (Farelly Brothers still not back to their best but quite entertaining), Gone, Baby, Gone (really good but not as good as i expected) and also Lonely Hearts (Ok, nothing special).

And that's about your lot. If you're still reading this obscenely long post then i congratulate you. You've won a prize: A photo of some chalk graffiti on the pavement the day after Krusty's inauguration:

Even if your party wins,
You'll still be under the thumb.

Class.

Neruda in Mendoza

I'm back...my 12 day trip has left me feeling 10 times more tired than before i left (and i was completely knackered then)...but it's also left me feeling 100 times more relaxed. Which is a good thing as i was wound up like a really, really wound up thing before. Even saying 'serenity now!' did nothing for me. What i clearly needed was a 10 day alcohol assisted trip down memory lane and a good catch-up with some old friends.

So first stop was Mendoza. I've always loved Mendoza, it's such a cool little city, chilled out, great people, incredible looking girls (although i obviously averted my eyes any time one walked close by) and one of the best open air bar-restaurant streets anywhere in the world. I must have been over 20 times during the last 4 years (Lore and I used to meet there when i was living in BA and she in Santiago) and i've got some friends there so it was great to see them again.

The trip from Valparaiso is pretty scenic, as the bus whizzes past some gorgeous country and mountain views. Then comes the cool bit as you rise all the way up to something like 3400m to cross the border at Los Libertadores. Here's the series of switch-backs on the Chilean side. The Argentine side is just a straight road all the way to Mendoza.




As i was going on this trip on my own, Lore asked me to take along the pet llama she adopted when we were in San Pedro recently. Named Neruda after some little known Chilean poet, he was pretty good company when i actually remembered to take him out of his travel bag. Here he is in Plaza Independencia.





So i can't really go into much more detail about what i did in Mendoza apart from: Thursday, meal with old friend followed by a couple of beers on Aristides Villanueva (the aforementioned best bar-resto street anywhere with about 12 blocks solid of good bars, good restaurants and, on the 2nd weekend in December, loads of recently broken up school and university students out on the lash creating a really great and fun atmosphere). Friday, back to Aristides. Saturday, a hungover meet up with Graham, an old travelling friend who settled down in Mendoza a couple of years ago and is now well and truly ensconced with a wife and a 7 month old baby. Graham's surname is 'Cooper' so, being English, he couldn't resist calling his baby Tomas 'Tommy' Cooper. Most likely because he made the baby 'Just like that.' Here's a photo of Tommy with Neruda. Not the best photo, mind, as Neruda doesn't like kids and he was itching to get away. It was one shot or nothing. We then headed back up to Aristides. Then on Sunday i got the bus to Buenos Aires.


As an end note, one of the things i used to really love about Mendoza was its peacefulness. There was virtually no crime or fear of crime. That's completely changed now as the city attracts more and more tourists (carrying passports, credit cards, cameras etc) and also as the local population gets rich off both tourism and viticulture (wine making to the less, er, clever of you out there). There's a real edge about the place now as it's very obvious that there are people eyeing you up to see whether you're worth robbing. I was sitting reading the newspaper on Sunday afternoon at a quiet outdoor cafe (i was reading about how 2 Argentines had been robbed in broad daylight in the city centre with police around just after taking money out of the bank) when there was a bit of a scuffle behind me. Two Frenchwomen were kicking the shit out of a kid who had tried to snatch their bags. He got away, but he got a good beating for his trouble. In the newspaper there was also a report about how an undercover policeman dressed as a scabby backpacker shot dead a wannabe thief on the walk up to Cerro La Gloria, a walk that used to be completely safe to undertake but is now not recommended. Take a taxi up. This is all a real shame as it takes away a lot of what i used to like most about being in Mendoza-not worrying about crime.

Next stop for Neruda was Buenos Aires. My trip report from there might actually be a bit more interesting. God i hope so.

Domes of Buenos Aires-Vote for me!

One of my favourite blogs out in blogolandia is Robert's Line of Sight. I check over there most days as there's almost always something interesting to read about. He's recently been running a series of posts on the cupulas or domes of Buenos Aires and is planning on making up a PDF pamphlet of the best. Despite my nagging, he's so far neglected to include the dome from my former residence in BA, the huge old building on the corner of Paraná and Rivadavia. I've always loved this dome as, to me, it resembles a German face from WWI with cool 'tache, little beard, down-turned mouth and spike-y helmet.

One of the things i most miss about Buenos Aires is my flat in this building. It was beautiful and a really great neighbourhood to live in, just off the Avenida de Mayo near Congress. It's been a wrench to sell but it's gone to friends so we know we can go back and see the old girl from time to time.

Below are some photos of the building, a close up of the dome and some views from the roof. Enjoy the photos and then go annoy Robert and get him to include it in his list :)








Congreso



El Palacio Barolo



La Inmobiliaria

Back in the BsAs

So it's been a while since my last post. The reason? I had to nip over to Buenos Aires to sign some papers. Of course, the paper signing was 10 minutes but we decided to stay for a few extra days so we could re-gain all the weight we'd lost from not eating steak twice a day like we did for over two years in Argentina. Mission complete, commander. We're now, officially, bloaters again. Yey.

Anyway, i thought i'd write a post about what we did and saw in the few days we were there. There's a whole load of political stuff and why Argentina is most probably heading for stormy waters (again) and why inflation is rampant and what could be done to change it that i could go into but i can't be bothered. So, with the exception of the inflation issue i'm going to talk about the good things and stuff we enjoyed in BA this time around.

Let's get inflation out of the way, then. It's a major problem. Official government stats put it at a little under 10% per year (a pretty high number in its own right). But no one believes the government figures as when the agency charged with measuring inflation started reporting double-digit figures Grand Master K sacked the lot and put a bunch of his own cronies in their place. There are a number of reasons why inflation is so high. Most of the reasons a 15 year old GCSE business studies student could understand. Argentina's economic idiot presidente Kirchner doesn't understand. He's an exceptionally talented politician (that's not really a possitive thing) but he has no idea how to run an economy. He doesn't appear to even understand the idea that by keeping the Peso articificially weak against the dollar (3-1 when it should be around 2.2-1) means that there are more pesos in circulation which in turn is a major cause of inflation (in order to keep the peso weak, the central bank buys millions of dollars a month-to do this they need more pesos, so they just put in a new order at the printing press. Clever, eh?).

On the ground, it's pretty easy to see the differences in prices. We left at the end of January and i'd put prices at least 8-10% higher and more for some goods and services. That's 10% in just 4 months. Buenos Aires is now only very slightly cheaper than Santiago and that's just not right. Why? Because a financial analyst with 3 years experience in Chile should earn us$2-2300 per month (6-7000 argentine pesos). The same person in Buenos Aires would be extremely lucky to break us$1000 or 3000 argentine pesos. A recently gradauted Business student would be very lucky to get more than 1500-1800 pesos a month in Argentina. In Chile the same person would be getting over 3000 pesos. Inflation is making life a struggle for what's left of the middle class over there so imagine being one of the 30-40% living below the official poverty line.

We went to a Brazlian bar/restaurant called Me Leva Brasil. We used to go quite a lot as it was pretty cheap for its location (corner Costa Rica and Malabia) but it's now really quite pricey. Actually, i'd go as far to say that its equivalent in notting hill or other 'cool' parts of london would be cheaper. And better quality. Drinks are reasonably good value but the food is no way near worth the price. Taxis have gone up twice since we left. The hotel we stayed in 3 years ago before buying our flat used to be 23 pesos for a double. It's now 100 pesos. A coffee in January used to set me back around 2.50-3 pesos. Now it's at least 3-4 pesos and sometimes more. 330ml soft drinks in bars and restaurants cost a whopping 4.50 pesos. A cheap set lunch used to be 6-8 pesos and 11-12 back in January. Now its 14-20 pesos.

Anyway, enough of the boring inflation stuff. Just what did we get up to? Well, time was short and the trip was very last minute-we didn't even have time to let some friends know we were going as we couldn't have fitted them in (despite my cyber-stalker's claims, we do have friends in BA -i know who you are 'micheal'/anonymous, your illiterate comments and failure to spell your own pseudonym correctly can only come from one balding total tosser. Your IP address rather gave you away as well, pal).

So we met up with just a few people we really wanted to see. We went to the aforementioned brazilian bar which, despite the price rises, was still a good laugh. We went out for lunch with another friend and we also went shopping.

Books are hideously expensive in Chile so we went to El Ateneo on Santa Fe and bought our Time Out New York (yey, we're going in September) and some other books. The girlf managed not to buy any boots, despite walking past numerous shooe-shops along Santa Fe, which was a shocking departure from the norm.





Other touristy stuff we did- We went to El Zanjon (Defensa and Indepdencia in San Telmo). I'd wanted to go for ages but never got round to it when i was living in BA. I would recommend the tour to everyone that heads to BA. The property was bought by a chemicals company over 20 years ago with the idea of opening a restaurant there (interesting business match...) but when they started to renovate and get rid of the rubbish that had built up over decades, they realised that the house was an archeological treasure trove. After years of painstaking work and at a cost of a few million dollars (at a guess) they found 3 or 4 different houses built on the same spot. Underneath are tunnels where the river used to flow. The original house dates from the city's founding and used to be right next the the Rio de la Plata before the city reclaimed a fair bit of land. The brick work is beautiful and very impressive and the tunnels underneath the property are really interesting. The project gained UNESCO recognition as a world class example of private cultural renovation. The tour in Spanish was excellent (no idea what the english version is like). I'm not really doing the place justice with this crap description so just look at the pretty pictures.



Water tank from the very first construction on the property





Boy'd up Peugeto 504. Class.



Finally, on Saturday we went to San Antonio de Areco with a friend and his visiting dad. San Antonio is Gauchoville. It was bigger and completely different than i expected. I think i expected a dusty wild-west town with a couple of un-paved roads. Instead, we were treated to a beautiful and incredibly peacefull country town. It looks like Palermo Viejo-all low rise 1900-1940s construction and because argriculture has always been a pretty lucrative business in Argentina, it's all pretty well-preserved. We saw a few proper Gauchos with their cool tapered trousers and sombreros. Here are some photos. Just check out the Art Nouveau door, stunning.












We went for dinner at Sudestada (fitzroy/nicaragua) on Saturday night. I hadn't been for well over two years as the last time i went i thought it was a bit rubbish. Times have changed. I went for the green curry which was really good and pretty spicey and the girlf had the bo luc lac which was also pretty damn tasty. Recommended.

And very finally-We arrived back in Santiago early doors on sunday morning. From having dangerously high levels of smog last week, Santiago is enjoying some winter sun. You could actually see the snowcapped Andes. A rare and beautiful sight.








So the question-Do i miss Buenos Aires? Well, yes i do. But not as much as i thought i would. I thought going back would make me think that i'd regret leaving but it didn't. Usually, it takes a couple of months for me to pretty much forget my previous life/home and appreciate what i now have. That's what's happened. To a certain extent, i miss all the places i've lived-Dorset, Paris, Malvern, Tours, Sydney, Quito, Bournemouth, Ste Agathe (but not so much Birmigham or Santiago) but i wouldn't want to revisit those times in my life. I love BA but i also love Valpo. I appreciate what Chile can offer in terms of stability and economic prospects. Waking up and being able to see the Pacific is just brilliant. So yes, i miss BA but not enough to make me think that i should go back and do that part of my life again. Times change and people change with them.