Pictures pictures pictures

Finally I am able to upload some of my pictures! It is taking forever though so I can't put very many up which makes me a bit sad. It is probably good news for you guys though, what could be more boring than looking at photos of my trip? Only watching Judging Amy.



My favourite picture from Recoleta. There are so many more, all very dull. Anyway, you can see more at my flickr. Nothing very interesting there yet (mostly freakin' Recoleta). Will update more when I get the chance. But it's hard to find a computer with a DVD player, which is currently my only option for updating photos.

FACTS ABOUT ARGENTINA:

-In Spanish, two 'LL's in a row is usually pronounced as a 'Y'. For instance, El Pollo Diablo would be pronounced as 'El POY-oh dee-ABB-loh.' But in Argentina, they pronounce it as a sort of soft 'J' sound! Crazy!

-People in Argentina really like Jon Bon Jovi and Amy Winehouse

FACTS ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA:

-People in South America like TV shows that involve an elaborate set-up intended to make someone look foolish (then joyously amused when they are informed of the clever set-up.)



Okay! Also I think I lost my debit card today.

Love love love
Lion

Una dïa en el hielo

Killing time in El Calafate, since our bus to Puerto Natales doesn´t leave until 5pm.

I had to book accomodation for us in Puerto Natales over the phone, completely in Spanish. It was quite hard but I think I got it right. If we arrive there tonight and discover I was successful I will have an enormous sense of accomplishment. If we arrive there tonight (at 10pm) and discover I was unsuccessful it will be a bit shit because accomodation can apparently be hard to come by around here and we will be homeless and tentless in a windy cold dark and sometimes rainy mountain town. However it is an adventure and I am sure somebody will take us in if necessary!!

So since I am killing time, you can have some wonderful pictures of Glaciar Moreno! It was pretty cool but like Lion says, it´s hard to describe. ¨Cold¨, ¨blue¨, ïcy¨and ¨very big¨is the closest I can get! Also ¨loud¨. You can hear the grinding and cracking echoing through the valley as it advances at 2 metres per day and large chunks fall into the water below (this is called calving). We spent a few hours looking at it and saying ¨wow¨ a lot.





We also spent a while wandering around El Calafate. There are lots of horses and dogs. There are also flamingos! I didn´t get any decent photos because my camera doesn´t have a good zoom so Lion will have to put some up when she gets the chance.




This is my favourite picture of El Calafate, taken on the first day we were here when the light was amazing. The green building is a nightclub!!

I´m glad to be leaving El Calafate, because its´ alpine-scrubbiness (a great novelty at first) is starting to grate on my nerves. Three days was slightly too long. But Puerto Natales sounds cool and we will do the ¨W¨trek there, which takes around five days (so expect us to be out of contact for a little while)!

We´ll also be in Chile. It is very bizarre to say, OK let´s book a bus to Chile tomorrow. I have never crossed a border over land before!

Lion cracked me up this morning. We were sitting at breakfast, discussing the two late-thirties men we shared a dorm with last night. They were very nice and everything, fit trekker-types, but seeing a couple of grown men (old enough to be our fathers) sprawled over their beds in cotton jocks, smelling like sweaty men, snoring loudly and desperately like they were trying to eat their own faces (Lion´s phrase) was a bit disconcerting.

Then the television in the background showed a news story with two big brown hairy sea lions sprawled on a beach on the west coast of Argentina. Lion was like, ¨Look at that, that´s what was lying on a bed in our dorm in its underpants last night.¨I laughed so loudly that everyone else in the common room turned to look at us.

That was considerably more than I intended to write! Better go before I reach 30mins on the internet-cafe counter... otherwise I´ll have to pay another 2.50 pesos!! Rip-off.

I will be in Puerto Natales, Chile, during my grandfather´s funeral. I guess I´ll be asleep, because of the time difference. I feel I should say a prayer for him, but I´m not really religious and I don´t think I know any prayers. I could make something up, I guess! I would like to say something for him when I´m on top of a mountain, or something, when we´re hiking. I think he would have preferred me to be with my family than on top of a mountain in Chile, but obviously that´s not possible. Anyway I hope that he is at rest now.

Glacierzzzzzzz

My dear sweet friends and family, you should email us more often. Well, me, anyway. I know I´m off gallivanting all day, running into half a lake full of flamingos, partying with new friends called Guido and Enrique and all that business. But in fact, as wonderful and startling and lovely as America del Sur has proved thus far, it seems that Nothing Compares 2 U, and there is nothing more depressing than spending twenty four hours doing incredibly fascinating and enrapturing things and then returning to an inbox full of nothing with no one to tell about it. And when I am sitting on a bus, or waiting in an interminable queue for the internet at a hostel with selfish people pushing in front of me, it is you that I entertain thoughts of.

Today we are in El Calafate, in Argentina. Tomorrow night we will be in Chile! Don´t worry, though, we are returning to Argentina for more adventures soon. I´m not sure what the internet facilities are like in Puerto Natales, our first stop, and we are planning to do a hike that takes about a week. So if you don´t hear from us, we are probably amongst the lagos and montañas, most likely replicating the opening scene from The Sound of Music.

Today we saw the Perito Moreno glacier! Far out, it was a big deal. But I don´t really know how to explain it to you. Maybe I won´t. Ro might though? You can ask her to if you like.

El Calafate is a very odd town. It is cold! After the mid-thirties temperatures of BsAs, this is thrillingly novel. Today I wore a singlet and a thermal shirt and a long-sleeved shirt and a merino jumper and a padded jacket! Not for very long though. Only while I ate lunch at the glacier. The main area of town is trying quite hard to be Aspen, I think, and indeed there are many charming woodsy chalet-style buildings and A-frame homes and chic French girls in quilted trenches and hoops earrings wandering around. But yesterday we went for a walk through town and wound up on the far end. It was sort of a wasteland, especially when you take into account how dry and stark El Calafate is in first place. There was garbage everywhere. We went into a general store and I was worried that a man was going to come out and serve us with a shotgun.

It stays light until around 10 in the evening.

On the aeroplane we watched a television ¨Just For Laughs Gags¨ which you may recall was made famous by Canadian cartoonist Kate Beaton! It was so good. I have never seen such an elaborately awful piece of television before. I couldn´t stop laughing. The best bit is that there was no sound, so everyone was in the same boat.

This is all I am going to write for now okay! I don´t want to be one of those using computer-for-ages people.

P.S. They seem to like Celine Dion in South America and also I have heard ¨Uptown Girl¨ by Billy Joel twice.

¨Awesome¨

AWESOME THING I WAS NOT EXPECTING TO SEE YESTERDAY BUT SAW YESTERDAY:


FLAMINGOS

photos de buenos aires

photos! i was going to say ´at long last´ but then i realised we´ve only been here a week. (it feels longer, although not in a bad way.) but caro´s been itching for photos (i don´t care AS much but it is cool to put them up) so here you are:

recoleta cemetery. at the edge of the cemetery you could see the craziness of the city behind the craziness of the cemetery, it was basically just insane all around

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lion (if you can see her: this computer´s screen is so crappy that we can´t!!) in recoleta´s plaza de vicente lopez

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this photo is for mum and dad: it´s the DUCK!!! or possibly a close relative, living in san telmo´s antiques market

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the argentian cat empire playing in avenida florida. they winked at us. (and, as lion adds over my shoulder, blew kisses too)

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football fans in la boca. they were almost shaking the buses singing and shouting out the windows and they danced off the buses around the corner towards the stadium

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la boca

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clothes for dogs in la boca. yeah don´t ask me why, i´m sure there must be a reason

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cool street graffiti art in palermo (p.s. tom reynolds, this is YOU)

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robo trying on some funky latin clothing in the coolest clothing store in the world in palermo (magda, you would have lost your NUT in this store, seriously)

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...yes.

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posing ´sexily´ (at least that was the aim: i think it may have failed dismally) in palermo (look at the street art on the right!!)

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lion posing in front of a ship that we refused to tour because it would have cost 2 pesos (less than one australian dollar). we are super-stingy. we´ve also been washing our clothes by hand because it would cost about 3 australian dollars to do them at the laundromat: what a rip-off

so there you have it: a week in buenos aires. tomorrow we fly to el calafate (we could have taken the bus for three quarters of the cost but it would have taken 44 hours and we´re not that stingy, yet), and I am very excited. hiking! glaciers! mountains!

Stuff!

I am so danged frustrated, you guys! I have a bunch of photos I´m desperate to upload. But I think I left my camera USB cable in Australia. So every computer I´ve been at I´ve hunted for a card reader, but they were all too old and none of them had one. Yesterday I finally braved the Spanish sitch and went and somehow managed to get my photos put on a DVD. So last night I went to the internet booth at the hostel with full intention of getting these photos up once and for all, only to discover that the CD drive on the computer doesn´t work. I couldn´t even get it to open. SOOOOOO I finally decided to lash out and go to an internet cafe this morning. And now I find... the CD drive is covered up so you can´t even touch it! Man but I am pretty furious.

Anyway, Buenos Aires proves itself to be full of fascination. Tomorrow afternoon we are flying to El Calafate in the south, so that we can check out Patagonia, but I will be sorry to leave. I could easily spend a while here. Luckily we will be back at the end of our trip.

We went out the other night for the first time (the first time for me that is; Ro went to Palermo with some backpackers while I slept the previous night. LAME!) I think I mentioned that a couple of the guys at the hostel told us about a gig. So we had a siesta on Saturday afternoon and then we woke up at 8:30 and in an anguished cry said ¨Oh no everyone has probably left already!¨ We looked all over the hostel for the people we were planning on going with but couldn´t see them anywhere. Trudged down to reception and finally Ro asked the guy working if he knew anything about it. Turns out it was his band. ¨We play at 11.30,¨ he said, and gave us the address. He was a bit too cool for school but we decided to check it out anyway (what else where we going to do?)

Okay, so at 11.30 we caught a cab to the Club de Arte, which was near Palermo (the main clubbing district). It was a grimy looking little place up a flight of stairs; we wouldn´t have picked it from the street on our own. Climbed the stairs only to be greeted by an empty bar, except for the band. But they seemed happy to see us. The guy from reception was suddenly all smiles and gave us the old Argentine cheek kiss which seemed a little odd since we hadn´t even introduced ourselves yet, but of course such is the Argentine way. Turns out his name is Guido, which I found most pleasing. We hung out with the band for a bit (and their friend from the Isle of Mann of all places, another backpacker called Matthew) and they offered us their Campari and orange juice. It was easily the worst thing I have ever tasted. I have no idea why anyone would ever drink it.

At about 1AM the band finally played. Lordy. But oh boy, we had a grande old time! Luckily for me they were much more erring on the ¨ska¨ or ska-punk rather than ¨reggae¨ side of things; reggae tends to put me to sleep. They were dressed much more reggae though. No checkerboards or porkpie hats in sight. Anyway it was uncharacteristic yet great fun skanking away on the d-floor, which was largely empty except for about four guys who were going loco.

(Note to Mum: in this instance, ¨skanking¨ (good) doesn´t mean being a ¨skank¨ (bad). It is a sort of dancing that you do to a lot of styles of music that come from Jamaica. It´s not very ¨skanky¨(bad) at all.)

Once the band finished it was about two - they were the only band on the bill - the club finally started filling up. Slowly, though. You don´t tend to go out until 2 in BsAs. It takes some getting used to. And how odd it was! The DJ played some more ska for a while, but then he busted out some salsa. And people actually started salsa dancing! The men and all. Actually the men were much more into it than the women. It was so bizarre for what seemed to be an indie club (a nice Mojo´s/Amplifier blend.) A friend of the band took quite a shine to Rowena and moved her around the floor like nobody´s business. Unfortunately moving away from him on the floor was a rather more difficult task. A shirtless hippy, not entirely unlike Michael Franti, insisted on dancing with both of us at once. We kind of messed up and he lost interest though. The bald and pierced singer from the band seemed to take an interest in me.

¨You don´t have this music in Australia,¨ he informed me.
¨Well, uh, maybe a little,¨ I said. ¨You can hear it some places.¨
¨But you have to go on the internet,¨ he said proudly.
¨Uh... yes,¨ I said. I couldn´t break it to him.

His big move was giving me a hug. Once I pushed him away (politely! Not like a shove!) he left me alone. Argentine men do seem to be fairly forward, but for the most part they also seem to get the picture fairly quickly.

I was so surprised at how friendly people were, and how many people came up and talked to us. So much for snobby porteños. An indie-looking girl and guy came us to me at one point and said, ¨¡Hola!¨ ¨¡Hola!¨ I said. They started laughing and said something to each other.

Where are you from, they asked me in English.
Australia, I said.
AUSTRALIA! they repeated in delight.

Then they told me, they have a bet going on.
¨What kind of bet?¨ I asked
¨You have to kiss one of us!¨
¨I have a boyfriend!¨ I informed them. ¨I´m not kissing anyone!¨
They looked at each other and groaned, like I was SUCH a bore. ¨But which one of us WOULD you kiss?¨

I don´t know what they were talking about. But they were very sweet and funny. They reminded me of some of the kooky kids you meet out in Perth on a good night.

Argh my internet time is running out!

I had some amazing dreams about Leonard Cohen the other night!

Love Caro!

Hola hola hola

Hellooooooooooo

God it is oppressively hot in this little internet booth. I am sitting on the roof garden of our new hostel having just eaten that most Argentine of meals, chow mein. Ro had a Lomo de Buenos Aires today (I think that was what it was called, although that translates to Loin of Buenos Aires which seems a bit weird so perhaps not) so I think that was Argentinian enough for both of us.

Tonight we are heading to Palermo Viejo. Last night we saw that there was a jam session a-brewing on the roof of our hostel, so we wandered up in anticipation of finding a guitar to steal and sneak off into a corner. Actually it was more like the staff playing drums behind the bar to entertain themselves, but when we questioned them they handed Ro a shaker and me a tambourine and we had a bit of a boogie. Apparently I am quite the talent. They may have been mocking me. Anyway they told us that one of the staff members is in a band, and they are playing tonight, and we should go check it out. So we are along with a bunch of others from the hostel. To be entirely honest I´m not convinced that ska/reggae is the sort of thing I´d go out of my way to listen to in Perth, but when in BsAs and all that.

Today we went to La Boca and it completely sucked. Boca is a poor neighbourhood but full of wonderful vibrant buildings painted in all sorts of fascinating colours with shutters in contrasting colours and that sort of thing. Unfortunately the citizens have been relegated to the decrepit buildings on the outside, while the centre has been overpainted and glossed and turned into a tourist hell. Tourists are advised not to venture outside the well-trodden streets and they admittedly did look somewhat frightening. It was full of markets selling truly awful things, men wailing with accordians and cafes with tacky tango displays. If you happened to glance at one of the dancers you would be immediately accosted by a young man with a menu and when you walked away, said young man would recite a well practised ¨you so gorgeous,¨ ¨I love you forever¨ and other such versings fitting of St. Valentine´s Day. Or Dia de los Enamorados if you are so inclined (evidently I am).

I´m not averse to a spot of touristy crap (I concede that I was most taken with a t-shirt that said ¨Buenos Fucken´ Aires¨) but it was just miserable. Like a Disneyland Boca in the middle of real Boca. It was probably worse than usual, though. We happened to be going on a game day - Palermo vs. Boca at Boca Stadium. The bus that took us there drove through a scene of near insanity. The streets were packed with illegally parked cars, shirtless porteños, busloads of singing tourists, people playing futbol... actually the only person we´ve spoken to who went to the game said it was too hot to enjoy. A shame since most gringos paid about $100 for the experience.

When we were looking dazedly around, some girls behind us giggled and repeated, ¨Vamos, gringas.¨ ¨Vamos¨ is usually used to mean ¨let´s go!¨ We assumed that they meant ¨Go away, white girls.¨ I´ve been looking up meanings of ¨vamos¨ though and it seems they might also have been saying ¨Hurry up, white girls.¨ We were walking kind of slowly in front of them. Either way it´s hard to blame them. I was embarrassed to be there. La Boca - the parts we saw, that is - is a shithole. The buildings are still beautiful but the people ruin it.

We´ve moved to a different hostel on the same street. It´s great. Much better than the last one. The people are maybe a little older and therefore a bit less braindead, and not just boozy skanky Australians. And the roof garden is kickin´.

So much more to write about, oh my goodness. But I am frying to death and I need water. How are you all? Well, yes? I hope so. Tell me.

Love love love
Lion

dia dos: el mundo de caballos (the world of horses)

Today bordered on awesome. We wandered around Recoleta, a ritzy suburb with a huge Spanish influence (think leafy tree-lined streets, big plazas covered in grass and shade with people everywhere just chillin' out, mediterranean-looking apartment buildings etc). The famous cemetery was INSANE, all these creepy old family crypts in hundreds of narrow cobbled streets (they really did look like streets since the crypts were mostly the height of small houses, some higher with crazy statues of angels, saints, warriors and so on). I felt like I was in somebody else's travels of Europe.

I stopped by a shop in a small arcade with a saddle out the front on the way back to the hostel, in a typical 'Robo shows her country roots' fashion, and the vendor came out to greet me. I was all, "No, no, I'm just looking," but he was all, "By all means, come inside and walk around and look, it's ok" (in Spanish) and then, "Where are you from?" in English. He didn't know very much English but we went inside, and he showed us around his (tiny) shop, poured us each a drink of Pepsi in plastic cups, and we ended up staying there for about half an hour.

The vendor (whose name was Enrique, or Henry to Ingles-speakers) makes all the saddles and bridles in the shop, and he runs the business with his brother and one other man, whose relationship to him I didn't catch. He showed us everything in his shop and told us all about it with great pride. To be honest I didn't catch a great deal of this part because he spoke so fast, but I picked up bits here and there and nodded, "Si, si, muy interesante!" to the rest. Haha.

I asked him heaps of questions about the horses in Argentina, and I found out something I've been itching to know for a while, as country of me as it is: the typical breed of horse in Argentina is a pony-sized beast called a Criollo. (pronounced cree-o-jo in Argentina or cree-o-yo elsewhere)

The conversation took a while, what with him not speaking English and all, but we got by ok and when we got really stuck I pulled out my spanish-english dictionary and everyone used it to look up key words. It's amazing how you don't have to understand every word of what somebody is saying to have a conversation!

After about half an hour, we took a photo with him, he gave us his email address to send him the photos and he gave me a magazine about polo. We came out laughing our heads off as we walked down the street. It was pretty random.

Lion stayed through this entire conversation, which was nice of her because I'm pretty sure she doesn't have anywhere near my interest in whether Argentians use Western-style or classical/European-style saddles (FYI the cowboys, or gauchos do use western but Enrique only makes classical). But she had fun enjoying the wackiness. I hope! Haha.

Good Spanish practice though. I am amazed at how much we're picking up and how quickly. I picked up the polo magazine while I was waiting for a computer, and was pretty shocked at how much I could figure out.

Oh I nearly forgot! The shop was called El Mundo de Caballos. Literally, The World of Horses. Funny stuff.

The hostel we're in was a good place for us to start out, because it's clean/modern/social etc and the staff are all really helpful (it's rookie-friendly), but we're quickly getting sick of the other backpackers. Lion and I are not adverse to partying but if we wanted to get drunk with other Australians we could a) move back to college and pretend we were eighteen again or b) head to the Obie for a Sunday session. We didn't need to fly to Buenos Aires! So yeah we're planning to change hostels pretty soon.

Other than that, todo bien, it's all good. Tengo muy hambre. Time for dinner.

The journey to... El Mundo de Caballo

Man I am pretty annoyed, I was going to write a long post with all sorts of sexy pictures but this computer doesn´t seem to have a card reader and I left my USB cable in the bedroom under the assumption that it would have a card reader. And there is a hell of line for the computer so I don´t want to go back up to the room.

Anyway, today was hell of eventful. Ro and I decided to go trekking to Recoleta, which is a fairly fancypants sort of neighbourhood about a twenty minute walk from the city center. Actually it took us longer than that but I suppose we were a bit distracted. It was thirsty work but we got there in the end and by golly it was a site for sore eyes. Everything you read and everyone you speak to tells you to check out the Recoleta cemetary so we went there first. I guess that I like cemetaries and all, but neither am I inclined to wander them restlessly like a sad ghost/Bill Murray. As far as cemetaries go I would have to say that it is a good one. Mark would have gone HOG WILD if he were there, and so inclined to do such a thing. We really saw some kickin´ rad tombs. My favourite were the ones with statues of angels. If you peeked into some of the family graves you could see columns of coffins, which was a bit creepy actually.

We saw Evita´s grave! And the other members of the Duarte family, let us not forget them. It wasn´t especially notable except that it was surrounded by hundreds of irritating people taking pictures. Me, Ro, a couple of others. I took one hundred thousand boring pictures of graves so get yourselves ready.

Once we got bored at looking at the futile housings of the deceased we wandered away hunting for agua and el baño but instead we found ourselves next door at a church! Far out it was pretty. All white and high ceilings, of course, except for intermittent panels that were decorated with intricate renditions of Jesus and Mary and all the usual crowd in gold and turquoise and deep red. It was really quiet with only a few people there, some of whom were taking pictures and wandering around and others who were bowed and praying and crossing themselves. Also we checked out the cloisters, which had been turned into an art gallery of old religious parephenalia from the church, and from other countries in South America too. Zany embroidered vestigial robes (I have no idea what vestigial means), framed gold leaf quillings by bored nuns, ugly (but they certainly put in a lot of effort so let´s remember that)statues of the big guy, that kind of thing. The Virgin Mary certainly appeared to be in a lot of pain most of the time.

Then we really did need agua y el baño and also LUNCH so we went to a little place we saw on the way to the cemetary. It was pretty cute and sold little savoury baked goods, empanadas and such but also fresh homemade pasta. The woman looked completely grumpy but once we attempted to order in Spanish she changed her tune and was all with the smiles and the ciao and the gracias. The same thing happened later when we went to a chocolatier/patisserie type place! They were all, ahhhh, you have a chocolate too!, and I was all ahhhhhh noooooooo and then I was all ohhhhhh ok, un por favor and they cackled with delight and bade us a fond farewell.

And yet the best was yet to come. In fact I might leave Ro to tell you about it since it is really her baby.

Other stuff while I think of it:

-The hostel we are staying at is basically like college except that people at college had an excuse for lying around all day and never going outside (they were students). It has its charms but it also has its tasteless slappers and vacuous surfers. Still we´ve met some fairly cool Israelis and some fairly dense people from everywhere else. There is a ¨celebrity party¨ tonight and I may or may not be in attendance. It will be interesting to move on.

-The weather has been grand, not dissimilar to that of Perth at the moment (no bushfires). Mostly sunny with a few clouds yesterday. Completely sunny today. Warm both days.

-Actually this is all I can think of.

Love love love
Lion

nosotros somos en buenos aires!

caro is writing a hugely long blog entry next to me, but the internet is free here so i'm gonna go nuts too. here are my thoughts on the city so far:

1. it's been heaps easier doing things like getting around, talking to people en espanol, etc, than I expected. I understand a lot more written spanish than I expected to (when things are in context it's especially easy), but I still struggle with understanding spoken spanish because people speak so fast. but other people we've spoken to in el hostel (muy gringo!) say that argentians speak quite a lot faster than other south americans so hopefully it will get easier. we are picking up a lot just by walking around on the streets.

i had to ask a shop assistant where to find a toilet today (donde esta un banyo?) and we conducted yet another successful spanish conversation, and ACTUALLY FOUND the toilet. we were pretty stoked.

2. being surrounded by a different language is actually really fun! all we've done today is wander round the streets of buenos aires (initially very nervously, expecting to be mugged/harassed at any moment, although when nothing bad happened we gradually got more confident) and it was a major adventure because everything was in a different language. ordering food was pretty fun too: it's a game of charades half the time!

3. having caroline around has been awesome. i'm so much less stressed doing this kind of travelling than i was in new zealand, and new zealand is easy in comparison. it is so much easier to be chillaxed in situations like "we're at a bus station in the rain and we have no idea what to do next" when you are not alone!

4. getting over jetlag still... caro and i seem to be on opposite schedules, because whenever one of us is perky the other is exhausted. but we're making good use of coffee and drowsyflupills where appropriate and we should be better adjusted in a few days' time.

5. i had a wierd moment when i woke up this morning and thought, "it's 9am here... so it's... 7pm in Perth? oh my gosh... they've already finished wednesday!!" for some reason this was an upsetting thought. i wish everyone was behind us in time instead of ahead of us!! haha.

pero todo es bueno! it's all very surreal, and i keep expecting i'll wake up tomorrow back in Perth. but it's also all very exciting and i definitely wouldn't want to be anywhere else!

But my mum says I'm cool

Honestly I have no idea why people complain so much about jetlag and long flights. It is really very tolerable.

So I flew out of Perth at quarter to one on Tuesday morning, and by six that afternoon I was at our hostel in Buenos Aires. Six in the afternoon Buenos Aires time, that is. I slept like nobody's business on the flight from Sydney thanks to Mr. Phenergan. By the time we got to the hostel, though, I was still feeling pretty wacked out, but Ro's cunning plan was to stay up until 9ish so that we could get into a regular sleeping pattern. So we walked around the block until we found a pizza place and had a very convoluted conversation in which Ro tried to explain that we were after a pizza without meat. We wound up with a pretty tasty Margherita. Then I fell asleep on the bed with a Spanish music show blaring on the TV and Ro couldn't wake me up, even when she shook me and yelled at me. Then I woke up and fell asleep on the toilet briefly. Then I had a shower and passed out for the next twelve hours. In bed, not in the shower, although either would have been possible.

We spent all morning wandering about Buenos Aires and not really having any clue where we were going, thank God for grid streets. It's cool. European architecture and all that. Everything is pretty expensive and Havianas are sold EVERYWHERE. Turns out they're a ripoff everywhere. Went to a very schmick shopping centre that Mum would probably like. In fact it put our very own Morley Galleria to shame. We went to the cheapest cafe we could find, which wasn't that cheap, and I ordered un sandwich con quesa since it was the only obviously vegetarian thing on the menu, and un cafe con leche, my second coffee in five months. I had my first this morning. Neither was that good. Anyway it turns out that was actually a bit of a faux pas since cafe con leche is only meant to be drunk with breakfast. Boy, was my face red!

The hostel is full of gringos, mainly Aussies, which probably a good thing since mi espanol es patetica. I don't even know if that's correct. So far I have heard them playing MGMT, Lily Allen and Regina Spektor. Now they are playing 'Sweet Child of Mine'. Also whenever I sit down I can't seem to shake the feeling that the floor is moving so I suppose I don't have my air-legs yet.

Millions of people want to use the computer so I should probably go even though I have lots more to write.

Love love love
Lion

"Hell Yes"

helllllllll yes i fly out at midnight

Chickity china the Chinese chicken

I leave in a week! Not surprising since yesterday I was leaving in eight days. Ro leaves today. In fact she might have left already?

The stupid bank sent my stupid debit card to the wrong address. This is the same debit card that was going to be my main source of Fundz in South America so it is kind of a pain not to have it. I won't get it until Friday, probably, and then I will have a terrible rush trying to transfer Fundz from one bank to another because I can only take out a certain amount each day and ohhhh noooo what a nightmare. Actually I'm not feeling that concerned. My Mum is though.

This morning I woke up and I was REALLY EXCITED! I like catching planes. The novelty never really wore off for me, plus it's been five years since I went anywhere requiring air travel. I've never been on a plane for fourteen hours though. So perhaps this will be the death of my love of air travel.

Ro leaves tomorrow, thank goodness

Ignore that last post. I am excited today! Seriously though I am probably not going to die of skin cancer when I am overseas. I usually wear sunscreen anyway.

Ro leaves tomorrow night! She's going to Tasmania for a week before we meet up in Sydney. (I just wrote "Sydnay" by mistake, it pleased me so much I almost left it there.) Why? Perhaps we'll never know.

I leave on Monday night next week from the domestic airport. I HATE the domestic airport. It is the least romantic place in the world. It basically looks like my office.

We have booked our first two nights in a completely awesome-looking hostel. I'd give you the link to the website but what if there is some eerie man from Buenos Aires who is for some reason reading this blog with a curiously lascivious delight? He would basically be equipped to stalk us so I will tell you about it once I'm outta there. We lashed out and got a twin room because neither of us have really had to sleep off jetlag before and we thought we might enjoy a spot of privacy while we do so. But after that it is time for DORM CITY. I love sleeping in dorms!

I still haven't decided on my second pair of pants. Most upsetting. I think I have chosen my shirts.

I finish work in three days. I wish I finished NOW. It is so boring.