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.