Buenos Aires - Sunday 9th May

OK, so I've decided - I love this travelling lark already, but I am not so fond of other travellers. For instance, met a German girl at Buenos Aires airport and ended up sharing a cab as she is staying at the same hostel as us. After about 20 seconds I just wanted to punch her. She had landed in the the city without a guidebook and although I think that's cool I didn't think the way she frowned because I had a guidebook and a vague idea about the city in advance was cool at all. And then there's all the other travellers, all yah-yah and so obsessed with being individual that they don't seem to realise that by wearing their oh-so-cool wooly jumpers covered in holes and their just-the-right-level-of-worn-out Doc Martins they are actually more mainstream than Chavs. You can't move here without bumping into someone playing a guitar or catching a whiff of Patchouli. It's all terribly predicatable. Anyway, back to German bird - I bumped into her on the stairs this morning at 5am (after a night out - my GOD, it is unheard of here to go out before 1am...) and found it hard to supress a laugh when, after comparing notes about where we'd been and what we'd seen, I discovered that in her quest to throw away the rulebook she had spent two days wandering the city aimlessly and had seen practically nothing. Har har. Anyway, spent the first night in a dorm with 6 other men and it was as smelly and upsetting as it sounds. So have now got a private room on the top floor for an extra 2 pound per night. I'm sorry but I don't think you need to spend the whole night listening to other people fart/snore/burp in order to experience a new place...

Anyways, whinge over. Predictably, Buenos Aires is FAB. This place is absolutely HUGE and so different to Rio. Well it would be I suppose, being in a different country and all... The city is so chic and cosmopolitan, not what I expected at all. Again, have seen most of it on foot but today hired a bike (well, I say 'bike' - it looked like something a four year old had thrown together with some left over Meccano; no brakes, no gears and pedals so long that I couldn't actually turn the front wheel without falling off...) and cycled all over the shop. Was v cool. Also, visited the Casa Rosada - the place where Madonna (sorry, Eva Peron) did her arm-waving schtick. And yes, all I have done for the last two days is skip around singing 'Another Suiotcase in Another Hall'... The other thing about BA is that it is SO cheap. Had the most MASSIVE steak last night that cost about a fiver, and tonight went to the cinema (Kingdom of Heaven - excellent), which cost three pounds - and that was including a hotdog, popcorn and Pepsi! The downside of this is that all day, everyday I have to turn a blind eye to all the knicker-wettingly cheap shopping opportunities. How depressing... So, two more days here then on to Peru on Wednesday. At some point in the next few days I WILL get some piccies posted, I promise. Stay cool my English frieds!

Juan (Peron) xxx