Puerto Iguazu - Buenos Aires: 04/11 - 13/11

Being Argentina I paid a lot and got a decent bus ride from Puerto Iguazu that evening down to Buenos Aires - a mere 18 hours in a bus. Being hip I got myself to the coolest part of town (San Telmo) as quickly as possible and randomly ran into Tamara and Ilona! We ended up staying at different hostels but caught up along with their countryman Michael again later for bohemian rapsody at a local 'literary cafe' aptly named La Poesia and a much-needed vegetable meal.

I went to a techno club I'd read about on the Interweb called Bahrein, arriving there at around 1230am to a beautifully decorated but basically empty club. The music wasn't great and it was taking a long time to fill up. Not having much cash I wasn't going to buy a drink and I was playing with the idea of leaving until I discovered the downstair section - the place used to be a bank and they had converted the vault into the 'underground' section called Subsuelo.

There the music was much better, and I soon got onto the floor to dance. There I felt old - partly because the average age of the punters was about 20, and partly because my back was so stiff and slow to warm up. But I felt better when I saw the DJ - white, bald and about 45, Sergio Athos (also club owner and Argentinian dance music pioneer) was rocking the house with smooth and sublime tech and crispy rhythms. The floor soon filled up around me and I realised the dancefloor etiquette here is not so polite as in some other places - some people would just come right up to my space and start dancing in it! But a great nights dancing though, all good. Interestingly enough it seems they also have the No Smoking inside rules here but everyone just ignores it and no-one enforces it - $&&^%ers.

I'd decided the photos for my blog for BA were basically going to be of all the great graffiti around San Telmo, so this was my ongoing mission for my week there. My usual city mission of searching out great coffee continued also with some pleasing results - I also realised the rumours of Buenos Aires' women being the most beautiful in South America were true. At one point I sat outside at a cafe in the coolest part of Cooltown next to a table of four young gorgeous women all doing a very good job of looking beautiful without looking liked they'd tried at all. Later that night was the annual Gay Pride march, where mobile floats cranked loud gay anthems like 'When Love Takes Over'. There were of course lots of PDA's, crazy costumes, marijuana and even public nudity. It was a shame though that pretty much every pair of breasts that I saw were fake, whether on transexuals or ladies. It was great to see lots of shiny happy people and a city mas o menos supporting their cause. I had bought a ticket to see a 'big' DJ at supershiny superclub Pacha but decided not to shell out the ridiculous $ to pay for the taxies required to go there at 1am. After super-cheap Bolivia I was quite jaded with expensive and consumptive Buenos Aires.

The next morning I checked out of my arty hostel to an even artier one, The Art Factory, where the Dutchies and I spent a lovely sunny afternoon, then took a basic tango lesson. This also involved watching our smooth instructors strutting their stuff and a stripped down tango band performing great traditional tango music. The next morning I said goodbye to the Dutchies who were off on the 3 hours ferry to Uruguay and settled in for a Melbourne-esque 17 degrees and rain. During my time at The Factory I of course met lots of international folks, like Tara from Ireland, Craig and Angela from Washington, recently arrived for a world tour after 5 years in South Africa as aid workers, Bonny and Tuchi La Flaca de Anana from Colorado, Christoph and Angelique from Switzerland, Jenni from Finland, Brandy from Canada, who along with Wendy and Sara from the States had just spent some time in a Hari Krishna ashram outside of the city. Bonny and I went to the tiny Botanic Gardens in Palermo where the deadliest things were the cactus glasshouse, fresh loquats and nude statues. One morning at the hostel we had a breakfast band.

Michelle had also completed her year-long pilgrimage and was preparing to leave - we were on the same flight back! We drank coffee and cream that she made from coffee that she'd picked, processed and roasted herself at her volunteer stay in Ecuador. It was satisfying that we could catch up in person and hear of all our adventures, there, at the end of all things...

With some other Arty types I went to see La Bomba del Tiempo, a 16-piece orchestrated and multi-cultural percussion band where we danced a little bit. One of my companions was Marty from Perth, an ex progressive DJ who was on a musical pilgrimage north that involved the World Music Conference in Miami and Creamfields in BA that weekend - jealous! I went to visit the new SAE office just down the way in San Telmo where I participated in a Spanish lesson and then, along with members Vincent, Sean and Michael and SAE manager Phil played some racquetball. It's kind of like a cross between tennis and squash, kinda cool but not quite enough running around for me.

On my last evening I went to the famed Desnivel, a busy steak restaurant with delicious meats cooked to order. Along with Marty, Ulysses from Holland, Estefania from Chile and Max from Germany we completed the fulfilled the requirement of all that come to Argentina by quaffing a nice local red while dining on their fine beef. Back at the hostel the evening's live entertainment was muffled by noise sensitive neighbours and we were asked to click as a sign of our appreciation rather than clap. Our next stop was Red Door, a cool bar around the corner where more drinking and glass-smashing was to be had - I saw about 6 smashed in a small room in an hour! One guy managed to make-out with two different girls in the evening. Soon enough it was 5am, and we were thrown to the dogs in the street. But our hostel companion had other ideas. He led us through downtown to a speakeasy: an illicit after-hours venue. A secret knock, a few quick words, open the hobbit-door and in we went. The next few hours in that seedy but kind of uber-cool place were pool and alcohol and being too drunk and talking a lot of shit and laughing with people like Irish pool shark Mick. Finally Jason from England and I stumbled back to the Art Factory and breakfast. Crazy night.

The next day was quite difficult for me - just functioning was hard enough, but I also had to pack and get over to Michelle's hostel from where we were to leave for the train. After sleep finally took over I think I experienced one of the worst hangovers I've ever had. Hot, dry and scratchy, everything was screaming at me and nothing felt anywhere near as good as being horizontal. Urrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Michelle lent a helping hand to get me through the transfer to the airport process though, where we had a flight at 230am... they sure do like to do things late in Buenos Aires! What a painful process.

Goodbye South America! Lots of love, Tris.