toogreytogrind

After not having much sleep on the night of the 23rd due to the snoring guy in the hostel, not much sleep on the flight of the 24th and the same again on the flight on the 25th, I arrived on the 26th in London surprisingly well. I was now glad that I bought the down bodywarmer in Puerto Natales, as it was cold back here.

The first shock came with a £9.20 fair from Gatwich station to East Dulwich train station. I then used up my only UK coins in a very short conversation with Shelley to say that I arrived. The machine wanted 40p more and cut short my conversation. Not something that strange here, but when you've been converting the costs in each country back to pounds you realise just how expensive England is. Craig's mother picked me up and took me over to Shelley's place.

It was great to see an old friend again after 8+ months, but it was a bit strange as well, like some sort of a dream, maybe due to the lack of sleep or from the change in environment, but things didn't seem real.

After chatting for a while, swapping some stories we went out to a cafe of a fry up. While getting stuck in to some good British food at its best, our attention got distracted by some raised voices. Some guy had come in to the cafe and wanted some instant service from the guy working there who was on the phone. Because, he didn't get instant service he was threatening the worker with violence, by saying something like, putting a 2 2 combination on him. What is this place London that someone would want to be violent to somebody else because they didn't want to wait a minute.

Welcome back to London! Welcome back to reality!

I didn't get much sleep last night. Well none actually, just one hour when the big French guy who was snoring all night, went for breakfast at nine and then went back to bed at 10 and started snoring again. I did try kicking the bed but it only worked for about 30 seconds.

I'm packed and ready to go. I think.

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On the way
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I had decided to go with the public bus (colectivo) as it costs just $1.80 ar and taxis are about $60 ar and the bus company is $30 ar. I knew where the bus left from and I had plenty of time for the 1 and half hour journey. But! This is Semana Santa and some groups saw this as an ideal time to protest. So congreso where the bus leavse from was closed to traffic and nobody seemed to know where the buses had been redirected to. After walking around for ages I looked at my watch and decided that I needed to take a taxi. I flagged down a taxi and asked the price. On the way to the airport we talked about beef and mate. A lot of what he said about mate contradicted what other Argentines said about mate, but I guess it's a personal thing. Mate for me has enough caffine without adding coffee as well. He got me to the airport in time and for $55 ar. That is cheaper than all the taxi companies are quoting in Bs Ar.

Ok, if I didn't write it one this blog I thought it, I give up spanish. Then last night I was having a conversation with a spanish guy, columbian and mexican. I said during then conversion that I made a promise to learn spanish. The mexican guy said to me, that I've done it. The conversation progressed and I found it difficult to comment but I followed it. I find it difficult to comment on polatics in english never mind in spanish.
Whatever i wrote or thought i guess i was wrong, you are what you are and if you are then do it. Yo soy hispanohablante.

To some people it may seem strange to be counting down to coming home from a place like this. But after over 7 months on the road some normality, reality, sanity, will be nice. Also I have reunion meal to look forward to, with my mates, I get to see Lisa again after a month. So at the moment there seem more reason to be over there than over here.

I've also been thinking about what I'm going to do when I get back as far as work goes. When I came back from Spain I was unemployed for quite some time too long for my liking.

One of the things that I've noticed here in Buenos Aires is that there seems to be a lot of guys with one leg around town, young and old. Maybe this has something to do with the way people seem to drive around here. Also I did see some graffiti saying something about 'Stop the deaths of the messengers'. Like in London there are bike messengers cycling around the streets. Maybe they are ex/messengers.

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UPDATE
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I had some mate with some Argentinian girls and they said that there are a lot of war veterans from the war over Las Malvinas, some have missing limbs and others psycological problems. There is a protest in the Plaza de Mayo at the moment, by the war veterans asking for more suport from the government.

Envase is really quite a good think and easy to understand but at the same time difficult. So what is it. Well the supermarket or chino buys beer in bottles but also has to buy the bottle itself. So when you buy a litre of beer for $2.50 ar you will need to buy the bottle as well. Good for the environment as they don´t get put in the rubbish, because you can get your money back.

Well not really!
After you´ve put the beer where it belongs, you can go to the chino with the bottles, who don´t care where the bottles have come from and will give you less, but cash to get what ever you are buying or you can go to the super and get more beer without having to pay again for the bottles. But you need to be getting the same number of bottles as the ones you brought back.

Not all bottles are the same, some are not returnable and will say so. So if you go back to a chino or a super with 15 bottles to get 15 bottles of the same beer and they have sold out and they only have none returnable bottles you will have 15 bottles of empties and have to pay full for the other beer. Some chinos will pay for the bottles and give you some cash against the none returnables, so you wont be too out of pocket. But I don´t think this would work at the super.

Simple really!

After one or two Quilmes at the hostel Maritza taked us all into going to a Peña. For those who don't know what a peña is, it's a club with live music. This one was with music of the campasinos, people from the country. One good thing about going to a club like this is that we were, I think, the only turists there. The Argentinians in the club proved to be as warm and friendly as always.

It was interesting to see so many young people getting into this type of music.

Even after the music stopped we had a chat with the band, and got a few photos with them.

I can't remember what time we got back to the hostel or how we got back to the hostel, but I think it was late.

I'm still at the Milonga Hostel, and today said goodbye to Judith the German girl who is one her way back to Brazil. The guys from the land down under have arrived back from their trip to Iguazú. They missed the tres fonteras mirador, they didn't go to the Brazilian side of the falls, but they did see the falls. Just! Lucky they were on a tour, and the tour got them out of bed, and on the bus to see the falls. The alarm didn't work and Quilmes were given as excuses.

Tom did say that he had a few funny looks with his shirt off, maybe due to the tattoo on his chest. He used an online translator to change the phrase into Spanish from English. Down in Oz it looked exotic, but here.......

The tattoo says "Caminante en dioses blinda". My students always had problems with the apostrophe. They would say "the house of my mother" and not "my mother's house". I guess online translators have problems as well, because "Caminante en dioses blinda" would mean that there is more than one god. Not Tom's belief nor that of the majority of Latin America.

He does see the funny side of all this and gave permission to put this on the blog.

After moving to the Hostel Milonga I´ve made a few friends; some guys from Oz Tom, Tom and Andrew, a German girl living in Brazil Judith and an Isreali girl Ayana a traveller. The Auzzie guys arrived in Buenos Aires and Andrew proptly got his bag nicked, so they´ve been waiting to get his passport and other stuff sorted out before moving on to, to, well their plan seems schetchy to say the least. Lucky being auzzies they have the backup plan, plan B, which is drink beer. Ok, this is also part of plan A as well. The did have some photos that I had a look at and they looked like they had some sponsorship from Quilmes, the national beer, for product placement.

Tom, Tom and Andrew, had to wait for the red tape so they made a move for a few days to Iguazú. The hostel seemed quite without the guys so Judith, Ayana and myself decided to do some sightseeing outside of Buenos Aires. I remember talking to some guy when we were in Iguazú who was form Buenos Aires and he said go to Tigre. So Tigre it was. I didn´t have any idea what it was going to be like, but after I would put it as a must see day trip. The town of Tigre is nice with a nice harbour section on to the river, spoilt only buy the MacD. Still MacDs are always good if you need to visit the toilet. Over by the port there is a market selling all sorts of goods, from all over. We did got to the tourist information which gave us two options of what we could do in the time we had. 1. catch a catamaran around the delta for about 1 and half hours for $40 ar or 2. get the public boat to the Tres Bocas for $14 ar ida y vuelta (there and back) and you get to get out and walk around and see where people live.

Option 2 was the best and cheapest option. With the public boat you get to see the stuff that you would from the catamaran but also get to see the small water ways of places like tres bocas. You can walk all the way around the island if you have 2 hours or more, we only had just over an hour so we went for a walk by the river. We even bought some of the local honey from a house on the way back. Honey is a welcome change to Dulce de leche, which they always serve and I´m sick of now. But the island like Buenos Aires does have its share of mosquitos, and I already had quite a few bites that were itching, and I didn´t want to get anymore. Take repelent!

It was time to go back and after catching bus 60 on the way there we went for the train on the way back to Retiro and then the Subte to the hostel. Again thinking about the prices of taking a trip here it´s cheap and this is an expensive country. Bus $1.60, Boat $14, Train $? (but cheap) and Subte $0.90. All that would possibly get you a one trip card for the London Underground if you don`t have a Oyster.

Walking along Santa Fe I´ve seen quite a few art shops, and if you go to the San Telmo market you´ll see that there are lots of people that are wanabe artist. The other day I met up with the guys from the Sandanzas Hostel at the Buenos Aires Cultural Centre, where there was an opening of some new work, and more importantly some free champange on offer.
I got to practice my Spanish with Colleta and Urko. So that was a good start for my next two weeks here to concentrate on my Spanish. I´ve also got back into reading El codigo de Davinci.

I went to the Delta office today and changed my flight date to the 24th of March. It was a bit of a drag as the severs were playing up and the girl´s machine kept crashing. I didn`t know if I was doing the right thing but when I left the office I was so happy. Ok, the travel will be a killer with a 12 hour wait in Atlanta, but soon I´ll be back in Blighty. I did have lots of ideas on what to do for 3 months but after traveling for so long I just don`t have the physical nor mental energy. I´ve had enough.

After that I went to look for a new hostel. For the last two days I´ve been in Santanzas, which is nice but at $40 ar is a bit expensive. So, I´ve booked into the Melonga for a week, which is $30 ar a night. It´s in a different part of the city and is a more central position. Should be good.

I´ve been having a few comments on my head wear this trip from one friend in particular. Well my sombrero that I´ve been wearing since Bolivia has been one of my best buys. Up on the Altiplano the air is so thin and the sun so strong, you need to forget about getting a tan and just cover up. A hat is great for protection in those areas. That´s what the locals do. Also it puts you in the shade and therefore it´s cool as well. So I´ve been carrying it now for several months and I´ve gotten attached to it.
When we arrived in Buenos Aires we got the "throw liquid over you and offer to clean it off" street scam tried on us. I remember reading about this street scam before we came out here and that it was common in Argentina. We were walking to our hostel, looking a bit lost and we were covered with black smelly stuff. There was a fat woman with gold teeth and a bumbag worn at the front standing next to us. She said it was the tree and offered to clean the stuff off us, if we took off our bags and rucksacks. I said to Lisa it was a scam and to keep moving. When we got to our Hostel I found that the black smelly stuff was all over my hat. I made a good effort at cleaning it but it still smelt funny. A few days later in Palermo we got smelly stuff over us again and there was another fat lady with a bum bag again. Lucky we just had on things that could be easy washed.

A few weeks later in Montevideo the hevens opened when I was trying to find somewhere to stay and my hat got wet. Now in Colonia it is dry but a bit furry with mold growing all over it. Guess I could throw it out as it was only 58 Bolivianos (3.50quid) but that wouldn`t be right. Dry clean it is.

So "Tit for Tat". Yes "Tit for´" is rhyming slang for hat but it also means to get even, and I have time to kill in Buenos Aires. Maybe....................

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Interesting site if you want to read up a bit on street scams:

http://www.jones.tc/barna/scams.html

I had read this web page and it saved me from the "Futbol" scam played on me in Madrid. I can`t find the smelly liquid one though. I read it somewhere.

I´ve left changing my flight until I´m back in Buenos Aires, but I´m still thinking of changing it. For when? I will just have to wait and see when there are available flights. There´s also the questions of what to do when I get back, for work. It wasn´t easy finding work before and then it wasn´t really in my field. The Spanish, should I quit learning Spanish? Can I quit? It´s been such a big part of my life for the last few years. If not how can I take it forward!
So far this trip has not really answered any of the questions I was hoping to answer on this trip. Far from it, it has just produced more and more questions.

Well, I´m back in colonia only this time staying at the Hostel Español. The big advantage at this hostel is that you can do your washing in one of the sinks in the court-yard. My washing was washed, drying and I went for a shower. While in the shower there was a storm and flash flood (there´s a lot of that going around at the moment), and I was back to square one.

Sunday and the sun is shining and I´m not too far from home so i should have some clean kit for tonight.
Tomorrow I´m on the slow boat to Buenos Aires at 8:30 pm so should get there for 11:30.

One thing I noticed last night was all the classic cars that were around town. Old Ford Escourts, Anglias, BMW etc. This morning there were all setting off from the centre of town. It said something about 19 capitals in hispanoamerica. I guess you can get two for the price of one with Bolivia.

Everywhere you look here people are drinking mate. I remember talking to one guy on the bus to Punto del Este and he said the Argentinian joke (Broma o chiste) is that the Uruguayans are born with a Thermos flask and a mate in hand.