This week we started to do some of the tourist stuff. First stop was the famous Recoleta Cemetery “Where the rich go to die”. This is a mausoleum cemetery and we’ve never been to anything like it before. This is where Eva Peron’s (Evita) grave/coffin is. There aren’t actually graves here but chapels of varying sizes, which the coffins are stored in. They are all at different states of repair, which means that some of the miniature buildings are in a state that gives them a really spooky edge. In the main the chapels are very well kept, but it really is a different way of walking round a graveyard when you can actually see the coffins. There are lots of stray cats here too – I wonder what they are eating.

On Thursday we went to the language school of our Argentinean friend’s mother. This is an English school where kids of various ages and abilities go after regular school to learn more of the language. Most of the kids we spoke to where in their early teens and they all spoke pretty fluent English as they had been learning since they were seven. The more time we spend here, the more that we wish that the British education system put more emphasis on learning a second language. It is such a useful skill to have. After the school visit, Lucas and Sofia (who have been extremely kind to us during our trip), took us out for Sushi in Puerto Madero which is the trendy port area of the city. Sushi is popular in Buenos Aires, but this was the first time we’ve had it here.

On Saturday we headed out to Tigre, and the Paraná Delta with a friend from our Spanish classes. Tigre is just under a hour away from downtown via a train which costs 2.70 pesos (about 50p) for a return journey. From here we got a bus boat out to the island of Tres Bocas which has various residencies and restaurants. Despite being so close to Buenos Aires, it is a whole different places and as we walked round we couldn’t have placed where we were in the world. It’s basically a load of islands of varying sizes with people rowing, motor-boating and jet-skiing between them.

I’ve made a short video with our best photos from the Tigre trip. Hope you like it, you can view the stills of the photos here in my Picasa account (I’m trying out Picasa instead of Flickr for the photos to see if it is better for sharing photos easily).

We ventured out around our local area with our big camera today to get a few snaps showing the feel of the place. Most of the photos were taken by holding the camera at waist height and just taking random things as we walked along (don’t worry I’ve deleted the really bad ones).

Looking back at the photos, it looks more South American than it feels. We’ll get more photos in other areas soon, the big DSLR camera just screams “I’m a tourist”, so we don’t always have it on us.

Anyway, hope you enjoy them, you can view them on my flickr page by clicking here.

(Avenue 9 De Julio – 16 lanes right in to the heart of the city)

Hello. You’re looking well. Not much to update everyone with at the moment. We’ve settled in to living in our neighborhood and our days are spent exploring the local area on foot. I’m also doing loads of work for my ‘online business’. The beauty of ‘slow travel’ is that we haven’t felt the need to see all the tourist sites straight away. In fact, we haven’t seen any yet. It’s great just to walk around and see the culture rather than the tourist spots.

Living like locals for us has involved eating lots of beef and pizza and drinking plenty of Malbec! The wine is rather lovely, in fact next time your wondering what wine to get why not get some Argentinean Malbec and think of us. Perhaps you could crack it open and Skype us for a chat. I think you’ll rather like it.

Anyway, here’s part one (I don’t want to bore you too much) of my A-Z of Buenos Aires (and to some extent Argentina). Enjoy, and should you so be inclined you can leave comments on the blog.

Air Conditioning
It is hot here and the moment. It’s fairly humid, but not uncomfortably so, although at the moment it is raining very heavily, we’re going through a bit of a thundery few days. Everywhere you go there are air conditioning units strapped to the side of buildings, and it seems that well over half of them leak, including the one above our balcony. This means that walking around you are constantly getting dripped on and wondering whether it’s a dog on a balcony or rain. We are very thankful for the air con in our apartment though, when we’ve been on a long walk in the heat it’s nice to sit in a fridge for a bit.

Beef

Argentina is known for its Beef. Some say it is the best in the world, in fact a lot of people believe that Argentina has the most fertile land in the world it’s just they aren’t too good at managing it. Anyway, we’ve had a few steaks since we have been here and they are massive. I actually think that Britain has the best beef, but I think the quality here may be more consistent.

Cartoneros
They have an interesting system for recycling here. Basically you whack everything in your garbage and each night thousands of people descend on the city and go through the rubbish looking for anything that can be recycled. There is a lot of poverty here (I’ve seen 35% quoted – there was a big, and apparently famous economic crisis in 2001) and this is an honest way for people to try and make a living. In fact when I found out about them I see that many are unionized and have uniforms etc. They bring large trolleys that have bags that are about 6 foot wide, high and deep that they pack with everything. I have to admit that it is rather strange to see people going through the rubbish just to earn a living, but it seems to work well as a system to get stuff recycled and to earn people some money. Despite a lot of the rubbish getting scattered over the road as a result it always seems to be cleared up the next morning.

Dulce De Leche

Dulce De Leche is a milk and sugar ‘goo’ that they eat by the truckload here (according to the guidebook). It is supposedly one of the national obsessions, and there is a whole isle dedicated to it in our local supermarket. I’ve been eating it with banana for an easy banoffee desert. Lovely.

Expats
I’ve joined the BAExpats forum, which is a bit of a strange place. It seems that there are a lot of expats here, which is due to the weather and the lower costs of living, especially if you are earning in pounds, euros or dollars. The people on the forum are a bit of a wining lots sometimes, but it’s a good place to find information out. It also has some stuff on there you’d rather not know about, but it’s good to keep informed on things. Despite the apparent number of expats, we really have seen perhaps two or three couples speaking English. This will be because we haven’t been in to the Centro neighborhood yet where all the tourists are, but I’m sure we’ll head over that way soon.

Fashion
Being one of the worlds largest capital cities, and there is quite a fashion scene here. Having said that it’s been hot here so everyone is walking around in shorts and flip-flops. This is great as it means that we blend in well with the locals. There are certainly loads of shops here, and when you head to the trendy area of Palermo Viejo there are lots of boutiques etc. Yes I could have picked Falklands but I’m not a guidebook. Yet.

Graffiti
Again, being a major world city, there is a lot of Graffiti here. Whilst there are the normal pointless writing things on walls there is actually a lot of very good and seemingly official graffiti about. I’ll try and get some pictures when we get the confidence to have the camera with us.

Heat
Did I mention that it is hot here? It is their summer after-all!

Igazu
These are waterfalls on the border with Brazil that we are still debating whether to go to. They are wider than Niagra and higher than Victoria. It’s not a cheap trip, relatively speaking for here, but it seems a shame to come all this way and not go.

Julio
Avenue 9 De Julio, it’s got sixteen lanes and takes a while to cross as there are several sections. It goes right in to the heart of the city and has the Obelisk on part of it. More on the Obelisk in the next update.

Kirchner
I was struggling for a ‘K’. The president of Argentina is called Cristina Fernández De Kirchner, or Kirchy to her Amigos (not really). The last president was her husband, which is amusing. I have seen her on telly twice since we have been here. The first time she was addressing the crowd at one of the artificial summer beaches in one of the parks in the city. The crowd seemed to be a load of kids and they were all splashing her from the pool. The second time she was outside the parliament building been shown how to drive a quad-bike. According to Wikipedia she wants the Falkland’s back (don’t mention the war), so we’ll keep an eye on her.

Local Produce
I think there is some kind of law in existence here that in an attempt to promote local industry they put quite a hefty tax on imported goods. This combined with the size of the country and the fertile land means that pretty much everything (food wise) you buy in the supermarket is produced in the country. This doesn’t mean that they are lacking anything, apart from maybe choice of veg, but I find it a refreshing change. There isn’t really any need to eat green beans flown from Kenya is there, but then it’s a lot easier when you have the climate to grow everything like they do here. The meat counter in the supermarket basically looks like a slaughterhouse with loads of beef options, and the counter next to it you can buy cooked steak and chips ready cooked.

Malbec
We’ve always been fans of Argentinean wines. You pretty much can’t go wrong with Argentinean reds. The are one of the few places in the world that have actually been able to cultivate the Malbec grape with success and the wine is nice and cheap here, including in restaurants. Now, maybe that’s a reason for all the expats!

 

To be continued…

 

 

After a fifteen-hour flight, which included a 90-minute wait on the plane in Sao Paolo, we arrived in Buenos Aires. I had arranged for a local private driver to pick us up, so it was cool to come out of the baggage claim hall and be met by Ana Luna who was holding my name on a sign. Maybe I should have picked a cooler name. Anyway, this made if far easier than sorting out a taxi, and we were soon on our way to our apartment. There was a lot of traffic on the journey that took around an hour from the airport. The slight delay was welcome, as it meant that we arrived at the apartment just on time to meet the agent to hand over the keys in exchange for a the money. We were a bit concerned about having to pay for the apartment in cash, as we wouldn’t normally walk around Manchester with that much money, let alone an unfamiliar, South America city like Buenos Aires. Everything worked out well and we were soon tucked up in bed in our air-conditioned apartment for some much needed rest.

We have a studio apartment, which means that it is just one room with a separate bathroom. We have a balcony that overlooks a road that isn’t a main one, but due to the number of buses sounds much busier than it is. Although the apartment is small, it is very cheap (compared to the rest of the world) and has everything we need.

Thankfully, the apartment has a large supermarket just a minute away so it’s easy to stock up with food and we don’t have to carry the bags too far through the heat. It seems that we have picked a fantastic location for our apartment, which is in the middle of the trendiest and most interesting neighborhoods. BA is famous for it’s neighborhoods, so more to come on that in a future post.

First impressions of Buenos Aires are that it’s a bit rough around the edges, with a heavily European influenced architecture. It is however very cosmopolitan and has a wide mix of brand new and old buildings. All the apartment buildings have marble lobbies with smoked glass that makes them look very eighties and colonial. We’ve spent our first week just walking around the local neighborhoods of Palermo, which is sub-divided in to small areas. Palermo is rather like Didsbury really I suppose, with lots of coffee shops and designer boutiques, and then there are sub-areas such as Palermo Viejo which is like West Didsbury.

We haven’t ventured out with the Camera yet. As we aren’t in the tourist area, we blend in very well, walking around with a camera will soon make us stand out. Due to the temperature (around 32 degree with about 60-70% humidity), everyone is wearing flip-flops and shorts anyway, so we don’t stick out. Having said that, we’ve felt perfectly safe here and as with anywhere as long as you are sensible and avoid the bad areas you’ll be fine. 

So that’s the first week over, and not too much to report. I’ve managed to do a lot of work on my websites, which is good (it’s a bit hot to go out until late afternoon). We are enjoying just taking things at a slow pace, and we’ve got plenty more to come in future posts, but I just wanted to let everyone know are settled in, and not write too much for this first update from BAs.

Adios!