Hola! Nosotros aprendemos espanol.
Hello! We are learning spanish.
(For those of you who know spanish, at least that was close enough to get the point across.)
We´ve been in Buenos Aires for about a week and a half now, having done a one week crash course in spanish last week. Unlike in asia, knowing the local language (or at least a little of it) is essential in South America. That is, if you want to know what food you´re ordering or where your bus is going. On the other hand, at least the alphabet is the same so you´ve got a fighting chance of understanding what´s going on.
Arriving in Argentina from Bangkok was like going to the other side of the planet - in fact, it is the other side of the planet. This country has seasons - four of them, not just a rainy season and a dry season. And unfortunately it´s not a warm one at the moment, which is a bit of a challenge at times. One of the first things we did was buy more warm clothes. The food is also the complete opposite of southeast asia. It´s a steady diet of steak, pasta, pizza, and bread - all the things that were hard to find before. From time to time we have cravings for a good noodle soup. Seeing all the locals eat indoors in cafes and restaurants (instead of on the street) is also a change. On the other hand, it´s good to be able to blend in with the locals - that is, until we open our mouths. We´ve been approached at times by people who know we´re tourists and only then realised we´ve had our guidebook out of our bag.
Buenos Aires itself is kind of like a european city with lots of picturesque colonial architecture, and also is slightly reminiscent of Wellington with its artsy cafes, and empty streets on Sundays. Our first hostel was in the atmospheric area of San Telmo with cobblestone streets and a grocer on every corner. On Sundays San Telmo attracts the crowds with an antiques market. The antiques themselves were out of our price range but many street performers turned out to make hanging around quite entertaining. (The quality of the buskers here is a lot better than asia. We´ve seen small bands that are quite good collecting money on the street, while in asia busking is often just glorified begging.) Outside of the city centre, the suburbs of Buenos Aires are filled with small parks, apartment buildings, and professional dog walkers. These are easy to spot because they´re the ones with a dozen dogs and not just one or two. Getting around is easy on the subway system and about half the time it´s been free for us because of some fault in the ticket office. One minor gripe is that Buenos Aires is a city of queues. There are long queues for many things from bus stops at rush hour to supermarkets most of the time. The supermarkets here should copy some upgrades from the ones in asia - often the express line is the slowest because the computers are painfully slow at processing payments. Sometimes it grinds to a standstill because someone at the front wants to pay by credit card. You can tell when this happens because the staff are standing around gesticulating at the machine and scratching their heads.
From here we go to the town of Rosario, about four hours by bus, and then after a few days will head further north towards the famous waterfalls at Iguazu, on the Brazilian border. After that our plan is to come back south through central Argentina and head for Santiago, the capital of Chile.
