BA= Bloody Amazing

We had heard a lot of big chat about the buses in Argentina. There had been rumours flying around about unlimited free champagne, as many soft drinks as you could shake a stick at and food that would make Gordon Ramsay drool. The reality was much less extravagant; the seats fully reclined into beds complete with fluffy pillows and blankets, but in the first seven hours of our trip to Buenos Aires we had only receieved a thimble of Fanta and a measly boiled sweet. That said, if that little puppy was your regular mode of transport back home you`d be laughing.

The lovely and sunny, Buenos Aires

We had also heard some even bigger chat about Buenos Aires as a city to visit, and this time the chat failed to disappoint. The city has beautiful European style architecture, cute boutique shops and must be the only city in the world where you can eat steak at 2am without being judged. In fact if we had to pick a city outside of the UK to move to, this would be it. When we arrived, `fresh` from our overnight bus journey, we headed straight to San Telmo for the weekly Sunday antiques market. This was comprised of a 1km street full of stalls selling vintage nick nacks, jewellrey and clothes. Even though every stall was virtually the same we managed to spend four hours um-ing and ah-ing over which nearly identical necklaces to buy, before heading back to the first stall we had visited to make our purchases. Women. That night we had a hankering for red meat, so grabbed a few people from the hostel and went out for a late night steak and red wine, Buenos Aires style. We finished eating at 1.30 am which is fairly early by Argentinian standards, and the local steak munchers were still rocking up at 1.30 am to be seated. They must have hardy digestive systems because surely a steak at 1.30 am is like a juicy helping of constipation on a plate.

Argentian flag

We woke up the next day and wandered over to Palermo, the trendy district of BA which smacks of Shoreditch in East London, with its trendy wendies and kitsch boutiques. Typically we had picked the wrong day to visit as it was a Monday and the shops were all closed to we satisfied ourselves by leaving greasy nose prints all over the windows as we perved over the beautiful garments inside. Unfortunately this pleasant window shopping experience was tainted by our over enthusiastic bums as we´d all been struck down with a group case of the shits and spent the morning in a haze of toilet panic, wondering where our next lavatory was coming from.

Japanese Gardens

With clenched buttcheeks we walked over to the Japanese Gardens which were really pretty and a nice place to spend an hour. One highlight of the hour was watching this otter-type creature go to attack a small child which had been pissing it off and trying to poke it in the face. We attempted a trip to the botanical gardens next door, but it turned out to be a mosquito landmine and within seconds we were surounded by the bastards and had to abort. Later, we joined a group from the hostel and headed to La Bamba, a South American drumming group who play in a huge abandoned warehouse. The show was really impressive and we got fully involved with some very English non-rhythmical salsa moves and shoulder shrugging. We emerged from the warehouse to find that we had missed a spontaneous thunderstorm and the centre of the city had turned into some sort of swamp- it even made the local news. We had to peg it home through torrential rain and made it back to the hostel looking like we´d been taking make-up tips from Alice Cooper.

Just your average grave. Nothing fancy.

Ahhhh..... Sepia. The only way to photograph a cemetery.

The next day was wet and grey and miserable which created the perfect backdrop for our trip to the Recoleta Cemetery. This wasn`t your average English cemetery made up of modest gravestones, there were rows upon rows of elaborate marble family tombs and eerie statues. One of these extravagant graves was where Eva Peron (Evita) second wife of President Juan Peron who died at just age 33, is buried. Eva was known in Argetina as `Spiritual Leader of the Nation` and her grave seemed to be nearly the only tomb which is still visited as it had fresh flowers laid all over it.

Dooooon`t cry for me Argentiiiiina

The only touristy thing we had left to visit in Buenos Aires was the infamous Cafe Tortoni, where guidebooks tell you you must visit before you leave the city. The cafe was established in 1858 by a French guy called Touan, and ever since has been visited by many renowned people such a politicians and international figures; even Einstein popped in for a brew back in the day. We queued to get in and then enjoyed some rather untraditional but very tasty ham and cheese toasties with tea.

Cafe Tortoni

All ham and cheese toastied out in Cafe Tortoni

Next stop is a home away from home, Puerto Madryn, the Welsh settlement on the East Coast. 'Ma ddeuwn!

BA= Bloody Amazing

Buenos Aires, Argentina