On the mend... - Blogabond

We left the big city and slums of La Paz and landed in the big and very much more modern city of Buenos Aires and found a few surprises. We remembered quite quickly that Argentinians (especially the men) are very competitive. Nowhere is this more evident when riding as a passenger in a taxi racing between sets of traffic lights for a single lane opening ahead. Unfortunately, due to their rather relaxed adherance to lane markings, the one single opening quite frequently allowed both cars to fit, much to our dismay. The other thing that became apparent was that they speak a different kind of Latin American Spanish than in Chile, Peru and Bolivia. In all other countries we have been fairly well understood whereas here it seems nobody understands us. Often they even repeat back to us the correct pronunciation which to us sounds like what we have said but they still don´t understand us.

View onto worlds widest road - Buenos Aires

We managed to get a nice hotel room one block away from what claims to be the widest road in the world ... and at 9-10 lanes (each way!) we´re not going to argue! For such a large road, its actually quite nice with parks separating every three or four lanes.

Andy in Buenos Aires

We have spent the last few days here chilling out and letting Andy get a bit better which he is doing slowly. And before you all start going on about all the crazy stuff he´s been eating, he probably picked something up from either scrambled eggs or some fried chicken skin - nothing out of the ordinary there... La Paz doctor said that this is the most common source of salmonela.

We went to a soccer (futbol) game last night which was certainly an experience. To say Argentinian fans are fanatical could be a bit of an understatement. The crowd, the noise and the smells were overwhelming. At either end of the ground behind the goal posts were the opposing teams fanatical supporters with very large fences between them and the pitch. On the side where we were there were more home team supporters but not part of the official cheer squad, though no less noisy. The sides of the ground were separated from the playing surface by a 3m wide and 5m deep trench filled with some revolting ooze at the bottom which really stopped you thinking about a pitch invasion. We were frisked on the way in and there was a riot out the back at half time when one side pushed down a security fence but we were in the safe confines of a tour with tour guide who assured us that we were safe as long as we stayed in the stands. We didn´t see a goal as we left just after half time because Andy was feeling (and being) unwell but apparently, according to our taxi driver, it was a 2 all draw by the time we had gotten back to our hotel.

Tomorrow we head north to Rosario, we have put off Iguazu Falls until maybe another week or so just to make sure Andy is well enough before we head back into the Amazon.

Ornate Doorway - Buenos Aires

We think that a lot of our friends would like Buenos Aires, its quite a beautiful city and has some amazing shopping (we didn´t know you could make that many things out of cow) and interesting street performances including Tango. We will upload some photos when we can find a good internet place.

Bye for now.
Cath & Andy.

written by

Cath & Andy on May 6, 2007 from Buenos Aires, Argentina

from the travel blog: A journey to the alter and South America

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You could just add Salmonella to the list of weird creatures you have eaten.

written by Kerry Alpaca on May 8, 2007

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