The South America Chronicles - Trece

When Gun'n'Roses wrote `Paradise City` I think they must have been referring to Buenos Aires. The grass is pretty green, but the girls sure are pretty. Stunning in fact! So guys, if you are single and know five and a half words of Spanish, get you arse over here now. And if you are not, well get over here anyway and pick up the most expensive pair of mirrored sunglasses money can buy. It is ridiculous here! But sorry, I`ll just wipe the dribble from my chin and get back to it....

What a great four days we have had back in Buenos Aires - we have now falen in love with the place. Staying around San Telmo was cool, but we have been in the suburb of Palermo this week and it is an awesome place. It is the trendy district, with tree-lined avenues and streets, cool bars, cafes and restaurants, and even cooler people. And the weather here has been brilliant, so we have just been lapping it up. Even having our plans to day-trip over to Uruguay scuppered didn´t concern us, as it meant that we had more time in BA.

We have had some pretty good meals. On our first night we went to a steak restaurant that we couldn´t get into another night because the wait for a table was over half an hour. We managed to sneak in this time and weren´t disappointed. The steak was the best we have had in BA - luckily we had been tipped-off that you only had to order one and share, as it was enormous. You could see plenty of over tables looking incredulously when the steaks they ordered each were delievered. Your steak also came with 14 side dishes, so you didn´t leave this place hungry. By chance, as we were leaving the restaurant, we bumped into Murray, and Aussie guy we have seemed to have followed since San Pedro. Murray and some people from his hostel were going out to a club, so we decided to tag along. Wednesday night is a big clubbing night in BA (go figure?), so we thought we better partake. It was a pretty cool small club and it was pretty busy. And despite it being a school night, the clubs still don`t kick off until after 2am.

Last night we also went clubbing, but this time to one of the big ones - called Crobar. It was a huge night, there was a big Chilean DJ laying and he was very good, and the place was rammed. We didn´t crawl home until around 7am, so today has been a little slow, and we are actually looking forward to getting on our 20 hour bus ride this afternoon.

We have also had a good look around this side of the city. Apart from just wandering the cool little streets of Palermo, we also walked a few of the parks and also went to Recoleta Cemetery, most famous for being the resting place of Eva Peron (Evita). But the whole cemetery is weird, full of huge and ostentatious mausoleums, some could even be the frontages of upmarket boutique shops. We also went to Bodies - The Exhibition, a truely bizarre exhibition showing the different parts of the body, from the veins to dissections of the body. But makes it really bizarre is that it uses real cadavers to do it, and on may of them you can still see hair, eyelashes, etc.

And of course, there has been the shopping. I (probably foolishly) left Anna to it yesteday afternoon when I went to watch the rugby. Luckily we can`t carry a whole lot of stuff or it could have been a lot worse. But we still now have a couple of bags that we are going to have to cart around for the next two and a bit weeks. Should be fun....