Cordoba, Saturday

Sun 0112 Quietish day.

Got up maybe 10ish, phone failed to charge during night for various reasons so partly out of laziness, partly to let it charge and partly as vague plan for day was head down to area south of historic centre guy at checkin had told me IIRC was cool on Sat afternoons in, well, the afternoon I stayed in flat watching YT and nursing phone to charge (about 1% every 3 mins) from powerbank for some time.

Did just before heading out maybe 3pm book the flat in BA on airbnb having had sane response from owner overnight; works out at £16/night more or less which isn't bad given I've been paying (poss at mentally inflated arithmetically convenient exchange rates) £10/night-ish for dorms. Area is San Nicolas which may be a revelation and if not is also walkable to San Telmo-ish stuff and also microcentro and so forth.

I bought a new USB lead - short one for ARS100, prob overpriced and maybe should have haggled or shopped around but tolerable and can't expect ebay six-week-shipping-from-China prices in the circumstances - from street markety bit of Independencia down on walk to the supposedly cool area.

Supposedly cool area either not there today or didn't exist. Ended up doing mini walk round Sarmiento park and the university campus (cool graffiti mixed with politically wank sentiments, students eh?) and some prob-universityish sports fields with hocket/rugby/soccer going on, which was sort of cool. Started to feel really hungry despite eating OKish yday and indulging in packet of sesame seed crackers during flat loiter in morning. Had half intended to eat out but not seeing anywhere which looked "fun" (sit at table, nice atmosphere, beer in sun/shade) I decided would go to supermarket. Oh, weather today very overcast but still warm. Not at all sunny.

Stopped feeling hungry once got to supermarket. Lucky as I was queuing for 40 mins to pay. Yay for a) weekends b) apparently insane delays as people pay c) being bumped out of the first queue after 10 mins as the massive tailback of shopping trolleys required me to move, then some guy needed to move back and I frankly had not a clue what was going on and just had to walk off and join another queue, which after a couple of minutes I noticed was a "green checkout" which didn't give (did it sell? yday in same supermarket was offered plastic bag at ARS1 each but had daypack so didn't take that up, maybe I was at a green checkout, today I hadn't taken daypack as sick of lugging it round) plastic bags so had to go requeue in a third checkout which *did* I think give me a free plastic bag (I had one in back pocket as always but not sufficient) d) people like me paying on credit card which apparently requires summoning someone over with a card terminal and blocking the queue for five minutes.

I bought a litre bottle of "lo mas barato" Iguana beer at ARS55 and a can of Quilmes Stout and have just finished drinking them. Both v acceptable TBH, though can't help feeling QS is not really a stout - but what do I know? A decent dark beer anyway. Annoyingly the Iguana is a returnable bottle so got charged ARS25ish for privilege of buying it and now I have to lug the bottle back to supermarket and hope I can get a cash refund not just swap it for a full beer. Yay for ecofascism.

Also got a sort of ring-shaped cake/bread (ARS50 on promotion) which may be Easter-ish but not sure. Had half tonight, very rich and nice actually. (Took photo of it in trolley; tempted to photo it out of packaging but since I knew I wouldn't eat the whole thing tonight I figured taking it out of packaging completely would increase chances of it going stale before could finish it.)

New USB cable works to charge powerbank (virtually impossible to charge it reliably with either of existing two cables) but phone (with dodgy socket, so can't blame cable) really doesn't like it. Have been nursing phone charge up via precarious balancing act (literally; I have to prop phone up at funny angles so cable and socket work) and short USB cable from powerbank tonight. Fuck all chance of charging in bed but can prob get away without it.

Among all sorts of much nerdier stuff watched couple of outdoor survivaly videos on YT tonight. I have no serious concern about actual emergency situations but apart from entertainment value this did remind me of eg "How to predict the weather with a cup of coffee"'s " urban bushcraft" stuff and also made me wonder if I might get any travel-light tips from them apart from just raw entertainment. Misc thoughts in this line:

- my current struggle to top up phone seems like an ultra-wussy nerdy version of struggling to maintain supplies of water, food or fire. The fact I have occasionally woken up a few times during the night, seen it wasn't charging and fiddled with it to try to make it charge has an amusing correspondence with waking up during the night to feed the fire keeping you alive.

- in a couple of places (including this flat) I am lighting non-survival gas hobs with unsatisfactory equipment provided (a lighter or match) which makes me worry I'm going to burn the flesh off my hand when the gas ignites. I light the hobs in my own flat with a simple fag lighter without (much) worry but I know it ignites gently on lowest setting without any fuss; the couple of places am thinking of haven't been like that. I doubt I will, but I could (and indeed in last such place wished I had) carry around a few wooden splints to use as "arm's length" firelighters.

- already mused on weight of water when moving around but Patrick did mention some expensive-but-reliable water purification tablets last time I saw him, I should get the details off him - if they're like 50p each that would still be comparable with the price of bottled water and even if taste is a bit foul might make it easier for me to minimise water I lug around long distances (since I only need enough for the journey, I know I can disinfect some once I get to my accom even if it's too late to go to shop for more)

- I have been moderately pleased with my efforts to determine which direction I'm walking based on rough sun location combined with knowledge of town grid layouts, but I should probably (for mental exercise+reduced muggability by not getting phone out so much) practice a kind of "urban bushcraft" when it comes to navigation, eg eyeballing distance/number of blocks on map and counting and so on - sounds a bit nerdy but would lower mugability, probably help me to "learn" local street plan better and would be satisfying not to depend so much on phone for navigation. Not that I do too badly already.

- obviously from my travel light perspective I prefer to carry one of everything because if it breaks it merely causes a teeny tiny bit of hardship (in a wussy way, the phone being knackered is worse since it is playing role of comms device+map+book+music player, and as waffled already toying with carrying two phones in future; not exactly "in case" one breaks as such, as to try to avoid the charging in bed which I thinks makes breakage more likely in first place) whereas survivaly types carry duplicates of some things because they can't just pop down the shops. Of course the idea of dual-function stuff is still useful (and not novel) from a travel-light perspective, but to eliminate items not add redundancy for safety.

- the only actual overlap between what I currently carry and these survival/outdoory people's gear at the moment is a) bin bags b) a torch.

0244 Bed. Bit of a late night but tis OK. Feel a bit sad not to go out Sat night but didn't fancy getting a taxi back, after I ate I felt bloated, I went out too early if I only wanted to go out once, blah blah. Saw "Happy Hostel Happy Bar" (with big drawing of Mafalda on wall) on walk earlier and felt a bit lonely, which is entirely in my head as I saw no one there at all. But although I could perhaps have stayed in more hostels with bars to hang around and socialise in I did hostels, I did dorms a lot lately and I wanted a bit of comfort etc. I *do* need to remember to look and see if there's a Spanish exchange I could go to here and/or in BA. Had quietly enjoyable evening in with beers and YT.

Not got a hope in hell of charging phone in bed overnight, it has got up to 84% and I can prob afford to spend a bit of time topping it up in morning and/or won't need too much power for a few hours out tomorrow, so have left powerbank charging overnight on new cable and hopefully it can get up to 100%. Phone seems to charge better off powerbank than actual charger lately tho hard to be sure I'm not deluding myself.