Saturday night in Buenos Aires

Sun 03:40. Am down at Cronico Bar somewhere in Palermo. On my fifth litre of Iguana and I had a couple of small beers before. I am not that drunk but, pace Wodehouse, I can feel the sweet brown liquour plashing against my throat, if it's not quite up to my teeth yet.

Didn't get up til 3pm. I figured/hoped there would be no cleaner at the weekend, but there was. Anyway.

Left the flat for the day properly about 4pm after popping out to pick up my laundry. Tried to buy apples at a supermarket but turns out they don't weigh stuff at the till here, and in the end I said fuck it and just bought some soft drinks.

Had a pretty decent steak (400g) and chips plus (and this costs bigtime, but what can you do, eating induces thirst and I was probably a bit hungover still) 2 small bottles of coke as a late lunch/early dinner. Cost me about 12 quid which is pricey in a way but the quantity and quality were probably better than I'd have got in London for the same money.

Maybe it's just my cautious nature but while I can't rave about the meat here as I'd hoped, I must say in general it's been pretty good.

Got the metro afterwards - OK, but a touch infrequent and not overly clean - to Plaza Italia (?) and wandered around Palermo. Came here after a couple of beers in Migueletes earlier. Much wandering around after that but Cristian had said Palermo was cool and I must admit the vicinity of this bar had other bars and seemed my kind of place.

I am more drunk than I should be and I will have to get a taxi back but what the hell. I am indoors but it's still a bit table-oriented and I doubt I will get any chat on but sod it..

Am drunk enough to be amusing myself with my oft-denied plan to do psychometric readings at a psychic fair (for charity, I am not a total charlatan) when I get back to London.

Vague onwards plan is to spend a couple of days bussing it up to Iguazu falls. Nothing booked yet, cos I have been too slack/drunk. I am concerned I should maybe have started taking the malaria tablets already, and also that I maybe can't drink when on them (must web search that), but although it's still pushing it taking the bus up that way will give me an extra day or two.

Disheartening to realise I have only two more nights here after tonight. I find it hard to meet people here but nonetheless I find the city quite cool, and while I am not obviously failing to see anything essential I feel I've been a bit slack as a tourist.

Wikitravel suggests skydiving here. That both tempts and scares the shit out of me. But the more I think about it the more I should do that in the UK when I return, where I have no language issues and if I do break anything it's less of a problem. I can go to my desk in Canary Wharf with a broken ankle or leg but I can't cart my luggage around easily with the same. And let's be frank, why would it be any better to do that here than back home? I do hope to scare myself shitless by doing it within the year, but I see little point in pushing my personal envelope right here and now. I can crap my pants just as well over Oxfordshire as Buenos Aires.

Oh, I infer from the TV screen here and a masking tape cross over the '24h' logo that they used to be open 24h a day here but due to some law now shut at 5am. It is scary I am here so close to that. And also a bit odd that this city with its 5am shutdown feels more relaxed than London with its "24h drinking" (hahahahhaha). Theory vs practice.

Oh, there is clearly a limit to how many free peanuts in the shell you can eat. I've been on the same bowl for all five litres. They are a bit insipid to be frank, even without the effort of shelling them.

Oh, and I have seen so much more Malvinas crap. An ad on the TV today (3rd) said yesterday was "day of the fallen" re the war. This may partly explain if not justify all the Malvinas propaganda I have seen. I guess I just happened to turn up here at the most propagandic time.

04:30 Some of the music here is quite good - "Money" by Pink Floyd right now, a bit of The Rasmus earlier - but it's not loud enough to cut through the background noise of chat and really let me enjoy it. Tho if it was louder maybe I'd be hacked off at the volume, as the background noise is quite loud enough as it is.

Need to finish up soonish so I can get the bill and a taxi before the rush starts. Though according to the screens they can serve til 5 and you can drink til 5:30 so it's probably OK, but still.

05:07 Just got home. Got a cab for 25, I didn't understand a word he said to me when I aksed how much it was beyond that number (which is disappointing, I have taken a number of cabs on the continent without feelimg so useless) and the meter showed about 20 when we arrived, but 5 is nothing and another time maybe I will take it on the meter.Anyway it is ridiculously late and I need to got to bed, despite being not that drunk.

PS The bar was still rammed at 4:50 when I left.

Friday night in Buenos Aires

Fri, 10:30pm. Just ordered my first beer today at a frankly rather dull looking bar somewhere about half an hour or an hour's walk from the flat. El Federal. Corner of Peru and Carlos Calyo. Walked to and past two other bars vaguely nearby earlier (one, Krakow, from wikitravel and one, Gibraltar, from my guide book), first was dead and the second seemed just too full to get a table and a bit dead with it. Came here simply because if I hadn't come somewhere soon I'd never have settled on anywhere.

I wasn't particularly planning to go to a club on reflection, but at this rate I'll be stone cold sober and desperate by 2am.

Got up about 2pm today. Walked along Av. Florida, it being one of the guide book's "must dos". To be frank, it's a pedestrianised street with a lot of shops. There's nothing wrong with it but frankly I'm surprised it warrants a mention, let alone an entry in 5 or 6 item list of "must dos".

I went into some quite elegant shopping centre on there (Galeria Pacifico? Not sure) which has some murals in. Quite cool, especially for a shopping centre, but personally I didn't like them much as art. They were slightly washed out and to my naive eye the material seemed a little insipid.

After that had lunch and it was 5pm when I'd finished. So I walked over and had a look at the pink government/presidential palace, then the local Canary Wharf-alike area where the old docks have been done up. Quite attractive.

Very overcast today. It's still warm but a bit more bearably so, although the grey sky is a bit depressing if slightly reminiscent of London.

Went back to the flat after and only left about 9:30pm, I ended up web surfing and reading Joel on Software, of all things.

Three young guys are having a noisy pre-fight-style row in the steet. Well, two of them at least. I think I caught the words 'coger' and 'novia' so I might suspect it's about some woman, but I could well be wrong.

23:40. Left there, wandered and now in what I believe to be Plaza Dorrego in San Telmo. There's a certain amount of life but I am at a table (of which there are loads free) in the square attached to some random bar. No large bottles of beer or large draught and I don't think there will be any chat here due to the lack of a bar to prop myself up at. Probably have a couple and try to soak up the atmosphere a bit then go for a wander again.

A couple of guys are playing music in the square, I can't really classify it except to say that it's vaguely jolly and it sounds a bit like one of them is playing an acccordion.

They keep giving me peanuts in the shell as a free snack. Which is quite nice I guess, although I find them a touch bland (although still moreish) after being more used to salted. (A few places have given me salted peanuts or crisps. I can't help thinking that makes more sense for the bar given the salt presumably increases thirst.)

Oh, I asked, as I think I saw on a menu the other day, the typical draught beer (chopp) is 350ml.

There are quite a few groups of mostly youngish people sat round the edges of the square with bottles of beer which I guess they brought with them.

Oh, I bought a copy of The Economist earlier from a street stall in Av. Florida. ARS45 or not far short of eight quid! Still, I haven't bought a copy in the UK for ages but I suspect it's four or five quid even there.

00:15. A guy just came up to me and tried to sell me the local equivalent of the Big Issue. I told him I couldn't read Spanish, he showed me a small quantity of English text on the contents page which I gather (though I didn't read it) explained it was sold by the homeless and for all I know (he said "Big Issue" when I told him I was English) says it is affiliated. I didn't buy it, despite his tempting suggestion that it was cheaper than my beer. Well, so what? Call me a tightarse but it's true. (Almost immediately afterwards had a woman try to sell me a ring and an artist try to - probably - offer to do a portrait. Both of them were put off with an 'ah, no' and a shake of the head.)

It's just slightly too cool for a short-sleeved shirt to be totally comfortable and slightly too warm to put my fleece on.

I think I should be thinking it's very cool to be sat here drinking in a square in Buenos Aires with live music playing, but for some reason I'm not feeling it. I mean, it's OK, but I'm really not having a blast. Maybe I'm just too sober or in the wrong mood.

00:45. Some (very) drunk guy just wandered up and I eventually understood he wanted the leftover peanuts. I was worried he would take the plate and endeavoured to indicate he could have the nuts but not it. So he pulled out the bottom of his T-shirt and tipped them in there. I suppose at least he wasn't particularly rude and didn't ask for money.

01:00. I have nearly finished my beer. I think I will get the bill and wander the considerable distance to somewhere I have a vague idea there is a club (I perhaps stupidly didn't write the name or address down on my phone) which judging from the description in my guide book is not too foul. With luck serendipity will throw somewhere appealing in my way en route and I won't get there.

02:50. Saw couple of bars near the square but they were full enough to be awkward without being so busy they were inviting. Major dead area after and I was busting for a piss, was tempted to go in street but didn't want to be a complete git or arrested. The road I was on turned into Reconquista and I thought fuck it and came down to Kilkenny at 1:40. On my third pint here, it's not great but sod it, I did sort of want to see what it was like late at night and they had a toilet. OK live music when I arrived and slightly shit but passable recorded music playing now. Pretty busy but not totally rammed so it's OK.

The full stop key on my phone is a bit knackered. It takes a hard press to get it to work. Sigh.

3:30 Just got another beer and only paid 14 instead of 15. Cheap either way but I wonder if the guy earlier was on the make. Some remix of Stereo MC's "Connected" playing now. And my phone keyboard is breaking. Full stops are becoming an effort.

Oh, I keep seeing Malvinas posters. One had a date, the war was in 1982. So I was five or six at the time. I must say my 'memories' related to the war are of reading about it in Adrian Mole books probably about the age of 10-11, and that one 'Bottom' episode where Robert Llewelyn plays a Falklands veteran.

If it's not clear, my slightly arsey mention of it in the blog post re the cemetry was solely triggered by continually seeing these reminders. I genuinely thought nothing about the war or the territorial claim until it was continually shoved down my throat while walking around the city. Those probably in a minority guys should get a grip. They have an attractive city and a country about a million times larger than the UK. Just let it fucking go. Their economy may suck, but so do ours (as witness my not saying I find it cheap here), so just shut the fuck up about the islands and get on with it.

04:15. They turned the lights up about ten minutes ago, I assume they are closing soon though the place is far from empty and the music continues. Been thinking, promoted by just hearing that song probably by Guns n Roses about "Paradise City", if the cities I've visited here are lacking in greenery compared to London. My gut feel is they probably are a bit, but I am really not sure. Certainly South Island Place had no or few trees, but then again Kennington Park was just down the road. There may be parks here but in London you don't have to seek them out just for green. (I do mean cities very specifically. Easter Island was quite green, as I think was Isla Navarino.)

I am reminded of something I think I read in my Bradt guide about Pinochet saying he would like to loan Chile to the UK for a few years to learn a few things (I suspect I mangle the quote, but whatever.) I can't help thinking nowadays it wouldn't hurt to loan the UK to Chile, from the non-economic perspective of a UK citizen who finds the place a bit repressive compared to Chile.

04:30. I'm not certain they would refuse to serve me another drink, but it is definitely getting quieter and while I'm sober enough to write this with no major problems beyond the dying keyboard I'm close enough to being properly drunk there's no point pushing it. Not a bad night considering I haven't had a chat, nothing great but OK. But probably better just to go home. It's about a ten minute walk, a bit of a pisser but no big deal. I may deliberately take a taxi during the day tomorrow even if I don't need it just to get some feel for how they work, then I can maybe go out somewhere remote at night with a bit more confidence about getting back without being mugged or ripped off.

As I write this I am suddenly feeling a bit drunk. It's cool, I'm near home and there's no double vision or anything, but yeah, even if I could get another there's no reason to. To bed!

(Yeah, loads of stools on top of tables as I leave. I strongly suspect I couldn't have another there even if I wanted to, and even were it possible I have no desire to try and get into a club at this time of night/morning. May try a club tomorrow, we'll see how I feel. I may even stay in the flat til 1am and then go out, though that sounds awkward on so many levels.)

04:50. Just got home. I may be imagining it but I can't help thinking the streets and public spaces, even just on my walk home, are a lot more spacious than they are in London. I did walk past a greenish area on the way but it did have a certain forced quality about it. For all the ways it sucks, it may be true that London is greener than here

Observation

Thu, 9:10pm. I plan to write up today's exciting activities on the more tractable laptop keyboard, but as I am down a bar mentally trying to get a handle on what I will do for the next four weeks, I wanted to make this observation for future reference.

Nowhere I've been yet have the immigration officials asked for proof, or seen proof 'accidentally', that I have a ticket out of the country before letting me in. You maybe can't rely on that never being a problem, but for what it's worth I note it down. I am thinking that - although I didn't plan enough up front anyway - it would probably have been better to have travelled overland from Santiago to Buenos Aires, stopping off in Mendoza and the apparently (based on talking to a couple of people) interesting places round there en route. As it is, I may end up travelling (by air or land) almost as far west as Santiago from here or elsewhere in Argentina, which seems both unnecessarily expensive and time consuming. But if I had planned on that originally, I wouldn't have had any proof as to how I was going to leave Chile when I arrived there, as I would have bought the bus tickets into Argentina no more than a few days in advance. As it turned out that hasn't been an issue, but I was adv
ised it was safer to be able to furnish such proof if asked. I would have been able to show an onward flight from BA to Panama, but I was advised that immigration officials can be a touch arsey and that, illogical as it might seem, that might not easily convince them I obviously planned to leave the country in order to be in BA to take that flight. I suppose in some sense you could justify that by saying that if push came to shove for some reason, they want a pre-paid travel plan they can force you to take out, rather than being stuck with the risk of the Chilean (in this case) government having to pay to deport me.

22:40. Just paid up in the second bar, three draught probably half litres for ARS33, call it 38 with tip. That's pretty good. It clearly depends where you go, what I find annoying is I can't easily tell which places are expensive. (The first bar I was at tonight cost about the same for two 350ml-ish draught beers and a coffee, for example. The menu even made it clear it would have cost about 30% more between 8 and 11pm. OK, you could tell from the menu, but - maybe it's just because I'm not local or experienced here yet - in London I can go to a bar and I know if it's a pretentious place which is going to overcharge me almost by instinct. It's not as if I regularly go into a new bar and get charged a fiver for a pint and am totally surprised.)

Cementario de la Recoleta

Got up about 12:30pm, with the inevitable aid of a cleaner trying to get in. They are becoming a perfect nuisance. :-)

Went over to some cheap restaurant recommended in my guide, which I couldn't find, but there were others nearby. Had a pretty decent steak and chips (lunch or breakfast, call it what you will), then walked (by an indirect route, I figured I had time and would see a bit of the city) over to Cementario de la Recoleta.

On the way I crossed Av 9 de Julio. Seven lanes of traffic in each direction, not to mention a distinct road running parallel on each side. There was a pedestrian crossing but despite the drivers here seeming generally law abiding it made me feel pretty exposed crossing in front of seven lanes of waiting cars at a time. (As in Chile, it appears acceptable in practice - I have no idea what the law actually says - for cars to turn right or left even when the green man - well, it's not green here, but whatever - is on and allowing pedestrians to cross. This isn't strictly speaking an issue on Av 9 de Julio, at least where I crossed, but that kind of thing adds to my nervousness.)

The cemetery is pretty cool and freaky. It's absolutely enormous, it's like (and I know this is a hackneyed phrase) a city of the dead. You just walk around this vaguely grid-layout area surrounded by pretty impressive tombs, most of which are a couple of metres high and some have mini towers and god knows what on. You really can get lost in there, I remember thinking I had been walking for ages without stumbling across the exit. (Once you catch on, there is a sort of church tower which provides a visual clue as to the exit location when you manage to catch a glimpse of it.)

There were a few cats around the place, which I thought was cool. (I am not going to be buried there of course - I mean, apart from the fact I don't live here, I dread to think how much the land must cost - but while I'm still alive I like the idea of a few cats wandering around my grave, and once I'm dead I won't have an opinion.) I stroked a few, one was incredibly friendly. Later on I saw one sitting on a tomb wagging its tail a bit. I thought it looked slightly hacked off but I figured I'd chance my arm and sort of rubbed my fingers about half a metre from it and made "puss puss" noises to see if it was up for being friendly with me. It's not as if I just went and touched it without "permission". But the little fucker just shot its paw out at me and drew blood. It didn't growl or anything first. I like cats but for a second I could have booted the bastard. I may die of rabies, but I wasn't bitten so I am not pursuing the matter any further medically.

Anyway, imminent death aside, for the first 15 minutes or so it was pretty cool wandering around looking at all these tombs and thinking how exotic it all was. I also noted that a few were in incredibly poor condition, webs all over the door, dust everywhere, that kind of thing. You must need a good family or pots of cash to set up a trust fund to keep your tomb in order after you're dead. It says something about human nature that someone presumably cared enough, or wanted to make a show of caring, to pay for someone to have a tomb in this doubtless exclusive and expensive place, and then nowadays it's just falling apart.

The fly in the ointment was that Eva Peron is entombed there. Now, I know very little about her and if the guide book hadn't mentioned this I would not have given it a second thought. But since I had been stupid enough to read the guide book earlier, and since I was IN THE CEMETRY, I figured I really really ought to see where she was. Of course, since this is a cemetery not nominally a tourist attraction (though I didn't see a single relative communing with their dead, it was all tourists and one young couple sucking each other's faces off on the steps of a tomb in a quiet area off to one side - I'm not a religious man, but for fuck's sake people, show a little bit of respect - I was *so* tempted to walk up and pretend to be an overseas relative visiting the tomb of my grandfather) you can't have big signs saying "EVA PERON'S TOMB THIS WAY". (Oddly enough, one - exactly one - family tomb was signposted. I have no idea why.) I was, by the clock, in the cemetry for two hours, and I reckon I spent 15 or 30 minutes tops actually enjoying myself walking round. The rest of the time I was basically conducting a methodical search around the fucking place trying to find her tomb so I could look at the thing and clear off. Doubting all the time that I would recognise the thing if I saw it, although I hoped it would have a crowd next to it. I was gasping for a drink most of the time. I mean, I was thirsty, not just that I fancied a beer. Oh, and though no one else bothered, I figured I ought to keep my cap off to avoid offending anyone, which didn't help my comfort, although there was at least quite a lot of shade with the tombs being like small buildings.

My feet were killing me and I was pissed off as hell because I was continually recalling the words of my guide book. "Follow the crowds and you'll find Evita's grave." Like fuck. There IS no clear crowd. You get tourists milling up and down all over the fucking place. If I could have met the person who wrote that sentence instead of, I don't know, GIVING DIRECTIONS or MENTIONING THE NAME OF THE FAMILY AND TELLING YOU TO LOOK ON THE MAP AT THE ENTRANCE or DESCRIBING THE TOMB SO YOU'D RECOGNISE IT WHEN YOU FOUND IT at the time, I would have happily smashed their face in with a spanner. After an hour or so of futile methodical searching, I ended up stalking one couple who I saw arrive, since the woman said "over there" and I figured she might have some idea where to go, and I assumed they would want to go to Eva's tomb at some point. (Some people did seem to have printed maps, but my attempts to listen in on their conversations didn't help, and I had no idea where they got the maps from. When I finally left I saw there was a big plan in the entrance. However, since it turns out she is buried in some family tomb with a completely unknown name to someone like me whose knowledge of her is "she was called Eva Peron and was the wife or maybe mistress of some ruler, probably a dictator but I'm not sure, and I don't know what he was called", it wouldn't have helped even if I had seen it earlier.) The couple spent so much time examining random tombs (which of course I had had enough of some time ago) that I ditched them. In the end I loitered near the entrance and overheard some other tourists ask for directions, and I assumed they were asking for directions to the star attraction. So I stalked them instead, impatiently waiting as they looked at other things on the way. Eventually we came to some completely ordinary looking tomb (I mean, impressive, but nothing out of the ordinary by the standards of the cemetery) which had a bit of a crowd in front of it. I hardly dared hope, but I thought I might finally have achieved my goal and could leave. The suspense of waiting to get near enough to read the damn plaques nearly killed me. And I had at last got there. I took a couple of very token photos, not being able to get a particularly good view, but what the hell, I saw it, I was there, and that's what counts. It cost me enough bloody effort.

I did keep thinking I should just ask someone, but I just couldn't bring myself to be quite such a morbid gawking idiot as to essentially say to anyone (let alone the odd security guard type hanging around) "Hi, I'm an annoying foreign idiot - oh, and our countries were at war 20 years ago, we won, ha ha, though I see you are still a little sore about it - and I have no idea who this woman really is and in fact I'm not totally confident she was even called Eva Peron, but as I'm here wandering round looking at the tombs of random dead people for entertainment because it's a bit exotic to me, could you please direct me to her tomb so I can have a look at it just to tell people I've been there?".

Further wafflings

Thu, 00:25. Will use 24h clock, fuck it. Two women just turned up and I heard them ask the waitress if they were closed and she said no. I may have one more after this if it's possible as a sort of 'fuck you' beer.

No idea what this place is called, but it's diagonally opposite Kilkenny. It's not great but it's OK.

There's a bit of a breeze but it's still pretty warm out. I have my fleece on and am feeling slightly warm, I am mainly wearing it because it's just cool enough for it to be bearable and this way I don't have to worry about losing it.

I really need to book some flights and make some plans for the next few weeks, but I don't have a clue except that I want to go to Iguazu falls (however they are spelled) and probably do 4-5 days in Uruguay. The idea of poring over guide books trying to make some plans enormously fails to appeal. I think I also need to start taking malaria tablets a bit before I go to the falls, which is a bit of a bugger especially if (I have no idea) I can't drink while on them.

00:40. Just ordered another beer. The waitress didn't look too happy, but I shall assume it's her normal on the job expression. Or maybe she's thinking about the Falklands. :-) Went to the bog, they had something I've never seen before - 'soap on a stick'. Rather than a liquid soap dispenser or a loose bar on top of the sink, there's a big lump of solid soap stuck on the end of a metal bar attached to the wall. Man, travelling certainly does broaden your horizons...

I don't feel drunk but medically I'm sure I shouldn't be having this second litre on top of everything else. But then medically I should probably be in bed, at work (drinking nothing stronger than distilled water) or at a gym, so...

There is a pirate-themed bar next door. The staff are dressed in a piratical, if slightly toned down, manner and there are wooden pirates outside. I passed there earlier on my quest for a bar inside a bar, but swiftly decided against it.

There's a guy a few tables away who has a sort of comb-over, but from hair in the centre of his head. Maybe I should let my island grow out and emulate him. :-)

Oh, one of the staff I spoke to earlier did exhibit the apparently classic Argentinian 'sh' pronunciation of 'll'. I haven't noticed it much apart from that, though it may in part subtly account for my difficulty in understanding everything said to me here

01:45. Just asked for the bill. ARS36 for two litres, 40 with slightly stingy tip. (I risked saying '40 with tip' as I handed over a 50, we will see if this is a Puno situation.) That's not bad. Maybe chopp just is overpriced, or maybe this is a cheap bar.

Just got my 10 change. Makes me even more inclined to put that incident in Puno down as a rip off. But maybe they did misunderstand me. It's odd, sometimes I can converse (badly) with locals, sometimes I ask for the menu and people don't understand me. Anyway, glad that worked tonight.

It isn't far to the flat but I hope I can go to the bog here before I leave. I shouldn't have been out this late but sod it. I doubt I'd get up at 9am whatever time I went to bed.

Music from Kilkenny (I assume) has been faintly audible all night. Maybe I'll go back there around 10pm in a day or two and try to be more receptive if anyone does talk to me. Apart from possible further travel planning, vague plan for tomorrow is not to get up too late and wander around, then I shall consult the guide and take a chance on some other bars tomorrow night. Friday or Saturday I may try a club just for the experience, but tomorrow night something lower key will do.

A few beggars tonight while at this bar. I always say 'ah, no' and shake my head. I don't know why I do the 'ah' bit, but I always do. I think I do it in an attempt to just avoid saying an outright fuck-you 'no'. I wonder if those two words reveal me as a foreigner or if it's too short to notice my accent. Either way, I don't pay. Liverpool St has taught me something. :-)

Most people have left the bar now, though there is a couple and a big group still around. I don't want to stay out any more - I need to save myself for tourism tomorrow day and better nights - but it's nice I'm not the last.

00:10. Walked back OK, no problem. Had to ring to get into the building and it took a couple of minutes but all serene. The room airconditioning is set at 24C (I upped it from 20 earlier, trying to be ecofriendly) and it's still on. And even at this time of night walking into the room is like 'wow, it's so cool in here'.

Cristian, my Argentinian Spanish teacher, advised me not to come here too early as it would be too hot. I am so glad I listened. I don't know what geographical quirk makes it so much hotter here than Santiago, but it is. I guess it's a good thing for drinking at night in the street, but if it's like this in their autumn, what must it be like in summer?

Anyway, a bit (or maybe lots) of refrigerated soft drink and then to bed. I am mellowed by beer, the earlier stuff was a bit shit but I shall try to take the lesson not to be so suspicious with normal people in normal bars, and try to retain my clip joint suspicion for dodgy ones. It's still quite cool to be here.

Bed, yeah

I have further wafflings to post from my phone. But I am back at the flat listening to Tom Lehrer (again). I do love the quote (from "Bright College Days", which I recommend any stray reader to look up, I am sure I have driven all my friends away with so much waffle) "Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife, Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life".

Hell, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl3mRjydcPw Enjoy, or have no taste. :-)

Fear and loathing in Buenos Aires

Wed, 7:25pm. Incidentally I think there was no time shift on this trip, as Argentina doesn't use summer time and Chile does and is, so that compensates.

Left the flat about 7pm with a vague plan as to which direction to wander in. Found myself at the Libertador end of Reconquista, rammed with pavements tables and not a single space free. Have wandered further down the street to somewhere presumably less fashionable :-) and sat outside waiting for the beer I've ordered. So much for my assumption (half based on the guide book) that the culture here is so 'late' that everywhere would be deserted at 7pm.

First impressions are generally favourable, apart from the heat. The architecture is a bit, well, I don't know the world, sort of UK-two-to-three-centuries-old-twiddly-bits-style :-) in places. (I've always wanted to learn a bit about architectural styles, but on looking things up I find myself unable to retain any knowledge.) But near the flats there are some fairly impressive tower blocks, not all of them of the glass-and-steel variety. Will take some photos tomorrow.

Have asked to see the menu. Everything is with convoluted sauces, but I think the steak sandwich (I asked and it was 75% comprehensible) manages to avoid anything I can't stand, so I've ordered that. ARS26. Oh, and it's ARS12 (or was it 14?) for a draught beer which looks to be about a half pint. That's about two quid. This is the first place I've been but it's not looking super cheap here. Mind you, I suspect that given the food seems relatively 'ornate' it's likely to be a little pricey. We shall see.

I only note it because of the stereotypes of BA, but although of course I'm just at some place in the street, it is heartening to note that people don't seem to be inordinately well dressed.

Food is OK but a couple have sat at a table just inside practically adjacent to me and I just saw the woman craning her neck to examine my food. If there was no glass intervening it would be as if they'd sat next to me on a 4-person table, they're that close. I feel like a zoo exhibit.

I just noticed some posters pasted over a wall on the other side of the street saying 'Malvinas Son Argentinas' ("The Falklands Are Argentinian", assuming I am not missing some subtlety). There is some small print I can't read from here, I will pop over and have a look if I remember when I leave here shortly.

8:45pm. Just got the bill, ARS46.50, call it 50 with a slightly stingy (but it's a round number) tip. The two beers were 20 for two due to some happy hour promotion I was unaware of.

9:10pm. Looked at the posters but couldn't take a picture as some guys were drinking on the step next to them. Loads more plastered down Reconquista and I took a picture of another batch. The smaller text names some organisation and says something like "On the bicentennial of the May revolution".

Didn't see anything great down the other end of Reconquista, doubled back down 25 de Mayo expecting for some reason it to be livelier, but it was a bit underlit and I didn't see a single bar/restaurant open. Am now at a table outside El Verde in Reconquista, some scaryish bloke in a suit spoke to me when I sat down and I couldn't understand what he said (I just said "is it OK?" and I got the "yes" part) but I have been served (by a waitress) so unless this is some Argentinian clip joint it's all good.

Slightly freaked out by the "Malvinas" posters. Honestly, the damn islands and the war had not even crossed my mind as I came into the country. I can't remember when it was but I think my age was in single digits at the time. And yet on my first day here (well, not counting the trip to Perito Moreno) I am reminded of it. I suspect the posters are the work of some minor semi-political party but it does make me wonder if I am a touch unwelcome here as a Brit. I'm sure it's cool. I will tell people I'm Irish if pushed. :-) (I have on occasion said I am "de Londres" and they mishear it as "Irlandes".)

10:25pm. FFS. ARS34, or nearly six quid, for two probably half-pint-ish beers. Am leaving ARS37 with tip. Man.

10:35pm. Come down to Kilkenny in Reconquista, partly as I noticed it earlier and partly as I remember seeing it in the guide book. Pseudo-Irish bar of course. Just got a pint of Heineken for ARS14, which is more like it. (Maybe they weren't half pints before, I know glass volumes can be hard to judge.) Don't really like it, it's very noisy and feels a touch unfriendly, it's a bit like a not quote so bad version of the O'Neills in central London which turns into a club at night. It's not *that* rammed, I haven't got a table but I have a spot to loiter in and there's plenty of floor space free. Vaguely thought I might get chatting to someone here but I don't think it's likely. Can't sit at the bar as it's too busy round there. Oh well.

11:20pm. Fuck-a-doodle-do.

As I was stood there on my own in Kilkenny some woman came up and started talking to me. I was deeply suspicious and hence deliberately more incompetent at speaking Spanish than I am naturally. She spoke a bit of English, although if I went fast she couldn't understand me (and it was quite noisy in there). She asked if I was on my own, I said I was and (lying hastily) said that I had to do a tour early tomorrow morning and was only there for one drink. She asked if I wanted to join her group but I probably somewhat rudely said I was fine.

A few minutes later some bloke, who I saw after with her small group, came over and introduced himself and we had a bit of a chat (mostly in English). Turned out he was from Madrid but has lived here (presumably 'on this continent', not in BA or Argentina) for 12 years, in Santiago. He was there for the earthquake. When he left me he said something like 'we are over there if you want anything'.

I finished my beer and left. In hindsight it would have been cool to talk to them, but that woman coming over had roused my suspicions (if nothing else, just "ooh, lone tourist, we can scrounge drinks off him", plus although she wasn't that attractive I couldn't help but suspect for that critical first few seconds she was a prostitute, which I am sure in hindsight she actually wasn't - she was either just being friendly or was on the scrounge) and afterwards I had to stick to my story.

I finished my pint, not overly hurriedly, and left.

I had seen an OK-ish looking bar opposite El Verde where I thought I would go after and could maybe sit at the bar and get chatting to someone in a slightly better way. As I approached this woman tout outside started chatting to me to entice me into the bar I was going to anyway. I got a bit suspicious at this point but I had seen scary bloke do a tiny bit of trying to attract custom outside El Verde earlier, so I sort of put it down to local customs. We spoke mostly in Spanish, she blabbed a bit about two levels, free to get in, I didn't catch everything. I was dubious but I confirmed it was free to go in and (lacking the vocabulary) that it was a 'regular bar' not a 'weird bar'. The instant I got in I got the strong impression it was a, well, I don't know the word even in English, let's say pseudo-strip-bar. I may have been wrong, but this woman in a tiny pair of shorts sort of seemed to be coming over to me, maybe she was just some random other customer (I mean, if it had been lin
gerie at least I'd have been sure) and the atmosphere wasn't up to much anyway so I immediately, before the tout woman could shut the door, said, 'sorry, thanks, no' and bolted. It was probably quite comic in its way. FFS. I hate those places as blogged about incidentally re the club on Easter Island, plus in some random city where I'm not fluent I could well imagine it being one of those clip joints. (The reason I say I don't know the word in English is I really don't know exactly what sort of place it was. It's not as if there was a naked woman dancing round a pole at the other of the bar. But my snap judgement - which I would say I'm 90% confident of - was that it was, making up my own vocabularly, a 'sex bar', even if it was on the level.)

I wandered up and down the street trying to find somewhere I could follow through on the 'drink at the bar' plan, but because everyone is at tables in the street at most places it seems not an option. (They have bars, but they were deserted.) I am sat outside at a table at some random bar now where I have been sat without any waitstaff attention for long enough to write all this, I wonder if they are not open any more.

FFS. All I want is a cheap beer at the bar, chat optional. I am going to leave here in a minute after having had free use of their table if no one comes over soon. I fully expect to be charged some insane amount for a beer if I do get one.

Obviously another night I can stray further afield and check the guide books etc, but this is a little bit disappointing. I wasn't having a great night but all this crap is not what I was after. It's a bit galling to have passed up probably genuinely friendly overtures in Kilkenny but I don't think I can blame myself for my initial suspicion.

OK, I am rounding the times in these blog entries to the nearest 5 minutes but it's 11:32 now so I reckon I have been sat here at least five minutes. I just managed to eye-contact a waiter over and have ordered a litre bottle of some probably local beer (they don't do draught, perhaps a good thing, just maybe that's why I've been paying through the nose). Fingers crossed but what the hell.

OK. It's "Quilmes Cristal". Fuck knows how much it costs as the tab system seems to rule here, but it tastes OK and I don't have some overpriced tart sitting on my knee and a thug blocking my exit, so things could be worse. Bit disappointing on the whole 'meeting people' front but what the hell.

11:55pm. The staff keep nicking off with some but not all surplus chairs, there are plenty of other people sat out here but I hate being in bars when they're closing, if they are. I didn't plan on having a particularly late night but it's a shame I am almost not having to force myself not to stay out.