Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn

We're now in Santiago, Chile, and our third hostel. I think we're beginning to realise how lucky we were with our first hostel, mainly because of how many South Americans there were staying there, and how few English speakers there were. Actually this one's quite good, nice and relaxed.

We nearly got run over again. We're so used to one way roads by now that we forgot to look both ways and nearly got hit by a taxi which didn't even slow down.

Impressions of Chile/Santiago are so far limited to comparisons with Argentina/Buenos Aires: cleaner streets, no dog shit, dirtier air, more expensive, no independent ice cream shops, just walls/nestle. Really, the pollution is amazing, the postcards of Santiago with the Andes in the background must have been photoshopped, I swear.

Kai's put up about a million photos of our eXtreme sports day. I like the one on the left, which I took :) However the promised film might take a while longer as IBM are going to take longer than first thought on Kai's machine.

Road Manners

Well I nearly got run over last night. Twice. First I forgot that drivers like to conserve the planet here by using their lights as little as possible, while at the same time forgetting that pedestrians have no right of way, then Kai and I helped a guy jump start his car, in reverse, down hill, in the middle of a one way road and through a junction with on coming cars streaming round us.

We were also persuaded last night to skip the geek BBQ today and instead go trekking, canopying and rappelling, which translates as trecking, abseiling and death sliding. The death sliding was the highlight, although we were a little narked when they took us round the three small ones and then told us that to do the two cool long ones across the river would be an extra 20 pasos. But it was worth it, there's an excellent video of Kai and I crossing together, Kai as superman, but Kai's machine is in for repair, which is making uploading anything much more difficult.

Mendozzza

So, we've finally done a little traveling, coming across the country to Mendoza, which is to the far west, next to Chile. I was pretty sad to leave our hostel, we'd met and made such a nice group of friends. Our final Spanish class was pretty emotional too. Actually I think that was our penultimate class, but we sang Shakira in our final class too. Shakira being Kai's choice after complaining about our teacher's choice of music.

Mendoza is a nice place. Like Worthing, Woodingdean and Sydney. Lots of bungalows (since the earthquake in 1861), wide quiet tree lined streets and a Linux conference. The Lonely Planet describes it thus: "Mendoza would be hell without the trees." I guess they mean during the summer, right now it's a really pleasant temperature. Not really sure what we're doing next, Kai was planning to go to Cordoba and then north and get to Sao Paulo in two weeks for a job, but I mentioned going over to Chile and he seems pretty interested in doing that.

A little while ago Mum said that maybe I need to "relax into my Spanish" at the time I kind of dismissed it, but it is a lot easier for me to speak when I'm relaxed. I just meant to ask someone if they wanted to use this computer, but by accident told them that I wanted to use it. It also depends a lot on who you are talking to, yesterday a couple of people told me that I spoke well and then a few minutes later someone told me that they couldn't understand a word I was saying. But then when I switched to English he still couldn't undecided me.

It's Gettin' Hot In Herre

When I arrived in Argentina the first thing Kai and I did was to visit Tigre. It's a nice picturesque town to the north of BsAs, but when we were there it was fricking cold. Victoria and I went back last weekend and found that in the hot weather it had become more like a pleasant beach resort with families sitting drinking mate in the sun. The one downer was the buena vista spoiled by a great big McDonald's stuck in the middle. I tried to explain the concept of planning permission to Victoria, but (I think) she said that if you own the land you can do what you like with it.

When In Argentina...

Well it's been a pretty bizarre weekend. Victoria and I spent Friday night in a transitory hotel, where you can hire rooms by the hour. Our room had a jacuzzi, a mirror above the bed, a plastic covered mattresses, duel showers, porn on TV and a kind of cabinet with doors on both sides set into the door, which allows the maid to leave drinks without having to open the door. It wasn't nearly as seedy as I had imagined. Apparently these hotels are extremely common in South America because so many young people live with their conservative parents who are in denial about them having sex, the girls here were quite surprised to hear that we don't have them in the UK.

Then Saturday night was museum night, when the museums of Buenos Aires open for the evening and there's a big party at the central museum. Going round museums at 1am didn't prove to be very exciting.

Our fellow classmates are, as I type, at the observer number 1 sporting thing to do before you die - watching River Plate vs Boca. We turned on the TV to watch it and wondered why we were seeing so much of the crowd. It turns out it's a pay to view match and if you don't pay you just get to see the crowd and hear the commentary. Guess we should keep an eye out for Toby and Rich.

This Is South America, You Can Smoke Wherever You Like

There are quite a lot of no smoking signs around Buenos Aires, no one seems to take much notice of them though. Then on Saturday night, in our local, the girls we were with were told that they couldn't smoke after midnight, which seemed a bit bizarre, but it turned out that from 1st Octobre smoking is banned in places with under 100m² floor space.

In other news Kai is ill. It's the only conclusion I can come to. He enjoyed spinach, and he admitted it. We went to a Geek Meet, some linux guys Kai met last week, and he dragged me along this time, I was expecting to leave early but it turned out to be pretty cool, really nice people and a nice mix of speaking English and Spanish, and they took us to their favourite pizza place afterwards.

You Are Here

This is our hostel on google maps, the area doesn't look nearly so dreary in real life, and this is Puente De La Mujer (Woman's Bridge) at Puerto Madero which I took some photos of a couple of days ago. Apparently Puerto Madero is where all the tourists go, God knows why, it's like the Docklands in London and even has its own Canary Wharf.

I should have said in my last post that our breakfast consists of two medialuna (half moon) facturas and a beverage. The medialunes are like small dense croissants glazed in sugar and got a bit boring after the first day. Kai defends them by saying they're not boring, sometimes they're stale, sometimes they're fresh. He's right, sometimes they're very dense and sometimes they're quite light. Anyway, it was a bit of a shock to the system this morning to be presented with toast and jam!

Food Glorious Food

Up until last night I had been a bit disappointed with the steak, it's not bad, it's just not been as good as everyone made out. There was one exception which was the Sandwich De Lomo Completo, or Lometo. It is the most incredible thing, a slice of tender beef, cheese, ham, lettuce and tomato inside a piece of French bread, I really can't tell you how good it tastes! And then last night we had the most fabulous steak in pepper sauce.

Kai's been obsessed with being able to cut the steak with the back of his knife. Last night I went one better and cut my steak with my fork :)

Now I'm hungry, and it's only 4:20. Everything happens so late here, the restaurants don't get busy until 10, and trying to get everyone together and out the door is what Kai and Spencer might describe as a nightmare or hell on earth. Victoria took my watch away on Friday night and wouldn't give it back to me until Sunday night. I can hear Jo's mum saying something about letting women walk all over me :) (Probably while telling me what I should be doing.)

They love their sweet pastries (facturas) and tarts here, they look wonderful, and sometimes taste quite good too :)

Ah, I See

"...the thing you eat your cereal out of is spelt bowl, the thing in your blog is the tube your food comes through, bowel, if you reread your blog substituting bowel for bowl its really funny."

Well Ha Fucking Ha :)

Letter From Home

"Is this a kind of enema, mensioned in your last blog, it sounds rather painful, and not particularly tasty."

Well now you mention it, it's not particularly tasty, but it's that sort of thing that tastes like it will do you good, or at least might make you feel good.

The weather wasn't so good on Friday and Saturday, it rained Friday night, and when it rains here it really rains, we had horizontal lightning and everything.