La Boca to Palermo... Still in Buenos Aires.

Today Owen, Sam, Ness, Sarah, and myself headed into La Boca. It's a crazy little suburb in BA all the houses are painted in bright contrasting colours. To get there we had to catch a bus, the first one during this trip. We found the bus stop and our bus came within a matter of minutes, but we were promptly refused fares because we didn't have correct change. It then took us twenty minutes to work out what that change was, and find somewhere that could give us that change, many places could not change 10 pesos (roughly $5 AUS), which is pretty bizarre, but gives you an idea of how impoverished some areas are. Money has been slightly problematic because we only withdraw money occassionally and when we do it's usually a couple of hundred pesos (we don't carry all of it with us at once, that would be silly!). Problem is the ATM only gives us 100 peso notes, and hardly anyone can change them! Anywho after finally getting the correct bus fare (roughly 30cents AUS), we were soon on our way. Drivers in BA are crazy, our bus driver clearly hated his job, which was quite understandable, but he drove like I drive in video games... recklessly. He almost killed a couple of pedestrians on the way, like actually slamming on the brakes at the last second and then swerving violently to miss them. Then once the bus had stopped, the driver screamed at the people he had almost hit out the window. It was quite something to be a part of. We arrived at La Boca and had a look around, it was very pretty, but very touristy, so we decided to venture out a little beyond the touristy area only to find we were in a slum of sorts. There was a suspiciously strong police presence, so we meandered back to the main area and sat down for a break, pulled out our lonely planet to read up on La Boca only to find strong tourist warnings about sticking to the main streets. We'll research things a little better in future. We got back on the bus, grabbed some lunch, and then parted ways with Owen and Sam. Ness, Sarah, and I decided to jump on to the subway and head to Palermo, which is a lot like North Adelaide at home, but prettier. Leafy boulevards, charming boutiques, and other noncy crap. I bought this wicked t/shirt of a hotdog high fiving a mustard bottle. It rocks! On the way back Ness walked through a small childs freshly excreted urine, but we all managed to successfully navigate through the mountains of dog crap. There are so many dogs and cats everywhere, seemingly unowned, but all relatively well mannered (opening doors for ladies and that kind of thing). We jumped back on the subway, and have arrived safely back to our hostel. This is our second hostel, I liked the first one better, there are too many people here... Any who the cerveza is calling, and we have to organize the next few days.

Catch ya on the flip side homecows!

Dylan

Photos are of La Boca and a $4 steak!

City of the Dead

Hey all,

Been here a few days now and heaps has happened. First day in Buenos Aires we just wandered around a lot. We struggled with the language gap at first but are getting the hang of some basic spanish and charades. Yesterday we went to the city of the dead, the place where Evita is supposedly burried. It was one of the craziest things I've ever seen, it is actually like a little city. Each grave looks like it's had hundreds of thousands of dollars poured in to it, Evita's grave is amongst the blander of those in the cemetry. Anyway I've got hundreds of photos to show you all, most with me and ness being inappropriate around the dead.
After that we went back to the Hostel, and then something really bizarre happened. We ran into some guys from school, staying at the same hostel. Sam Muerhead and Owen. What are the chances, same hostel and everything! Anyway we had dinner with them, and today we're all heading to La Boca. Anyway best be off. There's a huge line behind me due to internet being free in the hostel.

Catch ya round yo!

Dylan

P.S. Thanks for the comments guys, it's good to here from home!

All of these photos are of the city of the dead.

Arriving Continued

At 10pm we finally got on our flight to Buenos Aires. By this time we were very tired. For the first time we were not seated together. I was sandwiched between two guys, and I could feel one of them staring at me for most of the trip, but every time I looked at him, or said "hola" he looked away. Except for this one time when he just grinned, his skinny lips stretching to nonexistence and his dark yellow teeth on show for all to see. He still didn't answer. I pretended I was reading an Argentinian newspaper for the rest of the trip. By this time I was tired and a little bit fed up with all the flying, but that all washed away in a second when we came into land in Buenos Aires. It was one of the prettiest sights. Street lights in every direction, from horizon to horizon. It was mind boggling to see how big this city is. We got off the plane and found that our bags had been waiting for us on the carousel for hours due to the flight mess ups. Luckily they were all there. We prepped ourselves to go through customs, but because I think we were the last flight of the night (it was well after midnight), customs didn't care about our stuff they just told us to go through, so all you drug runners out there, take the last flight, like in any job custom officials can't be arsed doing their job when it's knock off time.
We said goodbye to the friends we'd made on the plane, (not creepy mc grin grin), and ordered a taxi from the booth at the airport. After waiting 10 minutes a guy swaggered up, flicked us the taxi reciept and casually gestured to us to follw him. If any of you guys have seen "The Big Lebowski" this guy was a spitting image, and had the same mannerisms as Jesus (not Christ), he was hilarious. Anyway we got into the taxi, and the driver travelled between 140 and 160 kmh the entire way back. Most of the way was 80 zones, this guy overtook an ambulance with its sirens screaming. It was relatively nerve racking, but we did manage to complete a 40 minute trip in 20 minutes, so it's not all bad!
We got to our hostel at 12.30 am, by this time we had been up for 30 hours with only the briefest of naps. We all had showers and Ness and Sarah went straight to bed. I checked my email, and some other Aussie bought me a beer, I went back to the room and Ness was wide awake sitting on her bed. I passed out immediately. When I awoke 6 hours later Ness had still not slept, so we decided to get drunk tonight to try to help us get over our Jetlag and at present we are well on our way!

Till next time,
Chuckles Mc Chucklebear.

Arriving

So, we made it safely to our first destination, Buenos Aires.
Currently I am sitting on the roof of our hostel (the Portal del Sur), where there is both a bar and internet access. There's a pretty awesome view of many grand buildings that are in varying states of disrepair, which seems to be a common theme throughout this huge city. It's mid afternoon and Ness and Sarah are napping, we're all pretty jetlagged. Yesterday we worked out that we had only slept about 6 hours in the previous 50, and my body still has no idea as to what time it is anywhere. In fact it's pretty hard to believe that it was only yesterday that we left adelaide. The flights were okay, but damn long. The food was awful, and served at strange times, but this was to be expected. Everything was going ok until we got to Santiago Chile, and they messed up the entire flight's transfers. We were lucky only to be held up for 7 hours, some people couldn't get flights until the next day. With nothing to do, and no Chilean currency, we began talking to other passengers. A surprising amount of Adelaidians were doing the same thing we were. In fact Rory's girlfriend Clair and her friends were on the same flight. So the wait wasn't too bad. I made my first attempt at communicating with someone whose language I didn't understand and made a fair ass of myself in the process. We were getting lunch, and I thought this guy was saying "dip, dip" and I was like I don't want any dip I just want my chicken and pepsi. He threw his arms in the air and walked away, we soon realised he was trying to get a tip, which is customary on this side of the world. Later on we tipped him, explaining that we were slow in the head, in the best Spanish we could muster, he laughed. All the locals we have met so far have been pretty accommodating. Anywho, I've got to cut this short, cos there's a cue for the computer and I've been on it for a while.
So I'll leave it you in suspense and you can all read the conclusion to this rather bland story on another occassion!
Regards,

Dylan
This photo is of a huge head in the Santiago airport!

It begins

Welcome all to the beginning of my amazing adventure.
I intend for this blog to be a record of my trip to South America starting this Sunday the 26th of November 2006 and ending upon my planned return on some day I'm not entirley sure of, the 4th of March 2007.
This will be your standard travel blog; self indulgent, riddled with in-jokes, and full of tedious long-winded stroies that have neither a point nor a satisfying conclusion. My adventure can be accurately deemed "amazing" for every day that I survive in a completely foreign country, with-out any travel experience or know-how. Further, it may be deemd "amazing" for every day my co-travellers Ness and Sarah do not murder me in my sleep. Not that either of them are in anyway nasty, but my prolonged company has been known to be quite grating. Unfortunately for you, the reader, the word "amazing" is not meant to suggest that this blog is supposed to be in anyway interesting.
So if you have fallen upon this blog by accident, take heed to my warning and stop reading now. Go look up some porn, or conspiracy thoeries about celebrity deaths, you know, the things the internet was actually intended for. If you are a friend or family member, don't feel obliged to read on either, I probably wouldn't read your travel blog. For those of you who do decide to read on, I hope you find something of interest, even if it is laughing at the myriad of spelling erors and gramatical mishappening's.

Regards,

Dylan
AKA the Chuckle Bear