Buenos dias Buenos Aires - part one.

At the airport we jump in a taxi and whizz past loads of big memorials to previous Argentine generals and various wars. Must not mention the Falklands, must not mention the Falklands....the taxi driver asks where we are from, and we tell him 'Londres', though I am quite tempted to say 'Australia'. It takes us forty minutes to check in to our hostel as the guy at reception is new, but he's cute and friendly, so we forgive him. It takes a further ten minutes, and the help of a friendly Aussie, to find our room. The hostel is in a huge building of faded grandeur, and our room is obviously one of the maids quarters, but at least we have a private room.

We head out shopping the following morning. We get on the bus to Palermo, and can't pay, as buses only take coins, which are surprisingly hard to come by. So, we feign ignorance nod travel for free. Vicky and Helen 1 - City of Buenos Aires 0. Palermo is lovely and Vicks instantly decides this is where we're staying when we come back from the Estancia. We walk for miles, my shoes start to rub, and eventually we stop off for lunch, before heading to the cemetery where we have a guided tour and make the obligatory stop off at the tomb of Eva 'don't cry for me Argentina' Peron.




That evening, we head out to a tango lesson, followed by dinner, unlimited wine and a tango show. As about 50 of us, majority female, stand in the room where we are to learn tango, I can't help reflecting that maybe the unlimited wine BEFORE the tango lesson would have made everyone a it more relaxed. We learn the basic steps, and both Vick and I are called to the front of the class to show 'em how its done.







The show afterwards is spectacular, and having bonded with several other people over tango and wine, I head off to the sister hostel of ours to drink and dance. I have a vague recollection of dancing the tango in the street with strangers, and being sick on my shoes, and Vicky tells me I wake her up coming in at 3am. Needless to say, we have a very chilled out Sunday.

We wander up to La Boca on Monday, before finding our favourite bar in Buenos Aires, La Poesia. With several glasses of Malbec under our belt, and having made a few new friends, we head off to a tango bar. We dance a bit of tango, drink some more and then decide to head back to our hostel. We have a very chilled out Tuesday.




Plan A - spend the day exploring Buenos Aires. Plan B - get drunk on Malbec.



Wednesday morning dawns bright and early, and I'm off to the airport to pick up Bonne Maman, who had decided to come and see her darling daughter for a week. The airport is chaos, like the tube at rush hour, fortunately, I am used to the tube and can elbow it with the best of them. Bonne Maman comes out, we have our 'Love, Actually' airport moment and I take her back to the hostel, clocking that she's packing Bollinger - hurrah! We go empanada making, which is (as with everything in this city) fuelled by Malbec and hosted by yet another reception hottie, who insists on calling my mother Mama, and tells us we can make willy shaped empanada should we so wish. HELLO, I'm with my mother......In the freestyle empanada making contest, Vicks makes a bear, and I make Christ the Redeemer, and we both win a cocktail. Yay, us!












That evening, we take Maman to the best steak restaurant in Buenos Aires and eat meat to die for, which some poor cow of course did, but the sacrifice was worth it. As one of the girls at reception in our hostel says, 'Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.'







Maman has coped remarkably well with an overnight flight from London, and spending all day in Buenos Aires, but we eventually call it a night and prepare ourselves for the six hour coach journey to Olavarria and our estancia stay.