Buenos Aires

We are on another bus; but this time Argentinian styley!! We are heading to the capital which is a 20 hour ride away. We've heard loads about the service here and have decided to go executive class. What a contrast to Bolivia!! We are seated in two huge leather armchairs that fully recline 180 degrees, waiter service with meals served with wine, back to back videos playing really trashy American films, champagne served after dinner and blankets and pillows supplied for our nocturnal slumbers. I feel like a Princess. Only one slight downside,the food. There are only two foods that I just cannot eat, both making me physically sick - custard and anything made from suet. Of all the combinations of meals that there are throughout the world and that could have been served to us on the bus it has too be pretty damn unlucky that for our main course we are served a dumpling-like concoction that turns my stomach after the first mouthful - how unlucky can you be! Breakfast was also a little strange although fantastic if you have a sweet tooth - we received a plate with a cake, chocolate bar and some Smarties. Interesting. There was enough sugar content to keep a three year old in a permanent hyper-active state for at least a week.

Arriving in Buenas Aires the heat is intense, at least 30 degrees. The city is huge, bustling and a little manic. The avenues are massive with some having at least 12 lanes. The streets are lined with gorgeous trees that are in full purple blossom. The buildings are grand, colonial and imposingly big: our first impressions are of a cross between Paris, New York and Barcelona.

Our taxi drops us of at our hospedaje - which is basically a huge house where the owners rent out rooms, and where they themselves live also. We ring the bell and we are buzzed in. I'm instantly reminded of Mr Ben, the children's cartoon, where on trying on costumes at a local shop the shopkeeper asks Mr Ben to "kindly step this way", and he enters a door that transports him to a different world where he embarks on a new adventure. We have stepped into the 1940s. The reception is furnished in what one can only describe as 'grannies parlour meets the Addams family'. Mortitia comes to greet us, and shows us to our coffins... er I mean room; I have a feeling that the hospedaje may be run by the undead as I see Herman Munster cleaning the room next door.Gulp.

We are staying in San Telmo, a district of BA that is renowned for its antiques, little cobble streets, tango and good cheap restaurants. We find a great Parrilla - meat restaurant- that serves absolutely mouth wateringly, tongue hangy-outy, droolingly delicious steaks and other bits of cow. The meat is so huge that most people have it on it's own without any accompaniment. This is a vegetarian's nightmare.

Back at our room and I can't believe it!!! On going to peruse the photos that I took of Iguazu, with Ad's little camera, the fucking thing is broken!!! Whilst most functions are working the display screen, when turned on, looks like a cracked window and no images are displayed. I feel sick. Ad doesn't say much, but I know that he is fuming with me. I take the normal course of action and completely deny any responsibility and desperately try to shift the blame to Adrian, even though I have been carrying it all the time and know that it is my fault. Fucking cameras are starting to piss me off!! That now bring the count to 4 lost/stolen/broken cameras. A stony silence remains for most of the day. I'm really in the dog house; I feel depressed, sick, stupid and a right prize plonker...I know,as does Ad, that I haven't done this on purpose, but that makes little difference. Cameras are becoming a recurring nightmare on this holiday.

The next morning, with relations very nearly properly restored, but with my tail firmly between my legs we take a trip to Boca. This area of BA is poorer than where we are staying, very working class and if the guide books are to be believed a bit of a no go area for tourists outside of a couple of well policed touristic streets. Two converging streets are a riot of buildings brightly painted in vivid yellows, reds and blues; tango music is booming out from every direction with dancing demonstrations being done outside several cafe-bars; artists line the streets hawking their pictures and a squat, chubby, curly haired Maradonna look-a-like is posing for pictures. We pause for a beer and watch one of the free tango shows. A procession of tight buttocked Lotharios enter the stage with their immaculately dolled up dancing divas to entertain us with their foot-flinging flirtatious frolickings. In addition to the tango, displays of traditional Argentine shimmying - a cross between flamenco, tap and Irish dancing - are presented. One nimble hoofer throws his legs around tapping a shoe clicking rhythm faster that my Uncle Arthur can play the spoons; another particularly lithe young man dressed in a dashing Errol Flynn-esque shirt produces two ropes that he twirls, twists and twiddles, like an proficient ninja warrior revealing his nun-chuck expertise, but while dancing and striking the ropes on the floor along to the accompanying band; the tango dancers, melded together as one, ooze sexual tension, lust and desire as they smooch their choreographed moves for all to see. Wow!! What a display. It's making me feel a little amorous... pity I'm in the dog house.

With no-one else to blame I resign myself to taking full responsibility for the broken camera. Unfortunately, I now have to buy another one, which due to the lack of available brands is not going to be as half as good as the lost/broken ones and is going to cost me twice as much as in the UK. An expensive lesson, but at least relations are now normalised.

BA is fantastic. We spend the next few days eating some great meat, drinking lots of wine -I've now been converted to the delights of a glass or three of good red - and exploring different areas. The weather is scorching; I'm as brown a berry that has probably been in the sun too long and has wrinkled and shrivelled and is about to fall off the bush ( oh maybe that's not good); and apart from Ad finding a grilled maggot in his lunch, one day, everything goes smoothly and calmly. We even nurture a fondness for the never-ending different 90 year olds, looking freshly scrapped from the morticians slab, that run the haunted hospedaje, greeting us each time we arrive with a long, deep, guttural Ooooooooolas! whilst eyeing our necks and salivating extensively.

I could spend a lot of time in Buenas Aires, it's a huge city and like any metropolis the longer you are there the more you understand it and the better the time you have. But we have to move on: Argentina is not cheap, and BA even more so. We need to cut back our spending and I'm informed, to economise, instead of my usual, I need to start drinking beer - which I very rarely drink as it looks and tastes like wee - and that we are going to have to sleep in more dormitories. Yuk! Boooh! Hiss! Stoopid credit crunch!!!!!!