Buenos Aires

I quickly recovered from my hitch hiking experience although I was walking gingerly for a few days, and now I'm starting to see why people love this city so much.

The first few nights were spent in a hostel right in the middle of the city. On a busy street where street vendors come out at night to try and sell their home made creations. There are places like this all over South America. I can't remember the exact order I've done everything in so I'll just do a list.

• I visited the Boca Juniors Stadium. It's pretty huge for just one team but it's like a religion to most people over here. It's hard to get tickets to games because there are just so many members. We watched Argentina play Venezuela on TV the other night... It was a whitewash of course but to see Messi playing and Maradona coaching was pretty cool. We're going to try and get tickets to see Boca play this weekend.
• I went to Camonito La Boca, the suburb of Buenos Aires with the brightly coloured houses. It's very touristy, but having rode a bike there I can tick it of my list of things to do, as well as:
• Drink Yerba Mate (pronounced mar-tay). Basically you put a special straw in a special cup, traditionally a hollowed out gourd, fill it with tea leaves from the yerba mate plant, and then use a thermos to keep refilling it until you're done. This is a long process, normally over hours and has a similar effect to coffee. I'm looking for a mate cup to buy as my souvenir of this city.
• I visited the San Telmo antiques market. San Telmo is a great little suburb of BA and every Sunday loads of people converge to dispose of their trash and treasure, hopefully making some coin in the process.
• And I've tried the steak. Beleive the hype, it tastes amazing and is ridiculously cheap(Try $3 to $5AUD for a 400g tenderloin). We went to a grill house and ordered a platter of meat between three of us... I've never had better tasting beef, and so tender! They gave us steak knives to use but blunt butter knives would have sufficed. Tick that one off the list as well.

Still remaining to do are take a tango lesson and see a football game. Both could be done within the week I think. The nightlife here is unreal. We went to a drumming show last night which was just amazing. Like an orchestra with a conductor but just drums... So many drums. We started tagging the back of peoples collars with little flyers just for fun. We called it the paper revolution and it could have been epic if not for the spiteful Americans who thought it would be fun to take everyones out. I'm sure someone got photos so I'll try to post them if I can!

Just a quick update on the drum situation: I've found a few here that weren't quite what I wanted but a guy who hand makes them is going to bring a few to next Sundays market and I might buy one then.

The original plan of staying here for a month in an apartment is no longer. I looked at renting rooms, but slow responses from landlords and higher prices mean a hostel is as good value, plus I'm not tied down to being here any longer than I want to be. I've found a great, small, cheap hostel in an awesome spot and already really like it here. Having met some new friends here and also having caught up with other mates I can see myself staying a few weeks. I'm trying to organise Spanish lessons for next week but I'm told they're cheaper and better in Peru so maybe I'll stay longer there.

All the best.
Tom