The following entries are based from my trip to Argentina… I hope you enjoy them. (no images added as of yet)

28/03/05
Today I started my journey to Argentina. Leaving on time by telling Mum that we had to be there earlier than the scheduled time. At present I’m struggling to write this entry sitting next to two Spanish hicks who are finding the whole flight idea a little hard. Currently we are flying over Bilbao and the view out the window is pretty damned nice (even it I’m over the wing).

29/03/05
Another day another story, we are currently flying upto Mardrid to catch our flight to Buenos Aires. The weather in Spain has been fine, dad and l have done not a lot today, apart from him packing and going to see his Chinese girlfriend and he has been quite tolerable. I am told that everything in Argentina is to be cheap so I’m saving my hard earned pennies to buy myself something nice, lets just see.
Side note: I just took some impressive photos of mountain range leaving Malaga.

(good place to put a photos don’t you think)

30/03/05
Its 8:28 am and we just got to our hotel. The journey was fine and quite pleasant, except for dad and his verbal diarrhoea… He bored the cabin crew to death, telling his and his family’s history and the endeavours of his failed business. Admittedly it was quite amusing to see. Another piece of spiffing news is that, due to dad’s unending wisdom and knowledge of the world’s electric systems, he let me believe that hotels here would have European plugs extension sockety things and therefore there was no need to purchase a universal plug… now I have no means to charge my phone, pda, or camera…. Hurray!
I’m going to freshen up.
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Much, much later (17:50): I’m in the hotel again, waiting for time to pass, as we have an appointment with our family members at 8pm. We’ve abeen about Buenos Aires looking for antiques for dad. He has this wonderfull idea of buying antiques and taking them back to Europe to sell at a fantabulous profit; sadly a million others have the same idea and there is an entire industry of not cheap antiques on sale to the public.
One thing I can say good about my dad is that he taught me something useful I about women; they love compliments. So anyhow, we were in this Rolex shop and to pass the time I decided to speak to the girl working in there, asking her what perfume was she wearing and how nice it smelt on her, this was taken very possitively and before I knew it she was trying to invite me to some dance club on friday night… well it was a start!

31/03/05
Its 13:00 and I’ve had the pleasure of walking around the minicentro of Buenos Aires with dad, in which he picked up every piece of paper being handed out, I do wonder if he does this to annoy me; since he sometimes waits or even asks for the flyers. A great example of how much I’m hating his company, he was sauntering behind me earlier, when all of a sudden when I looked back he wasn’t there and the last time I had seen him he had been speaking to a prostitute handing out flyers advertising her whorehouse. I looked high and low for him and was terrified he had been mugged or god knows what. I was beginning to wonder what I should do, when all of a sudden he came from some basement alley in a rush telling me (later) that the whore had invited him in for a drink. It makes me so furious how thoughtless he is. He has also told me that we are not going to Uruguay because he has been there already and he doesn’t want to see it again.
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(later) I just remembered to mention about our new endeavours with Rolex, I was dressed as usual, leather jacket, chain and baggy trousers and his highness decides we have to go to an official Rolex dealer and ask about prices. There we are deadpan faced in this jewlers, pretending (unconvincingly) we had $30k to spend on a watch.

01/04/05
Had a bitching session with dad this morning about how I always knock his ideas down and how I am not a listening and how I ought to do all the things he believes he does, like: reason with an idea, be the big man by not responding in a confrontation … and so many other things that just made me smile and stay quiet as it was a polite way of dealing with the absurdities he saying.
Having said all this I am now going to tell you all about what I have been doing today. After breakfast… I changed some money up to pesos, followed by a hike around looking for the Ferry company’s ticket office (to Uruguay) found it then discovered I was not able to make the booking without my passport. Started walking back to the hotel and found dad (still ranting to himself), so we took a walk around the west end of the city, where he was tempted by some glasses that where being sold as 1940s European, although I’d struggle to believe they where 1980s … Anyhoooo, we walked a bit further to some army surplus and I bought a nice Japanese lock knife for about �2 (new). Since then we have struggled our way back and he is now crashed on on his bed… And I’m off to buy my ferry tickets to Colonia.
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One thing I’m finding rather strange about this place is that people are using their cellular phones as walky-talkies with the hands-free on and with intermitant beeps jumping in when possible.

02/04/05
It’s been a funny old day today. Started off meeting Toto and going to a suburb or district of Buenos Aires called: Boca. There we looked around at the shanty style shops and stalls mostly selling antiques and pieces of art. From that we followed onto looking for a place to eat, the place is infamous for tango and I couldn’t leave without trying to tango and of course we would have to dine in a tango serving restaurant ..which was fun. After that, we took a stroll along the river till we got bored of walking and caught a taxi to the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires called: Tortoni; which was rather bland.
Much later and after parting company with Toto, we went to find something to do. After deciding on Houdini the musical (in Spanish) instead of some queer tribal dancing spectacular or the overly buxom broad in the show that had no name; we found a restaurant to eat whilst we waited for the show to start. To our amazement we reunited with the whole restaurant crew of the previous restaurant (dancers and all) walking in for a group meal at this restaurant. They were as polite and pleasant as they were when they served us (and there I was thinking that they were just doing it for our money).
So I went expecting another crappy musical and was pleasantly surprised ..what can I say? It was good! Made me chuckle at many occassions, particularly at the comencement of the show… we all had to stand up and sing the national anthem of Argentina….any ideas how that goes?

07/04/05
Sitting waiting again and now I have time to write down my thoughts again. I’m currently waiting for my plane in Aeroparke airport (domestic flights only), I’m heading off to Calafate for a couple at nights before going to Ushuaia. I have just done something truly ingenius, I was looking around the toilets trying to find the urinals… It wasn’t until two women with indignat faces walked in that I realized I was in the ladies. Yesterday was a little uneventfull, although I did buy myself some nice clothes for this trip. I also have now got trapped in this jewelery selling scheme, lets just see how long this one lasts.

08/04/05
After arriving yesterday at windy ”El Calafate” (I should point out it is El…) airport, I was picked up by some agency people and told about the many excursions available, I decided on taking the 4×4 excursion up to the ridge of the mountains over the town of El Calafate. Which took us up to about 1100 metres above sea level, the view was to die for and the wind was to die from (about -10C windchill at about 70 mph), when we parked up the Land Rovers were rocking almost over from the mere strength of the wind.
Today however, I went on a slightly different excursion to see the glacier of “Perito Moreno” (Argentina’s largest and consequently most famous glacier), this too, was gorgeous and I have decided no photograph of what I’ve taken will do any of it justice.
Tomorrow I’m off to Ushuaia…keep you posted.

10/04/05
Here in Ushuaia the scenery is pure death! (moreso than El Calafate). Today I went on a excursion to the lakes. These excursions are really making me sick, trapped with middle aged idiots who film and photograph anything and everything so stagnantly that it really kills the location. Anyhow, we had a small stop at a Husky breeding place was really quite speshal.
The hotel I’m staying at (hotel Ushuaia) is superb; very comfortable double bed in which my feet do not overhang the end, a view that overlooks the town/port and the Chilean Andes (on the other side of the Beagle Canal). The walk into town is about 25 mins down hill but that is fine by me as I need the exercise.

12/04/05
On my way back home now. Ushuaia vas truly beautiful, highly recomend the place.
A lesson I have learned today has been about personal space. I have come to notice that people are arrogant cunts, what this means is that when out of courtesy I offer space for someone to adjust themselves whilst getting on the airplane the people take full advantage of this and push further…(writen presently)… I ended up sitting next to this fat man on the plane who occupied the whole arm rest with his gut, I alighted that plane with an ache in my neck and shoulders and lower spine from sitting twisted next to this whale of a man.

posted by a-v0id at 10:20 pm & filed under Travels, Uncategorizable! | 1 Comment »