The arse end of BsAs?

School is in the morning this week which is good as I can do some cultural stuff (the museums, galleries don't open until 12:00) in the afternoons.

We have drawn the prettiest teacher in the school for our last week, so all the Chico's are trying hard whilst the Chica's just roll their eyes into the top of their heads.

My time at the top will be short lived as we have some new students from Switzerland and Brazil, it is clearly no longer a level playing field as they more or less spoke Spanish before they got here.Not only that the Aussies have decided to give their livers a break for a few days.It is interesting that all the students are really nice friendly people & luckily they all speak good english.

Two of the Aussies reported back from their weekend in Uraguay (an hour across the River Plate by fast ferry). They looked around a bit, had dinner and hit the town at 10:00pm. The place was deserted, so they asked a barman "whats up mate?" he told them to come back later as it was too early......."ok, what time 12:00"? No no no - try 2:00am!!!So they got some sleep and went to town at 2:00 am - it was heaving. More amazingly was that the Bands dont start playing until about 3:30 am. These people need to go to BST or something.Wilks Punte Del Est is the place apparently.

I saw yet another dog walker on my way back from the MALBA art gallery. It may not be art but i thought it was funny.. Must have been a slow day eh?

A weekend in Buenos Aires

Friday was the day of the great test. There were a good number of people barely functioning at school & they were the ones that made it in! Thursday was Australia Day and the Aussies managed to hi-jack the school "gay" pub crawl resulting in many suffering badly. Considering class doesn't start until 2:00pm it had to have been a late one. It wasn't so much late as early - 7 or 8.00am was the most popular time to have got back to their hostels!
Luckily I had a civilised dinner with Eddie & Beto so avoided the carnage.

Oh did i mention i came top in the Test? How sad is that?! I put it down to Wilks coaching.

By Friday night they had regained an appetite for cerveza so a few of us went for a meal at La Cabrera in Palermo, the decadent bohemian part of town where the beautful people (and me) hang out. We got a table at about 9:00 and had a great meal with some lovely Malbec. Matt ordered the "Kobe" beef. It was about the size of a family joint but was in a league of its own. i had thought Kobe was "hyped" up but it was truly amazing (obvioulsy we all helped him eat it),
We left at about 11:00 pm and they were still queuing (with young children).

During dinner the Aussies decided to go to Punte Del Est & Montivideo for the weekend, i  would have gone but was playing golf with Eddie. So a few Pisco Sours later, i was done for the night.

"Pisco Sours" are a Peruvion, lemon based drink - for anyone at Imola you will know how bad things can get after a few lemon based drinks! They are delicious.

Saturday was another lovely day at San Andreas GC  with Eddie and his band of merry men. We took things a bit easier at lunchtime for some reason. Jorge, who is a petrol head had seen Fangio in his youth, admittedly only doing demo's but even that was something to brag about! Aparently his birth place is Tandil, as i am passing near there i will try to pop in as there must be a museum.

Sunday morning was an early start as Eddie had invited me up to his country residence, a place called Pilar. It was a good excuse to get out on the bike. I wanted to miss the worst of the BsAs traffic so headed off at 7:00.
I checked with the garage what time they opened the eveing before. Basically the guard sleeps there so you press the door bell when you want to leave. Did i feel uneasy when this poor guy came to the security gate scratching his nuts in his underwear? Funnily enough, i didnt take a picture of that. Anyway he seemed pretty sanguin about it, opened the gate and I left.

The only people on the streets were people returning from their night out (probably more Australians). I managed to get to Eddies without getting lost once. The embarassment was the Toll both. With a queue of traffic, parping their horns, it is a bit of a panic to get a few Peso's out of your bag - especially when you try to offer them a tea bag! Phil gave me a few last time i was in Cornwall, for my camping, and i forgot where i had put them.
I dont know why they were so unimpressed - at todays rate of exchange 2 Pesos is about 1 English teabag.


We played golf again - I dont think i have ever played this much golf in January before (certainly not in 35 degrees). Mayling is a gated community and as you can imagine the houses that line the golf course are not at the budget end of the range.

After a nice lunch with Eddie, his son & two of his mates (all hung over from the night before - obviously)  I made my way back, again without mishap.The Car park attendant was properly dressed when i parked the bike.

Eddies wife is back tomorrow that is the end of the golf fest - for him rather than me!

Sorry no pictures this time

Dont believe what they tell you about the beef in Argentina...........it is ten times better.

The customs computer obviously sprung into life yesterday  & they were keen (make that insistent) to exchange my hand written one for the printed version. Obviously i had to pay the 2 way cab fare!
I will only know if it is all ok when i try to get across the border in to Chile.

I dropped my laundry in to be done! The romance of travel eh?
Just about every street has a little laundry to go with the fruiterers, pharmacy, hardware stores, barbers etc. There are still shops that do photocoping - I can only assume people dont have the money, space or inclination to have Whites goods, that we take for granted, at home. It is charming, you dont see many empty units and they all wash their bit of pavement everymorning (probably t do with the amount of Dog Poo! That reminds me, their pavements leave a bit to be desired -holes & cracks everywhere plus unstable tiles. If you step on one of these (and there are many) the water underneath squirts up your leg. People pay good money to go to Hever Castle for their water maze.


There was a public display of outrage when the price of Buses and Metro went up from Ps1.9 (30p) to Ps 2.5.(40p).The 25%-30% inflation is killing them as their salaries certainly aren't keeping pace.

I thought i had seen a lot of dog walkers over the last few days - but this was a different league! In this little area of the park I counted over 100 dogs - probably about 8 per person walking them. If Landscape Architecture doesn't work out for Rosie i am sure she would enjoy this.

With my new found interest in Car Parks, I took a closer look at this one. The operator "Neuquin" (closest i can explain the name he gave me) was from Paraguay and he was very proud of his machine and took me for a ride up to the 6th floor. This places holds 250 cars (see i am learning something in class). Nice to see someone happy in their work. This is more than can be said for the Peruvian illegal immigrants protesting down town whilst chained together. Basically they are losing their ability to work after years of being here. They didn't look very happy.

Dinner in a local Parradilla (means BBQ i think) was 2 enormous sirloin steaks, each about 2 inches thick, cooked perfectly in the restaurant on an enourmous flame grill - Ps55 (about £8) - a coffee costs £2 (a nice one admittedly). How does that work?

Big day today at Spanish - we have a test to see if we get held back or go up a class - i am fed up with trying to conjugate bloody Spanish verbs whether they are regular or irregular. If only I had Wilks here to help me.

All 370kgs of her is here!

Early start this morning to beat the rush at Customs.

Sandra, the lady at Dakar Motos (who helps poor saps like me through the paper trail of getting bikes in and out of the continent) arranged for us to meet at the Petrobras station at the airport for 8.30am.

First stop the Qatar office to get the bill of lading & pay them (another) handling charge.
Then a walk over to the other side of the airport to get into the secure cargo centre. We are first in the queue and a few people start to arrive - office hours are not strictly adhered to over here, so 9.00 can very easily become 10.00.

Reasonably quickly Sandra had the big brown box delivered to the customs area by fork lift. We are not allowed to touch it until we have been allocated our customs officer. There are 3 - basically the good, the bad and the very bad.
Sandra comes back looking pretty glum. We have been allocated the 3rd on the list! Not only that, he sees the bike is for an Englishman and kicks off about Las Malvinas. At this stage it looks like I will get turned over and likely not be able to keep my spare tyres (Number 3 had a stand up argument with someone a few weeks ago - to the point he had to leave his spares behind).

They pull the crate apart to reveal the bike well packed (by the guys at James Cargo Heathrow) and everything in good shape, I do my best to spread out the bags & kit for the forensic examination - the equivalent of bending over and waiting for the snap of the surgical glove.

A guy in customs uniform arrives with Sandra and with an admiring glance at the Bike; "was she heavy to ride?" and "what are the chassis and engine numbers?" (obviously all in Spanish) he makes some notes and is gone! Now I am really confused.

After he had walked away Sandra said "you are the luckiest guy ever"  - our man was kicking off on someone elses case so Number 1 picked up our file and took over (despite number 3 complaining about that too). All done and dusted! I was able to get my riding clobber our of the paniers, get dressed and get the bike ready to leave. Ah not so fast Chico (a spanish equivalent of "Sonny")..............this all happened by about 10:30. Unfortunately their computer was having a bad day and would not spit out my critical paperwork (the stuff that will get me across the border). It looked like we were going to run into their lunchtime, which have meant another 2 hour wait - meaning 2.00 or 3.00 BUT Number 1 (or as i now like to call him - Javier) came out, apologised for the delay and presented a hand written form for me! What a nice hombre. Do you think a kiss on both cheeks was a bit too much for a first date?

The jacket draped over the bike was to try to hide the tyres in case No3 came out!

That just left me to pay the extortionate storage charge calculated per kilo per day. Thats how i know my Bike & crate weighed 370kgs!

One guy in the queue for the customs arse kicking process, turned out to be an American (a nice one). His story was that he and his mate drove down from the US in a 1969 Camero about 20 years ago and never left! Still has the car too. He is a lecturer in mechanical engineering and was trying to get some CNC machine parts in to the country (which is tighter than a drum on any imports currently - hence their preoccupation with bike and tyre paperwork). he got sent away without his parts (no not those parts).

And lo it came to pass, I got dressed, said thank you to Sandra and wobbled out of the customs area, onto the highway back in to BsAs and then got lost.Well at least i got to see another quarter of the city that i wouldnt otherwise have seen. Mind you it was bloody hot & so was the bike - being a "block" style city you can hit a red light every 200 yds!

I eventually got back to the right district with the help of some "white van men". The bike gets lots of attention as most bikes here are no more thna 125cc's so luckily i didn't make too much of an arse of myself.

My mind turned to Car Parks. I had not heard whether i could get in to my block's or not so went on a hot and fruitless search. Basically it is "flat land" - high density housing with lots of cars, the car parks have long term contracts with the locals. Me turing up on the bike was a non-starter.

It was a competition between me and the bike as to who would expire first - i was sweating buckets and the bike was at the top end of the thermometer. With never more than 200yds in which to get some airflow it was not looking good. I pulled in to yet another car park but this time I blocked the entrance, turned the bike off and took my helmet off.
The poor Indian chap (not the Sitting Bull or Restaurant shop type) was giving it his best shot to tell me that i couldnt stay. You didn't need a degree in Spanish to know that. I used my new found knowledge (of 24 hours earlier) to tell him i was prepared to book in for 12 days and pay the going rate for a car - (I think i may have been pointing at the prices on his board at this point rather than speaking Spanish.). he shuffled back to his counter and pulled out a board with pins in it- there was a gap at number 59. Reluctantly he let me have it. I didn't need a second inviation so jumped back on the bike and shot up to the 2nd floor. I had a chat with my new best friend as i left the car park, Jorge - he was a life saver!

It took me an age to unload, then relaised i couldnt carry it all back to the apartment so re-loaded the spares and tyres.With wonderful forsight i had packed the wheel lock (goes on the brake disk). Pity i didn't bring the keys though.



It seems the River / Boca match is not all it seemed. Eddie explained that, yes normally it is a big deal and it has to be experienced, but not this time. The match is to be held in a small and distant province (Chaco) some 700 miles north in a small stadium. In addition they will be playing for almost nothing, just a reduced summer tournament that gives no credit to the winner whoever that is. Bit of a shame as I took Wilks advice and had ordered some prawns.. 

It was nice to get back on the bike and it feels a little bit closer to the adventure

Back to school with a vengance

A return to education was not a little daunting. It was not made any more comfortable by the initial "quiz" to gauge the level of knowledge amongst the disparate group of students. Needless to say the average age was south of 30! Amazingly i was othe only Brit - Brazilians, Aussies and Germans taking the lead. There is one very strange American (the only person older than me on the course). He introduced himself and stated to all and sundry that his only interest was to meet women! He went on to say that he was sadly disappointed and Argentina wasn't a patch on Ukraine.

Having read Rosies school books for a few hours, I was pretty confident of giving a good account of myself. How wrong I was. It was a progressive question and answer paper and I answered Q1, none too confidently, and that was where it stopped. I didn't anticipate such an unhealthy regard for the correct grammar!

Needless to say i found myself in room 204 with the other dunces (including the pervy American). The teacher Carolina, looked pretty depressed after 5 minutes - a Rasta Aussie called Julian, 2 Germans, the Pervert, a decent enough (if Ginger) Aussie and yours truly.
However, she soon worked out our level and we had a pretty good fun time. The Pervert couldn't handle thefirst hour and left, never to be seen again - which suited everyone!

The afternoon passed quickly and i know more than i did. I suspect I will have forgotten it all by tomorrow!
The younger members of the various classes didn't seem to mind the "old boy" coming along for a few beers after class. The great thing about students is that they know the best places to get cheap beer!

After one or four, I made my excuses as I really need to be on my mettle for the Customs officers first thing in the morning. This is probably the biggest challenge so far - to get the bike through customs without too many "considerations".

i still don't have anywhere to park the bloody thing, so could easily end up with two wheels and a saddle by Friday!

Oh, there is great excitement as the "Classico" football match in on this weekend - Boca v River Plate. A must see apparently- so a few of my new founds friends and i are going to try to get tickets for Saturdays game.

I will let you knwo how the day went with the customs and whether i got back, in one piece, from the airport through BsAs traffic!

Hasta La Vista

An education from the Judge

Via the various travelling websites on the interweb I met up with an American who has just finished his trip from Nevada to Buenos Aires via Ushuaia.

Dave is an interesting character, a lawyer who has recently retired to the bench and sits by rotation. We had a coffee down by the marina and he kindly brought some maps, papers and books for me. What was immediately clear was that I will need to plan the trip more than I had intended.

Fuel stops (which I sort of knew), Accommodation and Ferry crossings to name the main things. I am also going to have to do more miles per day (on average) than i had intended. For example, when he came through Peru he averaged about 35 miph. The winds down in Patagonia reduce the range on a tank of fuel to 250 miles (sounds a lot until you see how far apart the towns are). Fuel is not awlays available at the stations and if they have it you  may be queing for 2 hours

On the good side, he talked of all the great roads and sights.Thankfully there were relatively few "this is a dangerous road" or "I was nearly killed here" as he scrawled on the old map.The trouble at boarder crossings and attacks (cobblestone to the head of a friend of his) were generally in Central America, which suits me, as I dont intend to go that far North.

After coffee we wandered up to the Presidential palace a big pink building. The Judge had obviously studied the history of the countries visited and made me feel rather inadequate so i will have to do some reading. We joined a tour of the building with a bi-lingual guide which was great, the only trouble was his two languages were Spanish and Portugese.Any way we sort of got he gist of it.

This is the view from the balcony where the Peron's addressed the masses. Just out of shot on the right were the armoured personnel carriers and the Water Canon so my attempts to raise the issue of the Falklands was quoshed.

This is a soldier who smiled a lot, especially when i tripped up the steps in my flip flops just after taking this picture!

The Judge was taking an unusual amount of interest in the art on the walls. They are celebrating 200 years as a nation so pulled in a few works of the great and good of Latin politics. Che was there along with Zapata, Belgrano and of course Evita. It transpires that the Judges mother (an artist &  teacher) lived in Springs NY at the time of Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko etc. He remembers them as a child, it sounds like they drank alot. One time, knowing deKooning didn't like water, they organised a sailing trip to tease him. de Kooning got so drunk he threw up all over the boat.

Just shows you never know who you are going to meet or the stories thay have to tell. Did i mention i felt rather inadequate?

Tour over, I offered to buy The Judge lunch - curiously he choose Chinese? Well, I suppose he had been eating Guniea Pig for 3 months so it must have made a nice change.

Golf at St Andrews (no not that one)

Eddie kindly picked me up just before 7 am and we went to his Golf Club in the suburbs of BsAs. It was built by some Scots who happened to be building a railway back in 1890. The club and the whole area ended up taking the name San Andreas. They held many Argentinian Opens there before championship courses needed to be so long. It is a lovely course but boy was it hot! It was estimated to be 35 degreees.They play an informal game (with a name that doesn't translate) amongst 3 four-balls and i mananged to contribute lots of poor golf to help our team lose which resulted in several "fines" in the form of wine.

Eddie's friends were a kind bunch of English speakers - Brian, a Scottish enginner born at North Berwick. He works for the National electricity company. As another flock of green Parrots flew over, he mentioned the menace they are to the cables (nibbling at them) in the north of the country. So much so that they issued the locals with free shotgun cattridges. Seemed like a plan but the locals used the catridges to take potshots at the glass insulators on the pylons! I remember doing something similar with Reg's air rifle in East Coker (until I buggered it up).Nico the Doctor was a nice guy who played better thn his 14 handicap and Peter. Peter was the Argentinian cricket Captain for 2 ICC World Cups and is still Vice President. He has travelled the world playing cricket and hosted the MCC with lots of England players. He also played Rugby to a high standard but never quite made the National side. His son Andy played for the National youth sides.Then there is Jorge who is car mad and drives a Lotus 7.

We had a rather good lunch with lots of wine from Mendoza and my first sirloin steak - this was about the size of a small family roast but was delicious (served with onions). I think we finished lunch at about 4 but before the end we were talking about the Argeninian Millie Millia (but it is 1000 miles not 1000 kilometers). Another of their friends is the organiser. I have asked to see what we would need to enter next October. We will discuss again next Saturday when i bellieve we are drinking again after some Golf.

The one thing that people had said before i came here was that, the people are very nice and helpful. I can honestly say that everyone I have met so far has been just that................I will meet the customs men on Tuesday so i will see if the same holds true after that encounter!

Florida (no not that one)

Had to organise some details for the bike which meant trundling back in to Downtown BsAs. decided to try the Metro as it was already hot at 9am. A week long season ticket cost me just about £4 - read it and weep all those of you commuting from Clapham.

Very nice lady at the insurance broker sorted my Argentian insurance in no time at all and i left with the certificate. She is also sorting my insurance for most of the other countries i will be visiting so that was nice (can pick that up next week). This cost the princely sum of about £95 for the year. 

From there I went to see Sandra at Dakar motos out in a suburb called Florida. They help with all the paperwork at the Airport & the customs officals.
She tapped in to the interweb and found that the Bike was on it's way from Doha - clearly the most "efficient" way to get a Bike from London to Buenos aires was on Qatar Airways!

I was armed with my instructions for more black and white photocopies and words of warning that, the customs will not like me having 2 new tyres with the bike - they will assume i have brought them in to sell (well with 30% inflation I suppose it may be worth it to some). I didn't like to mention the fly reel and rod!

Then Sandra pointed me in the direction of the Train station (because of a cockup on my part i had taken a taxi there). The ticket for about a 20 minute commuter train back in to the middle of BsAs was less than 1 Peso - about 14p. Read it and weep all of you commuting in from Surrey.. And it was a "real" Locomotive.

The streets are littered with lots of old cars still being used, I saw this one and at first glance i thought it was a GT 40 but on closer inspection i realised that it didnt have the correct door handles. Some of these old nails are hard to tell apart.

I think i found out why there are pick pockets and muggers in BsAs, this is a Police car! need i say more?

It has cooled down enough to go and read my book in the jacuzzi's on the roof. Personally I think it is a bit extravagent having 2 on such a small apartment building.

Woke early and decided to walk downtown (about an hour). The only people out at 7am were the cleaners and dog walkers - the Argies seem to like their dogs. This lady was one of many who collect dogs from the various apartments. Perfect job for Rosie and I am sure Kiwi would enjoy the company. To be fair there doesn't appear to be large steaming piles anywhere.
Had fun and games sorting out a local mobile. Unlike the UK there doesn't appear to be any chains of any type of store. It took me an age to find a shop that even sold phones in amongst the washing machines. that was great until i discovered it had no Sim card. Lots of broken English & even more broken Spanish it transpired I would have to get that from another shop & he thought there was one about 5 blocks away (this is in the equivalent of their Oxford street). On the way to this i found a book shop that looked a likely place for road maps (there are los of bookshops). The patron spoke good English and pointed me across the road to another book shop that did indeed have what i wanted - a few peso's later and i am the proud owner of an Argentinian & Chilian road map (you have to have both as the other side of the border on each map is greyed out). So then i got to the mobile phone shop - No she didn't have any sim cards only phones, neither did she know where i could buy one! Back to the helpful book keeper. He came up trumps with a suggestion about 5 blocks away (yes again). Yes he had sim cards & promptly put one in and fired up the Samsung - it didn't work. he tired another one and hey presto i am in business for a few more peso's. I then ask if i can set up a contract? No. How about pay as you go? Si but not at this shop, i need to go to the kiosk next door (well at least it wasn't 5 blocks away). And so i now had credit and a phone that worked. best thing was to find a cafe and a seat near an electrical socket to charge the phone whilst i read the mutli lingual instruction booklet. all went well until the multi lingual booklet wasn't - only Spanish! Another visit to another store & luckily a nice guy who spoke English rattled a few keys and finally i had a phone that i can use.
Which took me nicely to 1:00 and lunch with Eddie. He picked a nice Peruvian restaurant and ordered Pisco's - the Peruvian equivalent of a mohito but much nicer.With my maps he was able to point out the most interesting route for my trip south whcih is great. Eddie has been a star and whats more we are lined up to play golf! Good job i bought my shoes!

To round off the perfect day Robbo sent me a note, accusing me of restarting the Falklands war within 2 days of landing!

Las Malvinas

All I said in the bar was - "Thatcher's new film is out and is meant to be really good, especially with the Americans help". I didn't realise it was going to set off an international incident.

Ola from Buenos Aires

Very smooth trip with no hiccups apart from it occured to me that i had forgotten to pack some English tea bags so pinched a couple from the airport lounge! I will have to resort to rationing measures by drying them out and re-using the pair of them for the next few months. I suspect there may be slightly more challenging issues ahead.
I would recommend TAM airways (especially if you turn left when embarking). Arrived on time in Sao Paolo and the connecting flight to BA was equally good. From the air SP & BA are bloody big cities but the surrounding country appears to be one big farm with field after field as far as you can see from 35,000 feet..
BsAs immigration was a bit of a wait, I think they must have been trained in NY but my luggage was waiting for me by the time i got out. Also Eddie had kindly organised a car to get me to my apartment.
Apartment is in a nice part of town Palermo - tree lined avenues with lots of little "local" shops and cafes - I have not seen one "branded"  outlet yet.
i haven't been mugged yet but i d see one, whilst having a beer at a bar on a busy intersection. Young, shirtless lad (with a mobile phone in had) runs past followed by several middle aged men - there was only going to be one winner in that race! The old boys tried to get the traffic cop involved but he couldn't have ambled over to discuss the situation any slower if he tried. He clearly was not going to get in a sweat chasing the lad. All rather good entertainment - when it isn't your phone!
Bike arrives Friday but i won't be able to collect until Monday or Tuesday.. International trade doesn't work at weekends? I dont mind not having the bike but it is a bit rich to be charged storage for something you can't influence.
Off to explore and buy a few thigns like a map - it could come in handy later on this trip.

just checked in at Heathrow

It was bloody difficult to get the Bike in to those little trays they give you to go through the security x ray.

Also sounds like Matthew Marsh is in BsAs living in an apartment and about to take a Spanish course - the only difference between us is about 30 years!

Next note will be from the other side

Honcho in a Poncho

Last day at work & some very special gifts from my colleagues at work................

Heathrow Cargo Shed

On Friday I delivered the bike to James Cargo which made it all seem much more real & imminent!
They ship some interesting stuff but I just hope they don't get my bike muddled up with the Liquid Nitrogen canisters holding Bull Semen or the Shark! Did you know the shark has to travel in a doughnut shaped tank with a pump swilling water past it constantly?  I knew you would be fascinated.

Jim & Steve in the warehouse are trying to fill a wall with postcards so must remember to do my bit.

and off I go...........

Lands End

Have just been down to say good bye to mother,brother and daughter in Cornwall so it seemed a good idea to get a picture of Lands End. With a bit of luck I will be able to add one in a few months time from the bottom of Argentina & compare.