John:
Yesterday was very sunny, 28 degrees and a bit of a shock coming from snowbound Yorkshire.
We got to the apartment late, after messing about at the airport for an hour or so while we tried to find our luggage. Yes we were struck by the missing luggage thing... Liz had said when we booked the tickets that this might happen because the transfer in Frankfurt was only 40 minutes, and we landed 10 minutes late. So yesterday part of the shopping experience was the buying of emergency clothes.

We also met Florentina, the owner of the apartment. She was exceptionally friendly, or maybe not so exceptional but certainly friendly. As soon as she found out our luggage was missing she instructed me to take Liz shopping and told me where the best 'sheep' shops were. As with the other porteños (denizens of BA) we've met so far she apologised to us for her English... I can apologise for my Spanish, but not much more yet. The apartment is on a street that is as busy as the main loop in Leeds, and the buses have a bass rumble that you can feel through your feet. Noisy? not really, once Liz had unplugged the fridge, I'd turned off the aircon and the Porteños had gone to the milongas for their tangos.

Then we woke to grey skies and heavy rain this morning and we have spent the day so far walking, developing my umbrella skills (the pavements get narrow and the kiosks and building work mean that one umbrella is sometimes too wide and two is a real struggle. We tried out one of (the hundreds of) local cafes, Cafe 1234 is at number 1234 on Avenida Santa Fe. It's one of those dark wood cafes, there are a lot of them here, and it's open 24hours a day, it'll deliver a cup of coffee and pastries to your door... the staff all wear starched white aprons and are impeccably groomed. A cafe con leche and 3 medialunas (Sweet miniature croissants) comes to $5.80 (that's pesos not dollars, they use the same sign and sometimes don't say which they mean, sometimes it's U$S or AR$... I know this was pesos because that's what I paid with and I wasn't chased into the street with a stick). The peso currently goes for 20p and our walk led us past places that suggest we were eating in a posh cafe... I suspect our wages will be correspondingly meagre.

Photos will follow soon, check http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsjustanalias/ if you want....

Liz: Our luggage is on the way from the airport. It's always a relief to hear that it's arrived...even though it has happened to me (and various members of my tour groups) several times during the last few years. The apartment has a little balcony overlooking the street which last night saw its two little chairs strewn with our handwashed underwear and socks. We slept for 12 hours before being roused by the morning rush hour and the sound of rain, something that we were fully expecting, having chatted to some of my colleagues at Travelsphere who had warned me about sudden torrential downpours. It feels very tropical here to me (I don't think that was something I imagined Argentina to be) probably due to the enormous delta on our doorstep. There are huge flowering jacaranda trees and palms along the avenues. Today there were lots of big drops falling from them. I think I'm going to be having a few Bad Hair Days...it is so humid here my hair has gone very curly.  ¶ 8:08 PM