20 years and in the last three has been using the format based on Strictly Come Dancing. They call it Bailando por un Sueño (literally dancing for a dream) but there´s no foxtrot in this program.

First, they introduced the contestants, all women, all with significant amounts of plastic surgical intervention (helium filled breasts, lips the size of Lithuania, arms with all the fat sucked out... the usual). As they were introduced the host, depending on the percieved hotness of the contestant would point out something unusual at the back of the studio so that the camera could linger on the contestant´s lycra clad (or barely clad) bum. It was reminiscent of Italian TV.

Then on to the dancing... over a dozen weeks they did the lot from the merengue, the Axe and the cha cha cha to Reggaeton and Hip hop... Reggaeton was the rudest dancing I´ve ever seen... I can´t even begin to describe it, just, very very rude.

Diego Maradona was a guest for a couple of shows and he seemed to give marks based solely on the tightness of costumes (or lack of costumes). The winner last year was a transvestite but no such shocks this year.

  ¶ 1:46 PM 0 comments

  So this is what we see from our cabaña, the cerrito uritorco. We haven´t been up it yet because
a) The days where it hasn´t been 40C it´s been cloudy up there
b) I´m really lazy

It was a little windy on Christmas eve so Heather and Flaco came over to the cabaña and we had a little parrilla (and a fair amount to drink... I´m now used to drinking like a porteño so I was under the table...) for our Christmas meal. Christmas day was spent reading and watching the swallows dipping for insects. Very unlike previous Christmases.

I´ve been trying to find a photo of where we went yesterday because the PC here doesn´t have USB so I can´t upload photos (it also has a really sticky keyboard grrrr). We went to San Esteban (appropriate for St Stephen´s day no?) and saw the Molino de Eiffel- an old, rusting, very big windmill that used to be for pumping water. It was designed by M. Eiffel for some exhibition and brought over by boat and train. Now it´s in the middle of nowhere but it´s pretty impressive.
  ¶ 1:50 PM 0 comments

  The photo is one of our neighbours here in the Cabaña (un saltamonte is what they call a grasshopper: this chap was about 10cm long and when he flew lazily around in the evening light he dragged his legs). There is a distinctly unchristmassy feel here, largely due to the 40 degree temperatures and the lightning storms at night (although today it´s much cooler and raining).

We had a day swimming in the river a couple of days ago so now both of us are a little pink, and not because of the leeches we had to pick off when we got out.

At the moment there are huge thunderclaps and torrential rain, so we´re sitting here in an internet cafe hoping it goes away before we have to walk back up the hill to the cabaña which will take us twenty minutes.

The landscape here is granite hills, like the lake district but not glaciated so the valley are all sharp v´s. The place is very green now, the rains fall in summer not winter here, and the majority of trees are spiny. Flaco (Heather´s husband) said we´re on the same latitude North as Algeria is South. So we´re spending the afternoons inside and the early evenings watching the hundreds of swallows,parrots and other birds, not to mention the guinea pigs (Conejillas de India) playing on the garden, although they may have drowned by now.

Have a good Christmas everyone.
  ¶ 2:45 PM 0 comments

  The title says it all, although in Spanish.

We're leaving the apartment tomorrow morning and killing time during the day (a long lunch, watch 'Children of Men' in the cinema, a long afternoon tea, aimless wandering.

After that it's Retiro bus station and the 9:31 'Suite Class' to Capilla del Monte (where they say 'yes' I guess).

I'll be taking photos and making the odd note so hopefully we can keep updating the blog while we're on the road (or, as is the case for the next two weeks: on our backs by the pool). Liz suggested we head up to the summit of Uritorco for New Years which sounds like a fine idea (especially because at the start of this year we went up Catstye Cam).
  ¶ 12:49 AM 0 comments

  After a week of 30 something degree days and blazing sun, the day of our last photo safari began with a night of torrential rain.

We went to Roy's birthday do on Saturday night, chilled out chatting and a good opportunity to say chau to a few friends (until February at least) but the storm which had been threatening, broke around midnight and we ended up getting a taxi after waitning for half an hour for a bus. It was a good job as two of the roads the bus would have gone down were flooded (more than a couple of feet too, one of the roads was blocked by a fallen tree)... the taxi driver had to reverse back up a one way street to avoid it.

It kept raining until Sunday morning so we weren't sure whether we would even go but eventually it cleared a little, not enough for any sun or anything, very british lighting. There were only five of us this time but it was another enjoyable outing, strangely subdued, walking around the slightly muddy and puddled paths of the Rose Garden. The Patio Andaluz in the photo is not meant to be a sunken lake. We finished with a coffee on (the excellently named road) Avenida Scalabrini Ortiz and went our separate ways.

Hopefully when we get back to BA in February we'll be able to tag along on another.
  ¶ 2:09 PM 0 comments

  So that's it for teaching for a little while. In the last two weeks I had been scheduled to do some fill in slots for teachers who finished in November and out of a possible 8 classes I ended up giving 3 (still got paid mind, it's just that the students had other things to do, like have lunch).

One class was with a Basque chap and, because it was his last, and only lesson with me, I just made him talk for an hour and a half. He said that the problem with Argentine women was that they were hysterical (what he actually said is the title of this post... we don't laugh at students, but we might chuckle later, when they're not around). He learned "highly strung" which he liked and then launched into a description of how Argentine women are thin, and stay thin by not eating, because they only want one thing: a man.

It was quite amusing, and not entirely serious, which I'm glad about because in my, limited, experience I've met many Argentine women who appear anything but hysterical, who are independant and like it that way.... that said, I have met a couple who have bordered on the moderately strung and have indicated that their lives would be much better if only they could meet someone....
  ¶ 11:03 PM 0 comments

  So, there we were in La Farola. It's a cafe/restaurant like a thousand others in the city, where countless Porteños have lunch, merienda (afternoon tea) or dinner. It has the classic seating, wooden table and chair sets in thick beech, each set is a square table big enough for two. This lets the waiters arrange the seating depending on how many people come in, I've seen tables flung together to seat 20. There are about 30 double sets of tables in the cafe, three rows of seating for four, ten deep, and another set of tables outside on the pavement (on Avenida Cabildo, a six lane two way main artery into the city). Along one side is the counter, it runs from front to back, the full length of the place. I usually pop in there on the way to Anglo School in the evening for a coffee (because, in this place, for three pesos you get a coffee, a little fresh orange juice, water and a couple of sweet pastries (usually filled with dulce de leche)) and I am always astonished at the number of staff. I counted twelve, waiters and counter staff and usually, at 6pm they are not particularly busy.

We went in there after Anglo School (just before heading to the cinema on the next block) though and it was a different story. The place was packed. There were 16 staff visible and they were all working at full tilt. Three girls were taking telephone orders and every couple of minutes a big chap would come out of the kitchen carrying a tray of chips the size of a turkey roasting tray. These trays would be wrapped up behind the counter and one of the army of delivery guys would scoot off on his moped. So in addition to 150 customers at any one time, they seemed to be feeding half the population of Belgrano too.

And the food? Well there was plenty of it and it was pretty tasty.

btw, the photo is of bar El Federal, much more photogenic
  ¶ 7:47 PM 0 comments

  We went to a Peruvian restaurant last night, about an hour's walk from home, it was a warm day, somewhere in the 30s and we could hear the sounds of football fans being excited by the last day of the season (Boca needed to draw to win the championship, Estudiantes, the only team that could catch them, needed to win, and for Boca to lose, then they would have a play off for the title). Boca were winning 1-0 at half time but we figured something was up when it got towards full time and the streets weren't filled with cars honking their horns. Boca messed up and lost 2-1, Estudiantes won 2-0 so there's going to be the final on wednesday at 5... I wonder how much work will be done that night.

Update: Boca fluffed it and after being 1-0 up, managed to lose 2-1.

The restaurant was full of, surprisingly, Peruvians, it was a cheap place and the TVs played loud salsa with 80's style videos. The food was okay, a little spicier than Argentine food generally.

As we left though it started raining and within 10 minutes the streets were flooded. Thankfully we got a cab home where we had a three hour lightning show.... hence the photo...  ¶ 3:07 PM 0 comments

  We finished work on Thursday at 9 in Belgrano and jumped on the subte (linea D from one end to the other, followed by linea E, because you can't easily get across the city, you have to go in to the centre and then out on the subte- but that was okay because it meant we completed the set, we've used all the subte lines now). We were heading to a gig that Winston (un amigo de flickr) had invited us to. It said 10pm start and included the word 'puntual' which suggested it would be no later than a 10:15 start.

So after arriving at 9:58 because:
a)we're British, and incapable of being late unless physically prevented and
b) it took us 58 minutes on the subte,
we stood on the pavement chatting to flickrfirends for half an hour or more (I wanted beer but we had to wait for the band playing before to finish).

Thea band we were there to see was Belladona, a noisy Ash-ian Rock Nacional (Liz says think of Lenny Kravitz and the White Stripes too) band. We weren't in the best spot to hear, the place was pretty full and we ended up off to one side at the bar drinking cold beer and eating panchos (before you ask pancho's what? it's a hot dog, and a big hot dog is a super pancho).

After the gig there was another hour of standing on the pavement chatting before a group of us were herded along by Inkel towards pizza. 20 people decended on a pizza place at 1:30am, the first was shut but the second, the waiters didn't even bat an eyelid. Beer and Muzzarella and Faina (the chickpea flour pizza accompaniment) for an hour or so before wandering home on the bus.

Fortunately for everyone, Friday was a public holiday, The Day of the Virgin.  ¶ 4:44 PM 1 comments

  Brett, he of the 10k fame, invited us to his birthday do. Originally it was planned to head up to Tigre and take over an island in the delta for the weekend (that would have been renting, not taking over in any military sense).

But plans change and we got the word to be at the Lobos bus company on Saturday morning, food was being arranged (with the exception of lunch that day). We met Brett's sister (who's travelling, in the Aussie manner, and has been for the last five months) and a bunch of his friends, a mix of French, Spanish and Argentine.

Lobos is a little town an hour and a half away on the little maxi buses (a little bigger than a minibus but not your full sized coach). We were heading to Club de pesca de Lobos, on the side of the Lago de Lobos, the big lake.

It was a very relaxing weekend, lots of mate, lots of lazing about, a little bit of rowing on the lake. Hector and Paola, an Argentine couple, brought the food in their van. Hector brought his fishing gear and we whiled away an afternoon sitting on the pier drinking beer, watching Hector cast his oversized rod and watching Oscar trying to untangle Hector's tackle (ooerr missus!) which took him three hours.

In the top picture, Liz is chatting to Charlotte, strangely ignoring the beer. It was a change to be speaking to non native speakers of Spanish, easier to understand than the Argentines who talk at supersonic speeds.

In the evening we had, what else but an Asado. Hector (the fisherman) underestimated and only brought 7 kilos of meat (!!!). The Argentine method of preparing the asado involves making a fire first (usually from sticks collected from near the grill, no firelighters here) and, once that's hot enough, tipping a bag of charcoal on top. Once the coals are hot, they're spread under whatever grills you have. It was bloomin' lovely.

Accommodation was in a casita rodante (literally a little house that rolls), known to the rest of us as an ancient caravan. A lot of people camp at Lobos (right next to their parrillas, which are permanent, and laid out in sets of four, with matching concrete tables twenty feet from each other. In the summer there can be as many as 1800 people there, I can't imagine the sight of 500 grills all going at once) but there's the option of the caravan too. No amenities, no gas, no water, just something with a bed and a door and a chance to avoid the mozzies.

Sunday was like a repeat of Saturday only windier and without the grilling. Oh and we had a breakfast of what seemed like sugar and mate (in reality, mate, with sweet biscuits slathered with dulce de leche (caramel)).

My stress levels are now critically low.....   ¶ 1:36 PM 1 comments

  Not a person... the creep is what happens at almost every crossing in BA. When the light is red for the pedestrians, they pile up at the side of the road and take a step onto the street, then two, then three... then you realise that they're really staking out their bit of the road. In the meantime there are usually taxi drivers and motorcyclists and bus drivers whose mental processes go something like "light's green, so I'm allowed to run them over" and they contunue thundering through, horns blaring. Any sign of timidity in the driver's behaviour and the crowd will immediately start crossing and only a particularly determined motorcyclist (or a bus that's really not stopping) will force them to wait again.

It got so bad that the city government (slogan: Actitude BsAs) has created the Guardia Urbana, the sweatshirt wearing, whistle blowing youths who, having failed to find work in swimming pools, now blow their whistles and officiously wave the hoards back... what they really need is El hombre del cruce verde, the green cross man, only for adults... probably with a gun, what the heck, you probably need Darth Vader to do the job here (if that leaves you scratching your head, well look on imdb to see who played Darth in the original movies).  ¶ 1:46 PM 0 comments