Hasta Luego BsAs

Well the time has finally come for me to leave Buenos Aires. The last three and a half weeks have flown by and tomorrow I head north to Iguazu Falls for a few days before heading into Brasil and really start my holiday.

Buenos Aires is an odd town. My impression of it is that it's an amazingly beautiful city with huge problems. A few of the Argentineans I've chatted to give me the feeling that people don't really know what to do here. Argentineans are very passionate about politics, and there seems to be a lot of mistrust of their polititians, which isn't surprising considering that the government prevented people accessing their money during 'la Crisis' in 2001. I can't imagine what would happen if the governments in Australia or the US did something like that.

I've mainly stayed in 'good neighborhoods', but there is a lot of poverty here, though I'm sure it's not as bad here as other countries in South America. Each night the streets are filled by people collecting rubbish from the streets that they can sell to recycling and other companies outside of town.

Well... enough of that!

Sadly, tomorrow is my last Spanish class in Buenos Aires. I'll be in Brasil for the next couple of months, where they speak Portuguese, so I'm hoping that I don't forget everything and undo Monica's hard work. I can generally get by and have simple conversations (really slowly) but am have been frustrated by a small vocabulary. I really need to do the mega-memory course!

Spanish Classes with Jim (UK), Philippa (UK), Andia (UK via Greece) and Monica (Our wonderful Argentinean teacher).

The plans from here are visit the beachside resorts at Florianopolis for a few days then spend a couple of weeks checking out Sao Paulo and Rio before heading to Salvador for Carnivale. Unfortunately there's about 35 hours of sitting on buses in there, but I'm sure I'll manage.

Luego.