Phil's Parilla Tip #1

If you haven't had mushrooms for a while, and you're at a Parilla, and you see something that looks like a mushroom, a Shitake mushroom maybe, and you pick it up, think for a while if you really remember what a mushroom looks like, then slowly put it back on the grill.

I'll admit I'm not the most adventurous eater, but I try. Last night however I had to elegantly, yet quickly remove (read spit out) what I thought was a mushroom during dinner. Turns out lungs look kinda like mushrooms... go figure. I had to recover by eating a Chorizo sausage and drinking a couple of glasses of beer.

Cementerio Recoleta

Vista
Originally uploaded by Phil Chan.

How many cemetaries can boast their own web site?

I spent last Saturday afternoon strolling through the beautiful cemetary in Recoleta taking photos. This is where the richest and most powerful families in Buenos Aires are buried and is chock full of cats that people have abandoned, adding to the calm and sombre feel.

I've posted some of the photos over on my Flickr page.

You can read more about the cemetary at their web site:
http://www.cementeriorecoleta.com.ar/

Laundromats and Lomos

A couple of days ago I started chatting to the Chinese family that run the laundry next to my apartment and it turns out that their son, Jing, is interested in studying engineering in Australia or the US, so we talked a lot universities in both places.

Last night, they were very kind to invite me for dinner and we went to an excellent Parilla, an Argentino BBQ. I've definitely gotten over my anti-meat stance from the first few days and have been eating beef 2, sometimes 3, time a day. I try to get a salad as well, but sometimes I forget and just eat beef and chips. It's hard to describe the beef over here, I don't know what it is, but they just know how to cook it. The beef is great in Australia, but we just don't know how to cook it compared to the Argentinos. The two main cuts here are Bife de Lomo and Bife de Chorizo, not to be confused with Chorizo (sausages, which are also amazing here). The Bife de Lomo is a better cut, but I find the Bife de Chorizo a little tastier. That could just be my unrefined palette though. Oh, and don't even get me started on the sauces :)

I definitely recommend a visit to Leo at The Gaucho Grill on Parramatta road to try it out. I don't think I'll be eating this much meat for the rest of my trip, so I'm enjoying it while I can... damn, I just got hungry again.

On the topic of food, I've also been spoilt by Dora who has been feeding me chocolate cake for breakfast. I would refuse the cake, but I don't want to hurt her feelings, eat each delicious homemade cake that she offers me.

I haven't only been eating though, Spanish is going well but is exhausting and we're doing tenses at the moment, so I think my sentances will make sense some day soon.

BA Nightlife

I recently changed my Spanish classes from the morning to the afternoon which has freed up my nights for going out rather than sleeping. I've only been out a couple of time, but both nights have been great so far.

On Thursday night Danny, Nic and I went to the equivalent of RnB Superclub, except that it's tucked away in the middle of the suburbs. oddly enough no sound was leaking from the building, so yo've got to wonder why we can't build proper clubs and mid-sized venues in Sydney. I think most people agree lack of venues is why the party scene in Sydney sucks so much. The flavour of the night was RnB, obviously, with a good dose of reggaeton. We got there pretty early, 1.30am, and despite being tired, I managed to last till 4am, which I was pretty happy about. 2am seems to be the time that most people head out over here, even on week days, with about 1000 people showing up eventually. The next day Dora congratulated me on becoming a real Argentino for sleeping in and doing a bit of work in the afternoon before eating dinner at 10 and heading out again. I feel that it's my responsibility to maintain this schedule in the name of cultural sensitivity.

Last night I joined a bunch of people from Danny and Nic's hostel bar hopping until we got to Sunset, a huge club a little out of town with a couple of thousand people spread between two rooms, one reggaeton and the other techno. We were lucky to arrive 10 minutes before the foam party started, and the night got crazier from there. There were, of course, go-go dancers a go go, wearing... well... closer to nothing than something. I really do love Buenos Aires. In an effort to keep Dora happy I stayed out till 6, which I hope she appreciates.

The clubs here have been great so far, with no attitude, cheap drinks and fairly cheap door prices as well. It's a welcome change to Sydney and it's easy to see why everyone here goes out so much.

Please stop freaking me out

I have a simple request to make of all Asians in Latin America. Please stop speaking perfect Spanish, it´s really freaking me out. I don´t deny that walking into a laundette and stumbling over Spanish with an old chinese lady is fun, but it is a little weird. In an effort to either convince the Chinese population of BA to switch, or to get over it myself, I´m going to search out Chinatown tomorrow for lunch.

This is just one of the differences that´s really caught my eye, or ear, since I´ve been here. Another difference is that nearly all of the streets here are one way. As it turns out, this works great. Far better than the trend in Sydney to take perfectly good streets and make them one way, or just "no right turn". The streets here are also really wide. At 60 metres wide, Av. 9 de Julio is one of the widest in the world, though I´m sure the 20 lane highway from the airport carries more traffic.

In Buenos Aires it´s hard to miss the multitude of buses that fly down the streets at speeds that would make Sydney bus drivers blush. One of the great things about the buses here is that they don´t really stop when you get on or off. A sign above the door informs you that the driver will open the doors when the bus slows to 5 km/h, but I´m sure we were going 20 this morning. I, of course, waited until a safe 3 km/h before I jumped out.

Buenos Aires - Part 2

It feels like much longer than a week since I arrived in Buenos Aires. I´ve spent most of my time here with a great group of people from Brasil, Columbia and the US. Unfortunately they´ve all left over the last couple of days but we had a great time exploring the city, eat more meat than is humanly possible and staying up late talking over a beer or two.

Cristina (Columbia), Mauricio (Brasil), Jenn (USA), Will (Brasil), Kareasa (USA), Me...

The meat here is actually freaking me out a bit. The flavour is far meatier than we have in Australia and I´ve been suffering from vegatable and fruit withdrawals. I finally bought some fruit today but have been thinking that I should finally become a vegetarian... of course I´m in the worst place in the world to do that so I´ll keep struggling through the mountains of meat for a bit longer.

Today I moved out of the hostel and started my home stay with Sénora Dora, a great, warm woman in her late 60´s who loves to talk. Fortunately for me she speaks English as well as Spanish, but I´ve been trying to speak English as little as possible and have been doing ok so far, but still have a very long way to go. Hanging out with Spanish speakers for the last week has definitely helped.

Buenos Aires is a great city full of beautiful European style buildings and houses, heavily influenced by the first govenor who was in love with Paris, and it´s easy to see why people consider it the Paris of Latin America. The weather has been absolutely shocking so far, so I haven´t taken my camera out yet, but it´s clearing up now so I´ll be posting the obligatory photos of churches and statues of men on horses over the next couple of weeks.

Despite being a great city, I´m not sure how I´ll handle the next 3 weeks. I´m starting to get itchy feet and am keen to check out Uruguay and other parts of Argentina and will be making weekend trips to the surrounding areas to keep me sane. It´s hard to see how I´ll last a year traveling at the moment, but I´m sure I´ll look back before I head home in December and wonder how I could have been so crazy.

Danny and Nic arrive tomorrow and it will be great to catch up and hear about their adventures. If you´ve seen thier blog you know they´ve definitely been up to some.

Hasta.

Touchdown

After a 20 hour flight I'm finally in Buenos Aires. A city of 13 million, this place is crazy. I'm staying at a big hostel called Milhouse which is great and has lots of activities to show people the city and hook up with other travellers.

Today we took a tour of the upper-crust part of town called Ricoleta. Home of the fanciest cemetary I've come across with lots of musoleums for the upper classes of BA. We made the obligatory visit to Eva Peron's tomb and our guide told us crazy stories how after Peron lost his 2nd term and fled to Spain, the government stole the embalmed body of Eva and hid it in different places to remove the symbol of the Peronistas. The body finally came back to Argentina from Italy when Peron returned in the 70's for his 3rd term.

After a checking out where the Spanish school I'm going to and a quick nap the hostel put on salsa lessons in the lobby which got crazy. The instructor, Jose Mas (Jose "More") was somehow able to get a room of sober travellers to shake their hips in ways which would make Diddy proud.

I think I've found the perfect cure of jet lag, which is to come to Latin America. With dinner starting at 11pm and constant partying, you don't get a chance to fall back to Sydney time and there's no choice but to acclimatise to local time.

Tomorrow is my first day of Spanish lessons, which will be good since everyone has been speaking to me in Spanish and it's a little embarrasing having to ask "hablas inglese?" all the time.

On a nerdy note, I stayed up till 3 watching the latest episode of Battlestar before I left Sydney... oh my god! How do they make television that good? I was a little worried they'd lost the momentum of the first series and were going down the religious path for the first half of the second series, but the military/personal tension is definitely back with this episode, and thank god. If you haven't seen it and can get past the fact it's in space and has evil robots, which is really not a bad thing, you should check it out.

Luego!