Tchê tcherere tchê tchê!!!

My 7am wake-up call in Buenos Aires came from someone else's blackberry messenger. I attempted to find it for a good five minutes before remembering it wasn't mine because my blackberry was back in England! 

After this rude awakening, I treated myself to an indulgent breakfast of coffee and medialunas (mini croissants, but very different to the kind you buy in supermarkets because they are so fresh) and headed off to the ecological park.

I passed about ten rodents (the size of rabbits but with tiny ears) and I still have no idea what they are called! Let me know if you find out. I´ve found a picture of them on facebook, which I´ve included below.
http://www.facebook.com/PEUR4

I went jogging for about an hour and was racing with a University student for the last 1500m (I won xD). Then, it was back to Chacabuco (San Telmo) for lunch with Olivia (a student from New Zealand) and a shower. I had been told that Argentina is a country for meat eaters (as the stereotype goes, all they offer are the 3 Ps: Pasta, Pizza and Parrilla.) So I ordered the chimichurri beef and was pretty shocked to receive a slab of meat half as big as my head. It was very succulent and I did quite well and ate most of it, which was quite uncharacteristic, considering that I have only started eating meat again fairly recently (by which I mean within the last year or two after a 5-year stint as a vegetarian).

Dinner was with Matt and Paula, whose crazy canine, Manu, kept yapping and licking everyone´s feet. She´d rescued him off the street one day and her flatmates seemed wary of him.

 Paula is from Columbia and is doing a baking course here so she brings home fresh produce every Friday to the delight of her hungry flatmates. You´d expect her to be a bit tubby but she looks really healthy and has beautiful tanned skin and long wavy hair. She showed me her five tattoos, including an apple on her left shoulder, a tree stretching across her whole back and a woman in heels hitching up her red skirt on the back of her leg. I usually think tattoos are quite tacky and I´ve never thought of getting one myself. But Paula made them look beautiful, probably because her skin was so honeyed which meant the colours came out really well. She was practically a walking work of art. 

 Night fell and me and Alex had a long catch up. Then it was time to get ready. We left for the club quite early by Argentinian standards. Most nightclubs start at 2 but we went to the club that fits in with office hours and starts at 12 (stupidly early by local standards). Matt, Paula and Olivia had been out the night before and wanted to catch up on sleep so only 3 of us hit the road and all of us were from Oxford: me, Alex and a ex-Saint Paul's girl called Katy. The 2 of them clearly had moves and I felt really self-conscious next to them. But it was still a fun night and I really enjoyed the music, especially the catchy Brazilian Gustavo Lima song "Tchê tcherelere Tchê Tchê.." 

Another thing that made me feel self-conscious was the outrageous way Argentinian men were behaving. Katy and I got a fair bit of attention because we have light-coloured hair (judging by local standards). When we walked out, several people literally grabbed me by the back of my dress and pulled me towards them so I held on tight to Alex´s hand and managed to escape. Even old men are disrespectful and will call out "piropos" to you on the street. Cringey cringey chat-up lines seem to be acceptable such as "¿Crees en el amor a primera vista o tengo que volver a pasar delante tuyo?" (Do you believe in love at first sight or do I have to pass by again?) 

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The next day, I walked to Recoleta. It didn´t look very far away on the map, but it took me a good five or six hours to arrive. On the way, I stopped off at El Plaza de Mayo. Or rather, the protest stopped me. I was both worried and exhilarated by the demonstration where gunshots fired high into the air made me jump and the beat of several massive drums seemed to hark back to tribal warfare. There were several people taking photos and I jumped on the bandwaggon. Two cheeky blokes caught me taking a photo of them and seemed absolutely chuffed, probably because they thought I was a journalist and they were going to be famous. They were beaming from ear to ear, which kind of spoilt the aggressive vibe. 

When I got back, I found out that protesting for a higher salary wasn´t a one-off event but more like an ongoing Argentinian passtime. When I arrived at Recoleta cemetry, the graves reminded me of a scene from a Jacobian play. Everything is bourgeois and sinister; and there is an aura of death and magnificence. Only a couple of people turned up to the tour in Spanish and my guide, Alicia, who thought I was Irish*, proudly showed me the graves of many revered Irish nobles, along with more mainstream figures like Evita Peron. There were flowers everywhere and men contracted by the families to clean each monument and, in some cases, take care of the stained glass in the interior. Every space is filled in the cemetery so you can only be buried here if the family of the deceased has not cleaned or visited their grave in fifty years. In this case, the plot once again belongs to the state and can be re-sold for an extortionate profit.

On my way home, I took my first colectivo (bus), which was a bit of a mission because there are no marked bus stops and it’s more crowded than the London Underground. Except that instead of swiping an Oyster card, I had no idea how to pay. Luckily, I befriended a girl by the side of the road, who showed me how to pay for my ticket and managed to persuade the driver to go on a detour and drop me right outside the flat! At 1.25 pesos, this ride was a steal! I will definitely be getting the bus again (If I can find it...)
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*I didn't want to publicize the fact that I was English because of the Falklands dispute. The graffitti made it pretty clear we weren't welcome