Lima - Buenos Aries

Another early start to the day as we had to be at the airport to catch our flight to Buenos Aries. The drive to Lima airport was quite fast as there was hardly any traffic on the road until closer to the airport. However once at the airport, there were tonnes of people. Poor Angie came to pick us up and told us that she was up until midnight collecting another lot of tourist. She must have had about 3 hours sleep. This was suppose to be her part-time job as she is still at uni. She had to leave us waiting at our queue as she had another lot of arrivals to meet. Given that we are now experts with the ins and outs of Lima airport, we were quite at ease to wait in the queue for our turn and then proceed to the next queue and so forth. (Note: For next trip – count the number of queues required to leave a place and time on queue).

Bye bye Peru and hello Argentina.

The flight over to Buenos Aries was okay. Diego met us at the airport as arranged. The drive to our hotel was pleasant. Buenos Aries' infrastructure is certainly much more extensive than what we saw in Lima. As we headed towards the city centre we saw wide tree-lined avenues, lots of nicely laid out parks, apartments, office buildings,many monuments and beautiful old buildings. What a change from the narrow cobbled stone streets in Cuzco and Puno and no more indian looking people around and craft vendors. Buenos Aries is just another big city.

After checking into our hotel (Plaza Marriott - Very nice big soft beds with soft pillows. Yes, luxury) we decided that we need to look for a place for dinner later on. We walked done Florida (Diego told us that we needed to watch our bags as this is the tourist street and there were pick pockets and secondly the locals don't shop here but at Santa Fe). There were lots of shops selling leather goods and cashmere clothing. Prices may be slightly lower than home but did appear to be that much lower to compensate for the trouble of having to cater the thing back. Along the way there were shop sales assistants asking passer-bys to go in for a browse, people selling various tours (eg. City tours, tango shows, etc), and sadly some beggars. While Cuzco and Puno were smaller and less affluent, there were hardly any beggars. The people there would try to sell something even if it was little packets of lollies. There were a few people sleeping on the streets.

We found several Irish and English pubs and popped into Jamieson's for a beer and snack. The calamari snack was delicious. If the music was not so loud we might had considered staying for dinner but alas it was too much. In our wanderings we ran into a restaurant and bar called Empire Thai. Why not eat Thai food in Buenos Aries. The place is owned and ran by yet another American 'refugee' named Kevin. We never really found out how he learnt to cook Thai food but he explained that the curry paste and various flavourings were prepared from scratch and not from jars. He told us that he was horrified to hear that even the Thai embassy chef used curry paste from jars. Here is Kevin's story:

• was a CPA that came to work at a branch of an American bank in BA
• bank got bought by HSBC
• got paid out and decided to stay in BA
• has 2 poodles
• has a friend (long term unwanted guest) camped in his lounge room for 18 months (puts a new meaning to couch surfing)

When asked if he was happy, he got all a bit strange and walked away. Anyway we came back later for another chat. Kevin told us about the history of the Plaza Hotel and the rich and famous that lived during the glory days of BA. To be fair, the pad thai and beef rice we ordered were very nice but it did seemed a little odd to be eating Thai food in BA. The daiquiris we drank were nice as well.

So far based on a very sample, the American 'refugees' we met appear to have very colourful stories to tell.