Buenos Aires and Montevideo

A long journey south saw us arrive in Buenos Aires, the holy grail after another long bus ride! Glad to be back in Argentina as it´s a lot cheaper than Brazil - we dropped our bags and headed straight to the nearest 2 quid ´all you can eat´joint ... classy ´ey!

Bs As is probably the most European city we´ve been to in South America so far, frst impressions were really good so we decided to rest up here for a couple of weeks and rented a small apartment in the centre of town. Being a resident means lots of siestas and late nights, a routine we fell quickly into ... although on some occasions we did show the locals how to drink too much and go home too early.

A short walk from the centre are Recoleta and Palermo, the wealthier parts of the city - apparently Argentinians have the most plastic surgery in the world and you can DEFINITELY spot the people who have had work done around here. Scary!

Recoleta cemetary, the place is like a small town with road names and resident cats. Eva Peron´s grave is here too.

After a few weeks living it up in Bs As we crossed the Rio de le Plata into Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Very quaint, another old colonial town we can tick off our list - we stopped here on our way through to Montevideo and so Rich could take the opportunity to force me into horse riding. I was pretty scared the whole time - having the token ´naughty´horse though didn´t help, it refused to walk through any water and kept making sure my arms and legs scraped every thorny tree and bush.

I know, I really was going that fast ....!

A couple of hours down the coast is Montevideo, probably the quietest capital city in the world! Only takes a couple of hours to see the main sights, a statue of a horse and a few museums ... next day we were ready and raring to watch England in the rugby final but it turns out that nothing here is open at 5pm on a Saturday! All bars were closed and restaurants were winding down - Rich and I had resigned ourselves to watching the match in the (empty) hostel until we stumbled across a small cafe with a TV, hurrah! Wandered in to find two other Brits (one of which I know through work, small world!!) who had been having the same problem finding somewhere, so the four of us got the beers in and watched the game.

We decided to wave farewell to Uruguay, lovely place but waaay too quiet to spend more than a few days. Back into Argentina for a spot of whale watching on the east coast before working our way down to Patagonia. Brrr.