Dont cry for me Argentina

Hola amigos!
I´d really like our first blog entry to be one telling you about the many highlights of Buenos Aires. I can certainly report that it is a fantastic city, lots of fantastic colonial buildings, plenty of convivial bars and restaurants on every corner and lots of interesting historical areas. The streets are full of my favourite trees, jacarandas, and for the most part you feel you´re in Paris. In San Telmo market you would swear you´re in Montmartre. BA also has its dark side 0 some of it could be sorted with a BA city council pooper scooper intiative but the extensive and chronic poverty is less easily fixed. Plenty of seedy types appear after dark when they start rummaging through bins . Unfortunately we came a cropper on our second day when we were scammed¨ the boys were squitrted with mustard from a tree, looks like bird poo and a couple of locals then *helped* us to clean them up, meanwhile *helping* themselves to Bruce´s wallet. Honestly, they just disappeared into thin air, it was like something out of Harry Potter! So instead of the tango show we had planned, we spent a fun evening on the phone to Australia cancelleing credit card, but not before a few unauthorised transactions had been made. We also made friends with the tourist police, who see people like us many times every day. Stable door, bolting horse but we will be super super careful from now on, I still have my cards so it is n´t a disaster though if I lose them it will be! At least they weren´t violent, hear plentyh of horror stories of people being kidnappend and driven to ATMs where they hae to hand over their pins.
Anyway, we put this behind us, went to Evita´s grave & the Evita museum yesterday. Also met Ben´s tennis internet friend Alejandro who I feared might be a pedophile but turned out to be delightful and good fun, cheered us all up. Faith in the inhabitants of BA now restored.

My spanish has been getting a real workout, seemed passable on the commute between Valentine and the uni but it def. needs a bit more polish before we arrive in Paraguay and Bolivia where English isn´t widely spoken. Sam just smiles and says gracis a lot , Bruce uses a lot of hand gestures and spanglish, Ben has learnt all his spanish from Shakira lyrics.

We are now at Iguazu heading to the falls tomorrow which we are really looking forward to. Going on a jungle trek then in one of those boats that take you underneath the falls.

Bruce has just handed me a nice cold cerbeza (beer) and it´s certainly the weather for it here, very steamy. So I´ll say adios for now, next update likely to be from Asuncion so all you Aussies listen up when Anton Enus tells you the temp in Asuncion, likely to be about 4 million degrees.

ciao ciao

Jackie
PS can´t go without telling ou about the 2 tango ladies who jumped on S & B in La Boca, they draped themselves around them, then Sam´s gave him a big juicy kiss right on the lips. Had it been the other one, he woudn´t have minded but putting it charitably, her glory was somewhat faded, in fact she was pushing 60! anyway, got a fantastic photo which if I can hold on to the camera for long enough and can work out how to upload photos to this site, you might see soon.

Adios for now
XX