Stuff we've learnt about Argentina

• All the cities are on a grid system
• And have the same street names (in every city!!)
• The Argentines are courteous and helpful. Even the taxi driver who charged us over double was friendly.
• It´s a lovely, safe country to travel around.
• Learning Spanish is hard. Understanding Spanish when people speak very quickly is harder. Understanding people speaking Spanish in a local accent and missing out consonants, with words from the local Guarani language chucked in, is impossible.
• Argentina is a VERY big country
• But one with a very good bus network
• It's definitely not Clifton. You can't buy pesto here.
• It´s very hard to get a cup of tea with proper milk.
• But easy to get good coffee.
• Frankly, eating steak in any other country is pointless from now on.
• When a child in Argentina is discovered to be vegetarian, the man demands to know which foreigner his wife slept with
• The Falkland Islands. Whew. Marked on all maps as Argentinian. Memorials to the war in every town. Signs everywhere saying "Las Malvinas son Argentinas". They really are upset about it.
• Cities stop when a football match is on (Argentina v Paraguay)
• You can make friends easily here if you make jokes about Chile.
• Cycling through the middle of a city is about confidence. If you stop, they won't wait for you. If you go, they might.
• Except buses. They just go.
• There are a lot of Pizza places here (due to Italian immigrants).
• Martin feels like a soft city boy compared to the gauchos (ranch workers) out here. They are tanned, can spend days at a time in the saddle, and carry very big knives.
• Despite it being at least 25 degrees outside today, everyone was in jeans and jumpers. Except us.
• The buses show quality films like the French film Asterix, with Spanish subtitles. It was quite good when watched like that.
• And lots of Eddie Murphy films.
• There are loads of film channels on TV, luckily most of them US films with subtitles.
• This is helping us have cheap nights in.
• There are entire sections in the supermarkets dedicated to tomatoes - tinned, in cartons, with herbs, with veg, with garlic... and yet we haven't eaten anything in a tomato sauce. Very suspicious.
• Rivers here are wide. They make the Thames look a bit pathetic (and yes we know it had a whale in it the other day. Still not impressive).

Overall feeling:

Really like Argentina, loads to see and do. Met very helpful people. We don´t understand why more British people don't come here. It´s great.