montevideo

We made our way back to the mega bus station for a long overnight bus journey to Paraquay. 10 hours to the capital of this small country. Border passing was easy. No fruit control thank god. It was early morning when we arrived. Me, knackered. Jumped in a taxi and thankfully we found a nice, comfortable hotel pretty quickly. Good price too.

Montevideo is a nice, quaint place. In its glory days it was booming city with its fortune based on the beef trade. European and North American markets couldn't get enough of it. Many of the city's magnificent buildings date from these times. Some are in good shape especially around the centre but if one walks a little beyond there, it is sad to see many buildings crumbling away. If they aren't already falling apart then they are simply slums.

A bloke called Artigas is their national hero. Credited with winning their independence. In the main plaza, an impressive underground mausoleum is dedicated to his memory and is quite tastefully done. It is the first such mausoleum I have come across in a non-communist country. We didn't get much beyond that in the first day due to continuous rain.

The next day though was a little more successful and we got to see the celebrated Puerto Merado. This is an indoor market that is really just a temple to meat eating. There are a number of individual eateries but they all share a common feature, a massive BBQ. We thought we ordered quite modestly but still have a farmyard arrived on our plates. It is quite an experience with live music, hundreds of people and a festival like atmosphere. Naturally, everyone and his dog was sporting a cup of mate and the more daring a thermo flask for on the move refills.

There are two Irish boozers. Pretty good ones too. Met a girl called Gabrielle whose father is a bigwig in the city or so she said. I believed her anyway as she lives in an exclusive apartment in the main square. I wasn't allowed in and had to wait for her by the statue of Artigas. I never got her telephone number but then again, she works as a psychologists so she probably figured out that I'm a proper loon!

buenos aires

It was an ordinary five hour coach ride up the coast to Buenos Aires. The only thing that began to get on my nerves was that it didn´t stop at all on the journey. What about me! What about a smoke! The coaches in Argentina are excellent. They have no need to stop. They have TV´s, tiolets, coffee machines and very comfortable seating. But I WANT a smoke!!

So when we arrived at the main bus station Retiro I was happy to be again free to destroy my lungs. It is a gigantic place. Over 100 platforms. It is a feat of logistic excellence that it functions so well. Its size can mainly be explained as there is no rail system to speak of anymore in Argentina so the coach is king. Soon we were in a taxi with some greaseball who did a good job of explaining some utter nonsense about the way the meters work in Buenos Aires. It shut us up but we have never been to the city before so what do you do. The upshot was a fare about twice what should have been charged. Wank*r!

The hotel was central but disappointing really when one considers the cost.I have always wanted to go to Buenos Aires (Fair winds) and I wasn´t sure why. Maybe it was simply the sound of the name. Or it was probably in some way to do with my youthful adoration of Diego Maradonna. The best footballer of all time,. I would say. Whatever the reason my first impressions were positive about this city fo 12 million. I found it to be clean, organised and very European in temperament and feel.

This would be the first of a few stops I would make in Buenos Aires. This stop was primarily intended to allow me to make an application for a new passport (my current one was running out of visa pages). The Irish Embassy would need a month to deliver a new one to me but at least I would be allowed to retain my present passport in the meantime. The application would have to be processed in Dublin. Fair enough. The trouble for me was getting out of bed in time to get to find the embassy and sort out the papers. After a failed attempt to find it and then to be parried next day by some utter lazy b*tch who simply didn't want to accept the application because 'It's not my job!', I finally made the application and was free to proceed to the next destination; Uruguay.

One thing that struck me as I made my daily pilgrimage to the Embassy was the private worksforce that supports the local uber-rich Portenos of the area of Recoleta. Dog walkers who walk up to a dozen dogs at a time! Maids out with the masters kids! Cooks running to and fro collecting groceries for the day. Chaffeurs polishing top of the line Mercedes! Security personnel covering the heavily fortified apartment blocks! A whole industry.

Argentina was pretty much an exception as a destination for Irish immigration in that it is a non-English speaking country. Most of the immigrants arrived during the famine. Apart from the numerous Irish pubs there is little sign of an Irish community. But just like Dublin, a week before I arrived in Buenos Aires, they had intoduced a smoking ban in public places. Needless to say my pub drinking was curtailed.

mar del plata

Mar Del Plata is the seaside playground of the middle classes from Buenos Aires, at these least days. Back in the old times, it was the preserve of the upper crust. Some of the grand old buildings testify to it. It gets such attention as it is not too far from Buenos Aires (five hours by road) and it has extensive and beautiful beaches. 20km of them.

The weather was nice enough while we were there but it isn't summer and not very hot. Not really swimming conditions. The multitudes have yet to arrived. That begins in December and during the summer season, it is said, the beaches become so crowded that the sand on them is barely visible. All we really saw was the occasional oddball frollicking about in the cold surf and the industry of youngsters assembling countless, what I can only describe as beach huts.

In line with all other places I have been in Argentina, there is a shrine to the Falklands War. This one honours the score or so who died that were born in Mar Del Plata. I don´t want to show disrespect but it was not exactly Stalingrad in magnitude. I continue to be surprised by the intensity of how the Argentines feel about the war. Aside from the dead and the defeat, I think the Argentines feel most strongly about the nature of their defeat. The speed and thoroughness of it. It was a humiliation really (but what else should one expect when a conscript army takes on a professional army). They are Argentines are proud people (justifiably so, in my estimation) and what happened on those dreary, windswept islands hurt their national psyche rather deeply.

Anyway, onto less profound ground, Mar Del Plata is home to a jolly bunch of 800 large, tremendously smelly, loud and sometimes irritable sea lions. They stink. Phew! The colony is natural. They occupy a side of the main harbour and lounge about barking at each other most of the time. When the trawlers return to port they go crazy. The benevolent fishermen throw the unusable catch plus entrails to them. That´s their main activity other than slobbering about, rolling over each other and basking in the sun. They take absoltutely no notice of the numerous humans standing only a matter of feet away. Gawking from behind the safety of a metal fence I should add. Despite the whiff, it is a interesting spectacle.

It reminds me of another thing about the Argentines. They are not out to commercialise everything like some in Europe. If this sea lion colony existed in say, London, then the local counsel would sell of the site to some investor on the grounds that they are better qualified to efficiently handle the ecology and preservation of the colony. Yeah, yeah. The colony manages itself well enough. The local authorities here provide for the little old lady with the lolly pop stick who waves on the traffic to prevent conjestion. If locals want to see them, then just pop down.

A quick walk along the beach of Mar Del Plata and you will note that many other pursuits are free too. Bowls, squash courts, volley ball pitches, etc, etc. What´s more, they are used. It is refreshing to see that although the Argentines are capitalist by definition, they are not yet obsessed with milking everything for money when the opportunity seems ripe.

Oh, and one of the main statues is to a man from Co Mayo who happened to be the founder of the Argentine Navy, Admiral Brown.