Buenos Aires

My brother Pete helped me set up this blog (thanks Pete) but it is my first attempt so my apologies for the poor formatting and sort of disjunctured timeline.....Ãalsoo difficult to navigate the internet and writewith theseeLatinn keyboards. Letters are in the correct locations but all other notations are mixed up. In order to place and @ on the screen you have to hold down the ALT key and then press the key numbers ¨64¨.....anyways as my trip progresses and I find internet access I hope to continue with postings.

First full day in BA was spent getting used to the time zone changes plus5 hrs and drinking lots strongong coffee which is served on almost every street corner in great form. You order a coffee but get a cafe late with 6 packets of sugar, cookies, and sparkling water.

Keep looking around fRobertwrt Duval (¨I love the smellnapalmapom(sp?) in the morning¨) who apparently lives somewhere downtown here.

Headlines of the English language BA Morning Herald http://www.buenosairesherald.com/ are about big protests in an Argentine city about 150 kms north of here on the Rio Plata. The protests are over 2 new pulp mills starting to be built on the Uruguay side of the river - one mill owned by a Spanish company and the other by a Finnish company. Residents of the Argentine city want the mills moved, are convinced that they will cause huge pollution, and are blocking all traffic over the bridge at this peak tourist season that the Uruguay economy depends upon. Uruguay obviouly wants the mills and needs the foreign investment to help prop up their economy. I think the Argentines are just envious that the mills are being builUruguayaguay rather than Argentina....These modern mills will have all of the pollution control systems, international reviews have suggested that there will be minimal environmental impact and the mills will surely create lots of new direct and indirect jobs for both sides of the border. In this economic climate they should be doing everything they can to attract foreign investment but in Argentina right now I think the main industry in this country is protest. Protests are a daily event, a summer past time for Che Guavera wanna be youth. There is so much repetitive protesting, for any popular cause, that water cannon trucks are permanently positioned in front of many governmentnment buildings downtown. The Main airport was also picketed today for some arcane reason and passengers flying out had to walk the last 1 km - bags in hand.

Anyway so much for my ranting.......it still is a very nice place and BA is a beautiful city, amazing old buildings, classic old cars, and the food...wow. We've been eating steak for evey meal...cooked to perfection every time and so good you never even think of putting and sauces on the meat.



Catching a flight to Mendoza tomorrow...we were going to take Southern Winds Airlines which looked cheapest on the internet but found out from locals that they were shutdown last week after caught smuggcocaineocane Spainspain on flights from BA via Lima.
Cute girl at the airport talked us into flying on LAN Argentina instead of the Aerolineas. Argentina.