Saturday, 1 January 2011

Or SLEEPLESS IN SYDNEY TO SLEEPLESS IN BUENOS AIRES

You think you live in a quiet neighbourhood until New Years Eve and you have a flight out the following morning. I can understand fireworks going off at midnight but what’s with still letting them off at 3.15 am! Talk about party central!

Anyway, after a sleepless night I checked in for my flight to Buenos Aires and in transit briefly caught up with Robyn and Ken from Melbourne who will be on the Veendam cruise. Through an online forum called Cruise Critic (CC) I have already been in contact with a small group of fellow passengers on the 17 night Veendam cruise from Buenos Aires to Santiago, via the Falklands and Antarctica. Robyn and Ken are the only other Aussies in that group but they flew out to Rio before meeting up again in Iguazu Falls.

My Qantas flight was a direct one to BA, 13 hours, and not a lot of passengers – so few that nearly everyone had an empty seat beside them. Watched 4 movies and didn’t get much sleep.

After doing some research I decided to use a Remise to get from the airport to my hotel – Remises are somewhat similar to taxis but you pay up front at the counter and then are escorted to your driver. This turned out to be a very good deal, as apart from being cheaper than a taxi, with BA recovering from New Years Eve and gearing up for the start of a huge Argentina to Chile road rally, a lot of the roads were closed and we had to go quite a circuitous route (or so I thought) to the Sheraton. If I had been in a taxi and paying by the meter I would have thought I was being ripped off left, right and centre. Because we had so many detours, it was hard to get a sense of direction in the city.

The ride from the airport took us along a tollway which was pretty empty, past browning grass similar to home during the drought but what struck me were the trees. No Eucalyptus (which might sound funny but I’ve come across them in most other places around the world, including the Greek islands, USA and even Easter Island) and most of the trees I didn’t recognise. Considering BA has a similar climate to Sydney I thought this was unusual – obviously a very heavy European influence.

The outer suburbs looked rundown with neglected buildings made mainly of concrete and flat roofs. It was only as we got closer to the centre did I see why BA has been dubbed the Paris of the South with its 12 lane boulevards and historic buildings. I still think whoever made that comparison must have been smoking some pretty good stuff.

With everyone sleeping in after NYE and then having late checkout, I couldn’t get my room allocation straightaway but had to wait several hours. Once in my room I crashed for a couple of hours then went for a walk to find something to eat. I can’t believe how empty the streets are – everything is shut and there’s hardly any traffic or people.

The first song I heard on the radio here on the way in from the airport was John Farnham’s ‘The Voice”. Also the main power sockets are the Australian 3 prong. But after these 2 little reminders of home, other things are done very differently. I watched the end of a polo match on TV (it’s obvious that one of the criteria for being a polo player is to have movie star looks) and when the home team won, smoke flares were let off in the stands (without everyone running for cover) and the horses and their riders were mobbed by enthusiastic fans. The main player was nearly pulled off his horse by fans wanting to hug and kiss him (and I’m talking about middle-aged male fans) and his horse was unfazed by the whole thing!