Blog from Argentina

Well. The Boot Brothers are at it again, off on an adventure.  You’ll recall that they tend to get into trouble if they’re allowed to go off on their own so I make sure to go with them. “Lacey”, that’s the one that fits on my left foot, is very outgoing, he’s the trouble maker. He’ll go off to explore anything that seems interesting and will kick anything he doesn't like to the curb, while his shy brother “Toe”  ( his mother named him that so no one would think he was a “heel” ) is the one who holds his tongue and just follows along one step at a time.

So far on this trip they’ve carried me off on a short drive into the city in son Brendans BMW 320( he’s very proud of it), a wait at the bus depot then a two hour ride on a pretty nice bus up to the Airport in Auckland city.

A longish wait, ( we like to get to the airport with time to spare) and we boarded a very nice Air New Zealand flight to Argentina.  The flight was 11 ½ hours which is a long time to be confined to such a tiny space but the seats on Air NZ are better than those on most aircraft so we were ok, able to sleep some and were well fed.

I watched “Suicide Squad” which was entertaining and “Petes Dragon”.  Not exactly intellectual stuff but it passes the time.

 Air NZ has just won the award for the worlds best airline, for the fourth year in a row! The service, the meals, the seating and the inflight entertainment is as good as it gets in cattle class. Recommended.

Buenos Aires, we arrived mid afternoon, but by the time we got ourselves through the very efficient customs and Immigration, got to our hotel and had a short break, a walk and a meal it was time for bed, after all we had to be down in the lobby for our taxi at 3 am. 

We wont get to see the city this time, about all I can say about  this part of Argentina is that its flat and busy, we could see the skyscrapers of the city off in the distance but with such an early start in the morning we couldn’t risk getting lost trying to go into town.

The Holiday Inn is a very nice, but typically western hotel, the kind you’d find in any country that handles a lot of travellers, sort of generic four star.  But the bed was comfortable, the meal, after some extended discussion in English with a waiter who only spoke Spanish, was good, and the desk service in the lobby as good as it gets.

3 15 am, a very zoomy cab ride back to the airport and a really slick check in, and here we are with an hour to wait before we head to the boarding lounge.

I like to look for differences when we, the Boot Brothers and I , are travelling, and cars are one of the “differences” that I watch for.  Renault and Citroen, with a good seasoning of VW, and a few Japanese built ( rebadged Mazda)  Fords make up the bulk of the vehicles, The trucks are almost all European, the buses Chinese or French, and most are modern and in fair condition.  Interesting, the only American vehicle we’ve seen was the worlds rattiest Ford F100, and believe me I’ve seen some ratty ones but this one beat them all.  Interestingly all the many many motorbikes are Indian, that’s not the “Indian” beloved of the USA vintage bike fans, but little 125cc bikes from India.  Thousands of them, like flies among a herd of cattle.

I did spot a very late model Bently Continental!

So as I write the Boot Brothers are under the table, conspiring with Dennys flower power shoes. There seems to be a lot of fraternisation going on under there, and while I’m glad that they’re getting on well, there seems to be a lot of giggling going on and I’m worried that unless I make sure that they’re put at opposite ends of the room at night they’re going to be getting into mischief.