How not to do your first day in Buenos Aires

After a 20 hour bus trip, we arrived in BA, to have my bag stolen about 10 minutes after we got there. After realising we didn't have the address for our hostel (rooky mistake) we made our way to the internet cafe where I put my small backpack down between Matt and I. There was no space for someone to get around us, and I have no idea how this guy got to my bag without bowling one of us over. <But, next thing we knew my bag wasn't there anymore and a crappy little black bag was. We then spent the next 3 hours in the police station. So much for our first cruisy day in Buenos Aires.

After that though the day picked up, right near our hostel was the big Sunday market, so we strolled down there for a while checking things out, everything from textiles, to mate gourds, to international adaptors (if we'd known how hard it was going to be to find that anywhere else we would have snatched it up on the spot). On recomendation from our friendly hostel host, we headed down to a park to buy Bandiolas for lunch (giant steak sandwiches) and ended up being treated to a drum show on the steps while we ate. The other upside of getting everything stolen is I now have a pretty good idea of where you can buy almost anything in BA. Unlike Aus they don't do as many shopping centres etc here, but they do seem to have various blocks virtually dedicated to specific stores, for example I can tell you where the electronics, second hand jewellers/gold buyers, hardware, antiques, and much more (yes there was much fruitless wandering while searching for necessary replacements). I have wandered through virtually every neighbourhood around BA, if you exclude the outer suburbs and while we didn't spend a huge amount of time 'doing the sites', I feel like I probably have a much better feel for the place after 6 days than Rio in the same period.

Anyway, here are some random photos. Next update from Peninsula Valdez, Sea Lions, and Orcas, and Seals, Oh my!