Buenos Aires - Plaza San Martin

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We moved from Palermo to the centre of town and a tiny "internal" (ie no outlook but with an upside of less street noise) flat for our second month and a small course of Spanish.

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There were a few improvements in town; the architecture included lots of "European" buildings, the dogs thinned out somewhat and the parks greened up.

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BA has some lovely old cafes and milongas (dance halls). We arrived at one of the latter around 11pm and waited until almost midnight before numbers increased and people began to tango. Old couples and young things doing what potenos do well into the morning in lovely shoes ..... often carried into the hall and slipped on at the dance floor.

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We visited La Boca which is either too well presented or freightening. A young German asked if he could walk into La Boca with us as he was afraid to go alone. Clearly we look tougher than we thought.

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Buenos Aires - Palermo

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Our first flat in Buenos Aires was in Palermo (about 6 or so km (and a gruelling, thief-infested subway ride on weekdays) out of the city centre). The area claimed to be pretty good ..... lots of restaurants, cutting edge fashion etc. Self-assessment rarely works. The whole area is crammed with mid-C20th flats (including ours) in 8 or more story buildings and it seems that everyone and his/her nana has a very large dog. Sadly, the streets are filled with the evidence.
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And the flat (second from the bottom on the left) ...... Ok, but (as always) smaller and less impressive than on the website. The owner though was very sweet and I suspect we had it pretty good by local standards. And extremely cheap by ours.
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We waded through an unusually long period of jet lag but settled in however to a steady study routine and the comforts of a breakfast/study cafe and a relaxed spot on a busy intersection for an afternoon drink.


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Christmas and New Years were fairly quiet events for us but the locals, without any apparent rules, fear of initiating a major fire, or regard for limbs, eyes etc, bought and set of fireworks in the streets with the same enthusiasm and disregard as we used to do in our carefree and ignorant childhoods on crackernight. The echoes in the canyons created by the apartment blocks were impressive.

A Friend of Dorothy?

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We went to a little jazz bar that turned out to be next door to the Stonewall Inn - a fairly quiet spot when we called in (one slightly scarey drag queen running a bingo game and two lads from Brooklyn) but boasting the first gay riots and celebrating the 40 year anniversary of same. Coincidentally, the 70th anniversary of "The Wizard of Oz" was happening in NYC at the same time. Judy Garland's (much loved gay icon (note our friend Dorothy's dress in the window)) death resulted in a fair amount of unhappiness and contributed to a general feeling of fed-upness that turned into "you've gone too far" when the police turned up for yet another raid. It's quite the gay Mecca. I went outside to take a photo. Chris (real name), an apparently friendy New Yorker, struck up a chat and offered to pick me up. Sort of complimentary for a nana. And an attempted pick up outside the Stonewall Inn could have been quite the NYC gay experience. But Chris (and this is not a criticism) was a man ..... and (also not a criticism) black .... very NYC but not very gay.
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Having failed with that particular gay scene we headed for the more mainstream......
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the Empire State Building (because you have to and we didn't last time),
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opera at the Met (Marriage of Figaro (rush tickets @$20 a pop!) and Tosca (standing room only)),
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cycling in Central Park,
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walking in the boroughs and a lavish Broadway musical (Mama Mia - also rather camp).
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Heaps of other stuff of course before heading off to LA for (the best things in LA) a swing on the monkey bars with the kids.

To NYC

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So maybe I'd had enough heat, humidity, Spanish and Mexico.......

"We could go to New York."

"Yes we could."

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A flight in and out was booked. We might need accommodation......

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We flew to NYC on a cheap American Airlines flight tucked in amongst a middle-aged tour group returning from Cancun (oh dear) for a 3 week stay with just three nights booked in a hostel. The hostel (The Loft) was out in southwest Brooklyn in a semi-light industrial area but a little bit grunge-groovy.

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After moving room almost every night (and a humbling stay in a 12 person dorm) we managed to rent (Craigslist) a studio (with a view) from Raquel in Manhattan (E 29th St (between 2nd and 3rd Ave)) . She was off to Spain for a couple of weeks.

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Loved the subway, loved the views, loved the parks, loved the little jazz bars, loved the whole thing really.
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A Little Bit of Maya

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We visited lots of Mayan sites in both Mexico and Belize. Mostly official, but there are so many ruins scattered across the place many (especially the small) have been left untouched by officials. In Sartenaja some locals, less impressed by their forerunners (and understandably somewhat more pragmatic than some), had recycled the stone from local ruins to build sturdier houses after the last major hurricane (big, bag wolf style) blew away their flimsier homes.

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The Maya built a lot of heavy, stone edifices in some really big cities. Mostly temples for their gods (who seem a blood thirsty lot), palaces for a few privileged royals and nobles, and the odd tomb. They never worked out the arch or large lintels so interior spaces are (if they exist) small, not so comfortable, and pretty dark and damp. Never-the-less, quite the status symbol and clearly the result of a great deal of ego and slave labour.

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As with most current religions (it's all pretty much a theme), the gods would favour you if you showed sufficiant admiration and the afterlife was the one to go for. Mind you, not too many people were putting up their hands to move on. Lots of cities have a ballcourt on which a game was played between (one can only assume) highly motivated individuals or teams with the losers sacrified to the gods at the end.

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The Maya were pretty nifty carvers and recorded major events and information in sculpture, stone tablets and pictures. They developed a written language based on hieroglyphs. Although they used pigments a lot on the outside of buildings most have weathered off completely (of course). One place had a few rooms with beautiful, well preserved interior frescos of royal life at the time.

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An Adventure in The Jungle

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Because we were in a wildilfe sanctuary neither of us fessed up to trying to kill the first scorpion we found in our room minutes before we found the second (which we also would have tried to kill had we had more success with the first) and went (with our shoes on) to find the ranger to come and do something about them. He was a sweet young man and immediately and purposefully went back to his room and emerged with a mystery item. I (full of admiration) asked what he had..... a mallet, spray, scorpion control device? "A newspaper" he said.

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We were dropped off by the local bus on the highway at a place called Maya Centre (where the Maya people displaced (ironically) by the sanctuary set up house) where we expected to shop for our jungle provisions. How well your expectations are satisfied I guess depends on what you're expecting. We found two old carrots, two old tomatoes, a capsicum, tin of mackeral (in a spicey tomatoe sauce), crackers, four eggs and six packets of 2 minute noodles. And some odd milk biscuits (breakfast x 3). We were pretty satisfied. A chat with the local women got us a "taxi" up to the sanctuary and a few days of jungle adventure.

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We went to Cockscomb Basin Wildilfe Sanctuary in search of jaguar (and the other 5 big cats of Belize), tapir, howler monkeys or any other mammal (or bird). Maybe even a reptile. What we found were one huge red bottomed tarantula and our 2 (equally huge) scorpians (but didn't photograph any) and some fairly impressive tapir footprints (they're big too). We did manage to do some walking through the many kilometers of really good tracks and cool off tubing down the river and swimming in crystal clear pools beneath waterfalls.

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While we had lots of nice walks together in the daytime it's pretty dark in the jungle at night and one shouldn't venture alone onto new tracks at dusk without a torch or any idea. And if one did, one ought to have told someone exactly where one was going. Mind you, on the up side, if one did it would provide a great opportunity to work up an impressive sweat running through the jungle tracks (like a freightened gazelle) leaping over roots and streams and all the while mumbling "God, I don't want to see a jaguar now".

The Belize Cayes

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'Next stop Belize' would be San Pedro on the southern end of Ambergris Caye. Madonna's 1980's song ("I fell in love with San Pedro. It all feels like yesterday....") did a lot for business and golf cart (the standard transport introduced by Americans to save them from any uneccessary exercise and cope with the then sandy roads) proliferation. While Madonna loved it, we only liked it (I suspect it's changed) so headed toward a quieter alternative with sand roads and more pushbikes/fewer golf carts) further south along the cayes that make up part the 2nd longest barrier reef (after ours) in the world.

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The plan was to stay a few days on Caye Caulker (still with sandy roads, rickety houses, fishing locals and mobile hardware) then catch a sail boat for 2 nights camping on tinier islands (4 palm trees) en route south. Sadly, despite us hanging around and waiting on the island longer than we might have (mostly because of the man who kept telling me I had a lovely tan and that he would like to rub it (I said I didn't think so)), they never got enough takers so cancelled twice and we gave up. But before moving on we ate lots of lobsters and found Errol (or he found us) with his beach umbrella topped trolley selling the best little Belizean pies and cakes (his wife cook is brilliant) including a rather special lemon meringue pie. I liked Errol's pies so much that I'ld ride a bike the length of the island (not that far) just to find him each day.

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Other than that we spent our time sitting in the breeze on the roof, swimming off the dock, spotting crocs (just the two), frollicking with sting rays (someone feeds them) and making friends with Snip-R (pronounced "Snipper") and Snip-L (you can work it out). We don't know who snipped or why.

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Into Belize

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We left Mexico via an o/n bus trip from Palenque to Chetamul including a stop by the well-armed Mexican army (which is better than 2 angry Chinese guys with swords and daggers) who got us all off the bus and searched our gear (but not Mary's who claimes she looks too respectable ... and she does) at about 1.00 in the morning. One on the lads on the bus suggested they were looking for contraband and (without any hint of humour) fruit.

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We arrived in Chetamul very early, dodged the usual shonky taxi men and got a local bus to the Mexican side of the border. Did all the stamping and paying and then back on the bus through no man's land to the Belize side. By the time we exchanged niceties with the Belize people (who speak English and share our queen.... all very comforting) and got the welcome nod, our bus had gone. Although we were pretty tired and a soomewhat marooned, we felt a little fortunate that the bus hadn't charged us for the trip yet.

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We spent the day in Corozal (my god it's hot and humid) waiting for a boat (if there were enough people for it to run) to drop us off on it's way to San Pedro (of Madonna's "I fell in love with ....."). We were headed for "Backpacker's Paradise" (turned out to be a misnomer). The place got a rave review in Lonely Planet but, based on the evidence we think that must have been a self-asssessment. Nothing much was as it claimed, and in a Miss Marple-like moment, Mary spotted the owner's maiden name (observed on her tourist licence) as an contributor listed in the back of the book. We're losing faith in Lonely Planet.

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Although the place was disappointing, we got to visit an orphan baby manatee ...... a face only a mother could love but cute anyway.

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The rest of our time was spent swatting unprecedented numbers of mozzies and cycling back and forth to town and the "nearby" (Lonely Planet!) beach for cool-downs before we could get the boat to call in and take us across to the Belize Caye's.

Some Images of Mexico

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Just a few photos......
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