BUENOS AIRES: STOLEN

Remember the days before mobile phones? The days when people had to actually talk to one another, without the means of Face book, email and Whatsapp! I know! I don't remember either. Your mobile phone these days is like your right arm (left as well if your left handed or ambidextrous, which would be both)! It's like your whole world revolves around this little electronic device and the thought of not having your mobile with you 24/7? Well, it would be the end of the God Dam world, and this is what happened to me recently. I had my right hand cut off. I had my phone stolen!

Me and Prue returned to Buenos Aires, in time to meet our friend Becky Brown or BB as I like to call her, who was arriving that night, but first we had to check into the apartment we had rented for the week. We actually figured that it worked out the same to rent an apartment for the week as it was staying in some sweaty dormitory in a hostel with a load of 18 year old backpackers. Being English we were there on time to pick up the key which surprised the apartment guy when he arrived.  Though I think anything might surprise the apartment guy as he was a little too wired from some acid rave thing, the night before.  He was a strange thing; small with the frame of a child and was wearing some awful double denim outfit, with goth boots! He showed us into the apartment. Now I'm use to staying in places that well?  Maybe aren't up to most peoples standards.  OK! Shit holes! But they are cheap shit holes, OK! So as we get into the apartment I think we are in a palatial place.  When I say say palatial palace this means for me that there are no rats, I don' think I'm going to wake up with bed bugs and there is hot water.  Amazing! Prue has other ideas.  The selling point on this place for us was the fact that it had its own little swimming pool. Prue walks straight out to the pool, where she finds it shaded by a canopy (We were told it would have sun).  The pool itself is extremely dirty and looks like it hasn't been cleaned in a century, maybe more. Prue is not happy and rightly so as we also find a piss smelling towel in the bathroom, though I'm still thinking palatial place.  Prue is not.  What follows is this: A very feisty, determined English woman trying to clean a pool with a brush and then using the handle of the brush to hit the canopy back to the side, while then demanding to speak to the boss.  Child man hands over his phone.  Prue then starts a hostage style negotiation on how the rent should be lowered with the boss.  Its at this point child man has reached his downer from the night before, becomes very stressed and starts smoking a cigarette vigorously. Oh and what was I doing you ask?  I was being terribly English sat downstairs in the bedroom, not wanting to complain and pretending it wasn't happening.
The end result: Reduction on the rent!
Prue: 1           Apartment boss: 0
Conclusion= Do not mess with an English woman on a mission, well not Prue anyway, which I became glad of, especially after her saving us some money and the fact the toilet and the sink started leaking the next day (That's why there was a piss smelling towel in the bathroom)!   Total bastards!

BB arrived in the usual BB manor; happy; excited and wide eyed even though she had been travelling for well over 24 hours.  It was the only Saturday night we had in Buenos Aires and BB was still keen in her over tired state to hit the town.  So we put on our best glad rags and decided to hit the terribly fashionable area of Palermo.  Now we had been told by an Argentinian friend of ours, Alejandro  (Remember him from my last trip to BA, if not read the post here) who was no longer living there, that we had come to Buenos Aires at the worst time of year (Actually he didn't quite say it like that! He said we were f**ked instead: Soooo Ale)! This is because during January most people leave town for the beaches of Brazil or Uruguay because its too dam hot!  Most places shut down and its like a ghost town. "OK, but it still a city" I told myself "There will be something going on? It's Buenos Aires, the party city?"
Only in the beautiful, classy city of Buenos Aires could we end up in a bar that reminded me of Macaulay's bar back in Warrington during my teenage years (Basically rough as shit)! We had been lured to the bar by a sweet talking Argentinian guy with deep blue eyes that you wanted to jump into like the sea.  He was obviously employed by the bar for that reason and it worked! Well that was until you got into the bar and paid ten pounds to wear a band which meant you could drink all you wanted.  When I say drink I mean it was like paint stripper mixed with food colouring which made most of the drinks bright pink! Hmm?  I feel like I'm on a club 18 to 30 holiday, but we have paid our money now and we are going to make the most of it.  Besides we are British and we will drink any old crap! We have two Argentinian guys with us who have tagged along.  They don't speak any English but me and Prue can manage small talk with them.  BB on the other hand doesn't speak any Spanish what so ever or does she? Because its at this point that we are first introduced to the Becky brown school of language.  The Becky Brown school of language consists of this:

1.  You don't speak any other language other than English and you only speak to all foreign people in English.

2.  You smile a lot.

3.  You are extremely nice and lovely so everyone completely loves you even if they can't understand you.

4. You really just don't care, whether you can understand someone or you them; your in Latin America having an amazing time.

The Becky Brown school of language does work though.  There were times throughout the trip where me and Prue were concentrating so hard to understand what people were saying to us without much of a clue, that BB would just turn around to us and say "I understand!"
"How the Hell do you understand when you don't speak any Spanish?" would be are response.
"Because its in their faces!  I can tell what they are saying from their faces and their emotions" she replied, and you know what she could.  The Becky Brown school of language, definitely beats Rosetta Stone any day.

Even enough paint stripper drinks couldn't disguise the fact that we were in the shittiest bar in Buenos Aires.  The final straw came when we were trying to dance to some crap house music and saw some heavily pregnant skank teenager dancing and drinking paint stripper behind us.  Time to make a sharp exit, before she gives birth on the dance floor.  We find ourselves in a big night club that looks a whole lot better than club 18 to 30, though by this time we are so drunk anything would look good.  Its from here on in, things become a little hazy.  I remember getting my phone out to take some pictures of us all posing like idiots that would later be probably put up on Face book, where people would probably put that they like them, when really they are thinking, total idiots.  About 10 minutes later when I think I'm dancing amazingly to some Latin beats (I'm not!) I go to my bag to look at my phone to see what time it is.  Nothing! I fumble drunkenly around my bag, but its a small bag.  You could tell if it was there or not, easily.  I also know its impossible for it to have fallen out.  I've been pick pocketed! Bastards!!!!!!  I would of screamed but I think I was too drunk to really of registered what had happened.  Its the fact that I'm so drunk that I decide to go looking on the floor for it, even though I know its been stolen.  I'm kind of clutching a straws.  I'm just barging in between people with my head to the ground and I think at one point I'm on my hands and knees on the floor.  I look up and see the others and wonder what a fly on the wall would think. BB's jet lag seems to have kicked in and she is delirious on the dance floor with her eyes shut, arms open, dancing like some crazy hippie.  Prue is now being dry humped by one of the Argentinian guys on the dance floor (I believe the Latins call this dancing) and I'm crawling around on my hands and knees looking for a phone I will never find.  Another great night out then?

 The next day I wake with a bad head and the realisation that my phone is really gone.  I'm in mourning.  I'm also having flash backs to when we got home from the club.  I recall BB Skyping her parents and them asking me how I was which my response was some thing like "Not so good as some F**cking bastard has stolen my phone! I'm so f**cking angry" (Luckily her parents have a good sense of humour) and then having a rant on live chat with O2 when they informed me that I could not get a new phone or Sim card until I got back to the UK! (I think I told the woman at O2 that she had ruined my life and she was going to go to Hell)! Oh God!  I won't have a phone or a British Sim for over 2 months!  Oh holy mother Mary of God!  In the whole time I have travelled I've never not had a phone.  Its my Internet, my texts, my camera, my music, my blog as well as my phone. Arrrrgghhhhhh!!!!!! Its my everything!  OK! I know its not the end of the world.  No one has died! There are worse things in life.  Anyway living without a phone for 2 months will be liberating, won't it?

We have been having a bit of trouble with wankers on our trip.  They are everywhere.  In our beds, bathrooms, on the streets, everywhere!  We first started to encounter them in Buenos Aires.  They are just horrible and they are so hard to kill! Oh! Sorry! Am I confusing you?  I am not a serial killer unless you are a Buddhist; then I would be classed as one.  I am not referring to men as wankers, though a lot of them are! I'm referring to Cockroaches!  Me and the girls have started calling cockroaches wankers.  I think everyone should do it.  Its very refreshing!  For example nothing can beat the sound of your friend in the morning screaming, "There is another one! There is a wanker in the shower.  I'm going to kill it!" followed by the banging of a flip flop and "Die wanker! Die!" As I said, a very refreshing way to start the day.

I can see why everyone leaves Buenos in January.  Its hot! Really hot! Thank God for the dirty swimming pool!  No really! Thank God for the dirty swimming pool.  Anyway its not too bad as me and Prue cleaned it up a bit and found how to work the filter.  Its a perfect haven in fact.  Now that Prue has demolished the canopy with a broomstick the sun is shining through and as its our own private pool and garden we decide that means our rules.  so in no time its topless sunbathing all round.  Yes!  We finally get to go topless in South America.  In fact its hard to keep your clothes on once we are in the apartment.  we jump into the pool after a day of walking around the city into its ice cold water.  Its so refreshing. There was a moment after one night out, that the heat was far too much for me, which is a rare thing.  It was oppressive and I felt I couldn't breath.  There was only one thing to do.  I stripped completely naked and jumped into the pool.  I was soon followed by Prue.  The water was amazing. So there we are a couple of English girls splashing around naked in a pool in the middle of Buenos Aires in the early hours of the morning, drinking wine.  I'm not sure whether the neighbours could see us? They probably could and thought "What the Hell are those English chicks on?" but in the words of Becky Brown "I don't really care!"
Next stop Montevideo.