Day 2

I awoke to find myself already within Buenos Aires city limits, and for the next hour and a half at least, endless suburbs passed outside the window. Baires is a metropolis of 16 million, making it one of the largest cities I've ever been in. Gasping for breath amid the fumes of a cavernous bus station serving the transport needs of a population four times larger than Ireland's, we took the metro into town to Lucia's Uruguayan friend Gabriela, who lived in a flat downtown. We used the place as a base for our subsequent excursions around Argentina.

Firstly we headed for a particular part of town to try to find a place for the night, but I pulled a mini-strop and wanted us to go with Plan A, which was a hotel in some other part of the city that I'd tried to book the previous night. Me and Tee headed off to check that out, but once we found the place, they rudely told us they'd no room and had no record of us. Eventually, we booked into an expensive place in an upscale part of town, but I couldn't tell the difference from other areas.