Well after a few days around this town I thought we could share some of ouyr views on what this place is all about.
We learnt from our driver to the airport in Iguazu that he and many others were upset that the ‘ruling family’ a husband and wife team have been in power for almost sixteen years and enough is enough and so nobody cares about politics anymore In other words a dictatorship of sorts.
The streets around Buenos Aires are struggling to cope with the rubbish which is left for the nightly collection and the rule is you put out the rubbish after 9.30 pm but people don’t follow this rule and put it out at any time and with dogs patrolling the streets ansd tearing in to the good smelling bags the rubbish men only take what they can easily lift and the rest stays for years. There are cars dumped on the streets and left to rot, not good unles you want a fiat of 1962 origin left to rot.
We have eaten out at a couple of local ,not tourist places, and find the serving staff have clearly not been employed to take care of the customer but mostly to chat with passing friends and their colleagues walking the floor. At one restaurant we saw a serving lady with two hot plates of food en-route to the customer when she espied some friends, she immediately put the plates down on a serving counter and then spent the next eight minutes or su talking to her chums and then she now takes the semi warm plats to the customer. However we did not find this problem in the tourist restaurants.
There are many shops offering last minute, end of sale, eand of year, for one day only sales of unbelievable prices and only for today that you do wonder.
We have seen dog walker with as many as 25 dogs all peeing and crapping and no attempt to clear it up and so it says a little about pride in the country.
I did question the lady on the front desk of the Hotel and she agreed that lack of pride was a severe problem and hence the rubbish and dog poo everywhere apart from the pavements falling to pieces and holes everywhere.
So impressions of this town are not great which is a shame indeed and we look forward at the end of our trip to meet the manager of my ex company office when perhaps he can enlighten us what is going on.
On the other hand today we found a nice little ice cream parlour which was tucked away and we enjoyed a nice cone of something cold.
Tonight we visited a local restaurant where the staff were slow but when 8pm arrived so did many more staff but asd the tables failed to fill the number of staff reduced badly, sounds a little like M Donalds to me.
Anyway we had a good meal, Jennifer had some really good pork chops and Noel beef tenderloin washed down with a bottle of Cabernet.
We got back to the Hotel and found that the new room we were in where the air condition system had started leaking water all over the floor however their was now a bucket to catch the water, so now we have a small Jakuzi in our room for no extra fee.
Oh well, we join the ship tomorrow mid afternoon with the knowledge of the ship that hit rocks of the Italian coast but this is an AMERICAN ship where this could not possible happen unless of course you happen to be parked in pearl harbour.
And so to bed to wait for the drip, drip plonk sound to start