Buenos Aires, 8th Oct 2008

In the beginning, there was darkness.
And the Air Comet flight attendant said Let There Be Light.
And warm mushrooms were served at 5 am somewhere over the South Atlantic.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because it was rubbish.
And Lo! said the captain, and the plane obeyed and it was good. Good air to Buenos Aires.

I find myself in a heart-warming one-bed flat, 100 yards from the thrusting, unashamedly priapic centre of BA; the Obelisk. By the time we landed yesterday I felt like a stamped-on cadaver, but the taxi ride into El Microcentro kissed my eyeballs, licked my heart and wibbled my ding-dangs back to life.

Slightly unconvincing second-hand horror stories about how Argentinians hate Brits, with a vengeance and to a man, were atomized by the fact that the first one I met invited me to his house for roast meat and wine with his Anglophone wife on Sunday.

Perfect weather for arriving from London - cool but sunny. So far so good. Apart from the sugary bun with ham and cheese I had this morning. Bleccch. I have no bike for three weeks so all I can do is drink Quilmes (a second-tier lager: Isenbeck is much nicer) and immerse myself in this nutty Southern Hemisphere metropolis. Further north, I'm expecting the inevitable Kentucky Run-In with a Creationist. Catholicism may be a sick, power-mad, kiddie-fiddling, brain-washing, peasant-indoctrinating, empty, gold-plated, bloodthirsty, fetishized, perverted, whisky-swilling, woman-hating, gay-bashing, witch-burning shitball of a religion, but at least it doesn't try to argue that dinosaur fossils are God's Prank.

It's taken me nearly 3 years to think of an end for the London - Cape Town story, and I still can't. Cape Town is much better as a long-haul holiday destination than it is as an overland end-point, partly because, quite rightly, no-one in CT gives a weeping shit how you got there. The wavers and well-wishers are gone. It's literally over. Bloody great town for a week's holiday though!

Things I learnt from crossing Africa:
1. People are nice.
2. I want to do it again.
That'll do me!

10/10/08, BA

Imagine a boot stamping on a bin bag full of rat's faces forever. Add E331 and salt to the result, and bingo! You have a sizeable batch of Piccadillo "meat" paste, the Worst Food Ever. Why in the name of wank did I buy two tins?

In comedy news, there's a cafe at Madrid airport called "Ars", and here in BA you can buy a small jar of glazed fruits called "Gentleman", allowing you to hand them around, eyebrow aloft, with the phrase, "will you take a Gentleman's cherry?"