Live from Argentina
We arrived to this amazing place and are having a week R & R before starting on our schedule of farm visits and meetings in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile which Ricardo Fenton has designed. I want to go through some dot points about the places I have visited so far just to give you an idea of what these places are like and how they differ from our towns and cities.

First stop Buenos Aries:
The capital of Argentina where 4 million people live in the city alone, the city would be the size of say the whole of Ballarat.
Another 5 or 6 million live surrounding the city mainly in shanty towns.
A third of the population of Argentina (30 mill) live in BA
The narrow one way streets are full of little cars and half would be taxis.
One street is not so narrow, it is the widest street/avenue in the world and has 18 lanes of traffic at its widest point and is right in the centre of town, you can get an idea of how much traffic is around.
Like New York everyone is tooting the horn, it is just a constant echo 24/7.
There are plenty of “Jack” Cameron’s (Characters) but I only wish I could understand Spanish.
Lots of “Boofheads” as well as there seems to be heaps of trucks.
The food is fantastic with lots of meat on the menu.
The beer (cervasa) is great and I recommend Quelmes the most popular drop.
Wine (Vino) good too.
They have never heard of cricket here, the only ones that have are like Ricardo (my sheep mate) who did some schooling in the cricketing countries and he just shakes his head.
They drink plenty of coffee but the main drink is mate, no I’m not bringing “Old Maaaate” back into the picture. They spell it mate but it is sounded Martée . It is a leafy thing sort of like tea but they suck it up through a chrome windy straw and keep adding water. It’s pretty good.
They drink mate as a social thing and if a crowd is gathered one will bring out the mate kit and make a brew and then hand it around in order.
The city is relatively clean and tidy and some of the building designs are worth seeing.
They once – not so long ago - had 5 Presidents in 12 days.
An amazing place let me tell you.

Second stop Pinimar:
Is on the East coast on the Atlantic Ocean side and is a touristy town, I’m told that half of BA spend there holiday seasons on the East coast at place like this.
They have gum trees here although I haven’t spotted a Koala yet!!
It would be open season for single blokes like “Smacka” (Don’t mention the war!!), tall, dark skin…….. you get the drift.
They all go to the beach, you can walk for miles and the crowd is just as thick, there must be 10’s of thousands of people on the beach at one time.
They drive on the other side of the road and there seems to be no rules, lots of motor bikes and like farmers they leave the helmets at home.
There must be hundreds of eateries, many with Asado’s cooking away (whole lambs split in half or quarters of beef attached to a frame where they are staked into the ground against a fire of hot coals).
We are 14 hours behind Aussie time.

If anyone has any stories from home they can test them to me on 0427 011900
That’s about all, will fire off some more stuff next we