Corrientes

Day 34 – Karaoke Argentina style

Having to get out of the hotel room asap we decided to have a nice-ish breakfast at La Perla a French style patisserie with 20 styles of coffee (I had the ‘Bariloche’ – black with a shot of chocolate liquor of course!), freshly squeezed juice and gourmet empanadas.  After dropping our laundry off, Matt spotted a Daphne dog which we played with for a minute and then headed to the internet and out of the heat to catch up on facebook, send some Christmas emails and do some planning.  After siesta was over and the shops had reopened, we hit the pedestrian shopping mall for bit.  Matt had so far lost two t-shirts and a jumper and worn his best shirt with his backpack a number of times streaking it permanently brown and so needed to replenish his wardrobe, especially before spending Christmas and New Years with Emilio and family. 

In the evening we found a bar in the pedestrian mall with some outdoor tables to have a few beers and finish out the day which was across from a CD shop that was playing music out of speakers out the front.  We had a bit of a chuckle when we saw ‘speed’ on the menu, but neither of us was interested in finding out what was meant by that by ordering it as sleep was going to be hard enough to come by as it was!  Just as our beers were being served, a local nut job took it upon himself to begin performing karaoke at the top of his lungs out the front of said shop, much to the initial amusement of our fellow bar patrons.  When the complimentary dance moves began after an hour or so, it was apparent that the show would not be ending soon and with our long-necks empty, we decided even our shitty hotel room was better than another hour of Argentina’s Greatest Hits.  Matt commented to the bar tender upon paying that he appeared to be losing business, but the bar tender just rolled his eyes and said “I know” like this was not the first time and there was nothing he could do about it!

Day 35 – Filling time

As it was peak time for bus travel in the few days before Christmas, we had booked our night bus to Buenos Aires from Corrientes earlier to make sure we were back for Christmas, but this involved a bit of waiting around in a place with not all that much on offer.  Tonight was the night, but first we had another whole day to fill.  The first job was still to find Matt a shirt to wear to Christmas (it took two days to find jocks remember…), second to do something touristy to have photos for the blog and third to find a cinema or some such other place to escape the afternoon heat and wait out siesta, having been kicked out of our hotel room at 11 and paying an extra 10 pesos for them to mind our bags. 

Having searched every shop in the mall, it was time to hit the side streets, but still no luck so it was give up time.  The only touristy thing of interest (and I think it was only of interest to me anyway) was to visit the local artesian museum ‘Museo de Artesanias Tradicionales Folcloricas’ and attached working studios displaying locally crafted metal and leather work and handmade dolls and scenes set up to illustrate traditional stories and fairytales.  Unfortunately being so close to Christmas it seemed a lot of the artesans were not working and there were no other tourists, so our free guided tour, all in Spanish, was hard work to listen to, ask questions and smile and nod in the right places!  We also went for a wander towards the riverside were a long mural, commissioned by the council, had been painted and partly sculpted along a 100m stretch of wall.

The search for a cinema and escaping the heat was somewhat of an epic fail as the only cinema in town was inside the Casino, quite a walk away, and when we finally arrived it seemed movies weren’t shown over siesta time either!  Not interested in playing the pokies just for some air-con we walked back into town and back to our bar for a cold drink and early dinner.  Then it was off to the bus station for the 10 hour overnight journey back to BsAs!