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Bondi (bon-dee) is porteño slang for coletivo, which means bus. Buenos Aires has an insanely complicated (at least it seems to me), but effective public bus system. Every inch of the city is connected within the network, with bus routes numbering in the 700s. Bondis stop often and chug along, but it’ll probably get you within two blocks of your destination.

Yesterday I caught the bondi for the first time, on my way to Cordoba y Aguirre for some shopping. I was a bit nervous as the GuiaT (Guide Yourself) handbook made me cross-eyed with it’s badly drawn maps, and I had to say “uno vienticinco” (P$1.25) to the bus driver before I paid for my ticket, but all in all it was a success!

Shopping is pretty good in Buenos Aires. You can get really cheap clothing imported from Asia, but I’m more interested in the hand crafted local products. I would love to go home with a good leather jacket, and a nice pair of boots. I had a scout yesterday but didn’t buy much. I did stumble upon a photography gallery though, what luck.

As I was leaving Las Pepas (http://www.laspepas.com.ar/), Melisa, the sweet sales assistant who served me, rushed out with her email on a piece of paper, asking me in a rush to contact her if I ever wanted to hang out :).

I moved over to Chris’s place last night. He lives in San Telmo, a beautiful barrio filled with cobbled streets, murals and Parisian architecture. We had a nice chat and a very doughy pizza for dinner. This morning I went around the block and collected some good portraits, will be posting them up in the arvo.

Thank goodness, a slow day. I really needed a break from all the excitement. I woke up late yesterday, went for a stroll in the neighbourhood, bought some flowers and groceries, sneaked in a shot of shy Ivan, and made a very simple lunch.

After a long afternoon nap Adriana and I strolled over to La Glorietta, a well-known local pagoda, to watch another free tango class. It was that perfect time of day where for just a few minutes, the light in the sky balances with the street lamps. In the low light I pushed my f/1.4 35mm to the max, and am finding that I don’t mind blurry pictures (when appropriate of course).

Today is my last day at Adriana’s, I’ll be moving onto a new host tonight. My next host lives in a studio apartment, so I’m going to miss having my own room. But travelling isn’t about being comfortable

I thought I’d load up a photo of my swollen eye since I keep talking about it. This was taken two days ago. Yesterday it was double this size. I’m pretty sure now it’s not the drinking that’s making my eye swell, but that I’m allergic to Argentine mozzies - my arms and legs are a mass of lumps. I’ve since taken some anti-allergents, so feeling less like Quasimodo now.

With my newly borrowed shoes from Cristina, Adriana took me to a free community run tango lesson last night - it was awesome! My feet were on fire after.

The teacher gave us a quick run down of basic steps, but I danced most of the night with Felipe, an elderly gentleman with astonishingly nimble feet and a firm lead. He actually managed to make me feel like I knew what I was doing.

Oh, and I have just discovered the joys of video blogging

Wow, what an eventful day! My eyes (the right one even more swollen) are drifting shut as I type, but I must get this all down when it’s still fresh in my mind.

The lovely Adriana will be my host for three nights. She is a fulltime working mum of two teenage boys. I arrived at her apartment in the Belgrano district yesterday afternoon, just in time to catch a beautiful orange sunset over Buenos Aires from her balcony. We then hiked over to the swanky Ricoletta district for a traditional Argentine BBQ.

This morning we went to visit Adriana’s mother in the suburbs of Gran Buenos Aires. Esther is 77. Her parents built their family home, Villa de Mayo (May Villa) when she was two, so she has lived in the same house for 75 years. It’s an incredible place, every nook has been lovingly decorated over the years.

Esther is a great cook. She managed to fit two huge meals into us over just a few hours. Most of what we ate she made from scratch, including the pasta and a delicious cake with the flesh of the higo fruit grown in her backyard.

Esther’s sister, Cristina, and their aunt, Regina, also came by for a visit. When Adriana mentioned that she was planning to take me to a tango lesson Cristina enthusiastically dug out her a selection of her shoes for me, so I wouldn’t have to dance in my flip flops.

Everyone was so enthusiastic about my photos, with the exception of Ivan (Adriana’s 15 year old son), they all loved to have their photo taken. The older ladies would crowd around my little LCD with their reading glasses in hand and cluck in approval. They gave my camera free reign, and trusted me. This doesn’t happen often, so it’s something I treasure. Eventually the ladies man-handled Ivan into having his photo taken too.

I feel so privileged to meet and photograph this loving family. I have been welcomed with an incredible amount of warmth and laughter - they had gone above and beyond what is expected of hosts. I’m deeply deeply touched, and today is not a day I will forget for a long time to come.

Eleo and her best friend Nicholas took me on an epic walk last night. We covered the entire area around Plaza Italia all the way to Chinatown. We passed by a zoo, a community of emabssies and consulates, a polo field, a massive equestian centre, the largest casino in Argentina, and a tango park. And a redlight district.

Nicholas is an endless fountain of information about Buenos Aires and its history, so much so that by the end of the night had earned the nickname ‘wiki’.

We finished the night at a friends 30th birthday party. We bought a bottle of red as a present, but I felt bad as the alcohol is so cheap here. In the photo below the price is in pesos, roughly three to one Australian.

I met Pablo, the birthday boy, his girlfriend Julia, her parents Maria-Rose and Oscar, and Mauricio, Pablo’s friend. They didn’t have a camera so it was nice to take some photos for them in return for a hilariously awesome night - mostly with me trying to guess their English and them trying to make out my terrible Spanish.

It was an half hour walk back to Eleo’s place. At night the street construction chuggs full force, Nicholas exclaims ‘Everything is under construction in Buenos Aires!’ Pretty accurate that.

I think I’m starting to find a good rhythm to my days. I wake up to the sunrise at 6:30, have a morning stroll around the neighbourhood. It’s a lovely time of day as the light is perfect, it’s before the heat sets in, and the streets are relatively empty which makes it easier to approach people for photos.

I then take a long nap at noon, then it’s out walking again in the afternoon. Dinner is usually at 9.

I’ve been trying to take a photo of everyone I converse with - the fruit vendor, the flower man, the baker. I’ll load those up soon.

I met Alexander yesterday when I came across his little jazz cafe on Ave Luis M on the fringe of Las Cañitas near Palermo. He had the most emphatic ‘Si!’ I’ve ever heard. His chicken salad was a little odd though…

The first day is always the hardest in a new city, and today was no exception. The heat here is humid and suffocating, so I was drenched in sweat as I played human-ant with all my bags.

I’m getting around surprisingly well. Most young people here speak basic English, and the general machismo of the males here means I can ask for and receive ready help. I guess being little, Asian, and confused looking are bonuses too :).

My lovely couchsurfing host for the first three nights is Eleo, a brisk young lawyer working in Centro, with dimples and a ready laugh. She introduced me to the traditional yerba maté, a tea like drink with hot water and sugar. It’s a social practice to drink maté, as only one cup passed around a table of friends. First sip was bitter and grassy (I had to ask for more sugar), but gets addictive the more you drink. It contains caffeine as well, check out Eleo’s laugh after a few.

The flight from Sydney to Buenos Aires flew by surprisingly fast, bad pun intended. I was sitting right behind an exit in economy, so had plenty of legroom, and I was sitting next to one hilariously smoothtalking Japanese-Brazilian.

Renato can say ‘Can I kiss you?’ in at least six different languages, but has trouble remembering how to write his own name in Japanese. Though I couldn’t decipher between his d’s t’s and v’s, he did practice some rudimentary Spanish with me. I only found out after that he wasn’t good at Spanish either, since Portugese is spoken in Brazil. In any case, I did learn an important phrase:

¿Yo puedo sacar uno foto tuyo?

If this is wrong someone tell me now, before I go out and start cornering hapless locals with it.

Got by waylaid by a Chinese family at the entrance to customs. Mrs Jiang was visiting her daughter and soon to be son-in-law, and is now flying back to Shanghai.

She doesnt speak any english so I took her through customs and left her at her boarding gate. She wasn’t very talkative at first, but opened up eventually.

…wide angle lens on the iPhone distorts on the sides, my face isn’t really that wide!

Waiting at check-in now, which is always fun.

I’m lucky to have grown up in a really tightknit family, but it’s always so difficult to say goodbye.

My cutie of a sister left early for school in the morning, so she left me post-it’s on the bathroom mirror. They’re now safe in my diary.

Mums sweet as always, but dad made me teary when he gave me a big hug at the airport, we’re not usually very cuddly.

I miss them already