Buenos Aires

If you'd blindfolded us and dropped us in Buenos Aires, we'd be hard pushed to guess we were in South America - it's a busy, bustling modern European city transplanted to another continent. Long pedestrianised shopping precincts, with every luxury brand conceivable, McDonalds and Aroma coffee shops on every corner, traffic jams above and an efficient metro system below, classy European architecture covered in huge glossy billboards for Gucci or Nike, and immaculately dressed fair skinned inhabitants - BA had been described to us as 'the Paris of South America' and it's easy to see why. It's a city we could imagine living in (though the closer we come to the end of our trip, the more we can imagine living everywhere).
Time is running out so we couldn't explore BA as extensively as I would've liked, but we enjoyed mooching around La Boca - the colourful port area once occupied by penniless artists but now seemingly dominated by tourist restaurants and tatt shops, and watched tango buskers dancing in the streets.
Another day I stumbled across an exhibition by Steve McCurry, one of my favourite photographers, and we managed to spook the boys by letting them explore the Recoletto cemetary alone - a citadel of imposing one-upmanship mausoleums in the affluent north of the city. We also managed to catch up with Pablo and Cherry, our companions back in Bolivia, and spent a lazy afternoon on the rooftop terrace of their apartment block (if you're staying here a week or more it's cheaper to rent a serviced apartment).
But, with less than a week left before our flight home, and feeling in need of some R&R, we decided to hop across to Uruguay (it's only an hour on the ferry) and seek out a beach. And with sleet and snow forecast for Easter weekend, we need to make the most of the sun while we can!