Caballito, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We were accepted by Pedro and Ana to Couchsurf with their family in a suburb of Buenos Aires. With Pedro's directions in hand we used our SUBE card to catch a bus to their place. It took an hour to cross the city in the late afternoon. The traffic is chaotic and Pedro said there are rules but no one uses them. We enjoyed meeting 4 of 5 children and and were also lucky enough to meet Ana's mother and a sister who were visiting.





Pedro has travelled to other countries but Ana is not keen on travelling. We chatted about all sorts of topics and it was very relaxing with the family. We watched Pedro's football team River Plate play an Ecuadorean team on TV.

We were able to get some laundry done and the next day met more family members. Lucia on the right came to NZ on a working holiday visa and worked in Te Puke and had also spent time in Tauranga and the Mount. In the evening Pedro took us to his club's stadium- River Plate.

Clara, in the middle, is studying but also does a lot of social work for the poor community. She supports children and adults who need extra tuition with their school work or studies.

Lucia is also a teacher and can have up to 40 adults in a class, It is tough being a teacher here.

Ana is a teacher and works with handicapped people and is doing her masters.

Pedro is now retired from working in banking.

Pablo, the son we met one evening, was busy working long days. He works for a small publishing company and they have a book fair coming up soon so was working everyday to prepare for that.

A few blocks from the house is the Natural Science Museum so we spent some time looking through that at the mounted dinosaur bones that had been found in various parts of Argentina. We also spotted some bird skeletons from NZ as well as some paua and turban shells. The museum opened early afternoon and after half an hour was really busy with visitors. We were surprised that no one in the family had been to the museum so we gave them a push to do it.

The museum is surrounded by a park where we saw lots of people exercising, walking dogs, dog walkers gossiping in the fenced dog park, and others relaxing with their partners. There were exercise bikes that you could pedal and charge your phone but the slots where you put in the usb stick seemed to be rusted up and did not look like they worked any longer. The green idea seemed perfect. I could imagine it would have been vandalised if in NZ. No one would do that in this park as each entrance had a police office and police walking around it.

We look forward to seeing some of the family in NZ one day.