Buenos Aires – I found this review of a local bar that left me laughing from the juxtaposition of the various clientele: This “underground” bar located in what used to be the transvestite red light district of Buenos Aires, congregates a bizarre mix of people, you may find there local reality TV fallen stars, artistry boys, transvestites, bloggers, among others. [Emphasis added.]

Had our first argument with a neighbor! The woman who lives above us started throwing things off her balcony early this morning screaming about how we’d ruined her life. In the course of weeding and cleaning up the garden we’d cut down a vine that threaded its way across the base of her balcony. This vine apparently was all that was providing her with enough oxygen to live and now she was sure she was going to die from lack of ability to breathe. (Her balcony must have several dozen plants on it… but this vine was the one that did it for her… oh, and we did all this garden work five days ago, on Wednesday…) After a long involved discussion that reassured her that we were planning to replant the garden with “beautiful flowers” and other plants, she was mollified and apologized for creating a mess – didn’t offer to come down and help clean it up I noticed…

La Plata – As I mentioned yesterday afternoon, we were off to a dance competition. This was the “first Peruvian national folklore” dance competition (Primero Campeonato de Marinera Norteña 2005) held in Argentina, just to narrow down the field a little bit. Henry and Elizabeth were entered into it, and given the lack of time for preparation with his exile back to Peru for almost a month, they did brilliantly – sweeping the first round with a perfect score! By the end, just to get any suspense over with, they placed fourth, having had to go through a two round run-off for a tie in third place.

The basic format of the competition was what was called dos a dos – each couple (there were 8 couples competing) danced two back-to-back dances of their choosing in front of a panel of three judges. Then the semi-finals were broken up into groups of 2-3 couples dancing simultaneously as an “elimination” round – though combined scores from the two rounds were used for a decision on the final rounds. This time, they danced to music of the organizer’s choice, but dances that they’d known would be in the semi-finals in advance. In the final rounds, only the top scoring couples danced, once again in pairs of two, with the two top scoring couples competing for 1st and 2nd place, and the next two competing for 3rd and 4th place. This time the dances were of the judge’s choosing, and again came from a list that had been supplied in advance.

I’ll leave the rest as a “photo essay” – Henry and Elizabeth are the first two photos. I culled through the 70 or so I took and picked out what I thought were the most interesting examples of the 8 couples. Oh, and by the way… great fun!