Sunday 22 November 2009
Exploring Casa Del Plata
We've been out into the city for a bit of an explore. 1st up was a jaunt down to the beach which is only a few small blocks away - about a 5 minute walk. The sand is brown and heavily groomed. Unfortunataly, not as nice as our east coast beaches. It was sunny with some whispy high cloud and a comfortable temporature. There was a reasonably strong cool easterly breeze blowing. We went out onto a large pier and then noticed a parade coming down the main street. It was for the paralympics in Buenos Aires. In typical Argentinian style there was lots of noise and cheering, drumming, whistles as they marched by.
I'm enjoying getting used to my new little Canon G11 point and shoot and, as I'd only taken 100 or so shots over the last few days, didn't charge its batttery overnight. That was a mistake as it went flat half way around our walk. So, I had to give up on thaking photos and just take it in.
We walked along the beach road for a while then headed into the city centre. Some streets heading to it were pretty basic, rough and quite a lot of tagging. The city centre is a long open mall and is only a block from our hotel.
The training facility is about 10 blocks away and quite small so it sounds like there will be separate training sessions for seniors and juniors. It will come clearer later this afternoon.
We have breakfast at the hotel but the ITF have done a deal for evenin meals which we can have at a range of designated restaurants apparently. Sounds nice. We have to look after ourselves for lunches.
The Hotel's free wireless internet can be connected to from the first few floors which is great. Unfortunately, while I'm connected to it as I write this, it's lost it's connection to the internet... sigh. Maybe I'll try to ask them to reboot it. There's a computer down in reception connected to their cabled network so team members are lining up to email and facebook messages back home.
PS: Pidgeon English instructions to the guy at receptions to "turn off, turn on" worked... he rebooted the wireless router and we're up and running on-line again.
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