Necochea - beach resort

Ok, so here we are in the beach resort of Necochea, after one pretty lame night in Tandil - read Leah´s blog for more on that. This town is on the Southern Pampas, where the Beunos Aires lot come for their holidays. It´s a bit mental on the beach during the day as EVERYONE comes to roast themsleves under the very hot sun - you can barely move for people, which is interesting the first time and pretty horrible there after. However, they subscribe to the body-beautiful thing here and this summer´s latest bikini style doesn´t leave a whole lot to the imagination...If you´re into people watching it´s a good (read funny) place to be, and I dont just mean for pervs.

The town is buzzing well into the wee wee hours, with clowns and shows in the square, loads of restaurants and plenty of bars. We´re staying in a quaint little hotel called "El Quijote", which is run by an eccentric fella called Rafael. It´s good value though at 66 Pesos/night including breakfast (3 Croissants and a coffee), and our room is cleaned everyday with fresh towels arriving on the newly made bed.

Today we went accross the river to the neighbouring town of Quequen, which is where the surf is to be found. I´m hoping to get into the water tomorrow or monday, though no-one rents boards so it means hiring a lesson (30 Pesos/hour). Probably do me some good though. The waves were big this afternoon, but messy due to the strong wind, and the few surfers that were out there seemed to be struggling a bit. The beach was much nicer than Necochea as it was a lot less busy, and the people seemed younger and a bit more of a surfy crowd. We were also told of a cool sounding Hostel called Jamming (which isnn´t in the Lonely Planet) which would probably be the place to come if you wanted to surf - we´ve payed for our hotel up front so we´re not going to move.

If the wind is up tomorrow we´ll probably pack a picnic and head for a place called Las Grutas, which is a beach further south where there would appear to be caves and stuff. Also sounds quieter and a nice place to hang out for the day. We´re also looking into a 4x4 ride into some impressive sounding sand dunes; up to 110 meters tall!