New continent... new country... same adventure. After a brief timeout in LA I'm back on the road. This time, I'm in South America. The plan is simple: explore Argentina and Brazil, with potential stops in Chile and Uruguay. Since you're still reading this blog, then you're clearly bored with the rest of the internet. I can't blame you for that - it's all crap. Seriously, though, you could be doing anything else with your time, but you've chosen to stay with me for a while. Much appreciated. In return, I'll try to do my best to entertain for the next 10 weeks...
The adventure began before I arrived in Buenos Aires. The flight down to BA took nearly 20 hours (including a five hour time difference), but it wasn't as grueling as that might seem: a three hour flight to Dallas, a brief layover, then a 10 hour flight to BA. On the first leg everything went swimmingly: no delays, no crying babies, and no morbidly obese people sitting directly in front of me and crushing my knees. I even had a friendly flight attendant who gave me free wine. (New revelation - two glasses of white wine and an Ambien = lots of sleep.) The second leg of the trip wasn't quite as perfect. When I first sat down on the Dallas-to-BA flight, the seat next to me was empty, and it stayed that way until the very last minute. Just before we pushed back from the gate, some guy had to ruin the fun and plop down next to me.
But it wasn't just that I had a neighbor with whom I would have to subtly play that "who gets control of the middle armest" game. It was far worse than that. The guy had epic bad breath. It was actually offensive. I smelled it even before he sat down. When he did sit down next to me and opened his mouth and it was like, "Whoa! When did you last brush, 1989?!" After about 30 minutes of breathing through my mouth to avoid the smell, he popped in some mint gum and I thought, "OK, this should do it." But it was to no avail. The mint gum was no match for whatever bacteria had comfortably found a home in this guy's gums. Not even the two Cokes, the dinner, the breakfast, and the tea that was served on the flight could erase his stench. His breath was a WMD - weapon of mass discomfort. It was literally a biological weapon. Argentina could win any war by dropping this guy into enemy territory and just have him walking around and breathing on everyone. I felt like the Defense Department needed to go to DEFCON 3 with this guy around. Good lord dude, get a truthbrush!
Mercifully, I survived his breath and made it alive to BA. First stop after getting into town was the hostel. Yes, I'm putting myself through hostels again. Why? I've found that it's the best way to travel solo. Hostel upsides: inexpensive; usually decent services for the basics (clean beds, bathrooms, etc.); and, most importantly, ability to meet other young travelers, hang out with them, and trade information. Hostel downsides: it's a hostel. Hostels are full of random people who do random, weird, and annoying stuff at all hours of the day, but you can't really complain because you're only paying $15 a night. The hostel in BA was well-run and clean, and I managed to get a four-bed dorm with a private bathroom that was cleaned daily by the maid.
(I was on the 'Che Guevarra' floor. There's me, Che, and Fidel just hanging out in the hallway.) The only problem I had with my hostel was that, for a couple of nights, one of my dormmates snored loudly enough to wake the dead. Even my trusty earplugs were no match for him. After an hour of listening to his snoring, I couldn't take it anymore. Have you ever gotten to the point beyond just wanting to kill someone - where you actually starting thinking of specific ways to do, just as a way to deal with the frustration? I did. I came to the conclusion that I'd dump him in a wood-chipper, wipe the dorm clean of all my fingerprints, and take the first bus the next morning out of the country and into Uruguay. I didn't do that, although I was tempted, but I tried to summon all of my mental powers in an effort to achieve some sort of Jedi mind trick to get him to stop. Nope, he kept on going. I lost control and blurted out, "Holy [bleep], you're [bleep] snoring so [bleep] loud I [bleep] can't take it any more!! Shut the [bleep] up!!" He slept right through it...
Enough of my ranting. Let's get to the heart of it. Buneos Aires is a large urban sprawl (something like 13 million residents) but most of the main sights are congrgated in a central area.
I decided to walk around aimlessly while trying to remember where the main sights were located. Other than the guidebook, I only had two people to rely on for recommendations of things to do/see. Unfortunately for me, both of them were girls whose "must see" sights centered on places to drink coffee and shop. Since I don't drink coffee and I hate shopping with a passion, I was left with my guidebook, Lonely Planet, to guide me. For the first time in a while, it didn't lead me astray. So I roamed and wandered and enjoyed the city. It has an old world European charm, even though it's not really that old. Many streets are cobblestoned and the buildings are packed in tight. Cafes spill out into the sidewalks. There's a great mix of architecture (which also includes the all-too-common decaying building). It very much reminded me of Barcelona. One difference is that the streets are mapped out on a near perfect square grid, which on the one hand makes it very easy to walk but on the other makes it feel more like Manhattan or LA as opposed to a classic European city. 
True, the city is a bit rundown in certain areas - broken sidewalks, buildings in dire need or a paint job - but somehow that makes it seem more real. Overall, there's a fair amount to see and do, and I feel that four days was sufficient to see everything, but there was nothing monumental or life-altering. On reflection, I realized that I never once waited in line for anything even though it's peak tourism season. There's nothing like an Eiffel Tower or a Statue of Liberty. (The one 'symbol' of BA is this obelisk, which stands in the middle of the major north/south thoroughfare. Neat, but not exactly stunning. Especially since most buildings around it all taller and therefore block it out of the skyline.) Not that comparing cities is fair or even worthwhile, but visiting BA seems to be more about soaking up the essence of the place than visiting any one particular thing. So I can't describe any "wow" experiences, but there were things I really liked and are certaily worth mention.
One of my favorite places was the Recoleta cemetery,
smack dab in the middle of the city. This is where the rich and famous of Buenos Aires are buried, so it's not your ordinary cemetery. For starters, there's no grass. None at all. The entire place is made of up individual masoleums erected for the dead. You'd think this picture was taken at a nice part of the city. 
But those aren't apartment buildings - that's the cemetery. The one pictured here on the left is three stories tall and built with marble columns. How ridiculuous is that? I guess it challenges the adage that you can't take your money with when you die. The cemetery is also the final resting place of Evita Peron. Her gravesite is relatively modest compared to others... it's only one story high... Amateur.
Another favorite was Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, or MALBA. It's a small musuem with lots of 20th century art.
My only regret was that I wasn't high when I visited. Bright colors and bizzare shapes and textures are what this place seems to be built on. Even in a completely unaltered state of mind, It left my mind spinning. (I also really liked this bench. Just something cool that you don't see everyday.) 
One piece of art that really had me shaking my head was an exhibit that included actual people. In the corner of one of the galleries was a regular bedroom setup - bed, chest of drawers, nighttable, etc. As I approached, I thought that the artist had made a really good likeness of a woman sleeping in the bed. But when I got right next to it for a closer look, I saw that the "likeness" was breathing. Just as I was about to touch the woman to see if she was real, she "awoke", and then in came a a guy dressed in pajamas who kissed her on the lips. She got out of bed and walked away, and he slipped in under the sheets, and that was that. I don't know what kind of art that is, but it freaked out everyone in the musuem who was watching this.
Another highlight was walking through the Presidential Palace.
It's tiny compared to the White House, but the decor and art are really beautiful in a centuries-old-Europe kind of way. It was regal and royal and opulent and everything you'd expect from a Palace. Still, I wasn't paying too much attention to detail until a guy from Calgary who somehow figured me for an English speaker approached me and started commenting on the beauty of the radiator in the hallway. I thought he was joking at first, but soon realized he was in the midst of an intellectual orgasm. He stopped and marveled at it's design and the etchings that were engraved in it and he was telling me about how rare it was to see radiators like that one and what it meant to the building as a whole and blah blah blah. You'd have thought this guy spent his entire life looking at radiators. At one point he said to me, "Man, they don't make 'em like this anymore," to which my response was, 
"I didn't know they made them like that in the first place." But I guess that's his thing. The best part of the tour was being able to stand on the balcony where Evita used to deliver her speeches to tens of thousands of adoring compatriots. (Terrible picture, I know.) I stood there and started to act as if I were giving a speech to an imaginary crowd of below. That only drew the ire of the security guard who probably thought I was nuts. Still, it's pretty cool to stand in the exact spot that is such an iconic part of a country's history.
Argetinians seem to be in love with street fairs.
(I'll be generous and won't call them flea markets). Since I don't shop they are basically useless to me other than observing tourists buying useless trinkets. Why I find that interesting is beyond me, but I do. However, one benefit of the street fairs are the nearly ubiqutious tango shows. Where there are street fairs there are tourists, and where there are tourists, there are people doing the tango. These performances are a real treat to experience, both for the dance and the music. I must say that watching tango being performed by people who know what they're doing is a true pleasure. It's probably been said a thousand times by other people, so I'll just join the chorus: it's damn sexy. I wish I had the skill to pull it off...
Although not a "tourist attraction," another thing I really liked about the city is the huge number of parks, large and small, that are dotted throughout the city. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love green space in cities. Most of these parks are dedicated to some revolutionary hero or Che Guevarra, or both. Every park had a least one bronze statute or bust of someone who did something at some time that was relevant to Argentina or the greater Latin American cause for independence. What amazes me is that, the world around, parks of these nature always seems to attract the exact same four groups of people: homeless, drunks, disaffected youth, and young lovers. What is it about the nature of the universe that small urban parks bring those four groups of people together?
I was told by several people that petty crime in BA is rampant. I survived unscathed, but I was in the city no less than 24 hours before I saw it happen to someone else. As morbid as it sounds, it was a really fun experience. I was on a crowded subway train to some random part of town when a huge commotion broke out about ten feet to my left. When I looked over, two guys were shoving each other and trading blows, and one woman was throwing cheap shots with her purse. There was lots of screaming and shouting, most of which I did not understand, but the word "puta" (Spanish for bitch) jumped out about 100 times. Pretty soon several other people were shoving and pushing one of the guys. As it turned out, he tried to steal the woman's purse. Not only had been stopped from doing so by the good Samaritans nearby, but they then rained down fire and hell on him. The physical violence was limited to a few punches and kicks, but this guy was the victim of the biggest verbal chewing out I've ever heard. Ten or 15 bystanders (of the passionate Latin type) brought this guy to tears. He managed to flee at the next exit, but that day surely turned out differently than he'd planned.
The only downside to BA is the schedule that people there stick to. Dinner no earlier than 10pm, arrive at the club or bar no earlier than 2am, and party until the sun rises. Having been jetlagged and tired from exploring the city by foot, I couldn't keep up. Both Friday and Saturday nights, I had the humbling experience of coming back to the hostel after a few drinks while a lot of other people were just beginning their night. How people can live like that night after night is completely beyond me.
So there it is. I began this leg of the journey in Buenos Aires, and now that I've crossed it off the list, I'm headed south. Way south. Next stop: Tierra Del Fuego.
The adventure began before I arrived in Buenos Aires. The flight down to BA took nearly 20 hours (including a five hour time difference), but it wasn't as grueling as that might seem: a three hour flight to Dallas, a brief layover, then a 10 hour flight to BA. On the first leg everything went swimmingly: no delays, no crying babies, and no morbidly obese people sitting directly in front of me and crushing my knees. I even had a friendly flight attendant who gave me free wine. (New revelation - two glasses of white wine and an Ambien = lots of sleep.) The second leg of the trip wasn't quite as perfect. When I first sat down on the Dallas-to-BA flight, the seat next to me was empty, and it stayed that way until the very last minute. Just before we pushed back from the gate, some guy had to ruin the fun and plop down next to me.
But it wasn't just that I had a neighbor with whom I would have to subtly play that "who gets control of the middle armest" game. It was far worse than that. The guy had epic bad breath. It was actually offensive. I smelled it even before he sat down. When he did sit down next to me and opened his mouth and it was like, "Whoa! When did you last brush, 1989?!" After about 30 minutes of breathing through my mouth to avoid the smell, he popped in some mint gum and I thought, "OK, this should do it." But it was to no avail. The mint gum was no match for whatever bacteria had comfortably found a home in this guy's gums. Not even the two Cokes, the dinner, the breakfast, and the tea that was served on the flight could erase his stench. His breath was a WMD - weapon of mass discomfort. It was literally a biological weapon. Argentina could win any war by dropping this guy into enemy territory and just have him walking around and breathing on everyone. I felt like the Defense Department needed to go to DEFCON 3 with this guy around. Good lord dude, get a truthbrush!Mercifully, I survived his breath and made it alive to BA. First stop after getting into town was the hostel. Yes, I'm putting myself through hostels again. Why? I've found that it's the best way to travel solo. Hostel upsides: inexpensive; usually decent services for the basics (clean beds, bathrooms, etc.); and, most importantly, ability to meet other young travelers, hang out with them, and trade information. Hostel downsides: it's a hostel. Hostels are full of random people who do random, weird, and annoying stuff at all hours of the day, but you can't really complain because you're only paying $15 a night. The hostel in BA was well-run and clean, and I managed to get a four-bed dorm with a private bathroom that was cleaned daily by the maid.
(I was on the 'Che Guevarra' floor. There's me, Che, and Fidel just hanging out in the hallway.) The only problem I had with my hostel was that, for a couple of nights, one of my dormmates snored loudly enough to wake the dead. Even my trusty earplugs were no match for him. After an hour of listening to his snoring, I couldn't take it anymore. Have you ever gotten to the point beyond just wanting to kill someone - where you actually starting thinking of specific ways to do, just as a way to deal with the frustration? I did. I came to the conclusion that I'd dump him in a wood-chipper, wipe the dorm clean of all my fingerprints, and take the first bus the next morning out of the country and into Uruguay. I didn't do that, although I was tempted, but I tried to summon all of my mental powers in an effort to achieve some sort of Jedi mind trick to get him to stop. Nope, he kept on going. I lost control and blurted out, "Holy [bleep], you're [bleep] snoring so [bleep] loud I [bleep] can't take it any more!! Shut the [bleep] up!!" He slept right through it...Enough of my ranting. Let's get to the heart of it. Buneos Aires is a large urban sprawl (something like 13 million residents) but most of the main sights are congrgated in a central area.
I decided to walk around aimlessly while trying to remember where the main sights were located. Other than the guidebook, I only had two people to rely on for recommendations of things to do/see. Unfortunately for me, both of them were girls whose "must see" sights centered on places to drink coffee and shop. Since I don't drink coffee and I hate shopping with a passion, I was left with my guidebook, Lonely Planet, to guide me. For the first time in a while, it didn't lead me astray. So I roamed and wandered and enjoyed the city. It has an old world European charm, even though it's not really that old. Many streets are cobblestoned and the buildings are packed in tight. Cafes spill out into the sidewalks. There's a great mix of architecture (which also includes the all-too-common decaying building). It very much reminded me of Barcelona. One difference is that the streets are mapped out on a near perfect square grid, which on the one hand makes it very easy to walk but on the other makes it feel more like Manhattan or LA as opposed to a classic European city. 
True, the city is a bit rundown in certain areas - broken sidewalks, buildings in dire need or a paint job - but somehow that makes it seem more real. Overall, there's a fair amount to see and do, and I feel that four days was sufficient to see everything, but there was nothing monumental or life-altering. On reflection, I realized that I never once waited in line for anything even though it's peak tourism season. There's nothing like an Eiffel Tower or a Statue of Liberty. (The one 'symbol' of BA is this obelisk, which stands in the middle of the major north/south thoroughfare. Neat, but not exactly stunning. Especially since most buildings around it all taller and therefore block it out of the skyline.) Not that comparing cities is fair or even worthwhile, but visiting BA seems to be more about soaking up the essence of the place than visiting any one particular thing. So I can't describe any "wow" experiences, but there were things I really liked and are certaily worth mention.One of my favorite places was the Recoleta cemetery,
smack dab in the middle of the city. This is where the rich and famous of Buenos Aires are buried, so it's not your ordinary cemetery. For starters, there's no grass. None at all. The entire place is made of up individual masoleums erected for the dead. You'd think this picture was taken at a nice part of the city. But those aren't apartment buildings - that's the cemetery. The one pictured here on the left is three stories tall and built with marble columns. How ridiculuous is that? I guess it challenges the adage that you can't take your money with when you die. The cemetery is also the final resting place of Evita Peron. Her gravesite is relatively modest compared to others... it's only one story high... Amateur.Another favorite was Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, or MALBA. It's a small musuem with lots of 20th century art.
My only regret was that I wasn't high when I visited. Bright colors and bizzare shapes and textures are what this place seems to be built on. Even in a completely unaltered state of mind, It left my mind spinning. (I also really liked this bench. Just something cool that you don't see everyday.) One piece of art that really had me shaking my head was an exhibit that included actual people. In the corner of one of the galleries was a regular bedroom setup - bed, chest of drawers, nighttable, etc. As I approached, I thought that the artist had made a really good likeness of a woman sleeping in the bed. But when I got right next to it for a closer look, I saw that the "likeness" was breathing. Just as I was about to touch the woman to see if she was real, she "awoke", and then in came a a guy dressed in pajamas who kissed her on the lips. She got out of bed and walked away, and he slipped in under the sheets, and that was that. I don't know what kind of art that is, but it freaked out everyone in the musuem who was watching this.Another highlight was walking through the Presidential Palace.
It's tiny compared to the White House, but the decor and art are really beautiful in a centuries-old-Europe kind of way. It was regal and royal and opulent and everything you'd expect from a Palace. Still, I wasn't paying too much attention to detail until a guy from Calgary who somehow figured me for an English speaker approached me and started commenting on the beauty of the radiator in the hallway. I thought he was joking at first, but soon realized he was in the midst of an intellectual orgasm. He stopped and marveled at it's design and the etchings that were engraved in it and he was telling me about how rare it was to see radiators like that one and what it meant to the building as a whole and blah blah blah. You'd have thought this guy spent his entire life looking at radiators. At one point he said to me, "Man, they don't make 'em like this anymore," to which my response was, 
"I didn't know they made them like that in the first place." But I guess that's his thing. The best part of the tour was being able to stand on the balcony where Evita used to deliver her speeches to tens of thousands of adoring compatriots. (Terrible picture, I know.) I stood there and started to act as if I were giving a speech to an imaginary crowd of below. That only drew the ire of the security guard who probably thought I was nuts. Still, it's pretty cool to stand in the exact spot that is such an iconic part of a country's history.Argetinians seem to be in love with street fairs.
(I'll be generous and won't call them flea markets). Since I don't shop they are basically useless to me other than observing tourists buying useless trinkets. Why I find that interesting is beyond me, but I do. However, one benefit of the street fairs are the nearly ubiqutious tango shows. Where there are street fairs there are tourists, and where there are tourists, there are people doing the tango. These performances are a real treat to experience, both for the dance and the music. I must say that watching tango being performed by people who know what they're doing is a true pleasure. It's probably been said a thousand times by other people, so I'll just join the chorus: it's damn sexy. I wish I had the skill to pull it off...Although not a "tourist attraction," another thing I really liked about the city is the huge number of parks, large and small, that are dotted throughout the city. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love green space in cities. Most of these parks are dedicated to some revolutionary hero or Che Guevarra, or both. Every park had a least one bronze statute or bust of someone who did something at some time that was relevant to Argentina or the greater Latin American cause for independence. What amazes me is that, the world around, parks of these nature always seems to attract the exact same four groups of people: homeless, drunks, disaffected youth, and young lovers. What is it about the nature of the universe that small urban parks bring those four groups of people together?
I was told by several people that petty crime in BA is rampant. I survived unscathed, but I was in the city no less than 24 hours before I saw it happen to someone else. As morbid as it sounds, it was a really fun experience. I was on a crowded subway train to some random part of town when a huge commotion broke out about ten feet to my left. When I looked over, two guys were shoving each other and trading blows, and one woman was throwing cheap shots with her purse. There was lots of screaming and shouting, most of which I did not understand, but the word "puta" (Spanish for bitch) jumped out about 100 times. Pretty soon several other people were shoving and pushing one of the guys. As it turned out, he tried to steal the woman's purse. Not only had been stopped from doing so by the good Samaritans nearby, but they then rained down fire and hell on him. The physical violence was limited to a few punches and kicks, but this guy was the victim of the biggest verbal chewing out I've ever heard. Ten or 15 bystanders (of the passionate Latin type) brought this guy to tears. He managed to flee at the next exit, but that day surely turned out differently than he'd planned.
The only downside to BA is the schedule that people there stick to. Dinner no earlier than 10pm, arrive at the club or bar no earlier than 2am, and party until the sun rises. Having been jetlagged and tired from exploring the city by foot, I couldn't keep up. Both Friday and Saturday nights, I had the humbling experience of coming back to the hostel after a few drinks while a lot of other people were just beginning their night. How people can live like that night after night is completely beyond me.
So there it is. I began this leg of the journey in Buenos Aires, and now that I've crossed it off the list, I'm headed south. Way south. Next stop: Tierra Del Fuego.
Que bueno! I'm glad our road warrior is back.
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