First Stop: Buenos Aires

Hola familia y amigos! So we are finally getting around to writing our first blog post. We decided it's easier to take in a city and then post about it when it's already in our rear view mirror so I'm writing this from city #2, Mar del Plata. More on that in the next post.

BUENOS AIRES! We were in BA from January 7 to 13 and really feel like we got a full experience while we were there. This trip is definitely different from other vacations because we are TRULY on vacation. We're not limited by time at all so we have the luxury of exploring for part of the day and lazing around for the rest of the day. We eat out, we eat in, Jeff cooks, I plan itineraries, and everyone goes to bed happy and full, if a little bit sunburned. Buenos Aires is a HUGE city. We walked miles and miles during our time there, splitting up our time to visit one of the 5 or 6 barrios each day.

Day 1-2 we focused on El Centro where our hostel was located, and where all the historic and governmental buildings are. Check out La Casa Rosada in the photo above. This is their equivalent of our White House. Our tour guide pointed out one of the balconies on the left and told us "this is where Evita used to give speeches, and where Madonna used to sing." haha... The guide also told us that there are two rumors for why the president's offices (unlike the White House, he or she (currently a she) does not actually live in the house, they just office there) are pink. One rumor is that they needed to find a paint that would not wash off and decided to mix in cow's blood to stain the exterior walls. This one probably isn't very likely. The other is that the two factions (political parties) each were represented by the colors red and white, so the blending of the two colors (and two factions in the government) created pink.

Days 3-4 Recoleta and Palermo

These two barrios are where the wealthier and middle class porteños live. La Recoleta is near El Centro and is home to La Recoleta Cemetery, a huge expanse of mauseoleums (seriously no grass at all, just wall to wall mausoleums). This cemetery includes lots of famous military and governmental people as well as aristocracy who lived in Recoleta. Evita is buried there and lots of other people we don't know much about (but recognized their names because all the streets are named for them) so we mostly just admired the masonry and got lost in the maze of graves. La Recoleta is a fancy schmancy neighborhood (i.e. Central Park South or Houston's River Oaks) but has lots of lovely sidewalk cafes and the streets are kept cleaner than the streets in El Centro. Recoleta sits next to Palermo which is full of excellent shopping and boutiques and restaurants. Palermo is a fun, hip area with lots of courtyards surrounded by outdoor bars, restaurants, and clubs. If we decide to stay in BA, we might try to find a place there if it's in our price range. It's a bit yuppie but it feels safer than other places that might be more affordable. Plus, if we're tutoring students in English, this is probably where most of our market lives.

Day 5 San Telmo and La Boca

San Telmo and La Boca are barrios south of El Centro with more of a blue-collar flavor. San Telmo is known for its tango hot spots, so we went to a Sunday afternoon antique market and checked out an outdoor tango show (see video attached at the bottom). We got caught in the rain and sat under an awning and ate our lunch that we put together from a sidewalk supermarket: mini baguette with yummy sliced salami, Argentino cheese, and a tomato. Oh, and a bottle of cheap red wine, of course. The whole lunch, including wine, cost us $4 USD. After the rain stopped, we wandered for several hours until we found La Boca, one of the more photographed areas of BA. Many of the buildings are covered in corrugated metal and some are painted in super bright colors and murals, so it's a lively place to see. However, the majority of the neighborhood feels very sketchy so we weren't sure where we were headed for the first hour. Finally, we heard some music and singing and walked up to a big escena turística: lots of outdoor cafes and each one had their own tourist enticement, either a couple dancing a very dramatic tango, people singing and playing guitar, overdressed tango dancers posing with tourists... we were not to be won over by the tourist trap so we walked over to the river to finish our lunch bottle of Malbec. Jeff pulled out his trusty Swiss Army corkscrew and enthusiastically yanked the cork out of the bottle, spraying wine all over his only pair of shorts. Jajajajaja... not a happy camper. So we took the Subte (their metro/subway aka subterraneano) all the way back to our hostel and called it a day.

Day 6 - La Reserva Ecológica

There is a huge ecological reserve between the city and the Atlantic Ocean, so on our last day in BA we walked along it and took in the naturaleza, although we couldn't go in because it had rained heavily the night before and the reserve was closed (probably due to excessive mosquitoes and muddy trails). We met a Cubano who asked us for an intercambio (exchange), i.e. he would play us a song on his guitar and sing for us in exchange for some plata ($). He was quite entertaining, although his song's plot line sounded suspiciously similar to R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet"... hahahaha. A very nice exchange though, I would say, and he gave us some good recs for what to do and where to stay in Chile.

So... there are some amazingly cheap markets here with all sorts of leather goods and jewelry but we haven't bought much since we have huge backpacks to carry as it is. We'll probably wait to buy stuff once we have our own place. We've walked ALL over and now at least we have a good idea of what to expect if we decide to hunt for an apartment in BA. The barrios are all very different and are far enough from each other that choosing one will pretty much center our lives around it unless we take the Subte to other spots for work and what not. We noticed some ads on Craigslist for English speakers. The pay is not good (about $5-$7USD an hour) but that's pretty much what we were expecting and we're open to the idea of it, if we decide to live here. We're also tossing around the idea of doing some of our own advertising for private tutoring but we probably will check out some language schools once the academic year gets started again at the end of February.

This is a long post but I wanted to paint you a picture of what we've been up to. I'll try to give shorter updates more frequently for the rest of our stops.

Fun BA Facts:
1. Stoplights are more advanced here: in addition to going from green to yellow to red they go from red to yellow to green! Maybe this is so all the motos and standard transmissions can get ready to go.

2. Every time you buy a coke (or anything at the store really, but that's all we buy), whether a can, plastic, or glass bottle, they give you a straw too! All the cool kids drink their cokes from straws.

3. There are no stop signs at all. If an intersection doesn't have a traffic light, I guess it's fend for yourself.

4. Wine is cheaper than beer per volume! Yay! And good too. A $2 bottle is just as tasty as a $10 bottle at home and spending more than $5 on a bottle is really splurging.

5. Pretty much the only beers served at bars around BA are Quilmes (Argentine for cheap, low-quality beer), Isenbeck (supposedly premium Argentine beer), Stella Artois, Budweiser, Corona, Warsteiner, and Heineken. So basically mostly imports, and not even great ones at that. Good thing the wine is so cheap!

6. The widest avenue in the world is here, at least 10 lanes in each direction with 3 sets of medians, 140 m across (and our hostel is on it). Actually Brasilia just built a wider one but our tour guide said that's a secret and that Argentines will beat us up if we say that out loud.

7. Napkins are more like pieces of paper you would write a note to someone on. Or tissue paper for a gift. Really not very helpful for all the greasy sausage sandwiches we like to eat.

8. The people here are very friendly and interested in where we're from and where all we plan to travel, but their intensity for their soccer teams is pretty intimidating.

More on our first fútbol experience and Mar del Plata in post número dos. Ciao!