Buenos Aires

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Eli was right.  Buenos Aires is AMAZING.

It also brings new meaning to the phrase ¨the city that never sleeps¨.  The sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 8 PM, lighting the city approx. 15 hrs a day.  TWO THIRDS OF THE DAY.  It is so weird walking around at 8 PM and feeling like it can´t be later than 3 PM.  Further south in Patagonia (we´re counting the days to the trek!) it will be light nearly 19 hrs per day - better for us to see the pumas with I guess. ;)  In BA not most, but nearly all Argentinians go to dinner at or after 10 PM, and we followed suit.  We even saw toddlers out after midnight in nice restaurants.  Dinners are long and enjoyable here, with lively conversation.  We didn´t leave a restaurant before 2 AM any night we were there.

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We were fortunate to be able to spend two of our three evenings with a friend from high school, Tim, who has lived in BA for a year.   His friends Tanner and Kim (both originally from the US) own a translation service company and a non-profit that improves the quality of education & access to information technology in rural Argentina.  The non-profit is based out of Ohio where Kim lives now.  You can check it out at http://www.projectpatagonia.org/.

We stayed on the edge of Palermo Viejo at a mod hotel within walking distance of some of the best shopping in the city - cleverly marketed as Palermo Soho & Palermo Hollywood.  It has absolutely assumed the characteristics as what it was marketed after.  It is also walking distance to the zoo, botanical gardens, japanese garden, and other green walking paths.

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The zoo would probably cause some serious controversy in the U.S., but we loved it.  The controversy would stem from the fact that visitors can feed nearly any animal in the park by hand (not the wild cats, hippos, crocs, snakes, rhinos or chimpanzees OF COURSE, but nearly every other animal).  In addition there were these crazy long-legged rabbits, birds and blind muskrat looking animals just roaming free.  To give you an idea - we fed &/or petted baboons, elephants, reindeer, zebras, goats, antelope, cows with the zoo-provided feed.  Like I said before we loved it as the animals wanted to come close to the fence for a treat, making it a more interactive experience.  Random fact - the antlers of a reindeer feel like velvet.  :)

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BA is by far one of the most architecturally beautiful cities we´ve been to, with european-like statues, parks, buildings and churches.  I didn´t capture nearly enough photos of this aspect of the city - sorry.  There are some photos of the Centre´s Plaza del Congreso and a ton of photos of the Cementario de la Recoleta.  Tim mentioned that there is a large italian influence in Buenos Aires, which we definately noticed in the people and the architecture.  The city has great energy - maybe because we´re visiting during their holiday season, so the city isnt as bustling as it is during non-summer months.  Most people are vacationing in Paraguay, Mendoza, or the Argentinean coastline south of BA.

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I think our favorite spot in BA was the Cementario de la Recoleta.  We almost had a game going with how or how not to build a family tomb.  There is a pic in here with a ladder and a stack of no less than 25 coffins ON EACH SIDE descending into the tomb.  50 coffins!  Yikes!  So here are the nots to do when building a family tomb - don´t make it look like a furnace & don´t pick brick as it crumbles over time.  The dos are - do pro-create, do add at least one statue to the exterior, do add a spiral marble staircase, do use steel for the doors, and do add stained glass windows facing inside the altar.

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Random fact - since we´ve arrived in Argentina we haven´t seen a single Starbucks.  We´ve had to resort to McCafe for fast coffee.  It really isn´t bad!  Given Starbucks global reach, we aren´t sure why the coffee injected pulse of BA hasn´t been inundated yet...

La Boca, the bario where Tango was invented was super colorful and full of fun people.  We didn´t go in the Centro Cultural de los Artistes as you could see most of it outside.  We headed to the La Bombonera stadium as well, but unfortunately, it isn´t soccer season, so no game.

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With 12 Million people we couldnt figure out why the air was so clean.  Tim was saying that car loans are nearly impossible, or at least much more difficult for Argentinians to acquire than in the US.  Probably a factor in the clean air.  The streets for a city of this size are also quite clean which makes this a bueatiful large city...sort of an oxymoron to many of us.

There was some sketchiness in the city.  Electronics are insanely expensive here ($1K for a Treo!!), so they are largely sought by customs and thieves.  We had an issue with counterfeit money, where the taxi gave us our change in copied bills.  It seems like a pretty big problem as everyone checks the money to verify it is shiny.