I-May, Eeda, and Jahn

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Time To explore BA and then head home… It was basically only about 24 hours with no sleep this time...

Saturday morning was our debarkation day in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The letter in our cabin the previous night said everyone leaving the ship today had to be out of their rooms at 8am. We waited downstairs in the atrium (peacefully actually because this was not the waiting area for very many other people apparently) and we got off the boat around 9:30am in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We were walked off by a Costa staff member and taken to our luggage, then our luggage was put through a scanner LEAVING the cruise. In all the time I’ve cruised, this has never happened. I asked why. She flatly said “to check for drugs” so apparently, this is standard practice. We were then introduced to Aime (pronounced I-May), our local Argentinian private guide and Palo, our driver, for the day. Costa had arranged for us to have an English-speaking tour in Buenos Aires for the day. We had booked this tour with them pre-cruise but they did not have anyone else sign up for it so for a few extra bucks, they arranged this tour just for us. We will spend the day seeing the sights and the tour will end at the airport.

I-May is 40-some years old, born and mostly raised in the jungle area of Argentina (north) and has spent the majority of her last 30+ years in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. She is honest about her country. She points out all the goods and the bads. All questions were welcome. I like this about her. We learn so much, to be honest, it is overwhelming. Here are a few tidbits of all the knowledge crammed into our brains between 9:30am and 4:30pm…

· 70% of Argentinians are of Italian ancestry and consider themselves Italians

· There are 3 million people who live in the city of Buenos Aires but Mon-Fri the population grows to 7 million when workers drive or bus in to work for the government or at banks

· All of the fancy buildings by the port are government owned buildings and government offices. I say fancy but they are just big older buildings built long ago. There are some “fancy” buildings and those are hotels or banks, just like all the other SA countries.

· Over 50,000 Buenos Aires citizens live in the so-called slums she pointed-out to us… no running water, rigged electricity, it’s free to live there, and the city hates them and wants to get rid of the slums. Years ago, Evita (Eva Paron) and her husband started a program where Argentina would build apartment homes for the slum families and they would pay the mortgage to the government of Argentina for 40 or 50 years to move out of the slums and own their own apartments. This program is still in place today and they are currently building a new high rise apartment building to get those in the last set of slums into apartment homes. I will say, however, this has been going on for so long now and with the collapse of the Argentinian dollar years ago, many of these apartment buildings are now slums themselves. It's so hard to explain because basically, the government leaders are unstable, their money is unstable, and their housing suffers because of this situation.

· A lot of families own their apartments because they are passed down from generation to generation and also when the government collapsed in 2001, anyone who was paying on apartments, ended-up getting those apartments free for life. So, now they just pay taxes. Taxes on a four-room apartment can be anywhere from $40 to $100 USD or so a year. Nothing really. Housing is “nothing” in Argentina. It is not an expense or a worry for most of them. Why? Because the majority lives in small apartments that do not have American standards. That’s probably why. No one lives in a 3,000 square foot home on a half acre. Not even the country people. The mansions from the past have all been sold now and are mainly all embassies for other countries. Most people are happy to own or have their own apartment because they were originally immigrants and were previously living with 3 generations, 7 people, in one room in a house with 50 rooms, one kitchen, and one bathroom. The apartments are considered good housing for most families. Aime lives 1.5 hours away from Buenos Aires via busride (or a 10 hour roundtrip walk which she has done before) and she lives in an apartment too. This is typical of most poor countries.

· They have universal/free healthcare. Anyone with a tiny bit of money does not use it because they want private or better facilities or better services. We drove by a beautiful park on this lovely Saturday and there were two nurses sitting at a fold-out table with a big sign on it. They are paid by the government to be there to check your blood pressure, answer any questions, and give some advice if needed. There was no one at their table and it was around noon and the park was full of dog walkers, families, and folks of all ages.

· The tango originated in Argentina and they are extreme proud of this fact. Originally, it was two men dancing together, not a woman and a man.

I could go on and on. We toured around in a small SUV vehicle while getting out and walking and taking long stops at several places. We stopped at the famous mausoleums (still being used today), a Spanish church from the 1700s (one of the few remaining buildings from that time period), drove by the embassies and the upper crust neighborhoods, to the Recoleta art neighborhood of painted houses and by the slums, by the soccer field, through the Polerma neighborhood and back to the obelisk, etc. We walked everywhere. It was nice and breezy initially… then it got sunny and the stories got longer and we were hot… and then it would cool down and it just went back and forth. It was A LOT. We stopped around 1pm at the Recoleta (colorfully painted art neighborhood) and Kamie had a sausage sandwich and I had a ham and cheese empanada. It’s their ham and their cheese so it was different from ours but good. Kamie’s sausage was cooked outside on an open grill and smothered in onions and peppers and flavorful. We had two tall and fat bottles of beer which we could not finish. Since we had poured the beer into glasses, the two young male waiters were very excited when we left our half-full beer bottles and said they would drink them! We learned so much today that I could write for hours and I don’t want to exhaust you the way we were exhausted. We headed to the airport and Kamie fell asleep on me in the car while Aime and I talked. She is a non-stop talker and storyteller. We tipped our driver and Aime and she grabbed me and hugged me. She was so nice. Our time in Buenos Aires was coming to an end.

One interesting little fact we noticed after the fact… Aime left us at a table in a local restaurant (where she knew everyone and they all spoke Spanish) so we could eat and she could go drink her mate (tea) she had carried with her and see a friend next door. We sat at the table and ate. There was a tiny table next to us and a girl sat down with a drink and sat beside us – directly next to Kamie. I didn’t think much of it but it did seem as though she was eavesdropping. We talked about how much we liked Aime, how nice she was, about the food (which we liked), about whether or not we were tipping enough or not (we tipped well), and ate our food in a lot of silence. We were tired and it had been a long day so far. There wasn’t too much to say. After about 15 minutes… here comes Aime and she and this lady have a quick and funny discussion in Spanish. I swear she asked her what we said. It was almost too obvious.

Anyway, Aime and Palo our driver left us at EZE – Buenos Aires International Airport where we rearranged our bags so we I could take off my shoes and put on sandals for the long flight (which was a great idea). We only had to wait in line about 20 minutes before we could check in for our 8:50pm overnight flight to Miami. We left our bags and headed to the Hard Rock Café. It was full of other Americans but it really was the only place to eat pre-security so there’s that. We bought a fried chicken sandwich and split it. I had a bottled water and Kamie had a Hurricane. The total, we thought, was $23 American dollars but it’s been a day or so now and the credit card shows less than $15. That’s unheard of. I’m not sure why that is so low. $23 would have been a good deal for a Hard Rock. I will say, the service is slow in Argentina. No one is in a hurry to do anything. But, we weren’t in a hurry either and had plenty of time for a flight so no worries there. We were tired and figured we might actually sleep on the flight home after such a long day.

We finally boarded the plane and we had the same 2 seats we had on the flight arriving – seats we paid $74 per person each way extra for so $296. They sucked again. We have had these exact seats before and they've been great. I know if it was just this model of airplane (777-300ER) - there is a wide gap between the seat on the far right and the window so I couldn’t lean against the window. Kamie had an aisle seat and I had a window (there were 3 rows of 2 in the back of the plane and that’s what we paid for). I did sleep SOME but I wrestled and fought with the sleep all night. Also, I felt a tickle in the back of my throat when we were walking off the ship and I started sneezing and coughing a bit on the plane tonight. Something odd that happened pre-flight was as we walked through security to get into the airport, we didn’t have to take off our shoes (ever) and there was no TSA Pre-check or anything because we are on Argentina soil now. We finally get to the plane and wait and lo and behold.. just before they begin boarding the plane…four or five security agents show-up and they setup these steel tables… everyone must throw away all food and water and you and your carry-on luggage is again spot-checked. They were all wearing disposable gloves and making passengers open their luggage and take out items, etc. I was floored. I’ve never seen that happen like that. We had to throw away our bottled water. We got on the plane and there were still people getting on behind us or besides us who had not been seated yet and the pilot says “flight attendants, please prepare the plane for takeoff” and before people are even buckled-in.. the plane starts taxing to the runway. By the time we actually took off, everyone was seated and the overhead compartments were shut. Within an hour of takeoff they attempted to feed us a total crap dinner that I did not eat – it was some sort of bowtie pasta with white cheese and peas and other odd things in there, a cold roll, butter, crackers, some sort of spreadable white cheese for the crckers, an espresso brownie, and a salad made out of red onions and carrots. I ate the crackers and the spreadable cheese and ordered a ginger ale and that was it. As soon as the food was out of our way, I watched part of Four Weddings and A Funeral and then finally drifted off to sleep for a little while. I struggled but I forced myself to stay as comfortable as possible and try to sleep. About 6 hours into the flight, I got up and walked back to the restroom and back. That felt good to just get up and stretch a bit. The plane was dark and quiet so I was too. Kamie got up for a little bit too. Kamie finally returned to the seat and I watched the rest of my movie. I tried so hard to sleep but instead, I just watched the insane path the plane took – which again was not the path we are shown when we first boarded. It’s so odd. I played Solitaire on my phone. They gave us a ham and cheese croissant for breakfast about an hour before landing. We landed in Miami at before 5am. We followed all the signs. We walked to the area for American citizens. He wanted to know what we were doing in South American and we told him a cruise and he told us to have a good day. There was no custom checking our luggage, no second checks, nothing. We walked out to get our luggage and leave the airport. I have never seen anything like that before on a flight except where the country you are leaving does all the customs/extra checks and neither of us remember anyone, anywhere asking us about what we were bringing into the country and we never completed any custom forms. I mean, obviously we didn’t have drugs so maybe that’s all they scan for? Just odd in general. By the time we got our luggage, got an Uber to our hotel, got our room keys (we had paid for the hotel for 2 nights so we could check-in at 5am)… it was closer to 6am… but it was still dark outside in Miami… we made sure the blinds were shut… turned off the lights and crawled in bed. We both slept for almost 3 hours solid in the dark.

I’ll write another post about Miami and home and a wrap-up… as the worst is yet to come, unfortunately… PS... TravelBlog is down right now so pictures aren't working. I'm not sure why but I'll be able to label the pictures and write stories below some of them probably this weekend when I post a final few pics and a final wrap-up note about this trip and our travel future overall.

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Comments

[Stacy]

I can't see any of your photos :(
I could see the pics on all of the other posts but not this one.