Buenos (or Malos?) Aires

Well, after five days in Buenos Aires, we have experienced solid rain, food poisoning, boring food, horrible traffic, and the loudest streets we have ever heard. We have also experienced helpful strangers, honest cabbies, plenty of American television, movies, and music, and a couple of very interesting folks to say the least.

All in all, the begining of our trip has been difficult but we are making the best of it. It isn´t so much that the city that has been a bad experience as much as a string of bad luck. We visited La Recoleta where many of Argentina´s powerful elite are buried including Eva Peron. We have seen a huge metal flower statue that opens during the day and closes at night just like a real flower. We saw a fabulous tango show on the street and a not so fablous expensive tango show in a theatre. We ate fabulous ice cream that was a combination between American ice cream and Italian gelato and have had some of the worst coffee we´ve yet experienced (Can you imagine, a world without Starbucks?).

We had the fortune of walking into a great restaurant where we experiened one of the best steak dinners ever. McDonald´s gave us the same stomache ache it gives us back home but it was nothing compared to the food poisening we recieved at the Tango show.

We visited La Boca, a small, poor town with a tourist destination based on the Tango. While there, we met El Hombre Hormiguero (the Ant Man). This was a colorful old man dressed in a red ant suit who was dancing in the street like a child. We were so sure he was nuts that we had to ask for a photo. Soon we realized he wasn´t so crazy after all. He is a local elderly man who wanted to bring hope to the children of this impoverished neighborhood. So he developed the Ant Man as a way to both raise money for the children and to show people that life doesn´t have to be so serious, even in such a poor area. You never know where you might find a life lesson or who may teach it to you.

What to expect in Buenos Aires:

The good-
Great steak (in the right restaurant)
Cheap food if you can stand to eat pizza and empanada´s everyday day
Easy and cheap transportation

The bad-
Trash laden sidewalks
The noise and smog
Lack of variety of food

That´s all until next time...We´re off to La Plata, the city Tracey studied in about 9 years ago. We´ll be staying with her host family for the weekend. On the 15th, we´re off to Puerto Madryn in the Patagonia, to see penguins and whales. And on the 18th of October we´re going to El Calafate to visit El Perito Moreno Glacier. After that, we´ll make our way to the Andes Corridor and Santiago Chile. We´ll keep you posted on our adventures!

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