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Published: August 5th 2009
Hey all,
Just sending out a quick recap from my time in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I started my trip at the airport outside of Caldera. The Atacama Airport is a tiny place not much bigger than a gymnasium at your average high school. I boarded the plane (the first time I've boarded a large jet by stairs) and happened to be sitting next to a guy from Australia who had been in the area about as long as I had. He worked for a company that owns a few mines in Chile and other parts of South American as well. It turns out he'll be in Copiapó for 4 years! It was fun getting to know him. The rest of the flight was great. LAN, a major travel company in South America, has great planes with comfortable seats, lots of food and drinks, plus they played comedy shows at take off and Classical music at landing. Every flight showed have that. Seriously. It took away all the tension of flying.
Anyway, I landed in Santiago and head to Valparaíso for 3 days. That turned out to actually only be one day. I ended up having the flu for the
first 2 days and was in bed with a temperature of 38.7 C (101.7 F). No fun. But I got out and saw the town a bit. I think I wrote about that already so I'll move on to the trip to Buenos Aires.
I headed to the airport in Santiago to meet Nick and Joe who were both going to Buenos Aires with me. Joe was taking a later flight but met us at the airport. Nick and I got through customs and got some food while waiting for our flight. Take off was a little bumpy and we had to gain altitude pretty quickly to make it over the Andes. That was probably the most beautiful flight, although the flight down to Santiago was a close second if not a tie since we flew right next to the Andes for the whole flight. We landed in Buenos Aires about an hour and a half later. Thus began the week-long hunt for
moneda, or coins/change. We needed it for the buses. Apparently the buses there only take monedas and so you need them to get anywhere. At the same time the government doesn't make enough coins so there
is a constant search and rapid exchange of moneda throughout the city. I managed to hang on to a few for souvenirs. At the airport we had to buy McDonalds to in order to get them which made me sad. Now, Nick had lived in Buenos Aires about 2 years before for 6 months and so he had a friend who was coming to pick us up. While Santiago, or Santi (James in English and if you don't believe me look it up), was on his way we were almost forced into a taxi ride by the unofficial, local taxi drivers. They will rip you off charging about $25 for a ride that should only cost about $12. We made it past them and onto the bus. I thought we were almost home but didn't realize that we I was going to have to sit with my backpack on my lap for an hour and a half that it takes the bus to get into the city. They really should have built the airport closer. But we finally arrived at the hostel, ate some pizza at Santi's, and went to bed.
The next day was a day jam-packed with
a tour of the downtown area, including the Senate and the
Casa Rosada, or Pink House (we have the White House in the USA),
La Boca, basically the birthplace of Tango, and about 3 different
ferias, or outdoor markets. It was great and I was able to pick up a few mementos and gifts.
The following days are a blur of walking through the city, checking out museums (I saw a Kandinsky in person, Mom!), the city zoo, a Japanese garden, and a Tango show that left me speechless. I'm not even sure where to start or how to begin. I will be adding photos as soon as I can. I'm still having trouble with my laptop, though.
All in all, Buenos Aires was an amazing place but WAY too big for me. It has about 9 million people living there which is about 8,986,000 to many people for me (Caldera had a population of 14,000 if you were wondering where such a specific number came from).
More vacation updates to come!
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tom
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¡Qué divertido! Esperaré más noticias tuyas :)