Buenos Aires and beyond

Sorry about being incommunicado for so long. We´ve been having terrible luck with the internet access since leaving Buenos Aires.

A quick wrap up of our days in Buenos Aires. We had and incredible time while we were there and can´t say enough about what a wonderful city it is. We highly recommend that every try to make it down here. The flights are expensive but with the given financial situation the prices are incredibly cheap for what you get in return. Although our arrival in the city was bumpy, we had no other incidents until the last full day in town (more on that later).

A few of the highlights from Buenos Aires:
Xul Solar Museum: Xul Solar was a genius/eccentric friend of Borges that has a museum devoted to paintings and other artwork. He was obsessed with metaphysics and mysticism, and much of his work incorporates the zodiac, numerology, and rosecrucian imagery. He was also into chess and developed his own languages. Much of the work had a proto cubist feel and the presentation of the work and the architecture of the builiding was quite striking.

Zorcal: Each morning we were woken by the sounds of the Zorcal, a small bird the reminds me of an oriole, that sings a song reminicent of the song Tequila. The songs started about 5:30Am each morning and we continued to hear the birds throughout the day while we were in Buenos Aires. The volume was quite striking, and we were amazed that such a small bird produced the sound.

Parilla: The Argentine equivalent of barbecue, but taken to a whole new level when compared to the U.S. These are the most common restaurants in Buenos Aires and essentially you have up to 30 some odd selections of meat that they will grill for you - anything from beef tenderloin to chittlins, and other less appetizing pieces of the cow, as well as chicken, pork and other meats, depending on where you go. You would get truly gargantuan portions for $5 to $10 US, and they served a delicious sauce called chimichurri alongside.

Ice Cream: Everywhere you went in Buenos Aires there weer increible ice cream joints, most of which will deliver. I´ve never tasted ice cream so good - and each place had at least a few different versions of Dulce de Leche, Chocolate and various fruit blends.

We also experienced a lot of very odd things in Buenos Aires. The first few days that we spent in Buenos Aires we constantly heard very odd cover songs, including a Bossa Nova version of the what sounded like the entire Bob Marley Legend album (we didn´t stick around tho here the whole album). We were constantly hearing wierd remixes, generally of very bad soft pop songs.

We encountered a number of interesting cab drivers along the way in Buenos Aires. Considering that most trip cost two to four dollars, we spent quite a bit of time in cabs. The first cab driver we had in Buenos Aires had lived in San Francisco as a student in the early 90´s and had been trying to go back ever since. In fact a number of the cab drivers that we rode with had a some point been to San Francisco. One night on the way to see a Tango show, we were picked up by a driver listening to Guns and Roses. As soon as he realized that we were familiar with it he turned it up and proceeded to blare the music while singing along and tapping the drum beat on the roof of the car. Next up came a mash-up of numerous mid to late 80´s heavy metal hits, starting with Shook Me All Night Long, and going through Def Leppard, Ratt, Van Halen, and numerous others. He finished with a bit of Madonna, his true love as he told us, as he dropped us off. That night after the show we were picked up by a driver who looked to be 80 and who was listening to Tango because he lived it, and who proceeded to tell us about police corruption and problems with the city.

The last full day we spent in Buenos Aires was quite an adventure. First off we decided to go to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site for it´s colonial architechture. We took a high speed ferry across the Rio Plata from B.A. which took about an hour. The Rio Plata is actually the confluence of a number of rivers that in turn pours into the Atlantic Ocean. The water was quite brwon, but the view of Buenos Aires was incredible. Upon ariving in Colonia we roamed around and found a nice open air parilla where we had lunch. We were so inspired that we´ve decided to emulate the place in our back yard once we own a home. The town was quite stirking - the original city gate and part of the wall from the 17th century were still standing a were a number of other buildings from when teh portugese were there.

The excitiement came when I started to have a alergy attack while there. At first it wasn´t so bad - a little snifling and sneezing - but on the ride back to Buenos Aires we sat near the duty free shop on the ferry which was filled with people trying on perfume and cologne. My sinuses promptly exploded and I spent the hour ride back running back and forth from the bathroom to the seats. I believe I went through a full roll of toilet paper. Then when we got back to Buenos Aires we realized we didn´t have enough cash to get back to out hotel and we didn´t have an ATM card but we did have a credit card. Plus it was about 25 blocks back to the hotel. So we sucked it up and hoofed it - all the while my allergies simply got worse. We managed to find a farmacia and get some alergy pills, water and a lot of tissue which I proceeded to use up as we walked back to the hotel. Although it was a beautiful walk, I´m not sure the people of Buenos Aires appreciated my sneezing all over their city. Once we arrived at the hotel I pumped myself full of anti-alergy pills including benadryl, actifed, and afrin. Not a good idea. I then felt so drugged up that I couldn´t concentrate for hours, and my heart was racing for the rest of the night.

We were able to rally to go out to dinner and since it was our last night we decided to hit one of the hipper restaurants in town named Gran Bar Danzon. The food and service were amazing. Sarah got dressed up in one of her new dresses only to discover that the entrance to the restaurant was a bit of a meat market - seven men intently starring down any woman that entered. We almost turned and ran, but managed to push our way through the crowd and enjoyed ourselves emensely. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that we finally got scammed by a cab driver. Just before catching a cab to the restaurant we stopped by the ATM - when we arrived at teh restaurant I handed the driver a twenty peso bill. He immediately responded saying that the charge was five peso and that I had handed him a two peso bill, which of course was impssible since I didn´t even have one. I was so defuddled from the alergy medicine that I honestly thought I had made a mistake, and even apologized before handing him more money. It was only after he drove off that I not only realized that I had been scammed but I remembered reading about this very scam when we were flying in from San Francisco. Score one for the locals.

And so ended our adventure in Buenos Aires. Next up Iguazu Falls