The Week In Review

Friday is here, which means my trip is nearly over. I leave tomorrow morning, early, and just pray that I don´t get nailed to badly because of my massive amounts of luggage. I`ll be up tomorrow morning at about 5 AM, so that means I`ll be leaving when some of the more adventurous of all of you are just going to sleep, or, right in the middle of the action (we`re 5 hours ahead of the west coast). I wanted to wrap up the week with a quick summary of events. But first, a couple of facts about the city:

Buenos Aires is HUGE. The population is about 14 million. There are 39,000 taxis I`ve been told, which is one of the highest ratios in the world. The city itself is settled on a river, and really has no beaches nearby, which is kind of decieving if you look at a map. Also, the economy took a really bad dive about 5 years ago. It used to be a really expensive city, but because of politics and a fleeing president, it crashed. It used to be that 1 peso was worth 1 dollar, but now 3 pesos are worth the same. That means that there are big city prices, but you end up dividing it by 3. For example, I`ll go and order dinner and a nice steak will be 30 pesos (10 bucks), a bottle of wine, 30 pesos (the same) and walk out with a bill that`s about 65-70 pesos, which should really be that much in dollars, but actually three times less in dollars. It makes it easy to justify filet mignon dinners every night...

The city is divided up into several sections, and each has its own feel. I first stayed in an area called Palermo, which itself has several parts. I was in Palermo Soho, which is much like any other area referred to as Soho, which I`m thinking means southern part? There`s also Palermo Hollywood, which has lots of restaurants and pubs. I had dinner there one night, and ate the best steak of my trip, a filet mignon called Lomo, which was slathered in Roquefort cheese. Then there`s a part of town called Recoleta, which is next to the downtown. This part of the city is famous for the Recoleta Cemetary, where Eva Peron is buried. I got the picture I needed, then got the hell out of there. However, I do have to admit that for a cemetary, it`s a pretty cool place. It holds the bodies of the very wealthy and prestigious families that have lived in the area. It`s also got lots of cool restaurants, one of which I just left. In fact, I had to stop there based on Kevin Meis`s advice. He told me there was a restaurant that served provolone cheese right off the grill. It was damn good. Thanks, Meis.

From there, we head into the downtown part, which is where I`ve stayed the last couple of nights. It`s your typical downtown, complete with lots of traffic and shopping. It`s a cool place, but you know how downtowns are. They get old fast. Moving along, you can find the area known as Puerto Madera, which is the old shipping part of town. It consists of an old port that`s not used anymore, but has lots of cool buildings, great restaurants, and it`s on the water, which is nice (even though it`s completely brown). It has a really famous bridge, which was a gift from Spain. It`s called something like Puente de la Mujer, or a rough translation, Bridge of the Woman. I don`t know what was woman-like about it. It didn`t give me dirty looks or argue with me, so I don`t know the deal with this one...

Then we get to San Telmo, which is the beginning of the seedier parts of town. It`s the supposed birthplace of tango, and it has a really cool street fair on Sundays that I got to see when I first got here. I got some great pictures there. It`s also where I went when I stupidly signed up for a tango lesson and dinner on Wednesday night. I went with two other people from the hostel (after I had checked out) and was disappointed that of ALL the hostels, there were only about 10 of us there. It was supposedly one of the hottest milangos (tango bars), but there was nothing hot about it, unless they were talking about the temperature. In that case, it truly was the HOTTEST place in San Telmo. We got there and had a very basic one-hour lesson. I really sucked, but not as bad as this girl from London...she was a disgrace. If I dance better than you, that means you are really shitty. The lesson wasn`t half bad, but dinner after was incredibly disappointing and I practically had to beg for a second glass of wine. After I was done badmouthing American politics, education, athletes, and the like, this Argentinian guy takes over and starts giving us this hour-long speech on the history of the country. I tried to pay attention, but my bitterness about dinner, my disinterest in continuing to tango dance after dinner, and boredom with his rant made me want to leave, and this guy wasn´t shutting up. So, being the suave and tactful person that I am, I started looking around the restaurant and reading things on the wall to give the impression that I was bored, but not going to leave. Then I pretended to see something that interested me outside. I casually walked out and looked around. I then moved far enough out the door that it made it look like I`d be right back, and eventually, I briskly walked down the street and jumped into a cab. That was the end of that.

Yesterday, I slept in really late, and hit the last destination, which is called La Boca. This is a funky part of town that is by far the scariest, complete with shanty towns. It lies on the working port and has lots of characters running around. What makes this a popular place is that it has a stadium and is home to a soccer team called Boca Juniors, who are on vacation right now. That would have been fun to see. Oh well. It is also well known because lots of the houses are painted crazy colors, which is supposedly because they used left-over ship paint on them. It was a pretty fun place, but I didn`t stay long. The cab driver insisted that I`d be raped or robbed there, or maybe both, so I did what I needed to do there and bailed. On the way back, this other taxi driver TOTALLY tried to rip me off. He was an idiot. It`s not like I`m a complete Gringo traveler, I mean, afterall I spoke Spanish with him the whole time. When we stopped, he tried to charge me SO much. I didn`t even get mad, I simply told him his meter was wrong and that I wasn`t an idiot. He ended up asking me for half of the fare. But c`mon now. If you insist that your meter is right and then settle for half, something`s not right. It reminded me of the time in high school when I bought a fake lunch pass, which I insisted was real (it DID look very real). They told me that they were going to suspend me for 3 days, and I argued relentlessly that they couldn`t because it WAS real. Finally, when they realized they had hit a brick wall, they told me that they`d just put me in in-school suspension for the rest of the day. More than satisfied with this result, I kindly obliged. It takes a liar to know a liar!

Last night, I got lucky in my hotel room. No, not that kind of lucky, I caught the last 5 or 6 episodes of The Surreal Life on VH1. You know, it`s the one with Janice Dickinson, Jose Canseco, Amarosa, and the others. It was hilarious. I could watch Amarosa and Janice go at it all day long. That kept me until about 930 PM, at which point I went out to the brewery for dinner and drinks, and then went to the Kilkenny Pub which was kind of a snooze. I went to sleep late, but slept in even later.

So, from here, I think I`ll go try and grab some last-minute souvenirs and call it a day. It´s been a fun trip, but I`m going to re-think my solo travel mentality. There were so many times that I wished I had friends with me. I think I`ll just have to try harder to convince them to take some time off and head down here. Speaking of which, anyone want to join me in Central America in June? Maybe Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, or the like???

Talk to you all later,

Ben