I don´t really know where to start with this one. Since I have last written, I have spent about two weeks in Buenos Aires, in an apartment we rented. The apartment is pretty cool because other people our age have rented the other rooms and they are pretty normal, for the most part. Staying with us here at the apartment is a Dutch couple that speaks perfect english, an American girl from Seattle, Colombian sisters, and Alejandra, the older lady. We all get along pretty well, with exception to the Colombian sisters who don´t speak to us....even when we are speaking Spanish. So I guess its kind of like two factions of guests, english speakers and the Colombians. Anyways, the apartment is beautiful and was probably built in the early 1900s or late 1800s. It is really pretty and the elevator is a little scary, as you can see out of the thing on all sides because the walls are iron mesh! Lauren and I got a great room that has a ceiling like 20 ft high. It was really hot for a few weeks but now it rained and has gotten down in the 50s at night! I have gone from waking up at 8am every morning to hardly waking before 1 in this city!
I sleep horribly late due to the culture in this crazy city. Breakfast and lunch time is normal but a break for mate (Mah Tay) is between lunch and dinner pushing dinner back to about midnight or 1 am. This really messes with my timing since Lauren and I haven´t gotten into the whole Mate thing.
Some more notes on Porteño culture are that they love mullets. Here a mullet is called a Cubano and it is a huge part of Buenos Aires life. I see probably between 100 and 300 on any given day here. The typical one is a sleek euro soccer mullet, paired with some stunna shades (sunglasses that rappers wear), and a skin tight soccer jersey. Its a pretty horrible sight. The next most common type is the disguisting rats nest dredlock mullet. These are really popular for the hippie types here. They wanna make me vomit. Last but not least is the rat-tail, which is HUGELY popular everywhere in Argentina. These are not centered on the head and in no way do they demand respect. The Argentine variety comes off the backside of the head at any location desired and may or may not be a dred lock. In most cases it is just a separated group of hair strands that are coupled together with any kind of cloth or rubber band found laying around. Most of them look like they have been growing since a young age. I have seen these coupled with the mullet on many occasions here. They come shooting out of the most un-suspecting of hair cuts just to shock the unprepared!
Now that the Argentina mullet epidemic has been discussed I wanna share soccer experience number 1. There are two huge club teams in Buenos Aires, Boca Juniors and River Plate. We chose to go see River Plate first and we´ll see Boca on March 1. These games are incredible. We went up to the neighborhood where the River Plate stadium is a couple days before the game and decided to familiarize ourselves with the area and get our tickets. To our surprise it was a really nice neighborhood with huge houses. We bought our tickets from the stadium for about AR$120 each. This is funny because the tour companies want AR$500 to take you to a game. When you go with a tour company you get a baby sitter for the game and a ride to and from the game. For face value and a $0.30 subway ride I got to go to the game like a big boy. I know its probably really hard for some tourists to go and buy your own tickets and take the amazingly efficient subway, but I thank them anyway because they were sitting right below us where we could laugh knowing that they paid nearly 5 times what we did for the same thing. So we get to the game neighborhood on game day about 3 hours early to be ready for masses of people. This was a good idea because I wanted to find some beer to drink on the street before the game. Lauren wasn´t real big on this idea so she made it her goal to make sure I was miserable and that I had the worst time possible at the soccer game. After walking around the stadium for about an hour we realized that due to a government order, no alcohol is sold anywhere near the stadium on gameday! I guess I´ll have to bring a backpack for the March 1 game at Boca! We got pretty hungry right before we headed in the gate so we stopped over by a chorizo stand and got a HUGE chorizo on a bun. It was really good and it fit the sport event mood. Lauren started to come out of her little mood once we got the chorizo, even though she claimed hers was undercooked. We got into the game with a full belly and completely sober and watched the raging fans in the Popular section hang flags, sing, and destroy things. The popular is a section of fans behind the goal. It goes all the way up to the top of the stadium. Thses are the fans you see on the news causing riots. They are locked into the stadium in order to separate them from other fans. They aren´t allowed to leave till all the other fans are gone! The barriers keeping them in their area are concrete walls with barbed wire on top. They sang and raged in here until kickoff, when these fans then started chanting. It was unreal. I had never been to a soccer game in a foreign country before so this was quite an experience. Since we didn´t get the babysitter service, we sat with a group of locals that sang and pumped their fist in a hitleresque manner the entire game. I still can´t believe those sucker tourists paid that much for a babysitter! After halftime the fans started chanting for their newest player to be put in the game. The Ogre. He was promptly added to the lineup at right forward and almost immediately scored! He was funny to watch because he is really tall and overweight. A few minutes later he assisted a beautiful goal and the entire crowd donned their shrek masks that were given out before the game. After the game we missed the last subway back to our neighborhood because the damn thing closes at 10pm, which is a pain in the ass since dinner isn´t until midnight! We got to try our skill on the public busses to get home! We did a great job and made it first try. When we got home Lauren said she wanted to skip the tango show and go to another soccer game because she forgot about being pissed at me and had a little bit of fun at the game! So now we are going to Boca together!
We spent some time in the upscale Palermo neighborhood when we first got here just because it felt safe. Its actually kind of lame. The big attractions here are modern art galleries which Lauren and I both, have decided we don´t care for. They are really confusing and the art can be really gay. I mean gay both ways, literally and the way that teenagers use it when they don´t like something they don´t quite understand. When we left the first AND last museum we visited, we both said at the same time, "I´m glad that was free!" A little more on modern art before I stop my rant. Anyone can take a lot of drugs and then throw paint at something and give it a retarded abstract title. Half the damn exhibits were UNTITLED. If you are doing some wierd ass thing where you are clearly trying to make a social or political statement, then title it or explain it please. Taking a picture of something in black and white is not art. Thanks for listening to that, I wish I could get the time back I spent in that place.
Palermo also had tons of gardens and a zoo. The zoo was cool and we got to see some different animals than you would in a North American zoo. I think the polar bear wanted to drown itself because it was 100 degrees outside. The gardens are probably nice but we´re gonna try those out right before we leave.
Puerto Madero is another district of the city. I really like this part because it is genuinely Porteño (of or relating to BsAs) but it has all the things you need! This is where all of the ports are for the bay on which BsAs sits. They have converted all of the huge brick wearhouses into restaurants, offices and upscale apartments. They are still original brick and sort of look like a turn of the century wearhouse, but they are styled with tinted glass and modern trim materials. Since Porteños eat their food with no spice at all, we were more than pleased to find a Hooters down here. Lauren had never been to one and we were both CRAVING spicy food, so we spent the afternoon eating wings and drinking 2 for 1 beers. The happy hour here is great. Nobody eats dinner before midnight so happy hour runs from off work time til dinner time, just like at home.......except here that is 5pm until 10pm or midnight!!! I think Lauren enjoyed her first experience at hooters. The girls were actually hot at this one too! You can´t go wrong with South American girls in a hooters!! I think I´ll bring her perception of hooters back down to earth by taking her to one in Hickory or Myrtle Beach when we get back!
Recoleta is the nicest neighborhood in town and we had a great time visiting this place. This is where the cemetary is that houses all of the famous Argentines! The memorials were like castles and you could look in and see the coffins in most of them. The guide there said that most of the mausaleums cost about the same as mid range apartment in the city! We went and saw the graves of the few famous argentines we´d heard of. So we saw Evita, and then we left.... Just kidding, recognized some of them from the names of streets in town! After the cemetary we walked around Recoleta and saw nothing but older American Tourists following around english speaking guides, dodging culture as best they could! There was Hard Rock cafe up here and the Recoleta Hippie Street Market. It is really called the Hippie Market. It is just a bunch of handicrafts, bums, hippies, and dumb Americans thinking they are buying something really ethnic. Its really just shit the hippies bought at the flea market across town that they are now selling in the rich part of town to tourists at 500% mark-up. All of the restaurants were about twice as expensive as the rest of the city and all were some kind of chain! We opted to hit some Mcdonalds instead, which we have done way too often here!!, and then head back to our neck of the woods. I feel guilty about all the Mcdonalds I have eaten but it doesn´t bother me too bad since Lauren and I can both eat for for under $10!! There are tons of cafes from the Buenos Aires good ol days, so we are trying to eat at as many of those as we can. We ate at the most famous one, it opened in like 1837. My burger was good but sent me running for the subway to get back to my apartment and Lauren´s milkshake cost more than my burger! The atmosphere is really cool because they have changed nothing other than the kitchen since it opened! They have live tango in the dining room every night!
The last place we visited was La Boca, a working class neighborhood by the docks, and home of the world famous Club Atletico Boca Junior! We headed up here to see the brightly painted houses, which were a lot more artistic than that shitty museum! The houses are all covered in corugated metal from the shipyards, and then painted in many bright colors! It makes for a really cool look that I have seen nowhere else! Lining the streets are restaurants and stages with live tango for free as long as you´re eating! We chose this as the alternative to a hundred dollar tango show downtown. The tango was good and food was horrible, but Lauren go to see some dancing so we were happy! Next we walked up to La Bombonera, the Boca Jr stadium! It is HUGE and it is covered in yellow and blue paint! They couldn´t decide on colors when the team was born in the 1900s so they decided to take on the colors of the next passing ship out by the docks. It was a Swedish ship so to this day the colors are yellow and blue. Tickets weren´t on sale yet for the game we wanted so we headed back to the touristy area. We were told Boca was a sketchy neighborhood but I think that is just for people who have never been anywhere else in South America. It seemed fine to me after visiting La Paz, Lima, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro!!! I have to go up there Sunday morning to get our tickets before the game. I can´t wait because these games are supposed to be crazy!!
Í´ll put the pictures up soon from this city! We have a lot of them. We are on the home stretch of the trip now and both of us are ready for something new. We head to Ushuia on Wednesday and then start heading north all the way back up to Lima. Ushuia is the southernmost city in the WORLD. Like Sara Pailin, maybe we´ll be able see Antartica from our back porch, like she can see Russia..... We´ll keep an eye on ém, Sara! It will be nice to be back in small towns after the 11 million person metropolis of BsAs. It is about the loudest city in the world.
For those of you who missed out on the Uruguay and Iguazu pictures..... heres the links!
Uruguay
Iguazu - Argentina
Iguazu - Brazil
-John
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