A last word about Buenos Aires

The Cabildo in Plaza de Mayo.
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A two-week stay in a city should give anybody a pretty good picture of what that city is. Although the tourist perspective of things can never equate the experience of living long term in a place, it can lead to some good guesses. Moreover, this perspective can be brought closer to the "real thing" by renting an apartment instead of staying at a hotel. Insofar, I guess our experience is close to what Argentines may do if they took some vacation days but were too lazy to travel anywhere: wake up late, have coffee and "medialunas" (delicious mini-croissants), wander the streets, do some unplanned shopping, go to the park, tell yourself you'll be going soon to that museum you always wanted to see (but procrastinate again), have lunch in a busy cafe, waste the afternoon on the Internet and have a gigantic steak with a bottle of wine for dinner... I'm not sure if they would take pictures of their own city though...

My steak!

Buenos Aires is not so much a city to visit, but one to live in. Except for a small section of the cabildo (the Spanish-era city hall) there is almost no colonial architecture left; the museums are of local interest; the streets have a very uniform look with their ranges of 10- to 15-story-high residential buildings with shops and restaurants on the ground floor. But Buenos Aires has that unmistakable feel of a place who lives and breathes and changes, comes over you and conquers you. It looks "Eurpean" some say, and it definitely doesn't look like any other city we've seen on this continent. If you're looking for an "authentic" South American experience, with colonial history and indigenous culture this is not your place. Is it good? Is it bad? The answer would depend on who you ask...

Lunch and entertainment in Palermo

Buenos Aires is safe for walking, even at night and even while parading a big SLR camera around your neck (by that I mean - using common sense; I didn't try my chances in the rough spots) although I got through a - luckily unsuccessful robbery attempt; transport is cheap and easily available, and the food is delicious - a two-week steak diet hasn't hurt anybody yet. For us Buenos Aires was just what we needed after the Andean and indigenous experience, after all that trekking and having to throw the used toilet paper in the bin instead of flushing it... no more llamas please, give me elephants instead!

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Still breathing the good air

Guardian angels. Too many.
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We spend most of our "tourist time" walking around town and breathing in the city's wonderful energy. There aren't many museums worth seeing in Buenos Aires and sadly, the most famous sight in the guide book is the Recoleta cemetery, which is indeed a landmark, but could hardly symbolize a city as alive and vibrant as our temporary hometown is. We didn't waste the evenings either, which were mostly put to use to sample the town's excellent culinary offerings. Just so we don't get disgusted with so much grilled meat we decided to alternate the foods at dinner - one day parilla ("grill" in Spanish) the next day something different: Indian, Thai, Italian, Chinese, you name it; there's something for every taste.

Ominous sky

The weather has been quite unfriendly to both tourists and locals, with temperatures hitting the lowest point in more than 80 years. The cold is annoying as it is - as if we hadn't had enough of it in Peru and Bolivia! - but the cloudy skies and the rain make it worse by taking away even that last pleasure which travelers can usually still enjoy when everything else goes wrong: taking pictures. That is, until today, when we were blessed with perfect blue skies and shirt-worthy temperatures; you know, the kind of winter weather that in Seattle makes a part of the population leave the house wearing shorts and T-shirts while the normal people still have their jackets on. I spent my daylight hours outside, clicking away at streets, parks and people.

On Sunday we changed apartments and moved from the downtown-shopping district to the upscale Recoleta neighborhood. The new apartment is a little different and that difference takes in both advantages and disadvantages. The studio we had for the first week was nice and modern, close to cafes and restaurants bursting with patrons all day long, had cable TV, central heating and a great view - but it was, well... a studio, quite small (more like a hotel room than an apartment,) lacked Internet access (I was able to catch a very weak, unencrypted wireless signal out on the balcony,) and the kitchen area was minuscule - there wasn't even enough space to dry the dishes.

The new place is larger and has a real bedroom, which makes it easier for us to do different things at the same time without annoying each other, like say, watching TV and sleeping. It has cable Internet and a larger kitchen, but it has no central heating - air conditioning instead, fine - the windows look to an inner shaft of the building so there's not much light, and the noisy elevator engine is right next door. On top of this, the TV set is a wreck and although there is cable available, the old Toshiba box is quite inept at scanning channels. It took me some time to figure out that by scanning multiple times, different channels populate the TV's 30 slots each time. There might even be a method to the madness, as if scanning once would get you the sports, scanning twice the music, and a third time would bring you the movies.

We reunited again with Michael and Mor, our friends from the Galapagos cruise, and we'll be spending some time together. It's the end of the trip for them and the end of a chapter for us. There are lions and elephants ahead...

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I've lost my common sense... but it feels good!

San Telmo's Sunday antiques market
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Anybody but the most hardcore of backpackers would be happy to enjoy a little bit of urban comfort after three months of cheap hostels, scorching deserts, mountain hikes in thin air, mosquito-infested jungle rides, and the crossing of the out-worldly Altiplano. So when we got to Buenos Aires and moved into our rented studio near Plaza San Martin, I finally felt like my old yuppie self again.

Renting an apartment - as opposed to staying in a hotel - offers a couple of advantages to the weary traveler, starting with that minute but important psychological change: it feels like a home. And for us, wandering bums carrying all our belongings from place to place in two huge backpacks, this made quite a difference. To be able to cook your meal if you want or to have a room that looks more homelike than the average impersonal hotel room is quite good, but for me, the most important is not to have to go through a reception area as I leave the building. And the fact that we don't have to be paranoid about the valuables left in the room when we go out...

For the last few days all we did was a lot of walking and a lot of eating. The weather is quite cold but bearable and it only rained once so far.

Something like that, for example

All big cities have something about them that makes them look, in a sense, identical. The vibrancy of the streets, the cars following one another like disciplined armies of ants, the legions of people buzzing around chaotically guided by an unknown and mysterious purpose, the businessmen in suits having lunches at sidewalk cafes, the glitzy windows of downtown boutiques - it all makes my head spin as with the effect of a wonderful, adrenaline-releasing drug. There are small-town people an big-town people - I belong to the latter category; whenever I get to a place like this I wish I could live here. Seattle has always been too small a town for me...

Romanians, it's not Dacia 1300, it's
an Argentine-produced Renault 12!

But urban living comes at a price: we quickly got tired and somehow ashamed of walking around and going to restaurants dressed in our grubby backpacker clothes - the bulky Keen hiking shoes, the all-too-sporty Marmot windbreaker - and it only got worse when I left my jeans at the laundry and had to wear the "jungle-pants" for one day... so we went shopping. This was understandable and expected coming from Angela, but from me and my stance of "I don't need to buy anything" it's nothing short of a religious conversion. I got myself a leather jacket, a sweater and black, city shoes. Angela got much more, I won't mention it all here, but it starts with a leather jacket as well... All those things we bought are practically bargains (my jacket would be about US$140, which is quite a steal at home) but they quickly add up so we stopped horrified after a while, before our bank account got into a coma... We'll have to get rid of it all and ship it home before we leave Argentina, but at least, for the next two weeks... we'll look good! Even I!

Old, backpacking Fritz

New, city Fritz

And as a bonus, I found the elusive item I've been chasing through all of Central and South America: a circular polarizing filter for my camera. It was quite expensive - about US$30 - but what the hell, I wasn't going to let this opportunity slip away. So if anything, my pictures should improve. If they don't, I only have my skills to blame, not the technology.

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In steak heaven!

Salta's Franciscan church
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"Travel days" are hallucinating tracts of time when for countless hours in a row we move from one point of our trip to the next. Getting from Tupiza, Bolivia to Salta, Argentina was one of those incredibly long days, during which the uncomfortable naps you take while being on board of a vehicle don't really count against the innumerable waking hours. It started when we woke up at a quarter to three to pack our bags and catch a southbound train that was supposed to leave at 4:10AM but in fact left with half hour of delay.

Three hours later we arrived in the freezing high-altitude (again...) town of Villazon and crossed the border to La Quiaca on foot, refusing all the transportation deals the touts at the railway station were offering us at overinflated prices (and we rightly did so; the prices on the other side were better). The Argentine border officer probably hadn't seen a Romanian passport in his life so he took a while trying to figure out what to do with it and whether I needed a visa or not, but in the end he stamped the 90 days stay and we moved on.

Interior of the cathedral

There are two things that strike the traveler after crossing the border between Argentina and Bolivia: on the Argentinian side there are newer cars, and the highways are paved. Going south on the slow downward slope of the Altiplano by bus was quite easy and comfortable and in 5 hours we made it to San Salvador de Jujuy, a larger town of which we only saw the bus terminal and the sandwich stand outside.

A mere one hour away in a very comfortable, bladder-friendly bus is Salta, a big old colonial town of 400,000 inhabitants. It was 6PM when we arrived, but once we did civilization struck us hard, and did so in the most favorable manner: by way of good food. Strolling on the Balcarce street we discovered the wonderful "La Leñita" restaurant which treated us with the best steaks I can honestly say I have ever had. The food was so good that after a less successful dinner attempt in a different restaurant the next night, we got back to La Leñita the third evening to revel in devouring tender, juicy beef cuts again. We have had steak for dinner every night since we got into this country...

We didn't do much for the rest of our time in Salta, besides strolling to the city center and back, lingering at sidewalk cafes, checking out some bookstores and eating well. Very well. So well... Ah!

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