Buenos Aires and Donde Debo Ir?

While in Punte del Este, I met a Korean USC grad from Brasil who told me how terrible Buenos Aires is, but I think the rivalry between the two nations clouded her viewpoint.  Besides this one nay, I was told by a wide variety of people that Bs As is amazing and worth a long stay.  Therefore, I felt inclined to take up residence here.  I explored the town from my hostel in the Centro in search of the best part of town to reside.  I did not like the Centro during the night as the steet were mostly desolate, and the few people actually in the streets were begging for something ranging from monedas (coins) to rolling papers.  In my coed hostel dorm room, I met a girl who was from the north of Argentina but knows Bs As very well.  She took me on the Colectivo number 39 (Bus that costs 1.25 Pesos roughly $0.30) to a part of town called Palermo.  Palermo is a huge area in Bs As and as such there are several areas of Palermo.  The place she showed me was Soho where in the middle is Plaza Serrano.  Plaza Serrano is a huge conglomerate of bars and restaurants where people sit, eat, drink, and dance until all hours of the day (note I did not say night).  I took the first apartment I could locate close to the Plaza for $450 a month.

The view from my bedroom which looks to the North

The weather has been amazingly comfortable so it has been conducive for socializing every night of the week.  The nightlife here seems to have carried over from Punta del Este, or perhaps it is the other way around.  As I mentioned before about my difficulties in communication on this side of the equator, I have enrolled in Spanish classes.  Fortunately my teacher looks like Salma Hayek which makes attending class fun.  However, it starts at 9:30am, and with the aforementioned nights getting started and ending so late, I have to changed to a later starting school.

In my first 2 weeks of being in Bs As, I have noticed several different things about this place than others.

1) Dog shit - people really don`t care that their dog deficates on the sidewalk.  The polite people will pull their dog into the steet so they go off of the sidewalk but never once have I seen someone actually pick up their animal´s excrament.  In Mexico I had to keep my eyes peeled to navigate around uneven sidewalks, but here in Bs As, I keep my eyes peeled for those soft steamy piles of dung.  It is literally on every block in multiple locations.

2) PDA - The people here really love to make out in public.  They will be standing in a bar, sitting on park benches, or riding the subte (Cheaper than the Colectivo at 1.10 Peso or roughly $0.28).  The locals love the public displays of affection.  

3) Sidewalks - In addition to our furry friends` feces, I feel like every 20th tile you step on is loose.  They use the word ´lodo´ for a particular situation when after a rain, dirty water lurks under a loose tile.  When you step on that tile, the mud flies up and attacks your trousers.  It has not happened to me yet, but I am sure my time is soon.  Sidenote - if I lived in Bs As and wanted to redo my floors, I would just walk around and pick up the tiles from the sidewalk instead of buying new ones from one of the many tile stores on Cordoba Ave.

4) Critial Mass - Just like San Francisco, there is a critical mass here.  The mass was larger than the ones in San Francisco and took up all of 9th de Julio, which is the biggest avenue in the world according to a fellow Critial Masser.  During the ride I heard them start a chant, ``Auto no, bici si``.  I quite like this chant and want to bring it back to SF with me.  I also want to see if we can lead critical mass over the Bay Bridge.

Getting ready for Critial Mass Bs As style with the Obelisque in the background

We literally overtook the autopista.  I guess Bs As drivers don´t mind having their highway blocked because they are used to being hassled by numerous protests.

This is her passion.  I love biking but not that much.  I was just thinking, what if she had some freak accident due to biking and loathed her bike.  Would she still want that tatoo? or would that be the ultimate tatoo I wish I never got situation?

5) Food - I really miss Mexican food.  The food here is more bland than I expected.  The grass fed beef is great, but just the flavor of meat does not do it for me after a while.  I need spice.  I found one place with spicy Thai food, and I travel 45 minutes by Subte and foot to eat it.

There is a lot of street graffriti around.  This is not the best I have seen, but I wanted to show Bs As general love for ham which is a meat I have never been too fond of.  Any place that you want to grab a quick bite will always have ham.

6) Monedas - There is a general shortage of change.  People make money by giving you 90 centivos on the Peso for change in front of mercados.  You cannot pay the Colectivos with bills.  Also the 25 and 50 centivos coins are basically the exact same size.  The 50 centivos piece might be a millimeter larger in diameter.  Very strangely, both the 25 and 50 centivos pieces can be either copper or silver.  You literally have to turn the coins on the one side with the value markings to know how much change you actually received.

7) Discoteque - I have harped about the lateness of the nights and mornings so this is not about that.  In Bs As they do something that is rather strange to me.  You have to wait a line with a bunch of frustrated patrons to buy a ticket which you redeem for a drink.  Also if it is your first time in line, or you don´t know the price of what you want, you have to look at the menu taped to the front of the cash register and make the other patrons wait even longer.  I don´t know if this is because of shady bartenders, but it makes me feel like I am at the Texas State Fair.  Also, my money is already put away by the time I am receiving a drink so I never reach back into my wallet for a tip.

The German in the grey shirt is my roommate Max and the other Karsten is his friend from college in Frankfurt.   Including those creepers in the background, this photo sums up the scene at Terraza del Este which is a mega club.  The club is next to the airport, and as the bouncers were kicking us out around 7am, the planes were buzzing only a few hundred feet above, which provided a second wind, literally.

Random Photos -------------------

This is a cool pedestrian bridge that connects San Telmo with Puerto Madero.  Puerto Madero is the most expensive real estate in town and not very accessible by public transit.

I thought Fernet was the San Francisco treat, but I was wrong.  The people here drink it with cola over ice.  In the supermarket, they don´t sell liquor, but somehow this qualifies as a digestivo instead.

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My plans going forward - This is a tough decision.  I really have a lot of options and would appreciate feedback on where to go next.  I have considered going
1) South to Tierra del Fuego
2) North to Iguzu Foz, West through Paraguay, North-West through Argentine and into Bolivia
3) West to Chile, North though Chile and into Peru.

I am in Spanish class for at least 2 more weeks so I have plenty of time to figure it out.

Muggy Mugging in Montevideo, Perpetual Party in Punta, Costly Crossing in Colonia

Before I talk about Uruguay, I forgot to mention something I learned in the Mexico City Airport, my bike is heavier than I thought.  My bike box with my panniers thrown on top was 50kg.  That is roughly 110 lbs before food and water.  With my body weight, bike, and panniers added up, it is at least 300 lbs!  I will drop some weight in Buenos Aires before I continue.

I rode roughly 28KM into the centro and found a mildew smelling hotel for 400 pesos (20 US$) a night.  When I arrived in Montevideo, I quickly realized that my Spanish skills were back to where they were when I crossed into Tijuana.  ´Y´ and ´ll´ is pronounced with a ´Sh´ sound.  For example, Playa is now Pli-Sha and Pollo is Po-sho.  There are a handful of other accents I am working on straightening out as well.

Montevideo is a town of over one million people, but the city is only worth a single day´s visit or maybe two if you have laundry to do.  There is one main drag with nightlife called Mitre.  This is the only place to get late dinner other than pizza or hot dogs in town.

I did a bad job showing this, but the UR money is really huge.

Random Statue, Similar to the DF Glorietas all over the place but not nearly as big.

Yerba Mata is a wildly popular drink.  The way it works: buy the Mata (glass made of dried fruit shown here), fill the Mata with three fourths Yerba Mata (which is like a coarsely ground tea), pour in cold water on the edge, let soak for 2 minutes, pour in hot water on the same edge and drink the Yerba Mata.  It takes three sip to empty the Mata but just refill  the hot water and repeat.  

Graffiti next to the Rio de la Plata

Horse Statue in the Middle of Plaza Indepencia.  It is because I took this photo that I was mugged.

So as I was taking the photo of the horse, a kid comes up to me and asks for a Peso.  I say no.  He comes to my other side and asks again.  I turn and look at him with a second more stern no.  He obviously came around my other side to check my pockets.  I took a firm grip of my camera and sure enough he grabbed the cord and tried to pry it from my hands.  He was unable to do so.  He runs off, and I begin to walk towards my hotel through the plaza again.  15 seconds later there is a girl yelling all kinds of things I can´t understand with another girl trying to hold her back.  The aggressive girl is spitting in my direction but fails to hit me.  As I am watching her actions, another kids runs from behind me.  I am unaware of the kid.  It reminds me of the scene in Jurassic Park where the guy about to get eaten by the Velocirator realizes they work in teams.  In any event, the kid takes a swing at the back of my head with a red motorcycle helmet.  I heard his footsteps just before contact and make about a quarter turn so the blow was directly to my left temple.  I am pretty dazed and run out into the street and stop the first car.  No one seemed interested in helping.  I go to a hotel where the security guard had seen the whole thing.  He calls the police.  The police come and basically ignore me.  I am really pissed that a kid just tried to knock me out to steal my stuff an no one cares.  I definitely learned that I need to be more careful about looking like a tourist. I know when I am walking through a bad part of San Francisco at night alone, I keep my head down and walk fast and no one bothers you.  If I would have done the same, I would not have had the headache for two days and a possible concussion.

Punta del Este is in the distance.  The city is like Can-cun with Vegas style gambling for South Americans.    Hotels line the both shores and the prices are more expensive than San Francisco.  I get to my hostel covered in salty sweat.  I take a shower and am still covered in salt as their shower was is from the ocean (Thanks - Tas D´Viaje)

Partying at 6am at Moby Dick with Americans from the hostel.  Ex-communicated Mormons are my favorite people to party with because they have a lot of catching up to do!  We left at 7am and the place was still packed.

Everyone takes a photo of this so I joined in

My long lost Atlanta fan.  Actually, she didn´t know who the Braves were or where Atlanta was for that matter.

You can tell how long a car has been in Punta by the amount of stickers.  Apparently it is okay for people to apply corporate stickers to your rear windshield.  I saw people actively doing this in broad daylight.  I imagine people would go crazy if  the same was done to their car in the States.

 I left Punta and returned to Montevideo on the same road.  I have dinner, but a ticket to Buenos Aires, and pass out in one of the deepest sleeps I have ever had.  I wake up over 12 hours later and can still barely move.  I finally get out of Montevideo and when on the road still in MVD a major storm rolls in.  In a matter of 2 minutes, it goes from calm to brisk wind to torrential downpour.  I am soaked head to toe and take refuge for an hour until the storm calms.  I put on my jacked I bought in San Quintin, Baja California and put it to the rain test.  It failed and will now go in the trash.  After the rain stopped, I was greeted by major head winds.

The flags were going crazy.  People could barely open the door to get in the store due to the wind.  I battled this for close to 10 hours and barely made over 100KM.

The sun is setting or has already set, and there is 10 minutes left of light.  I pull of the highway and go down a random road.  I start scouting for places to camp, but everywhere is fenced off with barbed wire.  I find some hay bails, hop the barbed wire, and decided to find another location since the grass is really tall, which makes me feel uncomfortable.  It is pitch black now, and a guy on a motorcycle approaches me.  He asks me a few questions then offers to let me camp.  He actually takes me to another persons farm.  I meet the farmer who is only wearing a bikini style pair of underwear and he allows me to pitch my tent on his porch.  The farmer (whose name I never understood) gives me a steak and cheese from his cow, and tomato and potatoe from his garden.  He told me he has 10 children that grew up here and had never left the country of Uruguay.  The house is as meager as it gets with a caved in roof, no running water, and trash everywhere.  In the night, the winds were blowing and knocking out apples from his tree which were crashing onto the tin roof above the porch.  Between the cold wind, hot sleeping bag, and apple on tin crashes, I did not sleep like I did in Montevideo.

I gather my belongings and head to Colonia del Sacramento.  I ponder most of the day if my online purchase actually went through.  I booked a ticket for 2pm because I expected to be in Colonia a day earlier and would make the morning to my time to explore.  Plans don´t always work out as I make it to the ferry port at 1:40 or just in time to go through immigration and catch my ferry.  The ticket cost me $50 for an hour long boat ride.  I paid under $100 for a 12 hour ride in Mexico.  I felt like I had been robbed by a legitimate company worse than the little punk kids.

Even though I never got to explore it, I have one photo of Colonia del Sacramento from the Buquebus Ferry

I have now made it safely into the depths of Buenos Aires!