The Lovely and Beautiful Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires from the 22nd floor of a Palermo building

After 48 hours of travel, including a six hour border crossing from Bolivia to Argentina, we arrived in Buenos Aires. The subway provided a quick ride to rejuvenation. We found a quaint four room hostal on the edge of Palermo Viejo, a neighborhood close to the city center. We negotiated a good rate for our 18 days stay and settled in for our adventures. The weather was gorgeous for our first week in the city, mid to upper seventies and ample humidity. Getting back to sea level brought us our first deep easy breaths since we entered the high altitude of the Andes nearly three months ago. Our dry skin recovered in about two days. Although we adored Bolivia and Peru, it was nice to be in a place where toilet seats and paper, and shower curtains were standard.
We quickly adapted to big city living by acquiring several good maps of the city bus and subway routes. Throughout our entire stay we probably averaged many miles of walking a day. The first few days we explored so much on foot that we literally collapsed into bed.

We met a nice gentleman in our neighborhood painting his new house. We want to be his neighbor!

We thought about parking our souls here for a day, but decided to go eat ice cream instead. The ice cream in Buenos Aires is amazing. We made sure to eat some everyday so we could understand the flavor structure and quality variance in each part of town. Josh pictured below demonstrating ice cream drainage, a technique used when the cone isn´t as fresh as it could be.

When we weren´t studying yoga, we spent our afternoons playing chess on our new Incas vs. Spaniards chess board (Incas go first). Za was keeping score of wins and losses until she decided part of love is not keeping track. Our games are still pretty average, but we´re getting better.

The city is full of monumental architecture, quaint cafes, and tango music. The makeup of the city is heavily European, and Italian culture seeps into the language and people. People in Buenos Aires say ´no por favor´instead of ´de nada´after someone says ´gracias´. De nada means ´of nothing´ or ´no problem´, and no por favor means ´no please´. The way people say it is quite funny though, as if saying OH PLEASE!!! It made us laugh a lot. Our Spanish skills improved throughout our stay, and although we aren´t fluent by any means, we felt the people of the city were open, polite and friendly. We found it challenging to go see live music, as concerts and dance clubs don´t begin festivities until midnight. A typical schedule appeared to be : eat dinner between 9:00 and 11:00, either nap or drink espresso from 11:00 to 1:00 and then go out until 6:oo in the morning. Needless to say, we couldn´t hang.
Our adventures through the various boroughs were always entertaining, even though the weather changed significantly throughout our second and third weeks. Luckily, we left before true winter hit.

Impressive bridge downtown.

View of a street downtown near the tango district.

Diagonal Norte, a huge monument in the city center.

Our last day in town, we went for a day trip to El Tigre with our two friends from Venezuela. Just 20 kilometers north of the city, El Tigre is a huge delta where hundreds of rivers run into the ocean. We took a boat ride and ogled at this impressive museum on the river.

Za and Marshia in Rio de la Plata, El Tigre