I realize this post is about 2 weeks late, but I’ve been really busy with school (yes, I realize that is the only excuse I have but it is true).  Those of you that follow my Flickr have probably seen the photos from this trip already, but you haven’t read the stories!

Fortunately, we had a nice 2 week break from school inbetween terms and a large portion of the students (including myself) took the opportunity to travel a bit.  Many people went to the Northeast, some went to the Amazon, and a few went to Argentina. I spent 9 days in the latter, but seperate from the rest of the group.

I’ve always had this desire to do some ridiculous trip by myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling with other people, but you are much more likely to meet more people and have a much more redeeming experience when you travel by yourself.  The hilarity of it was the fact that I did not speak the language of the country at all.

I woke up for my flight relatively hung over and running on about 3 hours of sleep because Bea, her father and I had a long night of drinking beforehand.  Ironically, her father was also flying out about the same time I was and we ended up meeting eachother at the airport. The hangover was nothing a few espressos and bottles of water couldn’t cure, though.

I arrived in Buenos Aires around 2pm and was practically imploding from starvation.  After checking into my hotel (which was beautiful, by the way) I set off to the nearest place I could find food. The Cooper restaurant was the location and they served a variety of Argentinian cuisine, which unfortunately meant 100 different kinds of steak.

Because I don’t speak Spanish, I would just speak Portuguese with a few Spanish words that I know and hope for the best. I started this off with the waitress, and it seemed to be going ok until I wanted to order some juice:

Me (in Portuguese): “What types of juice do you have?

Her (in Spanish): “Pineapple, watermelon, papaya, fresa”

What the hell was a fresa? I had no idea, and she began describing it only to further confuse me. Eventually she started drawing a picture of it and I shouted:

“Ohh morango!”

“no sé en Portuguese, tal vez morango”

“strawberry en ingles, si?”

“Yes, strawberry in English. You speak English?”

Finding people that spoke English instead of my Portguese-Spanish hybrid happened more often than not actually. It turned out that she was actually a Peruvian that went to a private English school and was going to university in Buenos Aires, so her English was probably a lot better than mine.  We exchanged info and she showed me some cool spots in the city later on.

As for the city, it was incredibly beautiful. I would go on extremely long runs just to explore the place and it was almost as if I had been dropped in some random European city. I did not feel like I was in Latin America at all.

The final two images are from the stunning Recoleta Cemetary, a place where many of Argentinians political elite (including Evita) are buried. Some of these tombs are nicer than my apartment.

As for Buenos Aires, it was a whole lot of eating, drinking wine, walking around, going to museums, etc. I met up with some friends for 3 of the 9 days, but other than that I was on my own or with the people that I had met there.

I did end up meeting these 5 hilarious girls from South Africa at a burrito place by translating (if you could call it that) for them. We ended up going out for a couple nights as well.

The are a few things that I really disliked about Buenos Aires. First, even though the people are completely beautiful and well dressed, they are probably the most uptight, “metido” people I’ve ever met.  If you’re a foreigner, they don’t want to talk to you or help you at all. In fact, the nicest people I met there were the ones that weren’t originally from there.

Next, the city is incredibly shady. I went to an ATM machine and pulled out $300 pesos (about $80 USD) since nowhere takes cash at all. I spent $100 on something, and then I went to a restaurant for lunch. When I went to pay with one of my other $100 bills, the waitress informed me that it was a counterfeit. I tried the other one and it was the same deal.  Apparently people pull counterfeit bills from ATM machines all the time, and you need to recognize it immediately and bring it into the bank.  Unfortunately it was too late and there was nothing the bank could do about it.

There was one day that I took the ferry over to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. It was about an hour ride and $40 USD round trip, which was a complete deal because the ferry was nicer than any first class flight I’ve ever taken.  The day was absolutely beautiful, which was a nice change because every other day was FREEZING.

I rented a scooter as soon as I arrived in Colonia to make getting around a bit easier.

I think I only spent about an hour in the city of Colonia.  Sure it was picturesque, had cobblestone streets, a bunch of history, and whatever else, but all I cared about was the fact that I had a badass scooter that topped out at about 30mph. I decided to drive as far inland as I could and visit a bunch of wineries.

Overall, I’d say that the 9 day journey to Uruguay and Argentina was a great success. I don’t think I’ll be doing much traveling until July, but that will be the epic journey of a lifetime.  I plan on spending 3 weeks hiking through Patagonia, doing the Machu Picchu Inca Trail, snowboarding in the Andes, mountainbiking down the Bolivian Road of Death, and rafting through the monstrous Foz do Iguaçu.  Any suggestions to this 3 week journey would be greatly appreciated!

Até logo!

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