Buenos Aires Hotels
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Takes 2 to tango
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April 16, 2008
Buenos Aires, Argentina Exchange Rate: 3.15 pesos to the dollar. Cost of living: Big Mac = 5.50p; can of beer at grocery = 1.60p No charge for Argentine visa! This morning we took to the air. We haven't flown since our flight from Tashkent to Istanbul. This time we flew from Cape Town to Buenos Aires. We flew a distance of approximately 4360 miles. Our flight departed at 10:45 AM Cape Town time and when we arrived it was 3 PM here in Argentina. Buenos Aires is 5 hours behind Cape Town, so the flight took 9 hrs. 15 min. Right? We're not sure because we are suffering from jet lag and after splitting two liters of beer at 8 PM we have to get to bed.
Our taxi from the airport to the microcenter of the city cost $30 US. We got an en suite room at the Milhouse Youth Hostel for 140 pesos. It is a very friendly place with a lively bar on the first floor. The sleeping rooms are on the 2, 3 and 4th floor around a central atrium. Physically place is very nice with the old building having been recently remodeled. They have free internet if you stand in line for one of the three computers. The noise from the bar downstairs is muted up on the 2, 3 and 4th floors, but by 2 or 3 AM the drunks start coming up. Because the three floors where the rooms are each have balconies surrounding the atrium, people talking on the 4th floor balcony sound like they are outside our room on the 2nd floor. Irina can sleep through the noise but Arvid can't. The bar stays open nearly all night and the patrons don't all come up together at closing and get it over with. Instead small groups come up one at a time talking loudly. Sometimes there are one or two drunk girls with one or two guys trying to quiet them down. They talk on the balcony, where there are seats and ashtrays, for maybe thirty minutes and get progressively quieter. One or the other of them seems to have an identity crises and just when Arvid thinks he can make sense of what they are saying they go off to their rooms. Before sleep returns the next group comes up. This time it's a girl and boy -- he's messed up about a girl back home and the girl is trying to talking him through it. She spends more time then you'd expect. Some groups are just loud and raucous threatening to stay up until they have to leave in the morning on their tour to Iguazu Falls. It goes on all night. You can expect this or worse from a place that puts a little band on your wrist so they will know you are a guest. They also prohibit food in the rooms and you can't bring alcohol into the building, because they have their own bar. It is all so juvenile.
April 17, 2008 Buenos Aires, Argentina The first thing we do today is find a different hotel. We go a few blocks away and find the Hotel Alcazar. For 150 pesos we get an en suite room with air con and cable TV. The place is silent, except for the whispers of a couple maids as they push their cleaning supply cart past our room. We can come and go as we please without wearing silly identity wrist bands. We can bring food and Argentine wine to our room. It's good to be in an adult establishment again. After we check into the Alcazar Hotel we spend most of the day walking around the city central. We see the National Museum and the Casa Rosada. But mostly we are craning our necks to see the architecture of Buenos Aires. Irina picks up a little something to wear tonight. It seems like every block has a sidewalk café, or restaurants with sidewalk seating. Some places charge more to serve you outside, others do not.
April 18, 2008 Buenos Aires, Argentina While we were trying to find our way through the Buenos Aires airport, when we arrived from Cape Town, we stopped to figure out where we were supposed to go when a man came up and offered to help. He thought we were South Africans and started talking about rugby. He directed us to the right line and we told him about our trip. He seemed to be interested. Before he left he gave us his number and offered to show us around. Today we got a SIM card and called him. Tonight George and his wife Gabriela are going to pick us up. The question was when did we want to get picked up? Arvid, looking at Irina, said, "8?" Irina nods. "Too early", George says. Arvid, "Ok, 9 is fine". George says in spanglish, "Let's make it 11, once in the noche." So that was our introduction to night life in tango city; it starts late. Eleven is actually early for 'portenos' which is what the people of Buenos Aires call themselves.
Promptly at eleven PM George and Gabriela drive up in front of our hotel and we are waiting. They have also invited their friends Eduardo and Susan who arrive in their own car. The first place they want to show us is the Café Tortoni, which is on the same block as our hotel. We had noticed the long lines of people waiting to get in but had never gone in. The interior is grand and in the back corner is a diorama with life size statues of Jorge Luis Borges, and his mother seated at a table with Julio Cortazar standing between them. George points out that the diorama could not possibly depict an actual meeting because Jorge's mother would not have been there. We learn later that both Borges and Cortazar frequented this place.
After we leave the Tortoni, George and Gabriela take us on a driving tour of parts of the town in the direction of their home in the Suburb of Olivos. They show us their yacht club and the home of the president which is only a few blocks from theirs. Unfortunately at night we really don't see that much. Eduardo and Susan meet us at George and Gabriela's. George is a retired airline pilot and Gabriela owns a day care center. Eduardo is a mechanic for one of the local municipalities. Susan is a secretary for a law firm. One interesting thing was their discussions of the troubled period of Argentina when the repressive military controlled the country in the early 1970s. Eduardo talked of a friend who had been kidnapped and disappeared. He had gone to the police to report this and the police simply said that "maybe there was a reason he had been kidnapped." George had been in the pilots union and fled from the persecution to France where he spent 3 years in exile. He said the French are not very friendly people and he had missed Argentina. You have to understand that most of these conversations are in Spanish as Eduardo speaks no English and his wife knows only a few words. Our Spanish isn't much better. Occasionally George and Gabriela interpret but much of the time we just have to guess what they're talking about. But the evening turns out exceptionally well because communication is only 10% words. We all enjoyed ourselves. Before we part Eduardo and Susan offer to take us out to a tango club Saturday night. It is now Saturday morning; about 4 AM. They would pick us up at 1 AM; that would actually be Sunday morning. These people are our age, how do they do it? Susan says they just take a nap in the evening. We have to decline.
April 19, 2008 We sleep late and are thankful that we are in a quiet hotel. Lunch ate at a street side restaurant and more sightseeing on foot. Argentina is famous for its leather products. Irina finds a black leather dress and an exquisite fox stole collar to match. Hear the sound of cha ching? April 20, 2008 Buenos Aires, Argentina Today we buy bus tickets to Puerto Iguazu where we will visit the famous Iguazu Falls. Our two tickets on a deluxe sleeper bus cost 370 pesos or about $55 each. We will leave Tuesday evening, April 22. We'll travel all night and arrive in the morning. More thumbnails ...
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