My trip started in Asuncion right around the time Americans were lining up outside of Wal-Mart and limbering up for some riot-style Christmas present shopping. Rather than drop-kicking the old lady who was about to snag that last 90%-off Tickle-Me Elmo or whatever it is that’s hot on the streets this year (I think I may be a decade or two behind on that one), I had a decidedly calmer day on a bus. The trip between Asuncion and Buenos Aires was just shy of 20 hours, with the only stop being customs at the border. Luckily, they keep a steady stream of free booze coming to stave off what would almost certainly lead to mutiny aboard the bus. I think pirate ship captains used a similar tactic of appeasing their sailors.
I arrived in Buenos Aires with a sore back and a hangover, and had no funny story to show for either. I got into a cab and did my best Argentine accent to avoid getting the standard tourist-tax that is commonly charged of us travelers, but the driver wasn’t buying the charade. I think he may have been tipped off by the fact I was going to a hostel, which, I guess in retrospect, was the weakest link in my plan to fake being Argentinean. That, or maybe it was that Guarani greeting I offered as I got in. Or maybe I am just really white.
He dropped me off at the hostel which we stayed at the entire trip, a little place called Palermo House. I found my traveling companions, Colin and Shawn, sleeping off their equally taxing trip from the States. Apparently CheapTickets.com’s trick to saving you money is flying you through 19 different countries before getting you to your destination.
Our first day in the city was mellow, and we took it as an opportunity to get to know the basic public transportation that we would be depending on for the following 8 days. The trip was full of things that as we were doing, I found myself saying, “Wow, I haven’t done/eaten/ridden/seen/heard/felt/thought this since I was back in the US.” Being on a train was number one on that list. The subway is, surprisingly enough, a quasi-tourist attraction in itself. One of the lines still uses original cars, which have that same charm as San Francisco cable cars. We got purposefully lost, and found ourselves in an outdoor market with vendors aggressively pushing a mix of cool authentic Buenos Aires schwag, and also your run of the mill junk in the same genre of I Love NY shirts. Number two on my “Oh yeah, I remember that from the developed world” list was having pizza that night. We have “pizza” here in Paraguay, which if I had to guess the recipe, involves Wonder-bread toasted lightly, covered with ketchup, a slice of old ham, and half-melted cheese that has been cultured in someone’s bathtub.
The rest of the trip was spent the same way a visiting group of vampires or humans with a sun-allergy may have vacationed. Buenos Aires is known as the Paris of South America, but to me it felt more like New York or any other city with a severe case of insomnia. Dinner is eaten around 10pm, then you go out for the night. Of all the places we went out to, there was a pretty good mix of small, fun pubs to big, obnoxiously loud night clubs. The drinking age is lower there, and despite us only being in our mid-twenties, we felt creepily old at more than one place.
The things we did during the day had a lower strobe light factor, and were generally just exploring the different areas of the city. I was less than enthused when we decided to visit a cemetery that all the travelers in the hostel raved about. I had a hard time believing that it could possibly be as interesting as everyone was making it out to be. When we got there, however, it was immediately clear why everyone puts it on all the travel sites. The place is huge, and feels like the setting of an Ann Rice book. All of the tombs are elaborately decorated, since most of it is filled with famous people and their families. Definitely worth checking out if you are in the city.
The many districts of the city each have a different personality, and we had a chance to visit most of them. As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in Palermo, (or Palermo Viejo, to be more specific), which felt like a neighborhood in New York. There are stores and cafes on every block, and most of the residents there exude a beatnik quality. There aren’t really any landmarks to see, but getting lost in the neighborhood led us to find everything from bicycle rentals, juggling equipment (a personal hobby of mine), and food of every style. One of the single best meals of my life, (and I didn’t write that without seriously considering its accuracy), was in the neighborhood:
Parilla La Cabrera
Cabrera 5099
Palermo
Tel: 4831-7002
I highly recommend it. Put your name in early, there is apparently always a wait as long as the one we had. If I ever go back to Buenos Aires, (or even moved there), I would keep Palermo at the top of my list of places to stay/live.
La Boca is probably the most touristy area we saw. It is known for its colorful buildings and tango dancers. The famous Boca Junior soccer club has their stadium there, which we took a tour of. The neighborhood sits near the water, and was historically the entrance point of immigrants. The neighborhood is worth a visit just to see the elaborately painted buildings. The neighborhood supposedly gets dangerous at night, but we did not see any signs of danger. Perhaps simply seeing police out is something I am not used to living here in Paraguay, so seeing even one on a street corner gives the illusion of safety.
San Telmo is where the flea market that I mentioned is held every weekend. It is full of vendors selling food, crafts, etc., and is worth seeing even if you are not interested in buying anything.
Buenos Aires is apparently much more expensive today than it was just a few years ago, but it still seemed extremely cheap to me. Some very misinformed Paraguayans told me that it was the most expensive city in the world, but I can say it didn’t even make the top 5 list of places I alone have been, (London still holds that top spot for me). As far as lodging, our hostel was a private three-bed room, was very clean as far as hostels go, and was just about 8 bucks a night per person – Granted, hostel prices aren’t really a good measurement for the general cost of living in a city, but I will say that I have stayed in far dirtier hostels at far higher prices. Transportation is very efficient and offered a number of choices including bus, subway and taxi. Taxis are a luxury that I can usually not afford to indulge in when I go to Asuncion, but in Buenos Aires they are far more common and about 100 times cheaper. That incredible meal I had in Palermo was a huge steak dinner with wine that cost me less than 20 bucks. The only aspect of the trip that got costly were our nightly bar hopping adventures.
I have been lucky to travel a lot in my life, and Buenos Aires is the first place outside of the US that I could ever imagine living permanently. It wasn’t necessarily the most interesting place to visit, the way a visit to any country in Europe might be, but it felt like a city that I could most easily consider home. Who knows – I hear they have some pretty good graduate schools. We were there a week, and I can only imagine what I didn’t get a chance to see. The only aspect of the city that I would have reservations about is driving. I was in a somewhat wild car accident while riding in a taxi during my visit. We all noticed immediately how crazily people drive there, (and I say that having already visited places like Italy, France, and Germany with its 900 mile-per-hour Autobahn). They seem to have the same intersection anarchy that Paraguay has; often times there is simply no light or stop sign, so you slow down and see who can zip through first. This, not surprisingly, led to my taxi accident. We were driving through an intersection when another gentlemen decided he could make it through first, but miscalculated and ran right into us. We spun about three times before we stopped and staggered out of the car, slightly confused. We walked away as the two drivers decided to get into a friendly conversation about each others’ brain sizes. If you visit, I would recommend not renting a car.
When I told Paraguayans in my site that I was traveling to Buenos Aires, the only response I would get was some sentence, given with a thick Argentine accent. They don’t have a standard go-to example like we use for a Boston accent (”pahk the cah in hahvahd yahd”), so they got creative. I was disappointed but not surprised that no one I spoke to here had ever been there, or known anything about it beyond that funny accent. Most people in my site consider going down to Asuncion to be a once-a-year indulgence, so leaving the country would likely require sizable loans. What did surprise me was the fact that people in Buenos Aires knew next to nothing about Paraguay, except for the Paraguayan President’s ever-expanding illegitimate herd of toddlers, (he is very promiscuous). When I said I was from Paraguay, I got the same reaction that Americans would give someone from North Dakota: A look that says, well, I guess we have nothing that we can talk about. (No offense to anyone from North Dakota). It was really interesting to be in another country after staying in Paraguay for a year, because I got to see how other countries here in South America view my new home. People in Buenos Aires who I talked to about Paraguay all readily admitted that they knew nothing about it, not even the name of that “other language” that those folks up there speak.
I’ll drop my Peru post as soon as I can.
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