Thanks to some great advice from my Finnish friend Tiia back in Lima, I chose to stay in a hostel in San Telmo, a neighborhood renowned for its welcoming bars, yummy paradillas, and... well, a bustling nightlife. I got a cheap room (AR$18 per night) in a dormitorio with two bunk beds. It was a far cry from the relatively private quarters I've had in my travels around Peru, but I was actually very happy to do this trip as any bargain-needy backpacker would.
One of my roommates, recently arrived from the States via New York and Atlanta, was a Belgian named Sergio. A friendly psychology student from Brussels, Sergio and I had dinner at a nearby restaurant (where I had a nice cut of steak and some fries, or papas fritas) and conversed freely about his studies, which to my surprise consisted of lots of reading in continental philosophy (Nietzsche, Freud, Camus) and the intellectual history of emotion. It was great to meet a scholarly humanist like Sergio who, like me, found the need to balance his academic studies with backpacking and world-travel.
The next day Sergio and I met a South Korean traveler who, amazingly, was in the middle of a three- or four-year trip around the world. This guy was in his late 30s, had saved up money as a banker in Seoul, and one day had decided to quit his job and just travel for as long as he could. He's currently one and a half years into his trip, and his passport (I later saw for myself) was an amazing document in itself: visas and stamps from all over the world, including India, Iran, and Pakistan.
The three of us -- a sort of United Nations of travel-partners (not an unusual theme, of course, for backpacking culture) -- headed out for a walking tour of the city center, famous for its monuments, architecture, and European-style streets and pedestrian zones. Just a short while into our tour, however, Buenos Aires was inundated with rain. It wasn't a constant rainfall, but there were periods of intense drenchedness. We did our best to see the Plaza de Mayo and the Plaza San Martín, and we did see the city's major cathedral, the famous Casa Rosada (or Rose House: Argentina's version of the White House), and the "Big Ben" of South America (whose name escapes me). But we ended up spending the majority of our afternoon in a rather pleasant contemporary art museum (Imago), taking in an exhibit on the history and culture of the city of Buenos Aires.
Reason #1: Heavy rainfall, poor background/natural lighting, trying to keep as dry as possible rather than take only "eh" pictures. (Besides, after my travels around Peru, I think I now prefer to take pictures of people and/or of natural settings rather than "city" landmarks on their own.)
In the evening I met up with my Dutch friend Tosca, whom I met in Nasca (and to whom I should've introduced you by now, in a blog entry on that trip), and her Argentine friend Soledad, from Rosario. We learned in a Messenger chat that we'd be in Buenos Aires at the same time. We had such a good time traveling to Nasca and then Huacachina (both in Peru) together that we made our best effort to meet up in Buenos Aires.
Which is exactly what we did that night: the three of us had dinner at a somewhat mediocre restaurant (where Tosca's "lasagna" turned out to be a pile of cheese on two slices of eggplant; no actual pasta to speak of) but then went to a nice bar in San Telmo (Café de l'Arbol) to listen to live music and have a few beers. The first group that played at the bar was superb: two guys playing guitars, and one of them singing classic Spanish songs of revolution. The singer had a really nice voice, and many members of the audience sang along with him. Makes me want to learn more about the political context against which these songs were originally composed.
After two or four cervezas, Tosca, Soledad, and I went in search of a good disco. We ended up at Por Vos Buenos Aires, a rollicking, mostly Argentine, club in San Telmo that played tons of Argentine pop (but also the seemingly universal Latin pop song "Gasolina") and just a smidgen of American pop (the first lyric of "Sweet Child O' Mine," but not the rest of it!). Tosca and I did our best to keep the beat, and with the help of three jarras of beer and a Cuba Libre, we did.
Reason #2: Lots of drinking. Had my digital camera with me but didn't bother to take it out of my pocket. Tosca, however, did take some nice pictures of us over the course of the evening.
Reason #3 (follows from #2): Made it back to the hostel OK but woke up the next day at around 2pm. (I fell asleep in the hostel's TV room after having finished a late-night snack. In my defense, I did so only because a Dutch couple fell asleep on the couch next to me. I figured, My room is upstairs, these two are also clearly going to bed, so why not relax in this comfy armchair? I woke up later that morning and made my way to my room. But my South Korean friend told me he saw me asleep in the TV room as late as 10am! I thought it couldn't have been later than 9 before I stumbled upstairs.) Too lazy to do another city tour, and eyes too heavy to see straight.
To make up for our partying the previous night, Tosca, Soledad, and I went to the international book fair in town. It was a great experience. Thousands of people of all ages flocked to the convention center for a Sunday stroll of book-browsing, book-shopping, and general appreciation for literate and print culture. Apparently, the fair had been advertised throughout the country, via every possible medium, as a major cultural event. And so like most of its European counterparts, Argentina remains a deeply literate and literary nation. I hope to write more about the fair on my other blog, The Paperback Museum.
After the fair, the three of us did our own things. Tosca and I picked up dinner at McDonald's, which was a pleasant taste from "home" after a day of recovering from Argentine beer. (My Chilean roommate Osvaldo did give us shit for this, but we told him to leave us alone. I think Osvaldo had been staying in the hostel for two months when I met him.) I then went with a Chilean girl, Gabi, to have a few drinks at two other bars in San Telmo. The second bar featured a local funk-rap-reggae band that ended its set with a 10-minute version of James Brown's "Sex Machine (Get On Up)."
The next day Tosca and I bade farewell to Soledad as she headed back to Rosario. Tosca and I had already talked about going to Iguazú Falls, the majestic waterfalls in the north of Argentina (actually on the border with Argentina and Brazil), by taking a night-bus later that day. Though this meant we had to leave Buenos Aires without seeing much, it also meant spending more time together and at a site that everyone who travels around South America says is a "must-see."
Tosca and I, it turns out, have similar traveling philosophies: make the most of where you are, and always keep open the possibility of visiting somewhere again in the future. (This is obviously very easy for a city like Buenos Aires.) So on Monday we decided to call it a day on the metropolis. But before we did, we went shopping.
Reason #4: While fun and memorable in its own way, I didn't want to take pictures of Tosca and me shopping.
I got a nice pair of leather dress shoes, a nice dress shirt, and two ties. I could've bought more, but I didn't want to embarass myself in front of Tosca (!).
We left in the afternoon for Puerto Iguazú, 18 hours to the north of Buenos Aires. On our way to the Retiro, or central station, Tosca took two pictures through the window of the colectivo, or public bus: the Casa Rosada and a government building. The pictures, which I now have saved on my laptop, are actually quite good, as though Tosca took them from the street on a day-long walking tour of the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment