The South American Adventure, Part I

We arrived in Buenos Aires on Wednesday night. The tour books say this is a very cosmopolitan city; they are correct. Much of the architecture has heavy european influences, and you do get the sense that many of the residents would be right at home in Spain or Italy (probably not England). The cab ride from the airport took us down Avenue 9 de Julio, a street so wide it seemed impossible to count the lanes of traffic (not that the lanes mean anything -- drivers here seem to come from the New York City taxi driver school of driving). In fact the whole city felt similar, but not quite identical, to New York. And though the vibe on the street may have been the same the Pizza was nowhere near as good.

Before arriving we booked reservations at the Clan House, a Bed and Breakfast located in the Microcentro neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The building itself is a spectacular bit of urban architecture and design. Our room had a 20 foot ceiling, deep brown hardwood floors, and a mixture of modern and shabby chic furniture elements. By morning we also realized that it is located across the street from a nightclub (thump thump thump) and that the walls and doors are paper thin. Listening to the nightclub and its patrons as well every resident of the B&B who walked up or down the stairs outside our door got old quickly so we checked into the decidedly more pedestrian Hotel Wilton in the Recoleta neighborhood the next morning.

On Thursday morning we took a tour of the Jewish neighborhood of Once (the Buenos Aires equivalent of the Lower East Side, except without the colorful condos). It was especially powerful to visit the site of two major terrorist attacks (the Israeli Embassy was bombed in 1992 and AMIA, a social organization, was bombed in 1994).

We also took self guided walking tours of the San Telmo and Palermo neighborhoods, saw a Tango show, and took a half day excursion to the Tigre Delta where there are no roads, and the residents commute by all manner of watercraft. As our tour guide said (over and over), there is a bus boat, a taxi boat, a supermarket boat, an ambulance boat, as well as kayaks, canoes, and quite a few other types of water travel. I am guessing they don´t swim; the water looked quite murky.

After Buenos Aires, our trip heads back to the rugged country with stops in Ushuaia (the southernmost city in the world) and El Calafate. The weather forecast looks intimidating at this point -- we`re keeping our fingers crossed!