Buenos Aires

We arrived in Buenos Aires without a confirmed reservation, so our first task was to secure a place to stay. We got a cab to St Nicholas Hostel, who would "probably" have an en-suite twin for us based on a phone call the previous day. Well, they had the twin, but not en-suite - a bit of a drawback, considering Santeri's stomach was still giving him plenty of grief. We ended up taking the room for the first night anyway, and the hostel folks were kind enough to hook us up with the room we wanted at Florida Suites for the rest of our stay. St Nick was ok, but Florida (and the new Milhouse, another hostel we looked at) was the Regency Hyatt of hostels. Very modern, very sleek, with organized activities for every day of the week.

Sunday, our first night in BA was very quiet, as we were both still feeling quite ill. We wandered downtown and caught the new Bond flick, Quantum of Solace. I really liked the film, Santeri was more luke warm about it. Anyway, at 15 Argentinian pesos (about USD 4) at least you couldn't complain about the ticket prices.

The next day, I was pretty much back to full health, but Santeri continued to have stomach problems. We used the morning to move to Florida Suites and then wondered around town, taking photos of some nice examples of colonial architecture. We also checked out the Puerto Madero harbor area, and came across a white bridge with a funky "spike" design - I'll have to look up what it's called and who designed it. For lunch, we tried the famous Argentinian beef at a riverside restaurant called Sport Class. Strange name, but great food. We also popped into the catholic university to take a look around, until a serious looking professor in a suit told us off for violating the campus dress code. Apparently shorts are a big no-no. We wrapped up the evening with a pub crawl organized by the hostel. Bad pizza, cheap beer, and backpackers from around the world all met to explore some four bars around BA, and we all ended up in a grungy club in the Tango barrio, San Telmo. I did meet a great guy, by the name of Jose, who works in Buenos Aires as a promoter but is originally from Ecuador. He was big on extreme sports, and gave me some great tips about stuff to do back in Quito. Will definitely try some of his recommendations.

Come Tuesday, we spent the day in the upper class Recoleta and Palermo neighbourhoods. They have some seriously beautiful buildings, and lots of parks between them, not to forget all the great restaurants. We also took a stroll through the famous Recoleta Cemetary, and of course snapped a couple of photos of its most famous grave, that of Evita Peron. We grabbed dinner with a couple of Londoners we met at the hostel, Nisha and Anika (both of Indian descent, despite Anika's Nordic-sounding name) and had an interesting discussion on whether Hinduism's ban on eating beef could be bent for a beef-paradise like Argentina. Apparently, for some Hindus, the answer is yes :-)

Wednesday consisted of more wandering around Buenos Aires, e.g., the Casa Rosada presidential palace. For evening entertainment, we took some tango lessons; amazingly for a dance class, we had more guys than girls, which gave the whole exercise a bit of a Blue Oyster Club feel (see the Police Academy movies if you don't get the reference), but it was fun nonetheless. We replenished our energy with some pizza once again, then headed to a tango club (called Milonga or something to that effect) to see how the pros do it. It was amusing to watch the huge range of ages, athletic abilities and dance experience on display. For instance, one of the better dancers we saw was a 155cm short, stocky, gray-haired guy in his sixties, whom we jokingly dubbed "Danny De Vito". He was about as wide as he was tall, yet moved with amazing grace and managed to look pretty elegant in his black smoking jacket. A few of the girls were just mind-blowing dancers, who could probably hold their own in a Jackie Chan movie. In true BA-style, the festivities were still going strong by the time we left at 3am.