Today’s Portuguese Word of the Day (PWOD): entre aspas = “quote-unquote.”
Buenos Aires is in the books. Beautiful city, awesome time, delicious food, cheap exchange rate. First the ups. As previously mentioned, my family beat me to Brazil. They left the US the day before I did and were puttering around the wonders of Rio de Janeiro while I was settling into my groove in São Paulo. Tuesday of last week they came to São Paulo to visit me and I showed them the sites here albeit in a very short time. Then off we went to Foz do Iguaçu. It was my second time there in a little over a year and during my 14 hour bus ride from São Paulo to Iguaçu I was pondering if it was worth my time and efforts to trek all the way there having just recently been there.......it was worth it, bottom line. And no, I'm not that awful a person to make my family sit on a 14 hour bus during their short vacation. Being the frugal student I am, I caught an overnight bus and put my parents and sisters on a cozy flight that got in a little after I did to Iguaçu.
Foz do Iguaçu: second verse, sweeter than the first. I can't put words to the spectacle that it is and any attempt I have made to describe Iguacu was done so last year in my mass email about it. I've posted some pictures and will let them do them talking. However, this time around I was more of a fan of the Brazilian side. Last year Argentina got my vote but this time I was more captivated by the Brazilian side...probably because of its offering of both distant and panoramic views, combined with the up close and personal finale that puts you right over the river at the foot of the falls and drenches you til your heart's content.
From Iguaçu we flew to Buenos Aires - a charming, clean, well urbanly laid out city with a European atmosphere laid smack in the middle of South America. The overwhelming response I've heard from friends who have been there is that it is a European-like city in South America. It seems the typical and accurate description of Buenos Aires, thus making it cliche and unoriginal to repeat it.....but it is a European-like city in South America. No better way to describe it. By that I mean it's not as techy and modernized as a US city, but nor is it as crowded, chaotically sprawled, polluted, and over-populated as a third world or industrializing city such as a Manila or a São Paulo. So all that, mixed with the cafe culture, the preponderance of plazas and pedestrian thoroughfares that connect neighborhoods, the modernist architecture of the buildings, and the fashionable styles of many of the women reminded me a lot of Europe – Barcelona to be specific.
There are different ways to describe Buenos Aires. It’s a big city with a small town feel to it. It is a city of neighborhoods and the layout of the city is very suitable to walk from neighborhood to neighborhood so long as you have strong legs, a good pair of shoes, a lot of time to kill, and tons of curiosity. Each neighborhood had a different feel to it and cultural identity. There were some areas where I felt like I was in Madrid while others that reminded me of lower Manhattan. The weather was chilly (50s and 60s) because of the reversed seasons but at no point was I ever legitimately cold. Argentina is a noticeably cheaper country than Brazil. It is a 3 to 1 peso-to-dollar exchange rate and as long as you are buying local foods and goods that are cheap to begin with, it is borderline highway robbery with what you are getting away with. By local foods I’m mainly referring to MEAT. The whole “gaucho” (cowboy) region of southern Brazil, Uruguay, and northern Argentina have long been synonymous with a top of the line world class beef industry. The Brazilians breed it and dance around your table serving it up on swords as you flip over costers from green to red to signal “keep it coming” or “stop.” The Argentines don’t bother with all that showcase. They just slice it up in portions the size of a small child and gluttonously flop it on your plate. I’m talking 30 ounce steaks for US $15. Hand in hand with the cattle industry is cheap leather. My parents and sisters went hog wild (no pun intended) on the cheaply priced quality leather jackets.
Most of our days were spent walking around the city, discovering the nooks and crannies of each neighborhood, and popping into cafés for short rests and cafelitos (espresso). Among the many sites were the Casa Rosada (President’s house) Plaza de Mayo (outside the Casa Rosada where the mothers of the captured and missing Argentine youths still gather on Thursdays to protest), Puerto Madero, Eva Peron’s grave, the San Telmo weekend street fair, and the La Boca Port through which hundreds of thousands of European immigrants entered in the 19th and early 20th centuries and thus making Buenos Aires a melting pot of races and origins and dubbing any local of Buenos Aires a Porteño. At night we treated ourselves to steak dinners and intoxicating (literally) bottles of malbecs and cabernets straight from the Mendoza wine country in western Argentina. Tango dancers were ubiquitous throughout the streets of Buenos Aires…(of course those streets were in very touristy areas and next to each dancer was a bucket asking for loose change). But still, Argentines are proud and passionate about their tango as a staple of their cultural identity
Unfortunately, Buenos Aires was not all fun and games. On our second day, as we were diving into seconds at an all you can eat grill house, my dad’s camera bag got stolen. We were sitting at a corner table on the second floor of the restaurant close to the balcony overlooking the first floor. As my sisters and dad recalled in retrospect, there was a group of 4-5 people who came over to our corner to peer over the balcony, pretended to call people downstairs, and took photos. Apparently they formed a wall around our bags and amidst the food, the commotion of the restaurant, and their “picture taking” someone snatched my dad’s bag without us noticing. In it was his SLR camera, all his photos of his trip to that point, and then the big one…..his Filipino passport with US greencard: essentially, his way back home to the US. Why he still has a Filipino passport with a US greencard (as opposed to US citizenship) after all this time living in the US is the topic of another book. But the here and now was focused on managing the passport crisis. The silver lining (if you can call it that) of the situation was that we were in Buenos Aires – the capital – and naturally, the hub of embassies. So over the course of the next several days, amidst the site-seeing my parents were able to make numerous trip to the Filipino and US embassies in Buenos Aires to get his new passport and temporary transit letter from Homeland Security granting him clearance to re-enter the US on his return flight. The process was inevitably beauracratic requiring paperwork from 2 embassies and a lot of waiting, but miraculously, everything got processed in a little over 48 hours and on time for him to leave on his originally scheduled flight back to the US. Things looked grim come Wednesday afternoon (less than 12 hours before their return flight) when we were still waiting on news from homeland security and the idea of cancelling and rebooking return flights crossed our minds. But at the last minute, the transit letter pushed thru and we were able to enjoy, stress free, our final evening together before parting ways (of course while eating steak the size of a small child).
Don’t let the story of petty theft discourage you from visiting Buenos Aires or anywhere else in South America for that matter. Above all, it is a beautiful and charming city. It has a little bit of everything – huge parks, delicious food, great shopping, the arts, and a lively nightlife. The women are gorgeous and the sprawl of the city is easily navigable for any tourist. I’m hoping to pay it a return visit sometime during the rest of my time down here particularly when the weather is warmer.
Back in Sao Paulo now and returning to the grind of classes, apartment hunting, and more frequent blogging since I’m not traveling. Stay tuned folks…..
