Mar 6

Today in Buenos Aires it is 84 degrees and “feels like” 91. I was close, I thought it felt like 93…

Okay, tired, but got the strength to get excited about seeing the remainder of this city. A hot, humid, large city.  After dressing for Antarctica, we find ourselves in Buenos Aires for a second day, at 95 degrees and somewhere around 65% humidity.  This is an interesting city.  We bought the “Hop On, Hop Off Bus” yesterday.  We rode around 2/3 of the city and have the last 1/3 to see this morning.  We get on a bus and ride through the city seeing more of this new place.

The bus finally takes us to the “Arts” section of town, the area we were told yesterday to not be in at night.  It is quite the eclectic section of town with buildings painted in all sorts of artistic ways.  Quite the place!

We arrive back in the center of the city after our 24 hour bus tickets expire and we walk around.  We hope to find a Tango exhibition but alas, it is not to be.  That would have been fun here in Argentina.  We ask around to try to find this and we are told that we might be able to find it in the Arts district, but that is the area we are told to be careful in and we decide to not return there.

Speaking of Art, it is apparent everywhere here. Gambling is also a thing for we pass a Casino on the way around town. We find an interesting lunch restaurant that at the least has air conditioning and we step in out of the heat.  I order an Isenbeck Malt Cerveza and life is good!  And cold!  Along with that, we order beef empanadas and a Eggplant-Zucchini Antipasto Salad to share.  A side note, napkins in Argentina seem to be a difficult commodity to acquire in a restaurant aside from 6 inch cocktail napkins, even for dinner.  But here at lunch, we actually are given regular dinner napkins!

Another interesting note about Argentina this entire trip that resembles every other place we have visited in South America.  Just like Peru and Ecuador, you can pay for your meals in restaurants and even taxi fares, with credit or debit cards.  But you cannot pay yout tip on the card.  Tips have to be in cash.  A note for all you travelers out there.

We find a mall to walk in out of the heat and we sit and people watch.  Here, you wouldn’t know you were anywhere but just a bustling metropolitan city.  This could be anywhere, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Miami or Buenos Aires.  People dress as they do anywhere, from casual to formal.  Ladies wearing as little as possible because of the heat tells us it is summer.  Children dressed as normal children run around and act like children anywhere.  Business people wear suits and carry satchels and briefcases just like everywhere else.

We find yet another park in which to hang out, at least this one has very tall trees for shade in the severe heat and humidity.  So we play with our cameras and horse around for the rest of the afternoon.

We decide to get a ‘last meal’, so to speak as we know we start our 25 hours of travel home soon. We even pass by a McDonalds where, for $159, you can buy a McCombo! That would be 159 Argentinean Pesos ($1.76 US)! So we walk back through town and, hey Elee, what’s that shop? 30-50% off? We check out a restaurant across the street from our hotel that we saw upon our arrival and have a bite to eat before our trip.

Then tonight we’ll start the travel home.  This might be my last post for a few days. We can hear the jets taking off from an Regional Airport from our hotel room. Not our Airport, we have to taxi across town to the Airport we will travel from.

We get a taxi to take us to the airport and it is not only rush hour in the city, but it start to pour rain down on the city.  Traffic is snarled and we barely move.  We eventually get to the airport an hour after planned and we start to get nervous again.  It also turns out the taxi, whose driver did not want to take us to begin with, dropped us off at the wrong terminal so we are left to pull our heavy bags around and try to find the correct place to be in the pouring rain.  But luckily, we find the right place in time to check in for our flight but there is no time left to spare.