Buenos Aires (BA), Argentina

Man this was a long flight. Basically it was:

San Diego -> Dallas -> Buenos Aires

Total duration was about 20 hours. I guess our plan was to travel the Americas because all the countries were 'close'.

Our Uber driver from San Diego was super cool. He had the Tesla Model 3 Plaid, and had Dragonball Stickers everywhere.

They weren't close. It was like planning to travel to both Perth and Japan because you came all the way from Europe because Perth and Japan are close.

Dallas

We transferred through Dallas.

I wanted smoked Texan style BBQ, since this is probably the only time I'll be in Texas before a long time. Airport had a restaurant which was actually really good!

Wanting some decent Mexican before its too late, we went to this restaurant which sucked:

And off we go.

Buenos Aires

So Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina. Standard big city.

Weird bullet things on the ground to stop the cars from smacking into pedestrians I guess.

San Telmo and Checking In

We were SO tired we couldn't really appreciate this leg of the trip. Our check-in to the airbnb was about 5 hours after landing, so we had 5 hours to waste, while tired from our loooong flight.

The walk to the market itself was much longer than we expected. I mean, sure, 25 minutes. But that's 25 minutes of walking on narrow roads, dodging traffic and pedestrians, getting lost. Quite stressful.

San Telmo is probably one of the more famous markets in BA. We had some fresh empanadas here, with mysterious ingredients written in Spanish. We discovered later that it was actually Spanish Black Pudding, Morcilla, or blood. Still, it was probably the best filling we've had.

Our sleep deprivation probably didn't help with our enjoyment of the place.

We also checked out a local department store. Pretty standard department store, fancy expensive shops. One main difference was a big focus on culture and art:

We got to our apartment eventually though, and had a good nap. Our host, Norma, was super nice and let her take a break at her place for a couple of hours.

The apartment had one of the old school elevators with the manual safety gate which took awhile to get used to.

Most Argentinian houses had a full-on dedicated bidet. I've mostly only interacted with the Japanese integrated ones so these were an... interesting experience.

Non-stop construction happening riiiiight outside our 11th floor window.

Touring

So we did a bike tour, as is tradition.

Steph's legs were on fire for days after, as is tradition.

And finally, the tour was too long, as is tradition.

On the bright side, we managed to drop by La Boca, which was a highlight of the whole trip to BA. La Boca is one of those "old-timey" neighbourhoods with interesting shops.

Click here to check out some cool tango in the street!

Palermo

We made home-made empanadas and stew! We went to someone's home and she taught us to cook.

We met a couple of Brazilians, one of whom can not speak English, so the session was a mix of Spanish, English and Portugese. Pretty crazy! But not understanding the other person in BA is prettty common I imagine.

This was something we wished we did near the beginning rather than the end of the trip in BA, because it was very enjoyable, homely and fun. We also learnt a lot about where to go, what to avoid and made some new friends. Too bad we were leaving BA the next day!

She also took us to a cool farmer's market where we saw nice things to blow our useless pesos on:

We bought some white maize, which unfortunately was confiscated on the next leg of the trip.

Food

We had some great Argentinian BBQ, or Asado.

We had way too many empanada. Some good, most bad. I guess its like the 'quick, fast food' type of food. I mean, the cheap ones are around 0.75 USD so can't really complain that much.

Choripan was... okay. Basically a hotdog.

There is a special type of Pizza called Fugazetta. It was amazing! Its a pizza stuffed with cheese.

Chores

Sadly as we are humans, we have to do chores. We used the whole bath as a laundry bucket and basically draped the wet clothes over EVERYTHING. It got dry eventually. Nice and humid indoors!

Tango

We attended a tango workshop, where we did a beginners class in Argentine Tango, then went to a "real" milonga, or social.

Before the social we dropped by a cool live jazz performance next door.

It was an Italian club, and many masters of Tango turned up. The place was sorta like a speakeasy, quiet outside and a security guard. You get in if you know the place. There are about 20 or 30 every night at different venues. Very cool.

We learned about lots of subtle social rules were taught to us.

• No clapping! Except for performances.
• Tanda system. There are 'micro sets' of tandas, 3 or 4 songs. You must dance the entire tanda with your partner. Each tanda is the same style. Between each tanda is a short cut version of a modern pop song, as the break. You have three types of tanda song styles, the tango, the waltz and the milonga.
• No asking to dance! You have to do the "cabaceo", where you basically stare around the room, make eye contact with your desired partner, and do a little head nod. She will either head nod back, or pretend she didn't see you.
• Men and women can dance together!

We also got to eat there. This is milanesa, basically argentinian schnitzel or parmi.

There was a live performance near the end with about 4 couples who were pretty great.

Unfortunately Steph was already in great pain due to the bike tour, so she slammed a couple of panadol. Even more unfortunate, she took 2x SleepRight instead, which look identical to panadol to the dimly lit venue. She slept a lot that night.

On Hyperinflation

Most stores are closed.

Exchange rates are... funny here. Capital flight is prevented by the government, so a lot of people are 'trapped' here, financially. Hyperinflation has kicked in here, with prices going up around 50% every year.

So what happens is people will pay double in Pesos to get US Dollars out of desperation. But this is the "black market", and you have to talk to shady people to get it.

The black market is called the Dollar Blue, and the official rate is called the Dollar White.

So you have to constantly think in two exchange rates as you buy food. Dollar white, prices are nominal, and not too expensive. Think in Dollar Blue however, and you realise that you just had a huge meal for "half price".

Thoughts and Conclusions

BA is basically New York for Latin America, in the functional sense, but for Spanish speaking people. LOTS of tourists go through BA, but they're all from Latin America and Spanish speaking countries. Similarly, immigration is relatively easy and encouraged, but again is focused on Spanish speakers.

Lots of big bins on the roads, trucks constantly loudly blaring through. I think the city has potential, but the noise pollution makes it hard to appreciate. A bit far fetched, but I think something like a mandate of electric vehicles only in a single neighbourhood would be an interesting experiment. It'll bring more attention to the interesting architecture and stores as opposed to listening to compression-ignition engines hooning down a narrow one-way street.

The city is super busy, with constant construction, loud noises, car horns. BUT, because of the poor economy performance, many stores were closed, streets were quite empty, the stores that WERE open were mostly empty. Didn't see any crime or conflict, but the hyperinflation story means that life in general just gets harder and harder over time.