Day Dos: The Day With A Lot of Fingers

First off, I´m freaking exhausted. I chugged a whole Gatorade after yesterday´s epic post but let´s see what I can conjure up for this one.

Met up with Victor Sanabria - Greg´s friend from HM - last night at a bar called Gibraltar. It´s in a secluded part of town (which means there was a greater chance of me getting robbed) so I decided to take a remise. The taxis here are decidely cheap, the total came to $6.50 pesos, which may seem a lot to all the Yanks in the room but actually comes down to about 2 bucks. The bar itself had a great vibe, an interesting mix of Argentines, British and American ex-pats and students. It´s actually owned by a guy from Sussex in the UK. We ate and then chatted up some natives who turned out to be fantastic people. One was a huge fan of ´heep-hop moosick´ and I spent the better part of the evening trying to explain to her that there is more to listen to than just The Ying Yang Twins (they´re very big down here for some unfortunate reason).

As I said before, everything down here is incredibly inexpensive. My dinner with Victor topped out at the equivalent of $13...a steal! I was buying shots of Jager for anyone who would take one, at $3 a pop it´s cheaper than drinking up at Hamilton. (I know now why Jager shots are so cheap. If the theory of supply and demand comes into play then these things could be given away for free because nobody came close to taking the extra shot I bought.) One thing I´ve noticed about myself when I travel to far away lands (except for that random trip to Narnia), looks like fake, I call it ´Monopoly Money Syndrome´. There is no intrinsic value of the peso beyond me spending it here, and because I have to divide by 3.1 just to get a ballpark figure for what I´m spending in dollars, I forgo the headache and just say ´Screw it...I´ll pay.´ That doesn´t mean I´m buying up all the trinkets on the street simply to spend the money, but when given the opportunity to spend wisely I tend to just throw inhibition to the wind.

Got home at 12am, which is like going home at around 7:30 in NYC (yeah, they party late), got some sleep in the insanely hot hostel room, got up at 8am and got today started.

The first stop was the roof of my hostel which is laid out kind of strangely as they have both the 1st and 6th floors of the building. I´m on the 1st which is a plus because its always dark in my room but a minus in every other sense. The roof is glorious and I got up there with my guidebook and morning cup of coffee to see the sun rise above the cupola on the Plaza de Mayo. Really cool stuff.

I began today by heading out to Jardin de Botanica in Palermo, the northern and nicest part of town. This required my first Subte (Subway) experience. Now, it´s not that the train system here isn´t intelligently thought out or designed. It works well, is relatively clean and the interval between trains is consistent. But if you´re constructing a subway system (hello...below ground!) in a city that averages 74 degrees a year, wouldn´t you spring for some sort of circulation in the cars? I don´t need A/C but how about a fan? Anything besides keeping the 3-inch cracks in the windows open. My sweat glads were abierto but I digress.

The Botanical Gardens are quite lovely. Landscaped terrain, manicured trees and the like but nothing worth noting here. Victor had told me that I had to visit the Jardin de Japonese, perpendicular to the Botanical Gardens, which was my next stop. The garden was originally part of the Botanical Gardens but was cornered off when Prince Something-moto came to Buenos Aires in 1998. It is absolutely breathtaking. There are cherry blossoms that form a line around the pond and different varietals of bonzai trees all over the gardens. The pond is teaming with koi, so much so that the fish seemed to be running out of room, eagerly poking their mouths out of the water to munch on some of the flora that had fallen in the water from the surrounding trees. There´s the requisite zen bell, a shinto tower and everything else you´d need to give you a Feng Shui Orgasm. It´s brilliant. So brilliant that I´m going to petition New York City to bring this Japanese prince and his wife to New York so that the city can build one of these gardens too. Which brings me to my next point.

Central Park is the bastion for all things urban landscaping. It´s beautifully maintained, orderly, clean, visually impactful and most of all, on an island of 6 million people, it´s the one place you can go for some quiet. Despite the many beautiful aspects of the Botanical Gardens and especially the Japanese Garden, the visual beauty of the gardens is completely ruined by the fact that the second busiest street in Buenos Aires runs right between the two parks! It´s mind-blowingly loud:

Tour Guide: "If you listen closely you may be able to hear the mating call of the rare and beautiful Okinawa Nut Hatch."
Me: "Sorry, does the Okinawa Nut Hatch sound like cement mixer doing 50 MPH on a dirt road? No, because that´s all I hear."

After the gardens I took the me and my royal companion (also me) to the quaint and immaculately maintained Museo de Evita. She´s got some pretty serious clout down here given the fact that she beat out Diego Maradona and Che Guevara for History´s Greatest Argentine and the museum does a fantastic job of giving the visitor a glimpse into her life. It´s two stories of chronologically based information going from her youth to her turn as a movie star to her marriage to Juan Peron and ultimately to her role as First Lady of Argentina. You can check the Wikipedia article on her but she´s kind of a big deal around here.

Of to Palermo SoHo. The. Coolest. Neighborhood. Ever. Palermo SoHo is basically the BSAS (Buenos Aires) version of SoHo (hence the name). It´s got some of the trendiest boutiques and restaurants in the city but does so without the snootiness of some of the other global hot spots (see: SoHo, Williamsburg, South Beach, West LA, etc.) The Argentines are serious about their fashion and Palermo SoHo is the epicenter of this movement. It´s block after block of kick-ass designe shops and labels that I´ve never even heard of. You´d expect the store staff to carry an air of stuffiness but I only encountered charming and helpful people in the half-dozen or so places I checked out. I was seriously blown away by this place and spent the entire afternoon just meandering around the quiet streets (ironically much quieter than the gardens I saw in the morning).

A Few Observations:

1) Like most Latin countries I´ve been to, there are statues everywhere here. But these statues are larger and far more imposing than the ones in Santiago and Caracas. I´m not sure what it is but there´s something very Fascist about all this statue building and I´d like it to stop.

2) The streets are choked to a stop by buses. And on these buses are people. Now the funny thing about these people is that it seems that their jobs in life are riding the bus. In New York there are rush hours: periods of time in the morning and evening when people are heading to and from work. Here, everyone seems to just be riding the bus all the time and that´s probably why there are so many of the damn things. I will put money on the fact that I saw the same woman 3 times on a bus. What the hell is that about?

3) For a country that has won an Olympic gold medal and world championship in basketball and two FIFA World Cups, I´m at a loss when I report that I have yet to see not only a soccer field or a basketball court but a soccer ball or basketball that wasn´t in a store window. Either the athletes come from the countryside or the government has banned fun. I could go either way on this one.

So, that was pretty long I guess. My fingers hurt and I need a nap. Don´t be afraid to leave some comments and I´ll try and keep you all as up to date as possible.

Mucho Gusto,
Noug