BS in South America

Ok, this will be one of my shortest blogs (lucky you!). I don't have a lot to say about our three weeks in South America. Pretty much, a lot went wrong but not horribly wrong (Thank God!).

The original plan was to leave Spain and take the last long journey across the Atlantic to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The flight was long and painful, even more so because I was still getting over my Spanish Flu. In the airport, I had a nice fever and almost fainted after walking down to our gate! After the flight, we had to make it thru the hell of more immigration and customs in Argentina. The nice icing on the cake? Argentina slaps a HUGE "entry fee" onto people from the US, UK and Australia. We had to come up with $240 just to get in!!! We were pissed. What the hell did we do to get charged so much? (That is a rhetorical question, you KNOW that the US did something to those people for us to get slapped with a nice, F-U fine) Ok, so after the surprise fee we get to luggage, then to change in some money into Argentine pesos. Another surprise! A big ass long line that took me almost 30 minutes to get thru! Ok after the drama, we get into a taxi and take a ride to our apartment. We decided that if you're going to be in a country for a long period of time, it doesn't make financial sense to try to stay in a hotel. Even a B&B is going to cost. Since we had almost 3 weeks in Buenos Aires, we decided to rent an apartment in one of the cool districts of Buenos Aires. Palermo and Ricoleta are two of the nicest areas to live in the city. They are both known for shops and restauraunts, old architecture and very "old world" neighborhood charm. We chose to stay in Palermo neighborhood because it is known for the young, trendy, hip shops and boutiques and all of the new restaraunts. While in the cab, we were tired but excited to see our new digs. We drove and drove and finally got to a neighborhood and started slowing down...uh...this place didn't look so nice. It looked hella run down, several buildings down the street were boarded up, it didn't look too great....Bruce looked at me, and I gave him a reassuring smile and we gathered our bags to go in. Inside the burgler bars we were pleasantly surprised. It seems that the person that owned this apartment gutted an old building and turned it into a modern, new apartment. It was perfect with a nice kitchen, 2 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. Perfect to say in for a long visit! It even had a roof top garden that gave an interesting view of the other apartments. Once settled, we decided that we had to give the place a chance. We set out walking and discovered that the Palermo neighborhood is everything that they described. Cool little boutiques, neighborhood stores and shops, great cafe's and my new favorite, a parilla! A parilla is a meat restaruant. They have meat on grills, with juices sizzling....every type of meat you could imagine! Gotta love the Argentinians and their love of meat!!!

Meat!!!

It was a very cool, laid back vibe in Argentina. We pretty much walked around, ate and drank every day UNTIL....Bruce got the Spanish Flu (courtesy of my kisses!!!). Of course, I felt fine but poor Bruce got real sick! I made several trips to the local Farmacia and stores to get OJ, tissues, NyQuil, everything that you would need to nurse a sickie back to health. I have to admit, I got a little scared a couple of days because he had such difficulty with breathing. We were actually considering taking him to the hospital at one point. He had developed a mild pneumonia but thank goodness we had antibiotics that we had brought with us that we were saving for a diarrhea that we never got!  The good news was that we had nice, long days of doing nothing at all. Just laying around the apartment, watching TV. I even got a chance to cook!!! Anyone that knows me knows that I LOVE to cook and being on the road this long has deprived me of my pots and pans. Being in an apartment for so long gave me the chance to feel "normal" again.
Although Bruce was ill, we did get a chance to make it out to a tango show at the famous Carlos Gaudel Theater in Buenos Aires. The show was spectacular!!! I never knew that Tango was so important to the culture of the city! They are serious about the dance! Carlos Gaudel is a famous Tango dancer from the early 1900's that went on to open one of the most famous schools in Buenos Aires. Tango has roots in a combination of African, Caribbean and Spanish dance styles. It was originally thought of as a "sinful" dance style, only done at cabarets or clubs frequented by sailors on shore leave. When it caught on with the "refined" people of Buenos Aires, it was cleaned up and adopted by the upper class as the national dance style of the country. It was excellent, but I think that I like the fierce passion of the Flamenco in Spain better!

On our way to the Tango show

The famous Carlos Gaudel Theater, home of the Tango dance

The city of Buenos Aires itself is pretty amazing in that it is a collection of little neighborhoods that are pretty self contained. You literally have NO reason to leave you own neighborhood unless you really want to. You have several stores, restauraunts, cafe's and parillas that keep you happy. No one needs a car and we walked everywhere we needed to go.

Tree lined streets of the Palermo neigborhood

The Argentinian Flag

The Football museum outside the stadium

The National Congress Building

The history of the city was very interesting and the influence of French and Italian is very obvious in culture, cuisine and architecture. Unfortunately, Buenos Aires is very DIRTY. There are almost 13 million people living in the Buenos Aires metro area and boy, do you notice it!!! There were tons of people on the streeets, in cars, in cabs in buses and there was tons of exhaust and fumes that made the air less than pleasant on hot spring days. My other complaint? The dog shit!!! I have never seen a city with so many dogs! Argentenians love dogs. That's nice. We saw lots of dog walkers, doggie boutiques and vet offices. I also saw all of the shit produced by these lovely pooches. Walking down the street to the store was like walking thur a Cambodian mine field. Crap was everywhere!!! Damn people!!! Curb your dog! ugh!
The rest of the folly of errors occured during our last several days in Buenos Aires. We were supposed to go to Peru to see the famous Machu Picchu. Mother nature decided that via deluge, she would wipe out the only railway to get to the famous ruins. Months after the flood/mudslide, the train was only partially open. We learned that our train tickets were no good and that we would have to take a 3.5 bus ride from another city up to Machu Picchu that they wouldn't pay for. After the drama and the weather reports of more rain in Peru, we decided to scrap Machu Picchu. We still had to go to Lima and stay for a couple of days to catch a flight to Miami (yes, we were in the US) before we could go to our next destination, Belize!

We added Belize on as a last minute, what-the-hell, place since we had more time to waste.
We did some research in Buenos Aires and decided that we wanted to go somewhere slow, with good diving and not very touristy for out last month of freedom. Belize fit the bill. We considered the more "traditional" places in the Caribbean but we didn't want to be bombarded by "American" life so soon. We wanted to avoid all semblance of our former lives until we absolutely had to come back!

It was nice to get to slow down and re-charge our batteries for a while. This stop over came at the perfect time. Unfortunately, being sick kinda hindered our opportunity to go out and explore the countryside but we really needed the rest. It was good to take it slow for a couple of weeks before we were off to our last country...
Check back soon for a full breakdown on our last country before we come back home

You can check out all of the pics from Buenos Aires and Lima, Peru by clicking here