Tuesday, August 14, 2007: Welcome to Buenos Aires!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

I was supposed to wake up at 7:30 to finish packing and get to the bus stop by 8:45. Unfortunately I accidentally turned off my alarm instead of hitting snooze and didn’t wake up till 8:30!! I frantically threw clothes into my backpack and stuffed breakfast down my throat and ran out the door. I was late to meet Calli, but luckily we got on the bus to the airport no problem. We arrived at the airport about an hour and a half before our flight and we were worried we won’t make it. Amazingly we flew through check in and security in about 30 minutes and made it to our gate with plenty of time!! While we were waiting, one of Buenos Aires’ professional soccer team came through. They were all beautiful and had huge calves.
The flight to BA was quick and really pretty. We flew over the Andes Mountains, which was a sight to see. We landed and got through customs pretty. When we walked out of the airport, we came to the quick realization that we were 2 foreigners in a new country! Our first mission was to figure out a way to get from the airport to the hostel. We took a bus with a well respected company Manual Tienda Leon to their bus terminal then they took us in a van to our hostel, 3 hours after our flight landed. We stayed in a great hostel called The Recoleta. Check it out: http://www.trhostel.com.ar/location.htm.
As we were settling in, we met 3 American guys (Jeff, Patrick, and Josh –can’t get much more American than that right?) who had been traveling around Argentina for the past 5 weeks. Two were high school teachers and one just graduated college. They were all really nice guys and two of them were strong Christians. None of them spoke Spanish and they were thrilled that we could help translate for them. They had hung out with a lot of the other people staying in the hostel but hadn’t really been able to talk to them! It was their last night in Argentina and Calli and I didn’t really know what to do the first night, so we decided to all meet up after Calli and I had dinner.
Calli and I first went and walked around a park and memorial called Plaza San Martin near by the hostel, and then we found a place to have dinner called Il Immortales (The Immortales in Italian). We went at 8 pm because we knew Argentineans don’t usually eat dinner till really late, but we were the only ones in the restaurant for about an hour! We shared a bottle of wine, salad, and pizza (huge Italian influence). Then we finished off with an amazing crepe dessert (called pancaques) and coffee. We were almost done when the waiter came by with two glasses of champagne “on the house”. We finally left after paying our $35 bill! (That’s right, $35 for both of us!)
Back at the hostel a bunch Americans and Brazilians hung out in the kitchen and somehow communicated in English, Spanish and Portuguese. It was incredible to watch everyone interacting and having a great time! Eventually the Brazilians left and it was only the Americans. I told everyone I didn’t want to stay out too late because I wanted to be able to wake up early and play tourist all day Wednesday. But we were having such great conversations and everyone was having a ton of fun, so I pulled out the usually reserved for finals week, “you can sleep when you’re dead” phrase, and around 2 we went to an Irish Pub across the street called Jack the Ripper. We discussed Harry Potter, our significant others (two of the guys had girlfriends and I told them all about Trevor), Jesus, being radical, politics, traveling, America, everything, until they kicked us out at 4:30. We then migrated to a 24 hour restaurant called 1234 and had empanadas and ice cream. Finally, we followed the sunrise to another 24 bar called The Alamo, which is owned and operated by a man from the US. At 7:30 we decided to head back to the hostel and we crashed.