Buenos Aires? I think Malo Aires!

For those of you not so Spanish inclined (Mick), Bueno in Spanish means "good", and Malo means "bad", and even though I googled Aires, I don't think it menas anything in English. So after having spent 3 days in the Argentinan capital, Buenos Aires, I have decided to rename it, with a more negative connotation. For my faithful readers, you know that I have NEVER written anything bad about travelling, cities, or my experience on the road (so far anyway), and would tell just about everyone I know to sell their posessions and head off into the world. So to what do I owe this new found negativism?; maybe i can blame it on 3 months in a cozy apartment (without living out of a backpack, owning lots of clothes, and eating Mick-cooked meals nearly everynight), or maybe it is just the Buenos Aires Experience I have had so far, but either way I am hoping my desire to "go home" leaves as quickly as my departure out of this city.

Getting out of Melbourne was sad, more so for me than for Mick, as I had about $600 worth of clothing and shoes that I had accumulated over the 3 months, that I was devestated to donate to some ungrateful people, and the "Sophie's Choice" process of consolidating the rest to fit into my backpack was shockingly pathetic. But after all was said and done we hopped on the plane, first with an 8 hour flight to Kuala Lampur, a 5 hour layover, a 12 hour flight to Capetown, a 2 hour layover, and a 10 hour flight to Buenos Aries.

Plane productivity included: 5 sleeping tablets, several hours of coma induced sleep interrupted only by the passing of a food cart (no matter what hour in the morning or night) two episodes of Glee, all of Braveheart, an episode of the office, all of the 3rd Twighlight move (which I have no idea what it was called, but I am definitely on Team Edward), some heated Tetris battles against Mick, 200 pages of "The Girl who kicked a Hornet's Nest", and LOTS of amazingly good airplane food (Malaysian Air food seriously kicks butt).

Upon arrival I cracked out my spanish skills to ask when the next bus will leave and how much a ticket is. I didn't really understand their response (which seems to be the trend), but I looked pretty impressive in front of Mick. We then began our nearly 1 hour walk (with my 25lb bag, and 10lb purse) to find a place to stay. Eventually we settled for the Goya hotel, which although it boasted a particularly impressive breakfast spread in the morning, was nothing special for nearly $60 a night. Since we arrived at 12:30pm Buenos Aires time, and 2:30am Australia time, we forced ourselves to stay awake, by walking around the city looking for a cheaper hostel to stay in the following night. After a quick meal, we were passed out by 8:30 BA time.


The next morning we hopped on a big yellow, open top, double-decker, tourist trap, I mean bus, to begin our 2 1/2 hour loop around the city. Buenos Aires doesn't have the chaos of the asian cities, nor the motorbikes or constant beeping, but it does still have a lot of traffic (including a 14 lane highway running through the center of the city), and lots of people selling you things. As we walk down Florida avenue people are selling tickets to Tango shows, city tours, money exchange (because we all want to exchange our money with some sketchy guy on the corner), leather jackets and dinner deals. They speak spanish to you, which reminds me that I don't stand out like sore thumb, as I did in Asia. The downtown street is lined with shops selling clothes, gifts and books, and of course lots of Macdonalds, Burgerkings, Subways and other Western shops.

Buenos Aires is split up into 12 districts and thanksfully the tourist bus showed us some of the more cultural sites and buildings, and some of their beautiful architecture (which ussually has some sort of graffiti on it.)

We hopped off the bus in the area called "La Boca" which sits on an inlet of water (which is really more polluted brown sludge), and although it was very touristy, the colorfully painted building facades and paper machete characters from Argentinan history coming out of building windows and standing in doorways was nothing but fun. We then got off at the "Reserva Ecological" which is a large ecological preserve, where people bike, run and one group (clearly of westerners) bird watch.



The real reason we got off here wasn't to enjoy nature; the promenade was lined with churizo stands that looked amazing, and I was hungry. We then went then drove through the ritzy area and hopped off near the Japenese and botanical gardens, taking a quick stroll through.


That night we got back to our hostel, grabbed some yogurts from the grocery store, since the pork-churizo from lunch was still lining my stomach, and spent our first night apart in 3 months sleeping in seperate dorm rooms.

After spending the morning planning our upcoming days, and finding another place to stay for the night, we walked to the train station, and headed to Tigre, a place where apparently the more affluent Argentians spend their weekends. Although the area was nice, we didn't find anything special. The inlets of water, a common rowing area, was again brown sludge and the screams of the local amusement park could be heard. We had a walk around the small town, a bite to eat, and a lie on the grass and called it a day.

Ok, so you are probably wondering why I don't like Buenos Aries. Here goes:

1.) Well first off it is expensive, some things are more expensive than Australia! A night in a 6 bed dorm is $15, a 200g box of cereal is about $6, a meal is $15-$20, a bus ticket is $100+ dollars and the list goes on. I had assumed things would be cheap, and they aren't!!!

2.) On our second night we stayed at a hostel in seperate dorm rooms. When I first climbed into my bed, I pulled up the covers and noticed a little black bug in the sheets. I flicked it down onto the bed below me (which some spanish girl had stolen from me, even though my stuff was on it already). I fell asleep but had an itchy sleep for the next couple of hours. At about 2am, I woke up and with my flashflight found them. Black bugs on my pillow and in my sheets, little baby black bugs crawling all over everything. I started smashing the babies, leaving blood splatter all over the sheets. At this point I couldn't switch rooms, so I dealt with it, by turning my flashlight on every time I felt something and either killing it, or looking like a crazy person when there was nothing there. I have stayed at some sketchy places, all over the world, but never had an experience like this. Needless to say I got very little sleep, and an immediate hatred for Malo Aires.

3.) Everything is booked! In Asia, I could navigate on the no plan plan, and roll up to place without a reservation. Here all the hostels are booked, and if you don't book 5-6 days in advance, you are going to spend your days looking for a place to say, which we did. On the first day we went to a hostel to check it out, and as we left Mick goes "this is what you call a DIVE". Little did we know that two days and 200 bed bugs later, we would be crawling back to The Dive begging for a room, which turned out to be fine.

4.) There aren't a lot of travellers. Everyone in Asia on the very clear backpacker route, was from Europe, spoke English and wanted to make friends with you. Here, most of the people in hostels are from South America and just staying in the hostel because it's cheap. Which doesn't make for a great atmosphere.

5.) There are random holes in the road (one of which I fell into) dog poop everywhere, graffitt on everything (including many historical buildings) and the city is dirty. Now as we walk down the street we yell "hole" or "poop" depening on what it is we need to avoid.



6.) The food isn't great. Granted we have been eating at the middle of the road priced restaurants, but one night I ordered a waldorf salad, and they brought out a chopped up apple, 2 walnuts and some celery, with creme on the side? We ordered a pizza last night and there was so much cheese on it, I am surprised we didn't go into immediate cardiac arrest. Maybe there are some good Argentian restaurnts around, but we can't find them? The one place that looked good, was about $40 a plate.


Well enough negativity. Yesterday we arrived in Uruguay, or "U R GAY" as Mick likes to call it. I will write more about it in a couple of days, but lets just say, I no longer want to pack up my things and head back to the USA! Uruguay is great!