Buenos Aires

What are the odds you stay in Buenos Aires forever?

– Reid, trying to sewer Andrew’s life

Our last post described the circumstances leading to our trip into BA. We were making steps to keep a positive outlook, but the first night really tested our patience. The guidebook described Hostel Estoril as “one of the best hostels in the world”, so we were pumped to get a space there. In fairness, the location was awesome! But beyond that, you would have to extend the definition of “best” to be enormously broad, and maintain a very open mind to the term “one of”, realizing that it really doesn’t say anything. With those conditions, I can say the hostel was one of the best in the world. The main issue was just the heat. For those of you that are not geography buffs, BA is located right near the surface of the sun, and you can tell just walking around.

This problem is compounded when you try to escape to your room for a bit of shade and cool, only for the room to be a nice sauna. Our time in BA could really be summed up with one adjective: soupy.

We needed food, and decided to just grab some fast food. All four of our cards were denied, so we needed to cancel the order. Justin Trudeau, if you could just put this on you list of things to figure out as well, we would appreciate it. After finding an open bank and miraculously acquiring some legal tender we returned and place the order again. Seriously, the worst burgers of all time.

However, this burger spawned a new round of “What are the odds” games. Here is the idea:

• Someone asks the other “what are the odds” to do X
• other responds with a number
• at count of three, both say a number between 1 and the responded number
• if the two numbers are the same the person has to perform X

Andrew turned to me and asked “what are the odds you eat here every meal we have in BA”. Suddenly I was sweating for a new reason; fear. I escaped, but the precedent was set. Our walks through this city became a lot more dangerous.

It goes on and on. It was mostly Andrew asking me to do dumb things, so I had to step my game up eventually.

Tigre

Bravely we navigated the Subte and Tren to a suburb named Tigre. We felt just like the explorer Magellan, wishing to reach his goal but unsure if he will ever return. We found our destination much quicker than Magellan ever did. Tigre is an odd place, a web of rivers near the Rio Plata. People drive there watercraft around to get from place to place, and it has a much more chill feeling than BA.

Exploring the network of rivers was something of a must do in this area, so across the river we went to get aboard the next available boat tour. To our jubilant pleasure we we’re told that we had 9 minutes before the boat left for the tour. We looked at one another and in unison shouted, “LUNCHTIME”. Back across the river to a cafe we went. Without much delay to the boat staff we climbed aboard and began our excursion yet again proving that cutting it close is a gift we carried. The tour was a great way to experience these narrow channels upon which few Argentine’s call home. Along the route we noticed an abandoned amusement park, and once again Reid was posed the question, “What’re the odds you break in?”.

Unscathed we managed to reach the train station to make our return back into Buenos Aires.

Conclusions

Is BA a bad place? Absolutely not, it is very beautiful.

Were we happy to leave still? Absolutely. We had strange issues here. Couldn’t cool ourselves, couldn’t use our bank cards, and kept having Uber drivers arrive only to not let us enter and drive away (we later learned Uber still isn’t allowed in Argentina). BA is pretty, but we are ready for El Calafate and the Patagonia region.

Buenos Aires: 5 out of 5 sweat drops

Reid and Andrew, currently waiting in a power outage stricken airport, hoping the conveyors come back on line to take our luggage and we do not miss our flight.