Sabado

I knew if I could only find a real pub here in Buenos Aires, I could better connect with the folks here. Serendipity can be fun.

After a day of walking around downtown giving myself a Lonely-Planet-guided tour of notable monuments and a big pasta lunch, I wandered over to San Telmo for a cup of espresso. After that I craved a beer at a real pub with real people sitting at a bar... a tall order here since most bars here just have tables and no bar or bar stools. But that's what I wanted, so I walked up and down some streets peeking in places to gague each one. Nope, empty... nope too loud... nope crummy lighting.. nope nope nope. Then on my way down Calle Peru, I walked past an Irish pub. It had a bar with bar stools AND people sitting on them. I kept walking on by, mainly out of habit.. usually there is a nope in there somewhere... Then I turned back and peeked in. There are no nopes here! I plopped down at the bar and asked the two English guys next to be which beers on tap they had tried. "All of them. We are regulars". They both have lived here for ten years and were happy to give me some tips of places to hang out back in Palermo as well. They had actually tried and failed to open a bar of their own, some years back. Now one of them runs the Buenos Aires chapter of Time Out magazine. After a healthy session at the bar one of them says "Hey I am supposed to go to a party at some French girl's apartment I don't know very well. Want to come?" Uh... Yes.

So we head off to Sofia's trendy flat on the edge of barrio La Boca. It's a hip crew of folks, about half of them porteño and half English or American, all very friendly, and as it turns out celebrating Sofia's birthday. Later on my English friends left, and left me behind at the party. Ha! Am I even supposed to be here? They announced that the party was moving to Shamrock, a club across town, for some dancing and I think a merger with another birthday party. They swooped me along and I partied like a porteño until about 5 am fueled by an armada of vodka and Red Bulls. I haven't even been home since this morning!

I returned home to my Palermo neighborhood still going fairly strong. Plaza Serrano, about a block from my apartment, is a traffic circle with bars all the way around it and tables out front. Some of the bars were shut, but two still had most of their tables full. My goodness. Time for me to go to bed.

Fun random night though. As my friend Heather would say, "Whoop whoop!".

Observations

During my first week in Buenos Aires, a few things have jumped out at me concerning the behavior of Porteños (people who live in BA).

• They don´t have stop signs. They do have traffic signals at larger intersections. But it took me awhile to notice that in other, smaller intersections, it's a free-for-all. The prevailing idea seems to be: try not to hit one another. They drive fairly fast through residential streets, and it seems to be a game of chicken to see who will stop. No accidents yet that I have noticed. I suppose it's working, and it keeps people zooming along.


• Where are the newspapers? One day I went to the super market specifically to pick up something to read, like a paper or a magazine. I did a little shopping then realized at the checkout. There is nothing! Liquor stores: nothing. I realized that the only place one can buy a paper or magazine of any kind is at one of the sidewalk news stands. Also, there doesn't seem to be any such thing as free weekly papers. Somewhere to see listings of movies, music, etc. This has led me on a wild goose chase to figure out what is where and when. Maybe I am just missing something. I imagine the news stand guys will light your store on fire if you try to tread on their territory. That's all I can think of.
  
• How do you order espresso? Ask for coffee (cafe´). Apparently there is no such thing as brewed drip coffee here. All coffee is espresso. That one took me a bit to figure out.


• People are stressed out. This isn't really my observation, although the people do have a bit of an intensity to them. I read in a newspaper (once I found it) that 5% of Argentinian teens have hypertension. It could be all the espresso.. or perhaps all the Red Bull that's required to go out to a club from 3am to 7am which seems to be what the youngsters do around here. Sheesh.


• Buenos Aires is the second home of The Whopper. Burger King is a super popular restaurant here. And given that the prices seem to be about the same as U.S. prices, they are willing to pay extra to eat there. I have to admit I have had a few Whoppers myself. BK seems to fill a gap in the type of restaurants they have here. They tend to either have tableclothes or they are street vendors. There is very little in between. I have noticed a few golden arches as well, but they mostly seem to be Mc Cafe's - stores that only sell pastries and coffee drinks. Starbucks is nowhere to be found.


• Browner people are serving lighter people. It could be my imagination, but I don´t think so. The folks working as cashiers, cooks, bus people, and generally blue collar jobs seem to tend toward the darker, more indigonous look. Most of the local folks here, although they dark hair, eyes, and slightly olive skin, are caucasion. Interesting how these divisions happy even down here.


• Porteños love PDA! As far as public displays of affection, it is just so different here. People will make out anywhere. In a restaurant, on a bus, and in a park it can get almost obscene. I was in a local pub last night. There were three couples in the mostly empty bar, and at one point all three couples were making out in their booths simultaneously. I could barely conceil my laughter.


• Dog shit doesn't exist. Well yes of course it does. But I have seen tons of dogs running around town crapping and I haven't seen even one person bend down to collect it. As a result, the sidewalks are peppered with smelly shit. Folks seem to instinctively watch where they step and don't even seem to notice. I thought maybe people wait until it's a day or two old and sweep it into the street. But I haven't seen any evidence of that either. I know Argentina has had bigger problems to worry about in the recent past, but somewhere along the line this should move up the list.
  

Landed

I have a home!

Yesterday I got the keys to my very own Palermo Soho apartment. I am not sure why they call the barrio Soho except that it might resemble the New York City neighborhood with the same name. Palermo is a large area and so they have named smaller sections with more distinct names.

It is already such a different experience having a home rather than a hotel room or a hostel bed. I have a fridge! I have a bath tub! I have a key to the building! Amenities I might have at one time taken for granted are now super luxuries.

The first thing I did after settling in was to go to the grocery store to buy some food and supplies. The notion of cooking meals for myself has been off the table for quite some time. The store I found, however, was not exactly Safeway. It was a fairly small store that still billed itself as a "supermercado". I only had about ten items on my shopping list but I only managed to find about half. About 1/5 of the store is devoted to local wines (on my list), but they didn´t carry corkscrews, so I had to buy box wine (not too bad actually). They also didn´t have peanut butter, english muffins, or any microwave food. Should I be surprised about this?

So today, for the first time, I can just relax during the day, and not have to worry about finding addresses, hotel check out times, where to keep my bags, etc. Now I can get down to the business of feeling like a resident... or a tourist.. whichever I choose.

You´ll have to ask me again after I leave here, but at the moment, I really have to recommend the notion of using an agency to get an apartment here in Buenos Aires rather than a hotel. Unless you really want the things a hotel offers, like daily cleaning and...er.. what else is there?.. you can rent an apartment weekly for about half the daily rate of a comparable hotel room. It makes me wonder if there is a similar niche being filled back home in San Francisco. I met the owner of my place, Julián, when I got the keys. He seems like he has a good little business going. I know that when you buy a flat in SF and want to rent it out, the rent will likely not be enough to cover the mortgage payment. But could it cover the mortgage if it was rented short term?

Hmmm.

Pavement

Boy are my feet tired!

The past few days, my feet have been hard at work trying to figure out how and where I should live while I am here in Buenos Aires. I started out in the dumpy but ok Hotel Los Robles in San Telmo. After a couple of days and nights there, I decided it wasn´t really my barrio. I think it´s a cute little neighborhood, but it doesn´t have the feel or the social aspects I´m looking for. Also, there is something about being in a little hotel like this that feels a little bit confining. The staff must let me both in and out of the building. One day I left without my ibuprofen. My ankle has been sore so I need it especially with all the walking every day. I felt guilty about going back and asking the eighty or so year old guy to get up and let me in and out again. So I bought some more at the store. This type of thing has happened a few times. I like to come and go as I please. I don´t like waking up the guy at 3am to let me in after I return from a club.

But more important than that, you don´t meet anyone in a hotel. In backpacker hostels and beach bungalows, you tend to meet many of the folks that come through. And now I am really in need of some quick friends. So this place just wasn´t working.

So, on a tip from my good friends Shannon and Kathleen who were here a few years ago, I decided to check out the HI Recoleta Hostel in barrio Recoleta. I figured if I stay there a couple of nights, I can meet some folks and then take it from there. Right? Well not really.

I got a room there for only $5 less per night than my private room. This place is equally run down but now I share a bedroom with three other guys. One older guy from Denmark that goes to bed around 8 pm. And two Argentinian business men using the place as a cheap hotel. They are all nice folks, but not exactly partners in crime.

The bathroom is shared by eight of us, and after dealing with a crazy wet floor (no shower curtain) one morning and realizing that Recoleta isn´t really my speed either, I decided to head to Palermo to see what I can find at any level from hostel to apartment.

As it turns out, there isn´t really much in the way of hostels or hotels in Palermo either. The web listing I found turned out to be largely out of date, and many of the listings I found were either no longer there or they had been upgraded to more expensive options.

So what I settled on was to rent an apartment. This is actually quite normal here for short term visitors. The rates are cheaper the longer you stay. But I figured that, by getting a place for a couple of weeks, I would pay only a little more than the original cheap hotel, come and go as I please, have a kitchen and other amenities, and have a much much nicer place. So I contacted a realtor and I expect to have a place locked up in Barrio Palermo Soho by tomorrow.

Now I´m excited. But boy are my feet tired.

Transporter

Ah... If it were only that easy.. to just beam you from one country to another like in Star Trek. I entered said transporter at 4:30 am yesterday when I boarded a shuttle to Guatemala city airport from Antigua. The machine must have been on the fritz because it took about twenty four hours to get me to Buenos Aires instead of only seconds like on TV.

I flew from Guatemala City to Mexico City to Miami to Buenos Aires. Yes I know, quite a ride.. but it was the cheapest way believe it or not.

Ok so except for the language spoken, Buenoes Aires is about the exact opposite of Lake Atitlan. It is a great big bustling city, it is getting close to winter here, and for some reason, every single person you pass on the street does not say "Buenos Dias" to you.

Don´t get me wrong. Like my friend Jonathan told me after visiting here last June, "This place is legit." It is like no other Central or South American city I have seen. Everyone said it is "the most European" and they are right (although I haven´t made it to Europe yet.. June!). The barrio I landed in first, San Telmo feels like a cross between the Mission District in San Francisco and Greenwich Village. There is a mix of old time business and hipster stores and restaurants. It is clearly in the process of gentrifying. In the mean time, it is still gritty and on the cheap side. I can get a hotel room here for around $20 per night. I am still getting a feel for the power of the dollar here. It seems, for many things, the exchange rate is about accurate. One peso buys you about what you would spend a dollar on in the U.S. such as a bus ride. However, I did buy a 15 peso whopper at Burger King today. (Sorry I just had to). So the jury is still out.. but at first glimpse, it is still fairly cheap here especially considering the quality of the place. The people remind me of folks from Sydney in that they seem to walk around pretty put together most of the time. They have stylish haircuts and clothes and seem quite chipper from what I can tell.

I have to say it is quite nice to have just about any little thing I need available to me for a change. For example... For some reason, I never bought a guide book for Argentina. I never considered it might be difficult to come by in Guatemala. And it was.. and I didn´t have a book at all when I landed here.

Now I have learned that the hotel listings in the Lonely Planet are far from gospel. In fact, I think I have never stayed in a single place listed in there. But there is something comforting about being able to read about currency, culture, weather, and especially transportation. Being fairly clueless and with still only basic Spanish skills, I broke down and just took a cab to town after learning there is no train from the airport. An expensive move, but that´s what I get for being unprepared.

So today a guide book was at the top of my list as was a tour of some barrios and guesthouses that had been suggested to me. I nearly walked my feet straight off today. You see, book stores here have lots of travel books.... only they are in Spanish! Can you believe the nerve?

Well I am on track now.. only quite exhausted after my first day. The next order of business is finding some friends. I don´t know a soul within a thousand miles of here. That is a bit tough coming from a place where I couldn´t walk through town without running into a friend. I do need a bit of a social rest. But that won´t last long. I may try a Craigslist post or something.

So now I also have some time to reflect on my time at the Lake. It was a great experience for me living in a small town. Living in a petri dish with others in the same boat.. every day having only the most basic of responsibilities... knowing each others´ every move... It brought us all close together quickly... far more so than in the city. That said... I am a city boy. I know this. Although I could easily spend a couple of months a year this way, I need more variety.. more restaurants.. more activities to choose from.. and occasionally, some anonymity.

Although I truly felt like a resident of the lake before I left, and will always have great, great memories of that experience, I also know it is not my home. My home is still San Francisco.

Unstuck

Some of the friends I have travelled with have used the term "stuck" to describe that situation when you are enjoying your current town so much that it becomes quite difficult to leave. Thong Nai Pan in Thailand was one of those spots for me early in my journey. Lago de Atitlan got me stuck here for awhile as well. At this point, I truly feel like a resident after about six weeks here. Both San Pedro and San Marcos are both small towns where, after a few weeks, it is difficult to walk anywhere in town without bumping into a friend and chatting or joining up to eat or hang out. It is a whole new environment for me.

My original intention was to spend one month here relaxing and visiting with old friends, and then spend two months in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Early in my trip I began to feel that two months might be too much time in BA. However, I was never able to formulate a desirable plan to fill in the blank time. After overstaying my original plan by a few weeks already, I began to feel a bit hazy and confused about my short term future.

Rather than travel somewhere I wasn´t motivated to go, I allowed myself to stay here at the lake until a desirable alternative presented itself. I honestly was a bit nervous to travel to BA on my own, still not having great Spanish skills. I also found it hard to leave all of the great new friends I have made here. Starting over in a strange new place, especially a big city where I know no one seemed daunting. At the same time, that is the point of my trip. I welcomed this sense of unknown when I went to Thailand, so I was conflicted about this rationale. Eventually I decided I was just being a bit lazy and still wanted to go to BA, but alas, I had procrastinated purchasing the airline tickets, and here at the last minute, how could I possibly still fly so far away on short notice and still remain within my budget?

My good friend Shannon unknowingly provided the solution.

She wanted to fly with Michael, her husband, to meet me somewhere close by, Mexico perhaps and asked me where I would be. Having no idea, I left it to her to think of something. I toyed with the idea of exploring Mexico before her arrival, but wasn´t having much luck building enthusiasm from friends around here to help me choose a destination. I decided maybe I didn´t want to explore Mexico. Just then, Shannon sent me a flight confirmation for Puerta Vallarta. Done deal. That´s where I will be at the end of May. Now what could I do between now and then?

As much as I love the lake, I am not really feeling like staying here another month. I am beginning to feel a bit stagnant and need something to look forward to. But what can I do that will keep me near Mexico but allow me to see someplace I really want to see?

After some toiling on the Internet for a couple of days I thought of a new plan, and after a few hours in the Buddha Bar using a borrowed laptop and their free wi-fi, I had the solution.

My original plan had been to fly from Guatemala to Argentina, then on to Germany, and finally back to San Francisco... a series of expensive one way tickets. As we all know, round trip tickets tend to be cheaper, mile for mile, than one way tickets. Sometimes, I have found, one way tickets are more expensive than round trip to the same destination. Crazy.

My requirement to be back in Mexico before June has given me a new opportunity. Now I can fly round trip from Mexico City to Buenos Aires, then return to San Francisco and fly round trip to Germany. This gives me an extra destination in my travels (Mexico) and comes in under my original airfare budget for the remainder of my trip, albeit only slightly.

Presto! Now I am excited once again. Unstuck, excited for a new adventure, one month in a great city, I get to see Shannon and Michael on a tropical beach, and still head on to Europe for the last leg of my travels.

I rule.

Party

Some friend from San Francisco arrived last week to visit Sune, Marianne, and me here at the lake. Sune and Marianne, in a brilliant show of hospitality threw an enormous party in their honor. The crew consisted of Toby, Erin D, Bryan, Erin L, and Rob from London.

We drove down the volcano to pick the crew up in Antigua and spent the night there. We also got a chance to do some quick shopping for things normally hard to find in a developing country, like a new charger for my shaver for example. We also picked up Sune´s "Freedom Bar Chicken Bus" which was being repaired there and drove the crew back up to the lake in Guatemalan style. In Guatemala, public buses are brilliantly painted former U.S. school buses, called chicken buses because of the livestock that sometimes rides along with you. They are generally operated by a crew of folks who are slightly insane, at least in the way they navigate the buses through traffic. One of them actually played "chicken" with us on the highway and we missed a head on collision by about two inches. That´s the main reason I like to stay put here at the lake and stay off the roads.

On Tuesday, Sune was struck by a vision of a grand private party for about two hundred friends, both to honor our guests and because there were some party makers in town that were up for the challenge. They had four days to come up with a location, DJ´s, transportation from San Pedro, sound equipment, food and drinks, and to spread the word. I was amazed to see how efficient Sune and his associates were at making it happen, especially since he was out of town two of the days picking up the crew.

They found a miracle location. A mansion near San Marcos that was available to rent that did not have much in the way of neighbors - important to avoid getting shutdown late at night. It was on the side of a steep hill, and so had many terraced levels down to the lake, perfect for a party. Mate´, a burner from Earth Tribe camp, decorated. He was responsible for decorating the Roots Society camp at Burning Man last year at 10 o'clock and Esplanade, and brought down some decor from a three day party he had worked on in Palenque, Mexico the week before. Sound equipment showed up, including some turntables for Jeremiah (aka J:Miah), part of our crew who had a load of breaks on vinyl he bought in London and refrained from ever playing out until this party. There was some nail biting when the turntables showed up without needles, but people prayed for them, and they appeared miraculously just in time for the peak of the party, and blew everyone´s minds with a fantastic set. The dance floor went insane.

I left the party at around eight in the morning and it was still mostly full of people having fun. Wow.

The residents of the lake who attended were astounded both with the quality of the party and the degree to which the various people involved made it happen in such a short time. It was an unprecedented show of cooperation. I heard that over and over again.

Both I and my friends were humbled by the gesture and impressed at how well it was executed. People will be talking about this one for awhile I think. The following day at Buddha Bar in San Pedro, it was deemed "Recovery Day" on their daily chalkboard message outside.

What a weekend.