Oh Buenos Aires. I did not instantly fall in love with this city the way that I did with Santiago, but its slowly been growing on me. Here are a few random thoughts and things about BA.
(1) Tread carefully. You must be very very careful when you are walking down the sidewalk, primarily for two reasons. The first, main, reason is dog shit or landmines, as I heard someone refer to them. Porteños (aka people from Buenos Aires) love their dogs. I think that they are a status symbol of sorts. If you have a dog, especially a pure bred one, and you can hire a dog walker then clearly you have a good cash flow, right? I wouldn´t be surprised to discover that 85% of porteños have pet dogs. It isn´t uncommon to see dog walkers with 12 or 13 dogs traipsing along next to them (or to see that many dogs leashed to a pole with the dog walker no where in site, probably getting a coffee). This is especially intriguing to me because in Chile and Peru there were lots of dogs but there were nearly all stray dogs lounging about the streets. I have only seen one or two stray dogs in Argentina. Anyway, they love their dogs here but they haven´t quite jumped on the "pick up your dog´s shit" bandwagon yet so tread carefully. The second reason to watch your step is that in many places the tiles that compose the sidewalks are missing or loose or broken half off. I re-twisted my ankle probably 5 times the first three days here (it was already swollen from hiking in Torres del Paine).
(2) Schedule. Argentina is on very different schedule than the United States. I´ve already talked a little bit about "latin time" and having to adjust to it, but Argentina (and especially BA) takes latin time to the extreme. Restaurants literally don´t open until 8:30pm. People typically don´t go to eat dinner until about 10pm. Finishing dinner at midnight or 1am is completely normal. Many clubs don´t even open until 1am and, just like in America, you don´t want to be there at opening. This means that staying out on the weekend until 5am means you are going home early. Funnily the subte (aka metro or subway) closes at 10:30pm. The buses run all night though. Because everyone stays out so late stores don´t typically open until 10 or 11am. On the weekends this gets pushed back even more. I´ve left my apartment at 12:30pm on a Saturday and only one of the many business near my apartment was open.
(3) Car headlights. I would estimate that 60% of taxis do not use their headlights. They only use their parking lights and I´ve even seen cars that just have blue lights, not those bluish white lights but full on blue, aka I can barely see you, lights. I have not gotten a satisfactory answer as to why this is. I´ve watched cars go past the corner I live on with their dim parking lights on and seen them flash their lights as they approach saying "Yo, I´m coming through! Car here!" A teacher at my school said its because when their headlights stop working they won´t take it to a mechanic to get fixed because they don´t trust the mechanic to not steal other parts of their car. My response is "You need a mechanic to change your headlight lamps? Don´t they just pop in and out?"
(4) Pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way. Cars will run you over. I swear to god. You just gotta get out of the way. This is complicated by the lack of stop of signs and an apparent dislike of signaling. Even when you have the walk signal a car turning right will practically plow into you.
(5) Could you walk any slower please? My American sense of impatience comes out full force here, especially on escalators and sidewalks. Argentinians seem to have a knack for lazily strolling down a busy, crowded sidewalk, four abreast, idily chatting. I want to scream "MOVE IT!" Instead I perform a weaving dance, avoiding the doddering grandmas, the baby strollers, and the perfectly abled adults that just seem to enjoy walking 1 mph. I have to just do deep breathing exercises on the escalators. They do not have the same "stand on the right walk on the left" room that all Americans are born knowing. A guy in front of me even set his briefcase down on the left side of the escalator the other, effectively blocking all traffic. Drives me crazy.
(6) Prices I have yet to figure this out. Some things seem to be super expensive. For example, it isn´t uncommon to spend $3 on a cup of a coffee or spend $6 on a beer. But a haircut will cost you less than $10. A friend and I went out for dinner, ordered 2 main courses, a huge salad, a bottle of wine, and two bottles of water and the entire bill came about to about $30 (and you don´t have to tip here and when you do you never do more than 10%). BUT I´ve also gone out and spend like $10 on a hamburger at a completely non-touristy cafe and I wasn´t ordering the most expensive thing on the menu.
Buenos Aires is a beautiful city. If you were dropped here and no one told you were in South America you would never guess it. Everyone says it so it feels almost cliche to say it but its true; Buenos Aires is a very European city. There are tons of cafes and many of them have a very old European feel to them. There are cobble stoned streets and tree lined avenues, tall, stone apartment buildings with art nouveau intricacies. Its a lovely lovely place. I recommend visiting it.
Okay, that is all for now. Next time I write I´ll actually tell you about some of the stuff I´ve been doing here. And maybe, if you are lucky, you´ll get some photos.
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