Buenos Aires
22 Feb­ru­ary — 24 Feb­ru­ary, 2005

Once I get back into Buenos Aires, I decide to splurge a _little_ bit on my hotel, think­ing I would get a much nicer place. The place I chose is close to the main pedes­trian thor­ough­fare — Florida, and close to many other things, includ­ing the pres­i­den­tial palace (the other hotel was near con­gress.) I walked into the hotel before leav­ing for Ushuaia to see if it was a nice place, and to make a reser­va­tion and the guy behind the counter told me I had to use the tele­phone to make the reser­va­tion. I said I’m not doing it, and left. When I came back to check in, they tried to tell me to use the phone to see if there were rooms. My exact response was “No way.” I’ve never been in a hotel where they couldn’t book you in at the front desk, and I’ve been in a lot of hotels in the last eight months. So they did it for me, after talk­ing to bosses, and find­ing num­bers, etc.

The room was OK, but not quite worth what I paid (140 pesos a night, or about $46/us.) It was much nicer than my last B.A. hotel, and it had a 20″ TV with cable. The shower was nice and hot, but small. The shower was a small porce­lain tub in that also con­tained a bidet. When you were fac­ing the shower, the bidet was directly behind you — I guess that’s where it’s sup­posed to go. OK, so far, this is nor­mal. The bidet had only cold water in it, not the hot and cold mix­ture com­ing from the show­er­head. There wasn’t any way to turn the bidet off that I could find — there were two knobs in the bath­room that weren’t marked for any­thing, but nei­ther one affected the bidet pres­sure or tem­per­a­ture. So while I’m try­ing to take a shower, the bidet foun­tain is shoot­ing cold water where bidets do. At one point I took a water glass and cov­ered the bidet stream, but I fig­ured that hav­ing glass in the shower was more dan­ger­ous than my bidet dance. My show­ers were quick and cir­cu­lar while I was there.

After my first water dance, I went out to get a late lunch. There was a place across the street from my hotel that served a very good chunk of meat, and I decided to go there. In Mex­ico, I have a the­ory that they take a com­plete cow, pound it until it’s about 1/4 of an inch thick, then serve it for every meat dish made (taco, steak, etc.) In Argentina, I think they take the cow and quar­ter it, and that’s your meal. The first time I ate at this place, I got a chunk of steak sub­stan­tially larger than my two fist side by side. Today I went with pork. And it was mag­i­cal — it was like the cow was hand raised by Mus­lim vir­gins, mas­saged by Thai pros­ti­tutes and fed a steady diet of French but­ter and Argen­tinean wine. Each of the two steaks I got were as large as the plate (they bring them on a sep­a­rate serv­ing dish), and I ate them both. I had a half bot­tle of wine and the total was about $7/US. It was glo­ri­ous, sim­ply glo­ri­ous. I walked around the rest of the day, hav­ing a cup of cof­fee to wake me up, and wan­der­ing the town.

One of the pre­vi­ous post, I said that I didn’t bring my lap­top because the places didn’t look safe from a secu­rity stand­point — well I meant com­puter secu­rity, not per­sonal safety. There wasn’t any place I vis­ited where I even thought twice about the peo­ple around me. As far as I can tell, Argentina is as safe as any city in South Amer­ica, or even America.

Buenos Aires was amaz­ing. the more I saw, the more amazed I was. I spent my next full day (the 23rd) walk­ing around the city. Louis coined the phrase “Death March” to describe these incred­i­bly long walks, and I saw a ton of very cool stuff. Every time I turned around, it was another beau­ti­ful old build­ing, or a beau­ti­ful street, or a park or statue. It was great time, and I ended up in parts of town remark­able far from where I started. I walked for some­thing close to six hours, largely non­stop. Every neigh­bor­hood was pleas­ant, with wide streets, pleas­ant side­walks, and trees — lots of trees. I vis­ited the ceme­tery where Eva Peron was buried and got a ton of great pic­tures. I haven’t been able to process them, since my lap­top is out of disk space. Per­fect tim­ing on that. As I packed, I watched the nightly dose of crime dra­mas and thought about what I’m doing next. I have a long road ahead of me, and many, many things to do. I had a hard time sleep­ing. Damn you CSI!!

I can’t rec­om­mend Buenos Aires, and Argentina enough. I think that if I ever get mar­ried, I’d like to go there for a hon­ey­moon. There was much to see and do, and a lot of it wasn’t as much. A per­fect exam­ple of this would be tango danc­ing, going out to a bar at night, or even din­ner. And this is a very roman­tic city — much more so than even Dallas.

My flight was at 7 a.m. on the 24th. I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to fin­ish pack­ing, shower, check out, and catch a cab to the air­port (about 45 min­utes away.) As you can imag­ine I was pretty tired, and a lit­tle grumpy. When I checked in, the immi­gra­tion woman gave me a nice com­pli­ment, which was a good way to start the day, but it didn’t get me out of my bad/tired mood. When I got to the air­port, my ticket was seat 7L. Not know­ing what kind of plane it was, I had hoped it was a win­dow seat, but it wasn’t. I was right between two other medium sized men and behind a chubby lit­tle lady who reclined her seat all the way back as soon as she sat down. It was hell. I man­aged to sleep quickly and soundly, if not long as soon as we took off. For some rea­son I can always sleep like a baby when the plane is tak­ing off, regard­less of time, caf­feine or airline.

When we landed, I was imme­di­ately reminded that I was back in Peru when I paid $7 for two small bot­tles of water and a candy bar. My next flight was on Lan Peru. My flight, booked almost three months ago had me assigned seat 32a, which was about as far back in the plane as you can go. I men­tioned this to the woman behind the counter, and after a few min­utes of talk­ing amongst her friends, and with­out any dis­play of emo­tion, I was given an upgrade to 5L. At the time I didn’t know what that meant, or what kind of plane it was, but come to find out it was busi­ness class on a 767–300, and it was very, very nice. Once again, and as usual, Lan Peru has exceeded my expec­ta­tions. Please don’t con­fuse Peru with Lan Peru. The seats are great and wide, there is a TV screen over the mid­dle of busi­ness class that is con­stantly show­ing our route, and sta­tis­tics on our jour­ney. Right now, we are half way between Bogata and Mex­ico City. I’m watch­ing The Motor­cy­cle Diaries on my per­son flat screen TV. One of the other shows I watched was a PBS series of peo­ple trav­el­ing over the world. The first of those shows had a woman trav­el­ing through Argentina, and going to many of the places I went in Buenos Aires and Ushuaia. It was nice to see. For Lunch I had a starter of raw salmon with caviar on top, and a side selec­tion of cheeses. The main course was Chilean Sea Bass with squash, and a glass of red wine. It was very good. I have all the leg, shoul­der and elbow room I need. Con­sid­er­ing it’s an nine hour flight, I con­sider myself very, very lucky. My plan was to orig­i­nally try to upgrade on Alaska in Los Ange­les, cause I’m gonna be very tired by then, but I’ll take this any day. It’s fly­ing like it used to be.

While in Lima, I bought a book called “Bring­ing Down the House: The inside story of six M.I.T. stu­dents who took Vegas for mil­lions.” I read it before I was halfway to Los Ange­les. It was a pretty good story, and the first time I’d read a book in one sit­ting in a long time. I didn’t fin­ish the other book I got in Ushuaia — “Emo­tional Intel­li­gence: Why it can mat­ter more than IQ.” The way things are going, I should be able to fin­ish this before I get back to Seat­tle. Bring­ing down the house is about guys and girls that found a sys­tem to beat black­jack in Vegas. It fol­lowed them through their rise and fall as card sharks — it was very inter­est­ing. The other book, on emo­tional intel­li­gence, basi­cally is telling me I don’t have any, which I knew. I don’t know why I’m read­ing it — maybe to fig­ure out how to fix many of these flaws I have (Don’t laugh — you’ve got some too.) That, and it was in Eng­lish, and one of the few books that looked inter­est­ing. I also picked up a book called “The Tip­ping Point” in Sao Paulo. It was a worth­while, if light, read. Not a bunch of books to go through in 10 days. Read­ing them hasn’t ever been the prob­lem, it’s been find­ing them.

The flight to Los Ange­les is long — 9 hours, but I’m pam­pered. As soon as I arrive in L.A., and scram­ble to get to my flight on Alaska Air­line, I come crash­ing back to air­line real­ity. I show up 20 min­utes before the flight is to leave and am told that I can’t make the flight. They’ve over­sold the flight, and basi­cally, I’m screwed. What does this mean to me? It means that I hate Alaskan Air­line. I’ve flown with other car­ri­ers that peo­ple love to hate — United, and have been pleased as punch. How­ever, Alaska always does me wrong. So right now I’m sit­ting in LAX, on the floor of a hot ter­mi­nal, hop­ing that 9 of the remain­ing 48 peo­ple yet to check in don’t. If I don’t make this flight, then my next option is a 6 a.m. flight the next morn­ing, and I’ll have to pay for my own hotel, if I get one. If I make it, I’ve been up since 2 a.m. Seat­tle time at this point, and every­thing was smooth. Until now. Need­less to say I’m rather upset, I guess it evens out with the pam­pered good­ness that I got on Lan Peru. Maybe that should be my mantra from now on — “It all evens out.” Right now I’m sit­ting in the flow writ­ing this, hop­ing, and feel­ing very, very sleepy. Sleep­ing in a air­port is always a bad idea if you’ve got stuff you’re attached to. What do I do — check my bags? Only time will tell.