 More 2015 Adventures |
Stop 1: Buenos Aires, Argentina |
 Next Day |
¡Buenas tardes, amigos!
I am headed south for Antarctica, and boy, is this ever a long transit! I left Los Angeles last night around midnight, flew for ten hours down to Lima, Peru, then came all the way across South America to Buenos Aires, Argentina where I have a seven-hour layover until my last leg leaves at 4:00 in the morning! I heard lots of scary things about Buenos Aires at night, about pickpockets and armed robbers and motorcyclists that snatch your backpacks and cameras, but the idea of sitting in the airport all night and not seeing this marvelous city scared me even more!
Luckily, using a nifty phone app called Couchsurfing, I reached out to a local fellow named Andy, who wasn’t afraid to show me around in the wee hours! We met up after I had transferred from Ezeiza International to Jorge Newbury Aeroparque, and we hopped on a bus into town!
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Our first stop was the famous Obelisk on the site where the Argentinean flag first flew over the city after the 1810 Revolution! There must have been a protest nearby, because the whole area was strewn with shredded pamphlets, and there were piles of smoldering garbage in the streets! Nonetheless, there was nothing about this famous intersection that felt any more dangerous than wandering Los Angeles at night. Maybe I was lucky!
Andy and I walked across the street to marvel at the Teatro Colon, a massive theatre and opera house that was built by four separate architects! Andy told me that a ticket to a show here was only $30, which made me way jealous! I felt better, though, after we visited the Pizzeria El Rey and tried Argentinean pizza, which is mostly cheese and fully delicious! Ours was called the Fugazzetta and had a cheese-stuffed crust topped with ham, onions, olives, and even more cheese! The two of us couldn’t finish more than half of it, and Andy gave the second half to a homeless fellow down the road.
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By now, it was almost 1:00 AM, and we were just arriving at the Plaza de Mayo, famed center of political and social movements! This is where Eva Perón gave her famous speeches to the people of Argentina, and where the Madres de Plaza de Mayo continue to hold protests each Thursday with unanswered questions about their children, who were “disappeared” by the government in the 70s! This time, there was a permanent fixture of signs demanding recognition for all the folks who helped on the home front during the Falkland/Malvinas War!
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Andy showed me the Cabildo, which was an administration building under Spain and a court building after the 1810 Revolution. It housed the first clock tower in Buenos Aires, but it’s also been treated poorly. Three arches were removed from its north wing to make room for the Avenida de Mayo in 1889, and three more were removed from its south wing to make room for the Diagonal Julio Argentino Roca! It sure is lucky that folks wanted to make this a National Monument, or it would have been destroyed for sure!
The buildings around the square were lit up in blue, white, and red for the French flag. Just yesterday, terrorists bombed a soccer match in Paris, and while I am heading south to adventure, the rest of the world is mourning. The making of history never takes a vacation!
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It was really quiet in the Plaza de Mayo; I thought it was going to be bustling, but there were very few people in this part of town. Lots of security, though! That’s probably because the Casa Rosada on the east side of the Plaza is like the White House of Argentina, only much pinker! It was originally a Spanish fort that became a post office then a custom house, then merged with a government building to become the massive Pink Palace that it is today! Buenos Aires really does seem to be a place where different things come together!
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We caught a taxi to the Puerto Madero district, once a very sketchy port area but now a very hip spot for nightlife! There were tons of people here! Usually in Los Angeles, this is when the clubs start to close, but in Buenos Aires, it’s when the fun begins! I wanted to come to this area to see the Puente de la Mujer, a pedestrian bridge built by Santiago Calatrava, which mirrors another bridge I saw in 2014 up in Redding, California: the Sundial Bridge!
The Puente de la Mujer is roughly the shape of a tango dancing couple mid-dip! It’s really a lovely jewel at night and a hi-tech one at that! A section in its middle can actually rotate ninety degrees so that ships can pass through! It was a really neat spot to people-watch and bat-watch, but the time ticked down, and we had to hurry back to the Aeroparque!
The line was really long at 3:00 AM, but Andy waited with me to make sure I checked in to the right flight south to Ushuaia. I give Andy total credit for making this a really fun, not scary at all, adventure in the city of Good Air! Now, it is time to head south for an adventure in the ice!
¡Volamos!
More 2015 Adventures |
Stop 1: Buenos Aires, Argentina |
Next Day |