Day 1 – “The Longest Day Ever!”

After 24 hours of travelling, we safely made it to Buenos Aires. Christy and I met in Canada, and then took a 12 hour flight to Chile, followed by a 3 hour flight over to BA. Juan, Saba’s college friend, picked us up at the airport (no signL) as we parted way with our new friend from the flight, Roman. We checked into hostel Ostienatto and quickly set out to explore San Telmo, the barrio where we were staying. It only took one trip around the block for us to realize that we were going to need ‘una mapa.’ We wandered over to La Plaza de Mayo, which is essentially the city’s center although it is located in the southern part of the city. Here we had our first café on Avenida de Mayo, as we listened to tango and milonga en los calles de Buenos Aires.

Though it had been a long day of traveling, we were not deterred form going out or first night in this magical city. Around 7, our normal dinner time, we set out for food, but upon realizing that the only thing open were small cafes, we settled for un pastel y vino tinto at a nearby pasteleria to pass the afternoon.

Around 9 we called Juan, who had offered to acquaint us with the night life of BA. Without any form of communication, we attempted to meet up with him and his novia, Patricia, which ended up being a lot harder than you might expect. We quickly learned of the shortage of monedas in Buenos Aires, making it difficult to make a $.20 call, and it was only 3 hours later, after grabbing our first empanda, wandering around the streets with ½ bottle of open wine, and looking for an address that did not exist, when we coincidentally bumped into Juan and Patricia. We made our way to Mundo ____ (Bizarro) and shared the best mojitos in town with Juan, Patricia, and our newest friend, James. In an effort not to look lame (even though we were going on 48 straight of no sleep) Christy announced that she was ready for a change of scenery and with her dancing shoes on, she led us to our first Argentinean discoteca! VIP… vodka… strippers… enough said. We had had our fill and decided to head out early (sometime around 4am). We piled into the Juan-mobile, which did not want to start at first. Christy, James, and I sat in the back seat and finished off that half a bottle of wine from earlier, while Juan played bumper cars in an effort to get us out of the space… que noche loco!