Back to Buenos

    Thursday night, after finishing up finals and saying goodbyes, Blake and I got on a bus to Buenos Aires. After 32 hours of traveling for Blake to get to Mendoza, we were only in Mendoza for about 24 hours before getting back on a bus. At least it was a good way for Blake to catch up on sleep. He got to compare the semi-cama from his trip from Santiago to this trip in cama, with extra service, wine, and a hot meal. We took the bus with a few friends who were also going to Buenos Aires, but were going straight to Uruguay, but we might try to meet up with them Sunday.
    We left the terminal to try to find the apartment we rented for the weekend, and stopped by the historical district of Buenos Aires to see the Casa Rosada and the main plaza. Blake's been GoPro-ing our trip to make us a video edit, and we are getting some great footage of the city and our trip so far. 
     We were trying to go visit Blake's company, CH2MHill's office, in Buenos Aires, and thought that the apartment was very close by, but when we looked it up on Google, it ended up being an hour away by train, until the landlord of the apartment figured out that Google was mapping it wrong based on the fact that the zip code system had been changed recently here, and the office was actually just down the street a few blocks.
    So we didn't quite know what we'd be doing at the office, but Blake emailed a few people that he had talked to through emails before to come let us in, and we said hi to the accounting department, got a few recommendations for where to go in the city, and took a few photos.
    Then we walked to Puerto Madero across a river, and walked through an ecological reserve where we got a great view of the ocean, even though it is contaminated and you can't swim in it. From there we had more mojitos by the river, with a view of old sailing boats and cargo cranes all lit up with lights, and a buffet dinner that didn't quite taste as good as how it looked.
    Day two in Buenos Aires, Blake and I walked through the city towards the neighborhood of La Boca, where the home soccer stadium is for the Boca Juniors team, and the Caminito, a tourist district full of colorful houses, street venders and tango dancers. On the way we stopped at a museum in a park with an exhibit about General San Martin. The museum cost about a dollar and had a guard in every room. It's hard to know how they are making money. We walked past a market that ended up being all second hand junky items like at a garage sale, but someone was selling rides on a miniature pony too.  It was getting dark and we didn't want to be walking in neighborhoods we didn't know in the dark, so headed back to Montserrat, where we were staying, for pizza. I think I've already got Blake hooked on empenadas, maybe not quite as much as me, but enough that we are already planning on making them back home! Blake is obsessed with the pizza here too; we've had really good salami and cheeses and longaniza.
 

  It's interesting that some of the things that Blake has noticed here about the culture are things I never noticed, and are new comparing Buenos Aires and Mendoza because I haven't spent much time here before. We've noticed red ribbons tied on the backs of parked cars all around the city and we didn't know what they are for, but Blake asked a taxi driver who told us that they are a good luck symbol in Argentina. Of course everything Blake notices about the city is about cars, like that cars use natural gas here. Blake's also noticed a lot of hostility from people towards us here, probably because we are tourists, and we've both gotten frustrated with the common situation of people responding to you in English even when you ask a question in Spanish. There are a lot more homeless people here in Buenos Aires than in Mendoza, and I definitely feel more vulnerable walking around the streets here than I do back in Mendoza. I'm so glad I picked Mendoza over Buenos Aires for study abroad, I wouldn't have been able to live in this big of a city for so long.
    Day three had some errors, mostly on my part. I didn't research enough how to get from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay. First, we couldn't buy tickets early Sunday morning like we planned, because the boat company was closed because it was Sunday. No one in the bus terminal could help us out, and we ended up walking to multiple wrong boat ports based on directions off the street.
Another company sold tickets for double the price, which we decided against. Finally after walking so long with all of our stuff, we took a cab, who luckily knew where we were trying to go, but when we showed up, the company was closed till 4, which was an hour and a half away, so we left to go occupy our time in the northern part of the city by going to a Japanese garden, the biggest in the world outside of Japan. It wasn't as floral as we hoped, but served as a source of shade. Luckily we had found a bus to take around the city at this point, and went to take it back to the boat terminal, but then made the spontaneous decision to get off the bus to look around an outdoor market we saw on our way, cutting it very short to get to the boat on time. But we found fresh squeezed orange juice and empanadas as a very refreshing dinner/snack. We made it back to the bus terminal right in time to buy tickets, awkwardly holding up the entire line. But the boat was sweet, and we are getting to go to a new country for 80 dollars each, which is a pretty awesome deal.