Buenos Aires II

Buenos Aires is a fantastic city, and full of things to do, places to see, and delicious and cheap food to eat. Today we slept in the latest we have the entire trip (around 9:00), and Elijah and I spent the morning walking to a park near the water, eating choripan, stopping by a bookstore, and generally having a great time seeing the city. It reminds me a lot of New York, in that it’s full of skyscrapers, bustling streets with people going every which way, lots of trendy shops, restaurants and cafes every corner, and people from all over the world. However, it definitely has its own distinct feel, and it’s similar to Valparaíso in a way. You can easily wander down just about any street and discover something interesting, and it’s easy to see the old European architecture, history, and uniqueness of this city.
The place where we bought choripan (which is basically a delicious sausage in a roll with fixings) was awesome. It was a street vendor’s grill, but it had an entire charcoal grill, huge roasts, a heap of sausages, and anything else barbecued you could want. The choripan we bought was a full-sized sub roll, and it only cost $1.50. Needless to say we went back the next day. After coming back to the hostel to pick up Elijah’s brother, Boris, we walked down the main shopping strip in town (avenida Florida) and drank in the sights and people watched. Buenos Aires is also famous for its cafes, and we spent a couple hours in one of the more famous ones, Café Richmond, where we drank coffee, played pool, and had a couple chess matches. We then grabbed another bite to eat, headed back to our hostel, hung out for a couple hours, and turned in early for the night.


July 20, 2010
Elijah and I headed out early in the morning to go back to the park we visited yesterday. Most of the park was closed yesterday, and we could walk around much more of it today. The park takes up a large part of an island next to the city called Puerto Madero. Puerto Madero is also the up-scale, trendy section of town, but the park is an ecological reserve that is mostly huge impoundments full of marshes and wetlands. We walked along the dikes for a couple hours, saw some good ducks and birds, and enjoyed the first day of nice weather we’ve had in a week. It’s beautiful today, and it was great to see such a big green space for wildlife in the heart of one of the biggest cities in South America. We then walked back to our hostel, checked out, and made our way over to the bus terminal.
In order to get back to Montevideo, we decided to take a combination bus/boat ride. The ferry was a modern, high-speed deal which only took an hour to get across the Rio de la Platte bay, and then a three hour bus ride to Montevideo. The boat terminal was set up like an airport, complete with customs and immigration, departure gates, and duty-free shops. It was also complete with a delayed departure due to technical difficulties, and we ended up waiting in the terminal for two hours. However, the ride was nice, and we then took a short bus trip the rest of the way to Montevideo.
We didn't do too much this evening, other than Elijah found a good pair of leather shoes to buy, we cooked a nice dinner in the hostel, and we chilled out and enjoyed each other's company for the last night together. Tomorrow we head back to Vina del Mar, and then only a few days left before back to the USA.














July 19