We are here, and we love it! We thought we were arriving in spring but we´re pleasantly surprised that it´s HOT! Our 3 flights to get here were unremarkable and we were surprisingly rested and ready to get out there when we arrived in the morning a on Thursday.
Buenos Aires is a seriously cool city, and so big. The streets are wide and leafy, and the architecture very beautiful. It´s surprisingly pleasant and walkable for a bustling city of 10 million people. Easy to navigate, clean and shady. It feels how I imagine Havana would be if it had never been left to decay, crossed with NYC. It also feels very safe- as with any big city there are neighbourhoods to avoid and our hostel staff explained where to avoid right when we arrived. So far we´ve really just been exploring and getting our bearings. We took a big touristy double decker bus tour which was actually really helpful to get a sense of geography here. It´s a 48 hour hop on/hop off-style ticket so today we´re going to get back on and visit the famous cemetery, and search out the big central city market for some culinary loveliness, and the five of us will make a big feast for dinner in our hostel kitchen.
Our hostel is an 1850s mansion opened and run by a collective of artists. It´s big and spacious and organized, clean and comfortable and every single wall is covered in paintings and murals. There´s a big comfortable rooftop terrace. They put out a really nice breakfast spread every morning that´s included in our stay.
www.artfactoryba.com.ar
The timing fell into place that Nate and I arrived here at the same time as our Lake O´hara friends Jon Brandt (with whom I went to Asia with last year), Lis Trotter and Sarah Delong. We´re all headed in different directions, various treks and different WWOOF farms in a few days, but it´s been really fun to arrive and explore BA together. We´re hoping to reconnect and cross paths again periodically.
Buenos Aires is a little expensive for our backpacker budgets, and as we all have long trips ahead of us we´re cooking at least one meal a day in the cute hostel kitchen. To put it in perspective you can still get a beautiful bottle of wine for under $5, and groceries are cheap, but eating out adds up quickly. The standard snack of an empanada is about a dollar. This is an AMAZING city to shop in, so it´s a good thing my backpack is too full to buy anything!!
We are NOT on the Buenos Aires schedule yet. Locals commonly eat dinner between 9 and 11pm, and going out to a concert, going dancing or seeing a tango show usually starts well after midnight. A really fantastic band played at our hostel last night and we´re going to their show at a jazz bar tonight, and as they are scheduled to play around 1am we´ll have a few cafe con leches before we go!
We plan to leave BA on Monday and our next destination is Mendoza, the main winery province where 70% of Argentinas wine is produced. Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the world outside the Himalayas is also there. After a few days of winery tours and hiking we continue to the farm we will be living and working at for a month. The farm is 24km out of El Bolson, well into the region of Patagonia!
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