Carnaval!
This weekend has been great, long, relaxing, and exciting. There is something about being here in Buenos Aires that enables us to stay up with the locals until the wee hours; it is the subtle rush of seeing new things coupled with surprises around every corner. This weekend has been our opportunity to get to know our area well. We used all of the public transportation available to push our territory that we are comfortable traveling to by taking the bus, train, taxis, hired cars, walking, and my favorite the catamaran. Public transportation is what we have found to be our best option for getting out and sightseeing and doing the things that we came here to do. A train ride from place to place will cost us around .80 pesos or twenty cents American, the bus is the same but it has more stops and although they go to places off the beaten path of the train it can be much more time consuming due to frequent stops and traffic. Taxis are easily hailed especially around tourist hot-spots and we have had great experiences with our cabbies working with our in-expertise with the city and Castillano. Now that www.Globalearn-IT.com has provided us with a cell phone (and a nice one, Sony Ericson Walkman phone) we are able to take advantage of our most luxurious mode of transport, the car service next to our apartment. Our driver Herman is super nice and we can call them 24 hours, or just walk over there and talk to them about where we want to go or return from. It has been advised to us to avoid trains and buses at night so we take a bus or train somewhere in the afternoon for .80 pesos and then call the car later from wherever we end up at and a return trip for up to a 40 minute car ride has not been more than 25 US dollars. We are getting to know Herman and he has proven to be one of our many new friends that we can depend on. Last night we went to a spot for pizza close to our apartment and I noticed our first new friend Victor, the waiter that took great care of us the first night we arrived. I told him that it has been a week since we got here (it has been wonderful) and how excited I am to find our first new friend hanging out at our favorite pizza place. He remembered us well and insisted on buying us our pizza. We spent the rest of the night with Victor and his “future wife” learning new Spanish words and helping Victor practice his English. This is just one example of the locals opening up to us and genuinely wanting to bridge our cultural gap. Every where we go we find people who are excited for the opportunity to share intimate details about this beautiful city, the City of the Sun. I found the sandwich that will become my staple for the remainder of my stay as well. It is lomo, or sandwich del lomo… A tender steak on a large hamburger bun with a fried egg, sliced tomatoes lettuce and roasted sweet pepper. It is so delicious to use a knife and fork to eat for a late breakfast or lunch. Stay tuned for my slide-show of our catamaran tour of Tigre. Chao.
