Buenos Dias!

So my study abroad in Buenos Aires is over and since I was a little less on top of the updating ball you get the whole experience in one sitting. As a teaser, during the past 4 weeks I was smuggled into Brazil, had my car towed, skied in the Andes and saw one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.

Since I last wrote you I flew back to the states for a day, did laundry, changed the clothes in my bag, said hi to friends and family and flew to South America to start my second study abroad program of the summer in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I flew from Tampa to Miami, Miami to Lima, Peru and Lima to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had set up a sublease on Craigslist and was supposed to meet the girl at the apartment to get the llave (key). Shocker she never shows up and never responds to my emails or phone calls. Lessoned learned, never give a deposit to anyone in a foreign country on faith. I opened a dispute up with PayPal and did get the $50 back so it ended up not being that bad. A pretty cheap lesson seeing that I ended up finding a much better place. Luckily my professor had the phone number of an apartment guy who put me up for two nights for free before finding me my own apartment for half the price I would have paid had I set up the apartment before coming and right next to all the other students in the program. Sebastian is the guys name and I can’t say enough nice things about this guy, we went out one night and he told me how he just wants to sell everything and travel the world. He does motocross, plays paintball around the world and skydives, guy is a blast. He told me that he felt that since one Argentinean wronged me that he had to counter that. So I had my own apartment in Recoletta (think upper east side NYC) for the price of sharing one and a view from the 8^th floor overlooking a park, not too bad.

The weather was cold and rainy when I first got there. It was winter down there and was a big shift from the weather I had experienced all summer in Spain and Florida. It ranges from about 30-60 degrees here depending on the day. I really like it on the sunny days but hate the gloomy days, pretty obvious comment but the truth nonetheless.

Now Buenos Aires is supposedly the Paris/NYC of South America and I can see why. The city is huge, has a lot of historical monuments, skyscrapers and tons of people. They mimic a lot of the important buildings after buildings in Paris, DC and other big cities. I really like the city, it is beautiful and the people are great. For anyone that speaks Spanish they use a “sh” sound for any “y” or “ll” and they call themselves Porteno’s. These people are great but are known to be cocky and think they are better than others. They are very European looking with lighter skin and dark hair. This is because they are a combination of Spanish, Italian, Irish and Portuguese.

Now over the four weeks I took four classes a week, a different subject each time and traveled every weekend. The group of students was pretty diverse, lots of second career but still younger guys, lots of couples and most of the girls were traditional law students (went straight to law school from undergrad). Fortunately a lot of the people in the group spoke Spanish very well, lots of South Floridians. My best friend on the trip was a fellow classmate that lived in Cordoba, Argentina until she was 12 until she moved to Miami, FL where she has been ever since. There is one reason and one reason only why my Spanish has greatly improved since Spain and that is thanks to mi maestra Natalia.

For the most part what we would do during the week is walk around and find good places to eat in Buenos Aires. The food is amazing and stupid cheap. I had arguably the best steak of my life at a restaurant called Juanna M for $10. Oh and that included sharing a bottle of wine and all you can eat salad buffet. It was a trendy restaurant that resembled a place you could spend a ton of money at in NYC, I ate there 3 times and had the same thing each time, bife de lomo (filet mignon). The food is by far the best thing about this entire trip in my opinion: the empanadas, the tartas (think of a pie with ham, cheese, egg and tomato), the parilla (Argentine BBQ), the great wine and the amazingly good and amazingly cheap steaks. Every meal was an event and an experience. It was a carnivore’s heaven.

Now most of the interesting trips and events happened on the weekends. Here’s the rundown:

Weekend 1: Uruguay

Most everyone in the class was just going take a quick day trip to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay but after consulting with a couple of friends, Jordan Maglich and Dallan Bunce, they quickly informed me that wouldn’t be worth it and instead we should go to Montevideo and Punta del Este. So taking their advice, James, Whitney, Natalia and I took an hour boat ride across to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay and rented a car there. James and I took turns driving our tin can of a Hyundai and had quite the adventure. On the way to Montevideo we stopped at the beach and saw one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever experienced, we stopped at a little farm that gave us free cheese and jam tastings as well as housed the Guinness Book of World records collections for pencils. The owner was a really cool guy.

We finally got to Montevideo and was amazed to find that not only was their food just as good or better than Argentina’s but it was arguably cheaper. We were delightfully happy. Now where our story takes a turn for the worse is when we decided that night to park our car on the street. 1) This is a bad idea to park a car on the street b/c it will likely get robbed and 2) we did not seem to question the fact that just b/c other cars were parked on the street doesn’t mean we can park there. So safe to say when we woke up the next day our car was towed. Thank god we had Natalia there b/c James, Whitney and I speak very little Spanish and it was not a quick process finding out where our car was. Long story short we walk the streets of Montevideo trying to find our car, finding the old tow place and other bad directions until we finally get our car out for just over 2,000 Uruguayan pesos (approx. $100 US). We park the car in a garage and spend the rest of the day sightseeing around Montevideo. Montevideo is a beautiful city with some cool architecture and monuments. It is also right on the water which is where we saw another one of the best sunsets I have experienced, might just be a Uruguay thing. We also found a plaza very similar to Plaza de San Miguel in Madrid which has bunch of walk up to the counter restaurants all next to each other. The parilla that we had there was amazing. Oh and the portions in Uruguay and Argentina are unbelievably big, finishing a meal is actual work.

The next day we drive to Punta del Este which is a beach town that is frequented by celebrities from around the world. Now since it was winter and the wind was blowing close to 15 mph it was not the most popular time to be there. The city was more like a ghost town, still a great time. They have a monument called “the hand” which is a giant hand that emerges out of the sand at one of the beaches.

We finish off the trip by driving back Sunday and walking around Colonia del Sacramento before the boat took us back. Colonia is a old little town with a lot of history. One of the cooler things we did was sneak into an abandoned Bull fighting arena. The arena was built 8 months before Uruguay passed a law banning bullfighting so since then it has just sat there.

Uruguay was an amazing weekend and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Weekend 2: Mendoza and skiing in Las Lenas

Flights in Argentina are not cheap. An hour and a half flight to Mendoza (western province/city in Argentina) from Buenos Aires runs around $350. The train system in Argentina is pretty much non-existent. So what most people do is bus it everywhere. Now for anyone that has tried to bus across the country it is not the fastest process and typically is not the most comfortable process. Well a bus ride from Buenos Aires to Mendoza costs just under $150 for a really good seat around $120 for a standard bus seat. Being the cost conscious traveler that I am and seeing that every dollar I spend has an interest rate attached I decided on busing it. I determined that since the bus ride was around 14 hours that the better seat was worth the extra $20-30. A lot of people made this trip and most everyone took the bus. We had a total of 10 people and 7 people bused it. I would like to say that those bus rides were amazing considering. We had relatively good dinners, free wine and whiskey, cookies, chocolates, movies, etc. The seats reclined nearly all the way flat and were like sitting in a lazy boy. At least two people said they got their best night’s sleep since being in Argentina on our bus, might have been the wine and whiskey but nonetheless they did. It was a huge surprise how great these bus rides were (I took the bus the next weekend as well).

Now Mendoza is known for its wine. So that Friday we got in around 9 am checked into our hostel and headed out to the vineyards. We got out there around 12 and rode bikes all around the town looking for vineyards. This process was not as smooth as originally planned but we eventually found a tour at a vineyard called Lagarde. Our tour guide was from London and was just working at a vineyard for 6 months in order to get out of London and also learn Spanish. Tough life, drink wine and hang out in Argentina for 6 months. My money is on that she never leaves, she didn’t disagree with me.

We have a great time there and head over to another vineyard only to find that they are done giving tours for the day. But they apologize and tell us that we can taste the wine for free though, that was the real point of our stop anyways so we were quite pleased. The guy who seems to be a low level worker there, takes us to these four large stainless steel vats of wine and hands us all glasses. One by one we get wine from a tube attached to these huge vats of wine. We test 4 different wines and finish off the great time by buying a 5 litre bottle of wine for 27 Argentinean pesos ($7 US). Now this behemoth bottle of wine nicknamed “my baby” ends up being my responsibility with a tragic ending. Over the next few days I carried “my baby” in the basket on my bike, carried it through the streets of Mendoza, packed it on the bus, secured it in the hostel, etc. All is going great until we get back to Buenos Aires, I literally take my keys out in order to open the door to my apartment building Monday morning after all this time, I grab the side plastic on the bottle, the plastic breaks and the “my baby” comes crashing down. 5 litres of wine lying on the sidewalk with glass everywhere. The doorman comes out and offers to get straws to drink it up and says what a waste of wine, not even mad at the fact that glass and wine are all over his front door and walkway. I couldn’t believe it, all that time and effort and I drop the ball at the goal line. Now I know how Jerome Bettis felt against the Colts 4-5 years back, heart breaking.

The night of the wine tasting we catch a 6 hour bus to Las Lenas. We left at 2:30 am and got in around 9 am. Snow is everywhere and the day of skiing is upon us. I had been dreaming of this since determining that I wanted to come down to Argentina. I had not skied since college and was pumped. The mountain is around 9,000 ft., it was sunny and very windy. Most the blacks were shut down due to the wind. We got out on the slopes around 10:30 am after renting everything and I helped teach Natalia how to ski, it was her first time. She was doing really well so I jetted off to some blacks and reds (btw blue and black). On this mountain you had to sign a release form to do the blacks, so I was a little nervous when they made me do that. Turned out just fine though. The powder was great, the slopes were challenging and I didn’t hurt myself, all in all a great day. I took a couple of falls, on one run on the black one I turned back up the hill to hard and tumbled twice backwards but somehow stood up and kept skiing after the second tumble without stopping, was pretty cool. I also took a closed red run that had a bunch of powder but also a bunch of rocks. I typically have not dealt with many rocks in my history of skiing so I thought I could just ski fast over a little one without issue, that was not the case. I front flip tumbled three or four times but this time my skis went flying. One went all the way down that section of the hill. So I sat on my other ski and sledded my way down to my other ski. Actually was a ton of fun b/c the powder was so deep it didn’t hurt and the sledding made me feel like a 8 year old. What a great time, loved every minute of it.

The final day in Mendoza we walked around and saw the city until our bus was ready. We took the overnight got back to BA around 7:30 am, slept for an hour and headed to class. Fun trip.

Weekend 3: Iguazu Falls (one of the 7 natural wonders)

Once again I bused it to Iguazu, Argentina. This took close to 17 hours, still great trip, slept most of the way. This time nearly everyone else in the program flew though but Natalia, her mom, sister and my friend Adrianne who is working in BA took the bus with me. We get into Iguazu around 9 am, check into our hostels and head straight to the park. Since Natalia, Carla (Natalia’s sister) and Adrianna (Natalia’s mom) are all Argentinean Adrianna and I got into the park for 1/5 of the price by keeping our mouths shut while Natalia’s mom bought the tickets.

Iguazu falls is shared by the border of Brazil and Argentina so there are two parks. The first two days we walked around the park, took a boat ride where we got soaked in the falls and went swimming in one of the smaller waterfalls. Iguazu falls is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. It felt as though I was seeing one of the most beautiful views nearly every time I turned a corner. I was in awe for an entire weekend.

Now it is free for Argentineans to go to Brazil but American citizens must have a visa to get across which costs around $140 and is much more expensive day of. The entire trip we had been talking about seeing if we could go to Brazil someway without having to pay. A couple of our friends went over in a bus that Saturday without issue, I guess they do not stop the buses at the Brazilian side of the border. So we took a car over though b/c we wanted to see the falls and were in a time crunch. All is good to go on the Argentinean side but when we get to the Brazilian side of the border the driver of the car tells me to just stay in the car as they all go inside and go through border control. The car is heavily tinted and not a soul approaches the car while they are gone, I try and keep my head down and focus on happy thoughts in order to take my mind off the fact that I am being smuggled into a foreign country. Everyone eventually comes back and we successfully smuggle me into Brazil, we are shocked and amazed at the ease.

Now the Brazilian side of the falls has a better view of all the waterfalls b/c it is more removed. All of the waterfalls for the most part are on the Argentinean side. The views were amazing (see picture attached), we run through the park seeing all we can. My camera dies on the ride in the car back to Argentina, timing was perfect, one charge for the 400 or so pictures I took that weekend. We do the same move getting me back into Argentina with no issue, still can’t believe that is how I got into Brazil. “Hey you just sit in the car while we go check in”, are you kidding me?

The bus ride back is a little late so Natalia and I go straight from the bus station to class around 35 minutes late, great weekend.

The last week in Buenos Aires was probably the best week. We went out Wednesday night b/c Natalia was leaving to go to Las Lenas with her mom, sister and Adrianne Thursday afternoon. We went to a show called “Fuerza Bruta” which plays in Miami, Chicago and NYC as well as all over the world. This was one of the coolest shows I have ever been to, a definite must see for anyone that can. It costs around $75 in the US but cost us 55 pesos or approx. $13. It is an artistic/musical/cirque de soleil/dance show that is more like a party than a show. Everyone stands in the room as the actors move through the crowd, dance on the walls, slip and slide over your head in a see through pool while the DJ blasts music. We also did a pub crawl our last night with nearly everyone from our class.

Culturally the last week I saw Congresso (congress) which mimics our capital building and angel and chariot statue in Paris. I also walked around old Palermo where they have tons of parks. Buenos Aires is huge and Tuesday I walked from 1:30 pm to 8 pm without stopping. We also saw the “Abuelas” which are a group of grandmothers that march in front of the Presidents house “Casa Rosada” b/c in the military coup during the 1970’s a lot of dissidents were killed and their children taken from them and given to families. So these grandmothers march and list out all the missing children. I also ate Juanna M again, love that place.

What an amazing trip and four weeks, I truly loved Buenos Aires and can’t wait to visit again. I am excited to see my friends and family and get back into a routine. Someone once told me that vacationing and routine go hand in hand. Without one or the other life is just out of balance. I truly feel I have a greater understanding of this concept after this summer. The two balance each other out and provide greater satisfaction on both ends. I am so excited about the summer I had but very excited to get back into my routine.

This is going to be a crazy year for me. I will finish up my JD/MBA, apply to schools in Singapore, take the MPRE and Florida Bar, hopefully clerk for a law firm or in-house counsel, continue consulting work in Honduras and around Tampa/Sarasota, continuing volunteering with GAL, Junior Achievement, SigEp, as a big brother, as treasurer of Stetsons Public Service Fellowship and of course find time to visit Rob Gidel in Gainesville for some UF football games, prepare to leave for a year (excited to purge myself of most of my belongings), amongst other things.

Life is good, I loved this entire summer, thank you all for sharing it with me. Hope to see you soon!