Should this go under Flight of the Selbies?

Blog 1 Buenos Aires

We arrived in Buenos Aires about 8 in the evening after an American Airlines flight from CHS to MIA and then an Aerolineas Argentina flight from Miami to EZE, the international airport in Buenos Aires (there’s a domestic airport in another location – you’ll hear more about that later). There was supposed to be someone meeting us, but we didn’t see our name on any sign. After about a half hour which included an unsuccessful attempt to use the only ATM in the vicinity (it was broken), we decided we had to go it on our own. So we picked out a reliable looking taxi stand and paid a fare to downtown. As we were waiting for the driver to show up and take us to his cab, Lynda found our real ride, Dr. Juan Verde. We told him we had already booked a cab. He gave a little frown, asked where, then went over to the stand and made the guy give us our money back. We were happy, but that interaction did seem … interesting.

On the way into town, he asked if we still wanted to go to dinner with the group (we had been scheduled to do that). It was after 9 pm, so we said no, probably not. But then somehow on the way we changed our minds and decided to go. It was the right decision and our first glimpse into what kind of hours we would be keeping in Buenos Aires. We went to a nice little restaurant near Puerto Madero, met all our hosts, had dinner, and discovered that Malbec is now going to be Lynda’s “go to” red wine for all occasions! We also discovered that this would be the earliest night we would go to sleep for the whole week. But probably best of all, a few of the women wanted to take Lynda around town and made plans to pick her up at 10 a.m. the next morning.

The Novotel hotel was excellent and we checked in and went to bed. A few notes: How much Spanish were we using? A lot! And we were rusty. There is English spoken a little most places, but not so much as in some other foreign countries. Note 2: We had forgotten how long the days are at that latitude in the summer, which it is down here. That’s one reason we stayed up so late every night. It would get dark about 10 p.m. We went to bed a little after midnight that first night. And so began our week of burning the candle at both ends.

Blog 2

The meeting started at 8 a.m. Breakfast was included, so we went there first, then I checked in to the meeting. The meeting was in Spanish as the official idiom, with simultaneous translation. You would check out headphones for whichever translation you wanted depending on whether the speaker was speaking in english or spanish. There were two people sitting in a little closed in box in the room who were doing the translating. Interestingly, one of them, a slightly older man, would go into extended coughing spells (15-20 sec!) every so often, but amazingly never when he was translating. You could hear him coughing through the walls of their little box, however.

Buenos Aires is a city where everyone still dresses up for everything (the folks in BA are called Portenos) which made Lynda happy because I was always wearing a tie. The meeting was good. I used the translator thingy the first time and then just listened to the Spanish speakers as a chance to improve my Spanish. I will say it frequently, but it is amazing to me how much we had to use our Spanish. i thought we would do it for fun and practice, but it was really required most of the time.

Lynda had a good time with her new friends and that was to become a recurring habit for the next 3 days. They went to the cemetery and Eva Peron's tomb among other things that day. but I will let her fill in the details. Now for some pictures. The main street, Avenida 9 de Julio (not to be confused with 25 de Mayo or 12 de Octubre) is the widest street in the world. At one point coming in to town we counted 9 lanes of cars going in our direction and that didn't include a separate two lanes off to the side. Don't for a moment think this means that there were 9 lanes lined out on the road. Nope! Everybody just squeezed in where they could.


It's taking a while for images to upload, even from our roost in the Condor Lounge (in the Buenos Aires aeropuerto courtesy of aerolineas Argentina), so you will have to do with mostly text for now and more pictures to follow.