Buenos Aires
As cities go, Buenos Aires is in the top ten. Plaza de Mayo is full of VERY impressive buildings which I hope to photograph if it stops raining. The first few days were beautiful but I didn't bring my camera. Buenos Aires is reminiscent of Boston and Paris. It's a modern city with some older architecture and its fair share of grandeur. There are very large parks and one wildlife reserve.

I arrived on Monday via collectivo (cheap bus for locals- NOT tourists) from Jujuy. the trip was roughly 22 hours and my calculations based on a 20 hour day put my arrival time at roughly 8am. Right, yeah, I know... I figured out later (well, someone told me) that days are in fact 24 hours and that put our arrival at 4am. bugger.

So, I arrived at 4am in a plaza no where near a bus station. I looked around for a 24-hour cafe -again, no where in sight. Hmm. Less than savory characters on the street eyeing my lovely guitar and backpack...
There was a well-lit newstand on the corner, so I bought a map, tied my stuff together and sat on it with my back against the building one meter and a half from the newstand so that I was sandwiched between the stand and the wall. I then proceeded to make friends with Claudio- the guy who worked the stand. We chatted for 3 and 1/2 hours as I waited for a more appropriate time to call my friend Sergio.

Claudio was dear. Truly a sweet guy. He was very concerned for my safety (apparently it was a very dangerous square at 4 in the morning). Three guys on the corner were eyeing me and waiting for me to leave the newstand. They waited for an hour and a half and finally left after daybreak. I'm no fool. I have no desire to be robbed in the safest country in South America after not being robbed in my two months in Peru and Bolivia where EVERYONE gets robbed once or twice. Claudio bought me two cups of coffee in the night. He was VERY kind, and generally a great person to chat with for a few hours. He was in the final hours of a 24 hour shift at the newstand. I'm sure the company was welcome.

Thank you Claudio. You will always be my first memory of Buenos Aires- and thankfully.

The MUSEUM

The Museum is a club in Buenos Aires designed by the same architect that designed the eiffel tower in Paris. Inside it's amazing. The first floor is wide open with some very posh looking tables with chairs draped in white fabric looking very chic at the far end (all reserved) and bars to the left and the right. The ceiling is three stories high, with two more levels lining the sides so that people can look down on the crowds. From the center of the high ceiling at either end are two large chandeliers of soft lights with lots of drapey material, one large disco ball between them and some soft hanging white Christmas icicle type lights to provide extra atmosphere. Someone said that without the tables it can fit up to 5000 people, but with them about 1500 people was about average. Imagine being in a club out of cool movies with about 1500 beautiful chic young executives and generally beautiful people. You could fall in love 100 times over in one night. In every direction there are more beautiful people drinking and having fun (and looking beautiful watching the other beautiful people). After a year in New Zealand, and three months in Peru, Bolivia and the desert in the north of Argentina...it was like landing on a different planet.