Buenos Aires aka. "trying to be 20 again."
The writing tips I have been reading recently say "Get straight to the point. Cut the first dreamy sentences. Hell, cut the first paragraph." So here we go.
Choose Buenos Aires if you want to party. Choose a party hostel, choose sleeping until 6pm, choose cheap bad-tasting beer. Choose hostel drinks, choose boozed-up-brits-abroad as company. Choose the toilet that hasn't been puked in by 9pm. Choose a club and music of any genre, choose dancing until sunrise. Choose repeating this seven days a week until you're broke - physically and economically.
OR
Choose to be over thirty, go to bed at ten, try to have a drink one night, fail and get an Uber home. Or even better, choose to have awesome local friends, have an asado, drink wine at Palermo, walk the pretty streets, buy tickets to see Queens of Stone Age and Foo Fighters and see only latter because of an astonishing queuing system (fill up a stadium from only one entrance surely gets everyone in on time!).
Awesome book store in an old theathre
Any thoughts on which route we took? Yeah. We stayed at the party hostel which was nice for socialising but oh boy I could not do the seven days a week partying any more. And I don't enjoy an everyday toilet lottery (I wonder what someone has left there this time?!).
Buenos Aires is by far the best choice for a city we could live in in Latin America. Big, clean, safe (as long as you don't wonder somewhere you shouldn't), food, culture, night life, beautiful parks.. not the cheapest though and after two weeks in Argentina we are hundreds of dollars over budget.
Oh well. Time to eat noodles.
(Can you guess what movies we have watched recently?)
Of course Buenos Aires has the fanciest cemetery of them all. La Recoleta Cemetery:
Around Mexico City, Spanish word number 2: Basura
I never would have thought I would spend a weekend in one of the liveliest cities in the world by sleeping 9-12 hours every night. Afterwards we heard about after parties lasting until 8 am, people dancing all of the rhythms of Mexico and felt kind of old until we remember why we were so tired – spending 8 days in a desert partying every day until late and all the preparations before and after did not leave a lot of room for sleep. Both of us have been a bit sick as well, Richie more and he’s mainly running around the city looking for a trash-can to put the tissues to – thus the Spanish lesson number 2, trash = Basura.
Thus, for us Mexico City has been all about daytime exploring in a very relaxed phase. And late starts. During our second day here we were able to see Parque Mexico and La Condesa area with millions of dogs (and dog poop), avoided the rain for an hour in a café, ate tacos and a burrito from a stall making new friends and getting a free taste of La Birria- soup (tender goat meat) and cow’s stomach- soup. You can guess which was our favourite.
I also really wanted to climb on top of a hill to see the Castle Chapultepec but by the time we were there, the whole park with museums was closing. I don’t know how many kilometers we have been walking around trying to find the places, metro stops or bus stops without a prepaid internet connection and keeping your phone in your purse as much as possible. The final adventure for the day was to catch the metro to the wrong direction, luckily it was only for two stops, and then we got home to cook a “shit load of vegetables” as Richie would say. Eating tacos with mainly meat and cheese and a burger-filler stint in America truly made one crave for something green and red.
Richie enjoying the rainy park walks
Third day, waking up from another 12 hour beauty-sleep, we opted in for an Uber to the Anthropology Museum. Most interesting displays were the Mayan and Aztec ones and albeit I enjoy looking at these amazing artifacts, about 20% of the texts were in English and you surely miss a lot of the finer details of the history. I was fascinated by small face- figures in each different culture though. Highly recommend visiting this museum!
Spanish word number 1: Terremoto (Location Mexico City, Mexico)
“Guys, we have to get out! It’s an earthquake!” (Earthquake = Terremoto or sismo)
Waking up to this yell in pitch black dark was quite the start for our travels in Mexico. We had gone to bed early trying to catch up with all the sleep we lost during Burning Man. I was already part awake as people had been yelling loudly in Spanish and I just cursed them off as drunken idiots. Next thing I noticed was my bed shaking violently but as I was at the top bunk again I thought a drunken person just couldn’t get into their bed. Little did I know it was an earthquake shaking the whole building.
Running downstairs in our pajamas/underwear, barefoot, without any lights was a scary experience as the building was still shaking. Imagine walking down the stairs of a boat thats sailing over small waves, in the dark when you have only seen the exit route once briefly. Outside we gathered together with other hostel quests and people from nearby buildings and waited for any news. From other people we heard that this was a very strong earthquake and that was proved right later in the news – the strongest earthquake in a century. Electricity was gone and as was internet and it was challenging to get the news back home that we were ok. This earthquake didn’t cause destruction like the 1985 one and I learnt that for example our hostel is partly built with the same materials as bridges are. That makes the buildings sway instead of breaking into tiny pieces.
The hostel we are staying is super nice and in a good area (La Roma Norte) and next morning we set out to explore the historical center of Mexico City. Moving around with the Metrobus is quite easy after you have managed to buy the rechargeable card from the machine that has instructions only in Spanish. Our intention during our whole stay in Australia was to learn Spanish but we ended up with 1 month’s irregular practice with Duolingo which taught us only how to say “a turtle drinks water”. Luckily, I can still remember some of my school Spanish and we have been able to get food and travel around. No risk of starving or getting lost – yet. We also managed to purchase a book with English to Spanish phrases so we are all set for countries where English is even less common than here.
So far after two days here I can say the food is delicious (although you don’t always know what you are eating), architecture beautiful and interesting and you are safe as long as you are smart. I am still being cautious on taking my camera out, thus we have way less pictures than from our previous destinations but that might only be a good thing. No more going through hundreds of exact same photos of buildings and scenery..
