BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (part 1)

I went through immigration, got my backpack and walked through customs without even stopping. I found the shuttle service desk I wanted to use and paid the $7 for the ride into Buenos Aires. The shuttle left the airport with only a nun and me inside. It dropped me off at the Waldorf Hotel about 40 minutes later, which was fast because there was no traffic at all at that time, of course.

I didn’t have a reservation, but every other hotel I’ve approached on my trip had been practically empty and this one was by far the biggest at 120 rooms. At first they said they didn’t have a room for me, but then the guy finally said they did, but probably only for a night or two. I did have to pay for that night even though people were already checking out, but it was worth it and I slept about 6 hours in my very comfortable bed. The room was $30 per night, but would have been more than $200 per night in New York.

I awoke just in time to catch the end of their buffet breakfast, which consists of coffee, tang, rolls, cheese, ham and so forth. Overall it was very nice, especially since it was a serve yourself affair. The first day I asked the front desk at the hotel about city tours as I normally find that a good way to get oriented. My book said a 3-hour bus tour would cost $6, but the front desk said they were $10. Even that was cheap and this was convenient so I signed up. A few hours later a representative from the tour company arrived in the lobby looking for me. She spoke reasonable English so I was hopeful.

She had us walk around the corner to another hotel where we would meet other passengers in the lobby of another hotel. A family from Tijuana was also along for the walk and we all had to wait about 10 minutes for the new people to arrive. Eventually the girl lead us all to a waiting van, which then drove a couple miles to pick up a Chinese guy before the tour was to begin. On board was a driver, the girl who rounded us up, and a young guy who was to give the tour. He was in his early twenties and spoke English like he was reading it phonetically off cards, but he seemed otherwise nice.

Our first stop was a cathedral that was unimpressive on the outside, but quite nice inside. We had 15 free minutes inside there until we met the van again. After that stop we exchanged a few passengers with another van and we suddenly became an all-English speaking group — presumably the other van contained all the Spanish speakers. Our guide was the same guy and his English was hard to understand, but I was happy to only have to hear the explanations once, and in English no less.

We then drove toward La Boca, which is the poor neighborhood where Italian immigrants first settled and is also home to their famous Boca Juniors soccer team. We drove to the stadium, which is very small, and got out of the van. We had 20 minutes on our own there to explore and to take the 15-minute stadium tour if we wanted. No one did, but I sort of regretted not doing it later. It was like $2 more, but I was already getting defensive about the add-ons. We got back on the van and our next stop was just around the corner at La Caminito or “small street”. As we pulled up, the guide said in his phonetic English, this is the most dangerous area of the city, you have 30 minutes to explore, then meet back at the van. Thanks! Actually, it didn’t really seem that bad although it definitely does have a reputation. He then led us directly into a souvenir complex and recommended that we buy things there. It was pretty obvious that they had a deal with the place, but there was nothing keeping us there. I wandered around the neighborhood a bit and saw an entertaining drum corps that was roaming the streets with a guy trailing who collected money from anyone who seemed even slightly interested.

After we got back on the van the guide told us we should not go to this neighborhood at six p.m., and it was already a few minutes after five p.m. The Chinese guy sat next to me in the back row of the van and was furiously writing something in his notebook that I’m sure had nothing to do with the tour. I wondered why he was even there? We then went around a corner past a river as the guide pointed out that it was the most polluted river of the world. It felt like s Simpsons episode at that point, but we continued. We past Puerto Madero and into Recoleta and saw various outdoor highlights of Buenos Aires. As we passed an upscale shopping center our guide pointed out that his company gives a 10 percent discount there, and I thought, how nice for them.

After a few more turns and a trip vaguely past Eva (Evita) Peron’s gravesite we came in front of that same shopping center. The van stopped and the guide said something about there was a problem with one of the buses and they couldn’t take us directly back to our hotels, even though they picked us all up in this same van. He then said we would be shuttled back to our hotels from an area reached after walking completely through the mall. He then handed us our ten percent off cards and I realized this was all a poorly played out trick to get us to shop in this high-priced mall. Whatever. Along with the discount card was a coupon for free champagne at a bookstore upstairs so I went up to use it. A waiter insisted I sit down and then brought me the champagne with a few small cookies.

A minute or so later I was back on my feet to see the travel section of the store. They had a few interesting books in English, but like in a few other countries there was a high tax on foreign language books so anything I was interested in was going to be $40 or so. No thanks. I then walked out the other end of the admittedly nice mall and decided to walk back to my hotel, which was only about a mile away and I wanted to walk around anyway.

Over the next few days I just mainly hung around and spent a ton of time at a student-oriented travel agency around the corner from my hotel trying to firm up plans for my next few stops. One notably trip I made was to the local racetrack, as that is a hobby of mine. I took a cab from my hotel, which cost about $3 or so. I paid about $1 to get in and walked to the clubhouse area. It’s a grand place that supposedly holds about 100,000 people, or about as many as Belmont Park in New York. The track is also gigantic like at Belmont, but they only run on dirt there. I got there before the 2nd race and left after the 6th race. There was almost no information available for Spanish speakers and basically none for English speakers. The facility is nice and comfortable, but the betting system felt like I had gone back in time 50 years.

I bet 10 pesos to ganador (win) on each race and luckily the last race won me 71 pesos, in a 16 horse field, no less. With a profit like that I decided to leave so I walked outside and across the street to another trendy area to get some lunch with my winnings.

Another tour I took in the first few days was a $25 bike tour that I saw advertised on a flyer at my hotel. I was weary because the bus tour was somewhat disappointing, but I decided to give it a whirl. There were 10 English-speaking folks who met two guides in a nearby park and we all got on well-maintained cruiser bikes. This one actually fit me quite well. After all the formalities were taken care of the tour began a bit after 2 p.m. I was relieved when not only did we break into two independent groups of 5, but I was placed in the younger, more fit group that consisted of me and these four college-aged guys from New York. We also got the guide who spoke better English than the other, but both were quite good. Our guide actually looked like a younger version of Dan Castellenetta (AKA the voice of Homer Simpson) and I even told him so.

Our guide would give a detailed explanation of something as the 6 of us stood there on our bikes, then off we would ride to the next spot. This was infinitely more enjoyable than the bus tour, partially because we got to see many things up close that a bus can’t even come close to. We covered a lot of the same ground as I had covered on the bus tour, and it was very hot and humid, but it was still very nice. We got to an Italian immigrant neighborhood called San Telmo (where I would spend many evenings during my stay) and the guide began to explain that “this area was primarily settled by Italians, but there was also some niggers.” Needless to say, the New York guys and I almost choked as we quickly pointed out that the N-word is not really acceptable among Americans. Someone said “black people” even though African-Americans would still technically be correct, then he asked, “what about saying “colored people”?” We obviously said no. He was around 30-years-old, but it was as if he stepped out of the 1950s.

The tour lasted about 4.5 hours even though it was only advertised as 3.5 hours. We drove the bikes into a parking garage that happened to be just around the corner from my hotel and we dispersed. I will now happily try out any bike tour I see that is offered based on that experience.

A few nights later I went to the other race rack in the area called San Isidro, which is about a 30-minute train ride out of town. The round trip train fare was like 40 cents or something, but I didn’t get going until late because I was waiting for tickets for an upcoming flight at the travel agency for an unexpectedly long time. San Isidro has the only turf course in Argentina, which is what I was looking forward to seeing. Unfortunately, it rained a lot in the two hours before I got there, so when I arrived for the last 3 races they were running on the muddy dirt track instead. I didn’t want to lose much money, especially since I was already ahead from before so I made two small bets on two races and lost both.