Argentina: Part 1

I've been back from Argentina for almost a week now, and if I don't start posting stories about the trip soon, then it may not happen at all. It's always difficult for me to write about big trips (too many things to say, perhaps), and the longer I procrastinate, the harder it will be. I've decided that rather than narrate the whole thing (no one wants to read that), I would chunk up the trips into topics.

Travel
If nothing else, traveling to Argentina was a lengthy process, kind of like a relay race that went something like this:

1. from my apartment to Diego's apartment
2. from Diego's apartment to his work
3. from his work to the West Falls Church Metro stop (co-worker gave us a ride)
4. Metro to the airport (all that and we just made it to the airport)
5. 2 1/2 hour flight from DC to Miami
6. 8 hour flight from Miami to Buenos Aires
7. 5 hour shuttle ride from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata
8. 10 minute car ride from the shuttle stop to Diego's aunt and mom's place.

* To return, reverse directions.

All in all, from leaving my apartment to arriving at our final destination, it took more than 24 hours. Needless to say, it was wonderful to finally stop moving.

I slept on and off for most of the freezing cold plane ride from Miami to Buenos Aires, so it didn't seem as long as it actually was. Although I certainly could have stood for more sleep after the flight, I was not very successful sleeping on the shuttle.

The drive between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata reminded me very much of driving across eastern South Dakota, but somehow it seemed more desolate. It was beautiful, of course, but fewer small towns and farms dotted the landscape. The land was pancake flat and stretched to the horizon with very little disrupting the view. Here and there, clumps of trees spotted the prairie with herds of cattle interspersed throughout.

Somewhere between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata

From Argentina Nov 2008

If the drive to Mar del Plata was uneventful, driving in Mar del Plata (or Buenos Aires for that matter) was a completely different experience. Only major intersections, and honestly not even all of those, have stop lights or stop signs to regulate the traffic. Instead, whoever "gets to the intersection first" gets to go first, or something like that. I guess there are some laws governing how the right of way is supposed to work: you yield to traffic coming from the right but get the right of way if traffic is coming from the left. This is made slightly easier by the fact that most of the streets are one way only. I never saw any accidents, but I might have gotten a few more gray hairs just sitting in the passenger seat. Needless to say, I was definitely not going to get behind the wheel of any car while in Argentina.

View of a Buenos Aires intersection from 20 stories up

From Argentina Nov 2008

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