How To Live Like a Rockstar When You are Not One...
Mendoza to Santiago: Crossing the Andes and Bar Make-Outs. April 17. I woke up hung over, which was fine because yesterday was a blast. Irmante and I head for our bus Mendoza to Santiago that would take us from Argentina to Chile. As we boarded the Mendoza to Santiago bus, someone had their things in my allocated seat. A woman standing there told me that the people who had put their possessions there had not realized the seating. Then...
Maipú Mendoza Wine Bicycle Vineyard Hop. April 16. Life is a funny thing. Here we are on a rock flying through space, rotating on its axis at 1670 km/h. Some humans are in an office crunching numbers. Some are preforming surgery. We chose today to rent bicycles for $5 and ride around Maipú, Argentina, drinking samples of wine in a vineyard, and then riding off to the next vineyard, then drinking samples of wine, then riding…. What a day....
Mendoza: Do the Do. April 15. I woke up in a seat on the bus when we were two hours outside of Mendoza. The land here looks a little like the outback of Australia except the earth is not red. This is sort of miles and miles in all directions of vast nothingness and only bushes and shrubs for vegetation. There is an odd shack here and there, but there is nothing for people to live on here, so there...
Buenos Aires to Mendoza: Sketchy Exchange Hustlers and Bus Fuss. April 14. I packed my bag when I got moving and then Irmante and I headed into the center to change the rest of our money. There was a lousy exchange rate today, so it was a battle to get a good deal and Irmante was impatient, which was driving me nuts. Eventually, I settled on far less than I would have liked to have taken at 10.15pesos/USD just to...
Buenos Aires Cold as Heck. April 13. I was ready to get out of the Buenos Aires cold today and start making our way to places that will lead us to more warmth, but Irmante had wet clothes that needed to dry. So, we decided remained in Buenos Aires cold for another day. We went to a market and I found a journal made with a record as the cover. It is one of the smartest things that I have seen...
Buenos Aires Money Exchange Cheats: Curiously Mysterious $1 Note. April 12. It is so cold here. It is colder than I could have ever imagined Buenos Aires would be. We need to get out of here! Last night when Zora and I were in the club, back at the house some guy got so drunk that he would not stop vomiting. He was even vomiting when he was passed out. The vomiting would not stop, so eventually an ambulance came...
Buenos Aires – Zora’s Birthday Rock Out. 11 April. Irmante and I headed into the center of Buenos Aires to change money. We battled hard for a good rate with all of the ‘cambio’ yelling crooks. The rate of the day was 10.25 pesos for one USD. We had $400 USD to change, so we negotiated very hard and found a guy who was going to change our $400 for 10.6 pesos/USD. He made a phone call and then lead...
Buenos Aires Meat Meet Party. April 10. It was a casual one, and I was not out of the house until it was dark, which always makes me feel shitty. We went to the butcher shop at about 8pm and bought a lot lot of meat, some vegetables, some bread and came back to have a ‘parilla’ (barbecue) for about 12 people. We were planning a Buenos Aires meat meet party. I was informed that as a man I would...
Buenos Aires Tango in Buenos. April 9. I needed freedom for the day as I have not been alone for more than ten minutes in about 6 weeks. So, I headed downtown by myself to gain my independence again and to get a feel for Buenos Aires without just following someone around to see the city having no idea where I am. I headed to Florida Street to where the money changers are as I needed to get rid of...
Buenos Aires La Recoleta Cemetery. April 8. Today was one of those days. My man period. I woke up grumpy. I have been battling mosquitoes all night, not getting enough sleep and then waking up itchy. It is taking its toll on my mood. I wanted to just go about the city alone, but Irmante wanted to hang out, so we tried that. But, being in a edgy mood and never having a break from a partner in crime for...
Buenos Aires Free Walking Tour. April 7. Someone needs to unify the electrical outlets of South America. Someone needs to organize a meeting of all the countries and make a decision of what electrical outlets will be used as one on this entire continent. We have now been to four different countries and they have had three different outlets. Ridiculous, and inconvenient…! The sleeping bag I have borrowed at the palace seems to be an Antarctic sleeping bag, but we...
Buenos Aires Black Market. April 6. Life started at 2pm, but it was really 4pm before any real action began. The economy is crazy here in Argentina, and if you take money out of a bank machine, you will get about 8 pesos for one U.S. dollar. But, if you take your U.S. dollars to the Buenos Aires black market, you can get 10 or more pesos for one U.S. dollar. Before Irmante and I left Uruguay, we pulled U.S....
Montevideo to Buenos Aires: No Sleep City. April 5. I woke up when Irmante was kicking the bottom of my bunk bed. I looked down at her. She told me it was noon. Time to get moving from Montevideo to Buenos Aires. We had to hurry to pull ourselves together to get to the ferry. She was really hung over and sick and grumpy and miserable about everything. But, she came through the other side. It cost us $37 U.S....
Punta del Diablo to Montevideo: Caballo Loco Hostel. April 4. I woke up in our hostel in Punta del Diablo and had my first shower in four days. That was pretty awesome. I did not feel dirty, but I probably was. There was only brown water at Cobo Polinio so it was not much of an option there. When we arrived here yesterday, I was already dirty, so I just dealt with it. I stole a towel from the hostel....
Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. – (A proverb I got from an older black man in New York in 2004.) – I have done no research on this trip to Uruguay, and realised on the bus itself that we booked that we will be doing a lot of unnecessary backtracking because I did not take 40 minutes to look at the future of our plans and just booked a ticket from Asunción to Montevideo… I am pissed off...
March 21 A MONSTER of a day. Irmante and I decided to head to the Argentinean side of Iguazu Falls. We took two new friends with us who, one of which we stole form the hostels expensive ‘tour package’ and we made our own adventure to figure out how to get to Argentina to see the waterfalls from there. The hostel agreed to store our luggage, and the four of us adventured off, with some semi-informed instructions of an Israeli...
March 20 On a 23:20 hour bus trip, I bet that I slept for 18 of those hours. It was 10:30am when I woke up and there were only two hours left to get to Iguazu Falls/Foz do Iguaçu. After arrival we collect-called the Klein Hostel that we had pre-booked to come and pick us up. They were there in about 5 minutes. Awesome. We dropped our things off at our hostel and semi cleaned up enough to head out, and...
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May 1, 2012 I was up at 7:00am, showered, packed and caught a bus from my hotel to Hyun Jin’s place where she fed me breakfast. She…