Vacation: Pt. 1 - The City Can't Ever Sleep

At three in the morning, I showered and shaved in quiet dignity, letting each razor stroke stand for the upcoming week's neglect. My razor (along with my sleeping bag, a majority of my underwear, and anything that required electricity) would be left behind in our apartment, waiting, waiting to be used. For we were going on vacation, and nothing would stop my grizzled, masculine return to Lima.

We landed in Buenos Aires around one in the afternoon and basked in the sunshine searing our skin with its tangible summer. In Peru, summer is still a distant concept, tropical though it is, with Diego's constant promises of "two weeks" starting to ring hollow. After a slow bus ride, we shifted into a taxi and hurtled towards the ocean.
The city, Buenos Aires, second city of Latin America, the Paris of South America, is everything and more. Decaying Napoleonic apartment blocks give way to modern skyscrapers (including Cesar Pelli's newest work that I think he designed on the can) and everywhere the slow creep of tango floating between the Fiats and the avenues. Or, in another way, Buenos Aires is like a middle-aged woman - born in Barcelona, living in New York - buying a second set of pearls in her second-favorite gown. You must go there.

More importantly, everything in Buenos Aires is covered in graffiti, ranging from the political "Down with Bush!" to the social "Nazis = putos" to the bizarre "Kill the monkey!" Even the obelisk on the city's triumphant axis is plastered with signs and slogans; the population of Buenos Aires, the young workers, are very very angry. But, oh, if they only knew what they have that we lack: on-time American movies, trees and seasons, pasta, subways, fashions, and a connection with the modern world. Make that Porteno a Limeno for a day, and we'll see his mettle.Everything is more cultured, more involved, more fashionable in Buenos Aires; suffice to say, I felt like I just got off the Plains Chief in Manhattan direct from Omaha. Lima is a huge city itself, but for all the wrong reasons, and is more like an overgrown provincial center, a necessary city existing for no other reason than to exist. It's not a Cleveland or a Detroit because the population filters in daily from the interior, but it lacks a cache; maybe its more of a Phoenix, a ugly, untidy city in the desert filled with people with nowhere better to go. We checked into our hostel on the edge of downtown and hit the streets.
The humidity coming off the river, and the sunshine, and the pizzerias, and the ever-present pouty glare of the billboard girls made me think, just for a second, I was back in New York. Though we knew nothing of the city (it was, after all, Diego's first trip to a South American nation other than Peru) we were lucky enough to have an amazing guide, Johanny Cruz, a 06 Yalie Alex Dadok half-knew through Davenport. She greeted us off Plaza Libertad, and we headed for the bars.

Johanny Cruz is a quarter-Dominican firebrand burning through Buenos Aires' nightlife. Nightlife may not be entirely accurate because, for a society that eats dinner at 10pm, the clubs don't fill until nearly three, a schedule that left leaves me befuddled still. Anyway, she hadn't slept in three days, and, as best I saw, may never.

That night we felt our first breeze of the good air, the swaying leafy trees, and the swaying, oh-so-good hips of the sauntering Argentine woman. Maybe it was the exhilaration of being on vacation, or the part of town we were in, or the cheap wine, or just our dumb luck, but for the first day in Buenos Aires, we saw nothing but beautiful women - ranging, long-legged, black-haired, fair-skinned women; gold-lined slingbacks outlined by the failing light of the Argentine summer.

Naturally, we fled from Buenos Aires in a day and half. We had seen the sights, the Pink House, the streets, the bars, the pizzas, the women, so we had no choice but to leave. Jeff and Alex Dadok headed to Neuberry Airport to catch their flight to Igazu Falls, leaving Diego, Alex White, and I to find our destiny. Destination: Uruguay!

Also, for my grandmother, here's a picture of the largest synagogue in South America.