In The Land of Thin Women

I bought seven donuts in the airport in Santiago, Dunkin´Donuts, with the Chilean change in my pocket, and dutifully carried my white box across the continent, into a taxi, into my hostel and onto my bed. A week ago, the day after I landed, I finished off the last two - manjar cremes - and every meal since then has been almost infinitely better. I have the steak - it´s delicious. I try the pasta - perfect. The pizza? Not New Haven thin, but rich and flavorful. Add some cheap wine from the west, and it´s a wonderful thing. Buen provecho!

Though it´s a beautiful city, it´s not a sightseers´city in the same way London or Washington DC or New York are filled with unmissable monuments. Buenos Aires is a city to wander through and appreciate as a functioning aesthetic object in itself, a monument to histories past and present. In the last week I´ve probably walked a hundred miles from neighborhood to neighborhood, and I only think I understand the surface of the things that I´ve seen.

I went to the Botanical Gardens the other day and just watched people go by the other side of the fence, trying to detect a pattern or a theme. Argentine women are beautiful, dark-haired, large dark eyes, with thin noses that stretch down their face to lips that are just slightly pursed and drawn-in. Many of them are quite thin and fashionable, and walk with long strides. Argentine men are much like Italian men, and can be quite handsome, but nearly all have terrible haircuts that spoil their look.

I met Caroline repeatedly in the short time she was here, and though she was leaving, I never saw her cry, which is impressive, because emotions run high in Latin America. I felt a little bit like a ghost in the background of her last days and Stuart´s (Caroline´s replacement) first days in Buenos Aires, but I couldn´t have expected much more. After all, she was the last American I saw in Lima a month ago, so I guess it´s always about balance.

Boca Juniors, the major soccer team in Buenos Aires, won the Copa Libertadores, the South American club cup, and people celebrated loudly. There were elections over the weekend, and Mauricio Macri (the owner of Boca Juniors) was elected mayor, and people celebrated loudly.

The city has a good amount of graffiti, most of it simple tags or political phrases. My favorite: ¨Dirigibles.¨Just dirigibles.

I bought a watch today, so I must be ready to travel. I´ve set it to Subte time.