So things are going very well here in Buenos Aires.  On Wednesday I’m planning to take a ferry over the Rio de la Plata to Colonia de Sacramento in Uruguay for the day.  Believe it or not after being here for more than two weeks I still haven’t really seen the Rio de la Plata, which has an absoltuly huge mouth.  I’ve seen a lot of water that leads to the river, but the view is always blocked by ports or the Ecological Reserve.  The Reserve really is nice now but is actually a former trash dump.

Then on Thursday I’m hoping to head south to Mar del Plata and then come back the next evening.  I’m going to take a train, which I’m excited about because I’ve never been on one before.  Mar del Plata is the beach here that all the porteños go to, so swimming and everything else should be good.

Then I’m going to go to Iguazú Falls on Sunday or Monday, and from there back to Santiago, where it’s back to work for awhile.

I have a couple other things that I would like to point you all in the direction of. First, I would highly recommend reading a short article called “The Day Seattle Stood Still.”  If you love Seattle and you don’t know about the general strike of 1919 and its relation to other important events in our nation’s history then you need to read this.  If you don’t care about these things, then go look anyway because the author has the most hilarious name ever.

The other night when I was trying to fall asleep I was listening to a podcast that I’ve had on my ipod for a while from Bill Moyers’ PBS show Moyers on America.  The episode was called the “Net At Risk“, and if you care about the freedom of the internet, net neutrality, or media issues and aren’t already familiar with these issues in general then you have to listen to this.  It’ extremely important, but please go look for yourself.  The web site with the video and audio as well as several other resources on the subject is here.

So I did go to the Bauen Hotel today like I said, and did some other things, but I’ going to write about those tomorrow.

These have been fun times here in Buenos Aires. So much has happened and I don’t care to write it all here. I have carried my camera to some of my more social escapades and here is a montage of sorts of those experiences.

This is how we spend a lot of our evenings in the hostel when there’s not a lot else going on. From left to right, we have David, Javier, Jonatan, Lara, and myself.
This is Jonatan’s vacation beard. It’s coming off when he gets back to Israel, and he’s going to photograph the four-step process.

This is a group of us out at a club called Opera Bay. It’s the one that looks like the Sydney Opera House that I have a picture of in an older post. Our group was composed of people from Isreal, Germany, French Canada, and myself.
This is what I look like from above.

Last night David, Lara, Jonatan, and I went out for some incredible sushi, and it came out on this:
Too bad David wasn’t fast enough to get the last piece.
Sucker.

This is Juanito, who works at the hostel and speaks several languages fluently but I’m sure is unintelligible in any of them, and Kathia, who is from Brazil and speaks three languages very well. They are both super sweet.

So those are the photo highlights. Here is the link to the set of the rest of these photos

I’m planning on going to go to the Bauen Hotel tomorrow, which is very special and I’ll write about it later. Chau.

Yesterday marked one week here and I’ve been having a great time and am loving this city more and more. Most of my time here has been spent walking around getting the know the city, reading, and hanging out with the friends I’ve made. It’s been mostly pretty relaxing.

Here is me, Cecilia, Lara, David, and Andrea having coffee at one of the many street cafes here. They don’t have mochas here but we managed to procure all the ingredients and made our own.

I’ve gone to a number of the bars and clubs around town which have been really fun, except that this being the height of the tourist season they seem to be a little different from normal.

During this time of year the city is overwhelmed by tourists and the porteños, as the citizens of Buenos Aires call themselves (though the people in Valparaíso call themselves the same as well), vacate the city to vacation on the beaches in Uruguay and to the south in Mar de Plata. I might not be exaggerating when I say there are more Israelis and Brazilians here than Argentinians. There are a good number of Europeans as well and what seem to be only a handful of Americans and Canadians.

So far most of my pictures have been of buildings and stuff; I also took a lot in the famous cemetery here, which I’ll show little further down in this post. I expect that I’ll be spending less time with the camera from now on, because though it may encourage you to look at your environment in a different light I also feel that it can separate and alienate you from your surroundings in a certain manner. I’ll be taking some more of the same kinds of photos but I plan on taking more pictures of the more interesting aspects of the life here when I do carry my camera with me.

One interesting example that I’d like to photograph; the city has come up with a rather novel solution to the problems of homelessness and the cleanliness of the streets. They created a company run by the homeless citizens that is in charge of keeping the streets clean and the government has bought them vehicles, streetcleaners, trash and recycling bins, and all sorts of equipment for the task. So every evening an army of people come out and start cleaning up the streets and sorting through the trash for recyclables to sell. It’s a pretty neat sight, and I think that through this a lot of formerly homeless people have found housing, or a least a source of reliable income.

Another interesting thing is that the local businesses here take care of the homeless people and actively give them the leftover food that would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the day. This is of course quite a contrast to the US where many people, poor and better-off alike, used to collect the immense amounts of perfectly edible food that groceries and restaurants threw away, although today most businesses have made this impossible by changing the way that they dispose of their waste, making it unfit for consumption or otherwise inaccessible to collectors.

So these pictures are all from Recoleta, a really nice and expensive neighborhood here with a lot of museums. The Cementario de la Recoleta is by far is the major attraction here. It is where the wealthy elite buried their dead in the most lavish conditions; I’m sure the pictures will speak better than I can.

This is a palace. I can’t remember it’s name but I’ll come back in here and fix that when I figure it out.

Just one really cool building in Recoleta.

The church next to Cementario de la Recoleta.

and the same church from the inside.

All the rest of these pictures can be seen in my set of architecture and cityscape pictures here.

The Cementario de la Recoleta is truly a city of the dead.

This is the entrance to the cemetery.

And this is the main walkway as seen from from the entrance.

One of the grander tombs.

A pretty typical view in the cemetery

This is more like an “alley” here, I like the flowers and that wooden structure going over the walkway.

This statue of a woman and her dog is pretty cool.

Close up of her face.

Here is a peak inside of of the tombs. Most of them do not look like this inside, with so many coffins, but instead have shrines.

Another cool statue.



There are quite a lot of cats here, which are fed by old ladies.

It only makes sense that there would be some pyramids here.

I took a ton of photos in the cemetery, the full set of you you can see here.

Since it’s after midnight now, yesterday was my third whole day in Buenos Aires. It seems completely unnecessary to say that this city is absolutely incredible and beautiful, except that it is even more so than I had expected. I still am very happy about spending the next year in Chile but am really looking forward to living here after that year. Waking up after the first night that I was here I met the people that I have been hanging out with since; an expatriate from Missouri, an ex-soldier from Israel, a German girl, and an Argentine girl. All of them are really cool people. The hostel itself is really cool and in an ideal location, in the Microcentro, or basically the downtown.

The first thing that we did was go to the Sunday fair in San Telmo, which occupies this one street for several kilometers along with a few squares. This was pretty cool. Otherwise, during the nights we’ve either been going out or playing cards while drinking wine. Certainly fun but not too exciting, but what more can you expect during the middle of the week? During the last two days I’ve been walking around the city getting to know it and taking pictures. Otherwise, I’ve been eating pretty well and healthily. I’m trying to eat five or six small meals during the day, which I did more or less successfully for the first time today, and I did notice that I felt better and more energetic than usual. I also started jogging today down at Puerto Madero next to the ecological reserve, which I plan on doing every evening here.

I’ve taken a lot of photos so far but almost all of them are of buildings. Here are some of the better ones. I’m dividing these photos by neighborhood, and I’ll try to add the names and locations to the buildings later that I don’t know now. I’m probably wrong about putting some of these building within certain neighborhoods that are near the borders. But what can I do?

The Microcentro is the downtown of the city, or the financial district. There are a couple of nice pedestrian malls here and a lot of shopping and stuff.

The Obelisk, which is one of Buenos Aires’ defining landmarks, is here, on the intersection of two of the cities main roads, one of which is supposed to be the widest in the world.

View at dusk from Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest road in the world

This is a view of the obelisk from Plaza de Mayo

The variety of architecture in the city is really amazing.

A residence in Plaza Lavalle

I believe that this is on the same plaza

Also on the same plaza, I believe this is the national theater, or at least just a theater

This is a cool, old school theater

This is one of the pedestrian malls at night. Galerias Pacifico which you see in this photo is  most beautiful mall that I have ever seen. I thought I was cool, and I hate malls.

A view of the mall from the inside

This is the mural on the dome at the mall’s center

This is el cabildo, or like the town tall, on Plaza de Mayo

La Casa Rosada, also on the same plaza. This is the Argentine white house. Obviously it’s under renovation in this photo, as are a ton of the other older buildings here right now. Madonna actually convinced the old President of Argentina, Carlos Menem (major neoliberal sellout, to let her use the balcony for that musical Evita. After that, Menem presided over the economic collapse of the country.

Another view view of la Casa Rosada…

Some massive building, I think i­t is an apartment building, that stands almost on its own between the Microcentro and Puerto Madero

The same building during the day

This Correos, or the post office, on Plaza Roma, in between el microcentro and Puerto Madero
This is also in Plaza Roma.

No, this is not Missouri, it’s on the Rio Plata.

I’m not sure what this building is, but it’s cool.

This is El Torre de los Ingleses. I really like the tower behind it also.

Puerto Madero is the old port for Buenos Aires, which now has been completely gentrified and must cost a mint to live in. It does have a really nice atmosphere though.

There is a modern bridge that cuts through the middle of Puerto Madero.

What is really cool is that it turns on it’s axis like so to allow boats to pass.

There are two old ships docked here. The other is bigger and cooler looking.

I think this thing is like an events center, resaurant, nightclub of sorts called Opera Bay. Yes, it’s named that because it looks like the Sydney Opera House.

They’re constructing a lot of condos on the far side of the port.
All of the old warehouses have been converted to mixed commercial and residential. I’m not sure what the use of these wooden things hanging from the windows is but I like them.

La Boca is one of the neighborhoods that was originally populated by immigrants, and tango has its origins here. It is really poor now and pretty run down except for a couple of streets that are completely overpopulated with tourists. The poorer areas have really old and cool looking buildings in decay, and the poorest areas have the same old and cool building pretty much falling apart with shanties build all around them. It certainly puts a face on the economic collapse as well as the economic disparity here. It’s supposed to be really dangerous here, especially at night, though I felt safe walking through these neighborhoods. Since I was by myself I thought it would be stupid to have my camera out though, which is why I don’t have any pictures of this here.

This is Caminito, the entrance to the tourist trap here and the birthplace of tango

El Caminito as well…

This is the side of Estadio Boca Juniors, which is home to one of the more popular futb0l teams here in Argentina.

A cool apartment building here in a reasonably decent area.

A pedestrian ferry across La Boca.

So there are quite a few more pics that I have taken. If you care to see them the complete set is on flickr here

I’ll be headed to some new neighborhoods and doing some other things in the next couple of days and I’ll try keep this thing updated. My friends that I’ve met and I are planning on ice skating tomorrow somewhere out in the Province, which here basically means outside of the city limits since the city exists within a rather large province of the same name.