Thank God We're Not Naked...en el Autobus

Criminal Element.

Hooptie(s).









Safety.

It's always quite striking how cities and countries so aptly manipulate their tourist experiences. Buenos Aires seems to succeed as well as any in creating a tourist corridor that creates a feeling of safety, while at the same time allowing the visitor to feel as if they are receiving a completely authentic experience. For six days Beth and I caroused around Buenos Aires with an aire of relative relaxation and comfort, never reminded of our initial drive from the airport with views of what may or may not be the real Buenos Aires, but surely was not our Buenos Aires. Dilipated apartment buildings, a general run-down feeling and a stench of gasoline permeated our initial experience. Then we made it downtown, or to el capital, where we were inundated with a tourist experience. There is a saying about Argentinians, in particular people from Buenos Aires whom they call Portenos, that goes something like this: Portenos are South Americans who speak Spanish, act like they are English and think they live in France. This is what it feels like. It's incredibly European, down to the manpris, the croissant breakfast, the chain smokers and the cafe con leches.

And this is what we saw the entire time, until we took the bus out. We were warned about this particular area. Told it was a bad vichey (As we understand it, the Argentine vicheys are somewhat akin, though according to our source much less dangerous than their more famous Brazilian counterpart, favelas) and that we could leave there penniless and clothesless, we decided to steer clear of this area. Though we did hear of a tour which tourist could take through the vichey in some sort of bullet proof (not true) air conditioned (true) vehicle, which I initially cringed at, then did a double take, and began justifying why it would be OK to basically exploit the already exploited, for "experience" sake, then looked over at Beth who knew exactly what I was thiking and basically said absolutely not, you're an asshole for even considering it, at which point the vichey was shut out of my mind. Until we left the city, and for the briefest moment we skirted the edges of the vichey. Dogs roamed in packs, men leaned shirtless from glassless windows with cervezas grandes, dirt roads with bicycles, motos and some of the most hoopty hoopties I've ever seen spewed dust into the air, and there were about 3 kids per square foot, basically it was a scene straight out of City of God, sans the drugs, guns and all of our possessions. Then it was gone, enough time to think about getting out a camera and documenting a part of Buenos Aires hidden to us tourist, but not enough time to snap the photo. Next thing we knew we were staring at a perfect view of the Buenos Aires skyline, leaving us with one last picture perfect memory.

I have to note here that, besides that one little area, the bus system, so far, has been absolutely amazing. We had a semi-cama bus, in which the seats are basically non-swiveling lazy boys, the air condition actually works (which is more than we can say for a six days at Bait Hostel) and we got to watch Pirates of the Carribean 500 in Spanish and my favorite early-90's-ish-b-movie-starring-John-Leguizamo, Spawn, which to my pleasant surprise was in English. As Beth would say, a little treat.

Things are going excellent and we are on the bus on our way to Iguazu to stay with Beth's family (note: we are now there, but we have lagged a bit lately with the posting. Up next: Beth's Argentinian family, brilliant Argentine Inventions and Passilla y Asado.)

Sweat Meter: The air conditioning on the buses being what they are, I didn't even need my wicking shir collection: 25%, due to residual sweat from the mile long hike and accompanying subway ride we took to get to the bus depot because Beth is worried about pesos and convinced we needed to walk to save the 35 pesos, or approximately $5 US, each. By the time we got on the "subte," I was at the eruption point and might possibly have been projectile sweating onto the euro-americans, which caused everyone to stare and move away from me. I hate humidity.