Muy Bueno, Buenos Aires
We are loving this city. We don’t feel like such outsiders and are not stared at constantly by children. There is so much culture and so much to do, we’re spending more time here than we planned on and that’s fine with me. Our first night we stayed at Hostel Cambalache in the Microcenter and I think we were the only non-Israelis staying there. The signs were in Hebrew and people spoke to us in Hebrew. Are we in Argentina? I guess there’s an Israeli circuit that most of the kids out of the army do, and this city is on the list. We only stayed one night there because in our dorm, Matt and I were the only ones to go to bed before 5am. We ended up finding a place that was practically our own apartment in San Telmo for only a few dollars more a night.
The city has a subway system that is good, but not air conditioned and it’s sweltering at times. It’s a little humid here, but it’s basically the end of the summer and really sunny and beautiful. There’s plenty of parks and trees and shade (and movie theaters with a/c when we need a break). We went and saw a tango show that included live music (guitar and bandoneon) tango, folkloric dancing/gaucho (which was really cool and was sort of eastern European feeling, dancing in a circle with arms wide open and boot stomping. The focus on the guy/girl dance was the guy, which was unique. At one point he had heavy leather balls on strings and slapped them on the ground, while stomping his feet to keep a beat with the music).
We also saw an aerial cirque show called Nocturna, which was wonderful and made me miss doing circus and being in the air. They had a flying trapeze, a swinging trapeze, a triple trap, silks, hoop, aerial doubles and acrobatics. They were all so strong and gutsy and did moves that made me dizzy. The hoop routine included every painful and scary move that I’ve unsucessfully attempted. My favorite was the guy/girl doubles routine done on the platform of the flying trapeze. It was kind of like a double trapeze, except the guy was in a fixed position and upside down the whole time. How he didn’t pass out, I don’t know. But he did really really great catches with the girl and the pace was quick and beautiful.
We’ve been eating well, too. Mostly Italian food (homemade raviolis, cannellonis, gnocchi, pizza) but we did find a raw foods restaurant that made my belly SO happy. I had a wheatgrass blueberry orange drink and a greens salad with seaweed, sprouts and veggies. The guy trained in NYC with Jubb and the food was beautiful and I left feeling satisfied (not just carbed-out, like most of our meals in South America). Learning more about raw cuisine is definitely on my list for when we return.