Exactly one week in Buenos Aires to the hour

I arrived here exactly one week ago at about this time, around 9:40PM. Here we are one week later and I am still in a complete dream. I am still not sure I am here, in fact my dreams at night have been so vivid and bizarre that I wonder if it is a function of the fact that I am dreaming twenty four by seven. I discussed this with someone down here and they said enjoy it because soon you will be back to your own life. A friend of mine is now in Death Valley and it seems she is experiencing the same thing, only her world is at one hundred and thirty degrees each day.

The people here have been very friendly and my Spanish has gone up one notch out of probably at least one thousand notches. I am now able to write a bit easier, and not so scared to do it. Luckily, during the day I interact with people who are all speaking Spanish to one another and although for the most part I have no idea what they are saying, at least I catch a word or two in each sentence and if I am real lucky can have a sense of the conversation. In the stores, people blab away at me on various and sundry topics and I really have no idea what they are saying but I nod politely like I do. Every once in a while I get up the nerve to say,

Estoy lento, por favor hablas muy despacio.

They look at me like I am loco, and continue on speaking really fast. Welcome to the Spanish world. Later on in another post I will start to discuss in depth the similarities and differences between Ecuador and Argentina but suffice it to say there are some very big differences.

For me, one of the gigantic differences is that you can drink the tap water in BA, and possibly in other parts of Argentina as well. Although I haven´t been to other parts of Argentina so I don´t know that for sure. I have been drinking the water now for five days and I feel pretty good. In fact, the water may even be better here than at home because they may put less stuff in the water, who knows. A friend of mine back home in New Mexico would pull out her pH paper and let me know where it falls on the scale. She has the ability to make acidic or basic water now by way of a cool new ionizing water machine.

Any way, because the water is potable out of the tap, it makes for a lot safer eating conditions as you cruise around and eat at the local restaurants. When we were in Ecuador it was always a big gamble every time you went out to eat because you never knew whether or not you were going to make it an hour or two after leaving the restaurant. But here, because water is so mission critical to all cooking, you are in much better luck eating out.

In fact, I have been buying a really nice package of shredded vegetables each day and bringing them home and having them for dinner. There is at least one fresh vegetable stand or kiosk on almost every corner in Buenos Aires. And they all pretty much sell the same thing, and for me this is truly fantastic. Also, on almost every block is a store that sells bread and good cookies. Compared to Ecuador the cookies here are AMAZING, and I know good cookies. In Ecuador the cookies were EXACTLY the same in every Panderia, where as here, the variety of cookies and cakes is beautiful. Its more like Paris then Cuenca.

The people all have a look that I can appreciate, and basically I have been here one week and I have not seen one FAT person, seriously no one. Its amazing how healthy looking the people are here at least from a weight perspective. Its refreshing to see that people care about their health and how they move around on the planet. Without getting into political or social commentary, the obesity is not healthy, and its very expensive as well. So, this is a very positive aspect of Argentina and more specifically Buenos Aires.

This is a very big city, and when I say big I mean very dense, dense, dense. Its like New York City, in fact its like Manhatten. People every where, cars every where, not a place you can turn with some peace and quiet. Big buildings every where, there isn´t a spot in this town where you can go and not see a big building.

Perspective is so interesting in life, and Al Einstein got the relativity theory really correct. When I moved to Pasadena from Placitas, New Mexico I was in shock. After living at the end of a dirt road off the grid with our own well, when I arrived in southern California I couldn´t believe the density, and for almost two years I was usually just shaking my head. Well Buenos Aires makes Pasadena look like Placitas. So there you have it, its all relative.

Not real sure what winter weather is like here, but I hope the past couple of days are more of a sign of what its like than the first couple of days I was here. I am now walking around in a short sleeve shirt during the day, and a light jacket at night. No more hat, gloves, and neck warmer like last week. But I assume it will get cold again and I will be back into that routine at least for about another month or so.

Again, this is a big city, and the density is really thick with cars and people. Surprisingly it doesn´t bother me too much in the short term, but for the longer term I am not a Manhatten type of a person. Also, in South America a friend of mine said they don´t really have heat, and he is correct. They have these small space heaters in a big room that sort of heat up a space kind of sort of, but not really. When we were up in the mountains in Ecuador at eleven thousand feet in the Andes, they actually had wood heat in a small fire place that did work, but that was a rare case of heat, and clearly that heat took a lot of work.

There are many signs that you are in the Latin world down here, but I won´t go into all of them right now. But my eye is better tuned having lived three months in Ecuador. I think the transition from Ecuador to Argentina is a good one, as you are less surprised by what you find and you aren´t surprised by what you do find.