Daily archives: November 6, 2006

3 posts

Back in the Land of Snow

Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Arrgh! Although I should be happy that we arrived back in Canada safe and sound, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’m no longer living the life of a rich man in Argentina. The flights back were pretty routine. The only real snafu was Jody sadly lost the pendant on a nice necklace that she picked up while we were down there. It was a sad moment. The trip took us about 15 hours of total flying time, and a combined 2 hours of lay-overs in Santiago and Toronto. I used my last pesos to buy a couple beers and waters in Buenos Aires. I ended up spending all but about $5 US of all the money I had converted.

Teatro Colon..

Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Last day in Buenos Aires left. We started the day getting all our bags ready so that we could check out before deciding what to do with our last 6 hours. By 9am, we had our bags packed, and left behind the counter. We hit the hotel restaurant, where we hooked up for a final breakfast with most of the group. 2 of the group had left the night before at 2am, heading off to Rio. Lucky for them, they had more vacation left to enjoy. Sadly, Jody and I were facing work in under 2 days. The last weekend. Boo. We had to make a decision on what to do. We had a little bit of shopping left to do, but we were also interested in visiting a world-known landmark, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. This is arguably the world’s best opera house. It has a long and storied history, which I couldn’t possibly get into in this brief post. We’d heard it was beautiful, but on our first weekend in town, had walked by it, and thought it wasn’t open, due to construction. We’d later learned it was in fact open, you just had to find the right entrance. The only obstacle in our way was that we hadn’t made reservations, and heard you really need them to get in. Oh well, it was our last day, and we wanted to take the chance. Read on…

Buenos Aires Redux…

Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Hi all… the time has come to look back on the final couple days of our trip to Argentina. When I last wrote to you all, I was seated in an Internet cafe in Mendoza writing about that great city. I was about to hop on the overnight bus to Buenos Aires, a trip lasting 13 hours or so. In order to prepare for this, I picked up a litro of cerveza, and some snacks at Norte, a local grocery strore. Funny enough, I got searched by the security guard. Guess I looked shady. Of course, all I had were some chocolates I bought at the local chocolate factory. Tartufo. If you’re ever in Mendoza, I recommend you stop by there. They are an ice cream, as well as chocolate factory. Mmm delicious. I dragged some of the gang there, and the only person who wouldn’t buy anything was Sabine, our little Swiss miss. She felt it would be unpatriotic to buy chocolate in Argentina. Oh well, I couldn’t convince her otherwise. But I digress. We got to the bus station, and I headed to the bar with my new South African mate Allen for a quick Whiskey. Yup, somewhere along the line, he sort of convinced me I should start drinking whiskey. And you know what? It’s not half bad. So, we had a quick Johnny Walker Red Label, then boarded our final overnight bus. It was a pretty sweet ride as usual. The on-board attendant was a really nice guy, and popped in a DVD called ‘The Classic Project’, which was a music video collage of hits from the 80’s. We all had a great time just guessing the songs and singing along. We figure most of the other passengers didn’t really enjoy it as much as us, but that’s life. Suffice it to say, it was yet another long bus trip where I didn’t sleep too much. That’s where the beer helped me though. I managed to squeeze in a couple quality hours of sleep anyway. I wanted to be somewhat refreshed for our last full days in Buenos Aires. Read on for more about the last day.