A New Year in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Argentina
34.6037°S, 58.3816°W

Our post-Christmas departure from Chile was bittersweet. We were excited to get to our next destination, Argentina, but also knew that our year-long trip was coming to an end. In just over one month, we’d be back home in Boston.

This was a year we won’t soon forget. While neither of us can remember a time in our lives going by faster, we no doubt have some incredible memories, stories, and fortunately just a few scars (my scars are mostly physical, while Sarah’s are more psychological…a result of spending a year in such close proximity to me).

In 12 months we’ve visited 18 countries, slept in 85 different beds, and have taken something close to 20,000 photos. We experienced our first earthquake. We’ve surfed, cycled and had our hair cut on six continents, climbed five mountains, and wore through four pairs of flip flops. We successfully dodged one robbery attempt and unsuccessfully dodged two others (although in one of these instances the perpetrator was a macaques monkey). There were 49 flights, over 100 Uber rides, 15 buses, a couple of long road trips, and one overnight train. We’ve eaten some of the best food of our lives and had two of the worst gastrointestinal experiences in the history of mankind.

Nearly every place we visited surprised us in some unforeseen way: the quality of Thailand’s street food, the size of the malls in Kuala Lumpur, the expense of nearly everything in New Zealand, and the number of shops and street vendors throughout the world that sell Pringles. One thing that has really surprised us, is how easy it has been to live out of just one bag. We’ve been happy with how we packed for the trip, albeit we are traveling lighter these days. Oddly enough, many of our predictions for what we would still have with us at the end of the trip were accurate (e.g., Sarah still has managed to keep her jean shorts), and our bags look mostly the same from when we started.

Given how quickly the year has flown by, Sarah and I knew that our last month in Argentina would also be a blur. There was a lot of Argentina we wanted to see, but because it’s such a huge country we had to be selective. And we wanted to make sure we balanced our travel in Argentina with taking the time to reflect on the last year and prepare for our next steps in life. We decided to base ourselves for the month in Buenos Aires, and take a handful of trips throughout the country’s northern half throughout January.

Palermo

We rented a Buenos Aires Airbnb in an area called Palermo. It’s a massive neighborhood – the biggest in the city – covering more than seven square miles. Palermo’s streets are lined with locally-owned cafes and restaurants with umbrella’ed tables circled by folding chairs on the sidewalks directly in front. The side streets are shaded by huge trees, many of them towering Rosewoods (La Tipas) that rise up and over the residential buildings. On some streets the trees connect in the middle, making it feel as if you are walking through a tunnel.

Buenos Aires is a huge city of more than three million people. In certain parts of the city, you feel as if you are walking around New York, and in fact, a lot of the neighborhoods in Palermo have New York-based nicknames (e.g., we stayed close to a cluster of streets referred to as Palermo Soho). Unlike New York, there is a general calmness that makes the city feel much smaller. Relative to other large cities we’ve been to, the streets are less crowded, there are few honking horns, and the vendors on the corners don’t really push their goods on you. So it’s kind of like New York if everyone popped a Xanax before they left their apartments.

Many Ways to Steak

One of the main reasons Sarah and I were looking forward to visiting Argentina was its reputation for amazing food and wine. In particular, we were looking forward to sampling the food it is most known for, steak. Argentinians take their beef seriously, and so we had to get up to speed on the proper terminology for ordering steak in restaurants. It took us a while to figure out the differences between things like bife de lomo, ojo de bife and bife de chorizo.

There are parrillas (restaurants selling grilled meats) on practically every block in Buenos Aires. Even in a relatively expensive area of the city like Palermo, you can get a steak and wine dinner for under $20.00. The steaks nearly everywhere are served up in huge portions and damn good. I’m not sure there’s a more difficult place for a vegetarian to live.

New Year, New Friends

As we’ve traveled this year, we’ve grown to appreciate how lucky we are to have so many great friends back home. Being far away has made us realize how nice it is to be in close proximity to the people we enjoy spending time with. It has also made us appreciate meeting other like-minded, friendly and fun travelers.

Sarah and I weren’t sure what to do for New Year’s Eve, a holiday usually spent with close friends. Fortunately, a few days before the end of the year I met a couple of other guys visiting Argentina on a bike tour through the southern part of Buenos Aires. Like us, Tam from Switzerland and Chris from Hawaii didn’t have plans for ringing in 2018, so we agreed to meet up for dinner and see how the turn of the new year is celebrated in Buenos Aires.

Argentinians do things very, very late. Most people don’t have dinner until 10:00 PM or later. Sarah and I knew that for New Year’s we would have to plan on 1) a very late dinner and 2) being out most of the night. As we started to make plans, I emailed one bar to see what time they opened. I received an email back that only said “2:00,” and I was surprised that they would be opening in the middle of the day, given how we had heard that pretty much everything is closed on December 31st. What I didn’t realize immediately was that the bar was opening at 2:00 AM. Evidently, most people in Buenos Aires celebrate the turn of the clock at homes with family and friends and then head to the bars afterward to celebrate. Needless to say, I began planning when I was going to take my New Year’s Even nap.

After sleeping much of New Year’s Day, we woke up and started to make plans for our travels throughout Argentina. Up first, a trip to the coast.