The past few days in Buenos Aires have been a blast. I finished my CELTA course on Friday and, of course, went out that night to celebrate with my classmates and some other friends. All together we were a contingent of about twenty people from the US, England, Scotland, Australia, Sweden, and Argentina...it made for a good time, but the bar that we went to wouldn't let us pull together tables for our entire group, so we got split up. Boo. However, we all still had a great time and, true to Buenos Aires fashion, I didn't crawl into bed until 11:30 the next morning, all things told.
Needless to say, I was tired on Saturday, but I made myself stay awake for most of the afternoon so that I could try to keep a more regular schedule for my body. I hung out with Alec and Brian that night, but we were mellow, just playing music and talking. Sunday was a lazy day in the morning, but then in the late afternoon I met up with Robin and his friends Willie (California) and Lívia (Brazil) and we went on the Masa Crítica, or Critical Mass, a massive bike ride around Buenos Aires. There were literally hundreds of people on two wheels, all celebrating bicycles and relishing in the fact that we could take over literally entire streets and even the highway and cars could do nothing but sit and wait for us. The tradition started in San Francisco in 1992 as a celebration of bikes and to remind everyone about cyclists' rights on the road. Since then, the idea has gone viral and there are events all over the world. Here in BsAs, it happens the first Sunday of every month. On our ride, we started at the Obelisco in the center of town and made our way in a big loop around the city. We did go on the highway for a while, and blocked out four lanes of traffic, who had to follow along behind us at our slow pace. Unfortunately, there were some boys who threw decent-sized rocks onto the highway and they caused a pile-up of cyclists. Luckily no one was hurt, but it put a (temporary) damper on the joy of riding a bike on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I met a few interesting people during the ride, including Gabriel, a local property manager who loves the camaraderie and organized chaos of the Masa, and Ciaran, a Londonite who's been here for six months teaching English and took the same CELTA course that I did, only in August. Small world! I took my camera along (duh) and took a bunch of blind pictures, just holding up my camera and shooting pictures without looking through the viewfinder. They turned out really well, actually, so I posted some of them here: Masa Crítica.
After the ride on Sunday, I went home and packed up my room so that I could move out on Monday as planned. I really enjoyed staying in my room and made good friends with some of my housemates, but it was time for me to move on (and onto Robin's couch) while I figured out my traveling plans. Since being here in his apartment, I've had a lot of fun going on bike rides and meeting new people. There's a good expat community here, and it seems that lots of the people that I've met know each other in some way or another. Example: Willie, one of Robin's flatmates (and now mine too), knows the Swedes I hung out with on Friday night through a Spanish class, and he met Brian and Kate, two of my fellow CELTees, while working for the BA Pub Crawl on Monday night. Funny little connections...I think it's fun how everyone knows each other. One of the highlights of my week was Tuesday, when I went on the Heart of the City bike tour with Robin's business and got to explore parts of the city I'd wanted to see, like San Telmo and La Boca. Our guide was a girl named Brett who's from Durango and here for two years doing a grad school program about urban development. Again, small world! She was really cool and friendly, and knew a lot of the history of the areas we rode through, which I ate up because I find history fascinating. There was a Canadian couple from Vancouver, Fred and Teri, and a Aussie, Tori, on our tour as well, so it was small and personal. We rode around for almost 5 hours, including a lunch stop, and all enjoyed ourselves. I also broke my vegetarian streak at lunch and tried part of a bondiola, a very traditional pork and cheese sandwich with choose-your-own toppings like veggies and sauce. It was pretty tasty, actually, and as long as I didn't think about the fact that I was eating part of a pig, then I enjoyed it. My stomach didn't have any kind of adverse reaction to the meat either, so it was a good experience. This doesn't mean that I've converted back to being a meatosaurus; it just means that I feel more confident in my ability to handle eating meat if I ever want to or am in a situation where it would be socially awkward not to (invited to a delicious homecooked meal that turns out to be all meat, for example). Check out some snapshots here: Buenos Aires.
After I got back from our bike tour, I was home for about an hour before Kate invited me to go with her and Brian to the Recoleta Cemetery, where Evita Perón, among other famous or important people, are buried. Here's a fun fact about why that particular graveyard is so full of influential figures: in the early days of Buenos Aires, the neighborhood of San Telmo was one of the first places inhabited, because it used to be right on the river and thus had easy access for trading and travelers. It was an affluent neighborhood until the yellow fever outbreak of 1871 sent the richies running for a safer place, which they found in Recoleta, and there they stayed. As a consequence, Recoleta is a nice neighborhood and the people buried there come from rich families. The cemetery is actually beautiful, reminiscent of the one in the new Phantom of the Opera movie, with big stone housings for the coffins and belongings of the deceased. AND it's overrun with kitties, which I loved, and so I got a little animal loving in as well as a visit to one of the biggest attractions in the city. See what I saw: Recoleta Cemetery.
Tuesday night I went to a big hip hop/dub step party at a club in Palermo, which I found out about and got free entry to thanks to Willie, who worked for the event. I met a bunch of new friends through Willie, and actually ran into our mutual Swedish friends there, and got to dance for hours, which was the best part. It was another night of dancing till daylight, but well worth it...I think I needed a good dance party, as I hadn't really had one here yet.
Since then, I've been tossing around many ideas of what my travel plans could be. I think I've finally decided: I'll do a few day trips and other local excursions around BA until Wednesday, when we're having a farewell party for Lívia, who's going back home to Brazil. After that, I'll head to Mendoza and Salta for about a week and a half, making it back to the capital for Christmas Eve. The day after Christmas, it's off to Iguazú and then Uruguay with friends, until my flight leaves for Chile on 5:40 in the morning on New Year's Eve. It's still a very fluid plan and likely to change, but for now that's what I've figured. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, check out the websites for Robin's and Mike's (Robin's flatmate) businesses: Biking Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Fútbol Amigos. Both are great ideas and I'm trying to help them out as much as I can, so spread the word if you know of anyone headed this way. Hasta pronto x
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