Fleeing the Country: Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay

To resolve my visa problem, a few days before Christmas, as detailed below, I left the country. I found that the cheapest flight was to my beloved Buenos Aires, through Montevideo. Flights to Montevideo itself were more expensive, and Juan wasn't going to be there anyway.

(The formulation "my beloved Buenos Aires" is accurate and descriptive, but it's also a reference to "Mi Buenos Aires querido," a tango song made famous by Carlos Gardel.)

Some assorted thoughts from the trip:

The Uruguayan airline Pluna deserves my thanks for its low prices, especially for last-minute flights. However, I have two gripes. First, the displays and the announcements for flights to or from the largest city in Latin America refer to "San Pablo." I understand that this is a direct-to-Spanish translation of São Paulo. For the sake of consistency, however, one should then call my present home "Río de Enero." See how odd that sounds? The airline also flies to a city that might be called "Puerto Alegre," but they don't call it that. Be consistent! Second, they charged for everything, down to the water in-flight (US$2 for a 500 ml bottle). I wouldn't mind this, except that neither the Carrasco Airport outside Montevideo (pictured below; about the size of the Manchester, NH or Grand Rapids, MI airports), nor Aeroparque Jorge Newberry in Buenos Aires has a single drinking fountain. I am an entitled American (and a cheap bastard)! I demand free drinking water!





It must be noted that Rio de Janeiro does have drinking fountains in both its airports. Because I was delayed by my good friends at the Federal Police, I wasn't able to fill my bottle before the flight.

To its credit, however, Buenos Aires has something that is nearly impossible to find in Rio de Janeiro: peanut butter!



I once had the following conversation with the Secretary of Planning for the State of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Ruy Barbosa:

Him: "I'm traveling to the United States next week; can I bring you back anything?"
Me: "Well, my girlfriend's coming soon and bringing me some things. Um... do you know what peanut butter (in my best approximation, manteiga de amendoim) is?"
Him: "No, what is it? Is it good?"
Me: (explains peanut butter)

Note that the peanut butter is right above the dulce de leche. I was in a Carrefour in Buenos Aires to buy bottled water. I thought to buy dulce de leche for Bethany, but didn't know if my credit card would work. I also figured that I could come back later for the dulce de leche. When I passed the supermarket again, it was closed.

So I took the local bus (only 1 peso, 20 cents, inserted into a cool rotating meter onboard the bus) to Retiro station into town from the airport, and passed along the Costanera Norte. Once upon a time, seven years ago, I went running and got lost near the Aeroparque. Passing the sights now, I considered that the run must have been pretty long, and I wondered why the large industrial blocks around the Aeroparque didn't dissuade me and make me turn around.

I had arrived after 9 PM, and the city was dark. Most of my photos didn't turn out. I can assure you that little has changed; the grand train station still sits next to the seedier-but-crowded bus station at Retiro. I set out to check the city against my memories.

I was first struck by how wide the boulevards in Buenos Aires are. Rio de Janeiro, the third-largest city in South America after Bs. As., has nothing approximating these wide streets. I don't even count Avenida 9 de Julio; I already knew how wide that was. (It requires two stop light cycles to cross.)




Buenos Aires strikes me as much more of a urban place, much more of a city. Rio de Janeiro is a marvel, and is also a city, but at most points you can look up at green hills or out onto crystal water, and you feel less enclosed by the urban edifice. By contrast, while in Buenos Aires, you never forget that you're in the biggest city in the country, an urban construction.

I walked up Avenida Santa Fé, a street I knew well. The Burger King was still there, as was the 24-hour cafe I was planning to use as an after-hours spot. I remembered the cafe - La Madeleine - from a particularly late night in which Karim, Pedro and I left Buenos Aires News (a disco now called something else) at about 5:30 AM, and stopped to eat breakfast, despite my grumpy protests. While I put my head down on the table and generally acted sourly, they ordered breakfast, made fun of me for the benefit of the waitress, and finally got up to go home at 8 AM.

Santa Fé seemed to have a lot more pizza and Italian places than I remembered. I was in search of a steakhouse (parilla), though I soon began to feel that I wanted to eat everything the city had to offer. The Italian food is very good, as are the various Argentine selections. The gelato is what I'd imagine Italian gelato tastes like, and on a muggy night there was a line at the most popular chain in town:



Given my previous experiences, of course I ended up at a mall, specifically at Alto Palermo, the mall closest to our dorm in the summer of 2002. Alto Palermo now has a Benihana, or, in the words of Michael Scott, "an Asian Hooters." This makes Buenos Aires even classier than Scranton, which in fact doesn't have a Benihana. I also noted that the new marketing slogan for Alto Palermo is "Pasión de la mujer." Sexist? Please! This is Argentina! There are far more sexist things in this country!



I ventured up Avenida Coronel Díaz to find the old dorm and see the neighborhood. The pizza chain Ugi's has been replaced by another pizzaria. The corner cafe still has a banner that reads "Quilmes - El sabor del encuentro." I couldn't find the local empanada shop that was on the way to the gym, but I didn't look very thoroughly. I was getting hungry. For the record, however, as I've told people, I used to live at the corner of Paraguay and Coronel Díaz. It exists.



I did eventually find a parilla that had filet mignon (bife de lomo) for about fifty pesos. I'd recommend this restaurant; it has a salad bar that comes free with dinner! Now, this is innovative for two reasons. First, orders at Argentine restaurants take anywhere from forty to ninety minutes to arrive. Although I could (and did) chew on the provided rolls and breadsticks, that becomes dull. Second, most Argentines' concept of a salad doesn't go beyond iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, and tomatoes (unless you add globs of mayonnaise to disguise the vegetables). This salad bar had much more variety. The place is Aires Criollos, at Av. Santa Fe, 1773 in Barrio Norte.

And the steak! Oh the steak! I took one bite and all the memories came flooding back. I love Brazilians, and I love Brazil, but nothing can dim my passion for Argentine steak. The steak was delicious, the house red wine was delicious, and the combination of the two made me sing out the following response to the waiter who asked how my meal was (in broken Portuguese/Spanish): "Lad (rapáz), I came all the way here from Rio de Janeiro just to eat Argentine steak, and it was all worth it."

After dinner, I went back to La Madeleine - which advertises with a neon "24 Horas" sign out front - and found the awful news posted on a flyer on the door: "closed for cleaning and fumigation until 6 AM." It was roughly 12:30 AM.

I instead found another cafe, and sat down to write. I ordered an espresso and a medialuna - a sweet croissant - according to plan. In the thrall of steak memories, good coffee, and another medialuna, I wrote for two hours or so.

The cafe closed at 3 AM, and I was forced onto the street. It was then that I concluded that my romantic vision of Buenos Aires as an all-night city was a little off. Santa Fé was closed except for a few pharmacies, and the street was quiet except for the trash-pickers. I walked a few blocks in search of a place to sit and snack, but without luck.

In defense of Buenos Aires, it was early Tuesday morning. All reasonable people should have been asleep, or at least at home.

I took a taxi back to the bus terminal, and a bus back to the Aeroparque. I tried sleeping on some seats and couches, but was awoken twice and shooed away by employees opening up restaurants in the food court at 5 and 5:30 AM.

In the early light at Aeroparque, I satisfied my interests in politics and travel at the same time. I snapped a photo of the Argentine President's official plane. As the United States gives their president's plane the codename "Air Force One," so Argentina gives theirs the name "Tango One." (You can see T-01 on the tail. "Tango Three," a smaller plane, was also parked there. News sources I found later confirmed that Christina Kirchner was in Buenos Aires.)



My flight took me back to Montevideo, where I used my last Argentine pesos to buy Bethany an alfajor, and gave the change to flight attendants collecting for a charity for premature Uruguayan infants. In the terminal lounge in Montevideo, I sat reading La República (depicted below, with a headline about the outgoing President's Lula-like high approval ratings) when I was approached by a woman with a clipboard. She asked me if I had a moment, and I did. She then asked me whether I had "Pluripass."

"Have what?"
"Oh, are you Uruguayan?"
"No, sorry, American."
"Oh, excuse me. Sorry to bother you."

It's okay. I'm still very flattered to be mistaken for a local.



I'm content being (legally) in Brazil for now. As I've known all along, Buenos Aires and Montevideo warrant future return visits.