Winter travels: São Paulo and Manaus

For four weeks, we lived at the center of it all. The expensive, expansive, hectic, maddening and refreshing center of Brazil, São Paulo.

Specifically, I splurged and rented an apartment in an apart-hotel in Moema, a neighborhood on the south side of the center, only a few blocks from Parque Ibirapuera. I had limited time to find and reserve a place, and many places to be. The apartment ended up sheltering Bethany and my cousin Christian as well, so maybe it wasn't a terrible expense.

In reserve order, the ugly, the bad and the good of São Paulo.

The Ugly

Moema is, after Jardins and whichever neighborhood is currently trendy, the third-nicest neighborhood in São Paulo. Or at least it should be; it's certainly expensive enough. (Note: Due to circumstances, it was once necessary to search for lunch in Jardins. I consider myself lucky to have escaped after losing less than R$20.)

We lived five blocks from an Applebee's, and six blocks from a Starbucks. This combination might exist in Barra da Tijuca (and maybe in Brasilia), but otherwise nowhere else in Brazil. (Perhaps nowhere else in South America.)

On every corner, and in front of every decent restaurant, stood valets willing to park your car for around R$10-R$15 for the duration of lunch or dinner. Even the gym up the hill had valet parking. Admittedly, there wasn't much open street parking, but this is true in San Francisco as well. I can proudly say that I ate lunch regularly in most towns for less than it costs to park one's car in Moema.

Bethany and I went to a local joint to eat burgers, fries and Cokes for the 4th of July, in our best ironic manner. We chose a place called America Pasta & Burgers instead of Applebee's. The bill totaled R$88, and we never ate there again.

The above examples illustrate the ugliest part of São Paulo's wealth and inequality. In the finest neighborhood, the rich spend large amounts of money to enjoy a standard of living on par with that of the United States. For the quality of products and services, prices are outrageous. And the streets are stale and soulless. There's very little public space, because everything has to be held behind gates or under vigilant watch or hidden. (Granted, there is more public space downtown.)

Last December, while we walked around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio, I commented to friends that I wouldn't mind retiring to a high-rise apartment in Lagoa. Valmore questioned this, noting that he envied the United States, where everyone has a small single-family house with a yard and a fence; why would I want to move to an apartment? His point was taken, though I did later see upper-class single-family homes (most memorably, near the park in Campo Grande) in Brazil. The major distinction between single-family homes in Brazil and the States is that the former are almost always behind guarded walls.

In short, the rich of São Paulo can indeed lived charmed lives, but they pay exorbitant amounts to do so, and to keep that world protected. (This is already widely known; I'm just relating my encounter with it.)


The Bad

In many cities, I've met people who say "Oh, the traffic here in [my city] is getting to be as bad as São Paulo." It's an interesting point of reference, because I didn't find traffic to be too much of a problem in SP. (See above point: this may be due to the fact that I lived in Moema. I admit that traffic did once make us late to the SPFC-Avaí game, but we didn't miss much.) The bus system is not too bad, the metro is speedy, and I don't own a car. (Really bad traffic is in Salvador. F--- you, Rótula do Abacaxí.)

But if the traffic isn't bad, the air pollution is. My eyes stung from time to time, in the same manner that they always sting when we crest the hill up near the new Getty Museum and enter the LA Basin.

And every driver was, of course, sitting in his or her own car, most without passengers. As my mother asked in Salvador (not rhetorically), "Has the government done much to encourage carpooling?" Ha! Crazy lady. The current government is trying to put more cars on the road as fast as they can, with special tax incentives and discounts.

There are some kinks of developed world life not worth imitating, as São Paulo develops.


The Good

But the integrated bus and metro system was great! And two museums, the MASP and the Museu da Língua Portuguesa were lots of fun! And Rua Augusta is a good bohemian/alternative break from the blandness of Zona Sul. Chris especially liked Augusta, aside from the very disappointing Mexican restaurant at its peak.

And yes, one does get the feeling of being in the center of the world. You can take a bus in São Paulo and pass the corporate headquarters for, say, the maker of a brand of urinals that's all over the country. Or the headquarters of a beverages company whose juice you drank long ago at a dark bus station in Goiânia. You can go to the Tietê bus terminal and literally find a bus for anywhere in Brazil. Every touring show or band or exhibition will pass through. (50 Cent played while we were in town, and the Bodies exhibit was open at the MAM. Tickets for Mr. Cent's concert started at R$200, which seemed steep for a hip hop artist who hasn't been relevant for five years.)

And oh, the park. Parque do Ibirapuera, as previously mentioned, has a 6000 meter dirt trail around its perimeter, with three water stations and two bathroom stops, varied terrain, and plenty of shade. There are running routes in Brazil that are more scenic (Aterro do Flamengo, Rio), longer and with more bathrooms (Parque da Cidade, Brasília), shadier (Parque Mãe Bonifácia, Cuiabá), with cleaner air (Praia do Calhau, São Luís), or with more fun wildlife (Parque das Indígenas, Campo Grande), but Ibirapuera wins the all-around prize.

It took two tries to figure out how to manage the course while running clockwise (the direction without signs), but two or three loops could be combined and cut into almost any distance. I think I topped out at 18 km. I don't remember.

Sadly, the park is a slight break, but not a complete break, from the smog and exhaust of the streets.

There was also a fruit market on Saturday up the hill in Vila Nova Conceição. And tofu and yakisoba noodles in local supermarkets. (And peanut butter, but only the Peter Pan sugary type.) We never had very good Japanese food, but did find some good pizza after a search.

Finally, interviewees in São Paulo were just as friendly and helpful as those in other states were. I picked up a little of the paulista r in my accent, which I've retained to the present, but I still find José Serra's accent a little over-the-top. (In a funny coincidence, only after a visit to the Museu da República in Rio did I realize that one of my interviewees was the spokesman who announced Tancredo Neves's death in 1985.)


The Uncategorizable

São Paulo is not soulless. It is just too splintered and diverse to be categorized. I'm sure that if I traveled for the sake of experiencing specifically art, fashion, food, music, architecture, history, or any interest, I could really dig deep into one part of the city and be richly rewarded.

However, in taking a little bit of everything at once, I must admit that I found São Paulo to be bland. Sure, it's the most populous city in the Americas, but it lacks the romantic feeling of "here I am!" that one gets in Manhattan. Even on Avenida Paulista, or in the park, or at the monuments or at Praça da Sé or Praça da República, there's little romance or style in the city. I blame this on the car. In Manhattan, one sees (and gets bumped and shoved by) the multitudes on the streets and the subway. Here, there are crowds on the subway, and people on the street for lunch, but it's all just so mind-bogglingly spread out that it doesn't feel dense. (Disclaimer: Anhangbaú metro station did feel dense at Tuesday, 8 AM.) Many people just get in their cars and pass you by.

There's also no center. The city is too big to concentrate on any one plaza. Not all roads lead to Praça da Sé or da República, or to Terminal Bandeirantes. Corporate office parks are in Chácara Santo Antônio, a good 15 km from where their daily occupants and masters (probably) live in Jardins. Hence the helicopters.

For that reason, with apologies to all readers, I never took a photo in São Paulo. Of anything. It never dawned on me to do so, even when visiting monuments and museums. I don't have a good explanation why.

Will I be back? Rapáz, seria quase impossível continuar estudando o Brasil sem voltar pra Sampa. Of course. And I'll give it another go. (But not that Mexican place, Tollocos. That stunk.)

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It occurs to me that my reports on places always include complaints about one thing or another. I'll never be satisfied. So let me refrain from detailing my thoughts about Manaus.

It will suffice to say that I prefer Belém to Manaus, and that Manaus will need a lot of work to become an adequate host city in 2014.

It was nice, however, to get back to the familiar signs, sights, and smells of regular Brazil. And we ran into Alceu and his family (visiting from Fortaleza) on the plaza of Teatro Amazonas. The plaza is a lovely public space.

And while I met more than one paulista who explained to me (in SP) how Brazil feeds almost parasitically off the wealth that São Paulo produces, I also met two Amazonenses who explained that the industrialization (and coffee boom) of the Southeast was financed by tariff duties on rubber, and so the rest of Brazil owes Amazonas a debt.

As two small momentos of Manaus, here's a picture of Albert in front of Teatro Amazonas, and a stuck turtle at the Bosque da Ciência.





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I have a flight for San Francisco in four days.

Do You Like Concrete? Brasília, Distrito Federal

I came to Brasília in search of nationwide data and to test a few hypotheses about federal-state relations. I can say that I won't leave completely empty-handed. I would call my week moderately productive, and I'm almost certain that I'll have less productive weeks among the next few.

I'm still tired of travel, tired of being in the field, tired of the same routine and of the same loneliness. Yet I march onward. I go running a lot, though I fear that my shoes are barely going to make it to July 3rd. (I left my new pair for Bethany to bring down then.)

Brasília, the capital of the future. Or at least a very 1950s version of the future, built for the automobile, mass urban housing, and dramatic gestures in urban planning.

Brasília, for the uninitiated, is laid out in the shape of an airplane, with the body comprising the Monumental Axis, the Esplanade of the Ministries, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace, and (somewhere) a McDonald's I falled to locate. The wings of the airplane are devoted to zoned residential and commercial areas.

Everything is laid out according to a system of acronyms and numbers. I stayed in the South Wing, at superblock 705, off street W3, in CRS (Residential Center South, I think). I went to a meeting in SRTVS Quadra 701, or Sector Radio and TV South, Block 701. There are separate areas for hotels and hospitals.

There is a logic to it all, which one learns gradually. I don't actively dislike Brasília - though I actively dislike the fact that a decent hotel is out of my budget range, given that hotels are limited to Hotel Sector North and Hotel Sector South - like others do. I just think it could stand for some re-development and new planning after fifty years. It's certainly not a pedestrian-friendly city, despite the fact that cars stop at crosswalks (not always guaranteed elsewhere). Brasília would receive a Walkability Score close to zero.

To get an idea, of just how spread-out and car-friendly it is, see the following photos.





The last picture is of a diorama that's in a small underground museum near the presidential palace.

These photos are all taken within the airplane, an area known as the Pilot Plan. There are other outlying areas, but almost none are adjacent to the Pilot Plan. One has to go down a long road to reach the next developed areas. This movement out of the Pilot Plan is surprising. Normally, in Brazil, as one leaves a big city, one encounters suburbs and smaller developments that are poorer and more run down that is the center of the city. The poverty level seems to increase as you move farther from the city center, until at last you're in the countryside.

Brasília, by contrast, has among the highest wealth and development scores of any city in Brazil. And for twenty-one of its fifty years of existence, it was the site of a military dictatorship. Hence there are almost no visible slums on the outskirts. When traveling out of the city (by newly-built metro or by car), one immediately jumps from city to countryside. In Brasília's case, one jumps right from the buildings into the red-dirt cerrado, the high savannah in the middle of the country. I wish I had photos of this, but alas I was negligent in not bringing my camera along to that interview.

On the first Sunday in town, I took a walk down to the presidential palace in hopes of seeing a tour. I wore long pants, but didn't sweat too much. Although the termperature still hovered around the same 31-32 C it was in Fortaleza and Salvador, the air here is much drier. I almost miss the humidity. Almost.

Along the way, I passed the new national library, which has nothing on the old national library on Avenida Rio Branco in Rio de Janeiro. (Reminder: When Brasília became the capital, all those federal public sector employees had to move out of Rio de Janeiro. Poor them.) Coincidentally, it's named after a former governor of Rio, a master populist.



I also passed the newly-opened National Museum (the hemisphere resembling Saturn) and the Cathedral. The latter bears a striking resemblence to Space Mountain at Disneyland and Disney World, also pictured below. That's not by accident. They were built in the same era (well, Space Mountain in the 1970s), and were both designed to showcase the future of architecture. Space Mountain doesn't have stained glass.






Beyond the Cathedral lie the Ministry buildings. Each building has brass letters outside declaring which Ministries it contains. I imagine that somewhere there is a collection of giant marquee brass letters, ready for the moment the next president rearranges the ministries or creates new ones.




Also, nothing says "bureaucracy" like big concrete slabs, row after row.

The Ministries are also one of the redeeming features of Brasília, in that many of them have restaurants that are open to the public. The restaurants function mainly to feed public employees, of course, but visitors are welcome after 1:00 PM. And the food is cheap!

I visited the restaurants at the Ministry of Agriculture (R$9.46 per kilo, but no credit cards accepted) and at the Ministry of Communications and Transport (R$10.00 per kilo, credit cards accepted), the latter twice. Normally, food is R$17.99 per kilo if it's affordable, over R$20 per kilo at most places in Zona Sul in Rio, and R$30.00 or more at the mall. By contrast, the Ministries are a steal. I would like to personally thank the Brazilian people for subsidizing three lunches for me. I ate 1.38 kilos on my second visit, and 1.02 kilos on my third visit. (Go ahead, convert that to pounds.) Normally, I eat around 0.6 kilos for lunch at a restaurant, and pay more.

Numbers above fixed. Thanks to Amy in comments.

And on my walk I encountered my good friends at the Ministry of Foreign Relations! Hooray!




The building is rather beautiful. It may be a little nicer than the old Palácio Itamaraty in Rio (which I have also visited; see the posts about my visa mix-up). The contrast is between colonial and modern styles.

[On reflection, my best friends are the Federal Police; it was their mistake and slip-up that allowed me back into the country, and thus did not send me toothbrush-less and computer-less back to Argentina.]

Other bureaucratic buildings on the east end of the Axis, like Itamaraty, are more beautiful. I saw the Ministry of Justice building and wanted to jump into the fountain for a swim.



And of course there's the famous Congress. I was surprised by how close I could get to the building. The security-mad United States wouldn't dare let one duck under the awnings and walk on the grass.








At the end of my walk, I was sorely disappointed. The Presidential Palance, the Palácio do Planalto, is under refurbishment and was closed to tours. Oh well.




In conclusion, Brasília falls right about in the middle, out of all the cities I've visited. I'd come back, though I'd try to drive hard bargains to stay at a nicer hotel. I will say that I did enjoy the cheap food, and running in the Parque da Cidade.

Now to return to the Mato Grossos, but briefly.

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Oh, and the United States can best be represented by a bacon cheeseburger. Obvio. (The US burger is available on Fridays. Other days are McAlemanha, McBrasil, McArgentina, McItália, and McEspanha.)

Buffalo in the Amazon Basin: Ilha de Marajó, Pará

Leaving Salvador, mono, lethargy, and Easter behind, I arrived in Belém late Monday night. My plan to connect through São Paulo and thereby pick up a Vivo SIM Card with the Sáo Paulo area code (11) failed. TAM Airlines's computer system crashed nationwide, which made all planes late and shortened my connection time. And Guarulhos terminals are still, well, Guarulhos terminals. They have a pub, a magazine shop, a duty-free shop, and that's about it. (Guarulhos, for the uninitiated, is the busiest airport in the country, located in an adjacent suburb of São Paulo. The city has another domestic-only airport - the second-busiest in the country - in the south end of the megacity.)

So I arrived in Belém at 2 AM on Tuesday, and paid through the nose (R$90) for an okay hotel with a wireless connection only in the lobby and a generous breakfast spread.

I'm as far north as I'll be for the entire trip. Belém sits at about 1 degree of latitude south of the equator.

It was a low-quality first week, in terms of work. Due to the Easter holiday, my letter requests for interviews hadn't arrived and so peole didn~t expect me to call. I ended up sending multiple follow-up emails, which set back the days in which I could make requests. My late arrival didn't help.

Despite the work troubles, I've been quite taken with Belém. It's my kinda town. There are trees along the sidewalk for shade, a grid-like layout (though not as straight and orderly as Campo Grande), public plazas and parks, and enough compactness to put most sites - both touristy and work-related - in walking distance. Were Belém in the US, it would receive a high walkability score.

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I decided to use my first weekend in town to, er, leave town. Belém sits on the southern part of the Amazon River delta. The delta (drainage basin) is immense. It's difficult to overstate just how much fresh water is coming out of the rainforest.

Anyway, in the middle of the Basin is the Ilha (Island) of Marajó, the largest littoral island in the world, and a landmass approximately the size of Switzerland. The island's main attractions are water buffalo, their meat and cheese, and isolated beaches. (Belém, a city with a working port, has no beaches and some not insubstantial water pollution.)

So I arrived at the River Terminal early at 6 AM on Saturday to catch the 6:30 AM ferry to Camará. I had three objectives for the weekend: see buffalo, eat buffalo, and go swimming.

The ferry ride took three hours and was pretty boring. You can see the sights below. I left my computer and all books back in luggage storage in Belém, and thus had nothing to entertain me. Well, that's not entirely accurate. My phone has Sudoku puzzles as its only free game. I don't really see the attraction of Sudoku. I play it when I'm waiting in line for things like vaccinations and grocery check-out. It's a pretty formulaic, repetitive game.


Early morning crew in Belém


The Belém skyline behind us.


The view of the riverbank, once we left Belém, looked pretty similar.


At certain points, there were no islands to pass and nothing but fresh river water to the horizon.


Our ferry boat line, going the other way. The blue tarps keep out the intense sun.

Two days before I left, I had an interview with a former Secretary of Transport, who proposed that one could get rich (and should get rich) building a hovercraft/hydrofoil factory in Brazil. Most rivers are large, but not all of them are navigable. The river depth varies, preventing the movement of large (cargo) ships. My interviewee has been part of a group that's trying to dredge the rivers and thus create a northern outlet for the crops of the Center-West (read: soy, wheat, and cotton from Mato Grosso). If they could manage to move cargo ships from the interior through Belém - and the rivers do extend that far - they could drastically cut costs. Belém is far closer to US, European, and Asian markets than are the ports of São Paulo and Paraná.

He didn't really know much about the environmental impacts of such a project. He probably thought they were exaggerated.

In any case, we arrived in Camará on the island about 10 AM, and were herded loudly onto buses going to various destinations. I was headed to Salvaterra, the middle city (only three cities are open to independent tourists; most of the island's interior is preserve or swamp) with stingray-free beaches and a few hotel options.

It's unfair to say that Salvaterra is a one-horse town. There were multiple horses. And multiple buffalo. And multiple really hideous black birds.




One of the horses. And note the ongoing football game behind him.




After arrival, I took a walk to find Praia Grande, the beach of some note and the place, according to Lonely Planet, where one could eat lunch cheaply. (The buffet at my hotel looked rather unappetizing, sitting there for a while in the heat.) I did find the beach, and found some buffalo cooling themselves in the confluence of a small creek and the (fresh water) bay (pictured above).

For lunch, I ordered buffalo carne asada. It came with rice, beans, farofa, buttered spaghetti, and mayonnaise-based potato salad. My hypothesis is that fresh fruit and vegetables (besides mangoes) are costly to import from the mainland, thus the dearth of them. My later visit to the town supermarket, which lacked a produce section, supported this hypothesis. Lunch was, unfortunately, pretty bad. The buffalo was close to carne de sol, and so was pretty salty. The rice, beans, and farofa were standard, but I didn't take a second bite of the spaghetti or the potato salad.

However, it was reasonably priced for a touristy place. It's also not the first time I've ordered a dish meant for two while eating alone.

On the walk back to the hotel, I passed the same buffalo grazing just off the beachfront road. I hoped they would stay there while I went to retrieve my camera.

Of course they did not. I had to wander down the long beach to take pictures from afar. I won't say that they're disappointing, because they can't choose their appearance or species. I will say that they look (and pretty much taste) like cattle.


The aforementioned ugly birds.







I did get a chance to go swimming in the fresh water. The river washes down, as you can imagine, tons of debris from the rainforest. Not all of it rots or is consumed before it reaches the ocean. As a result, a swimmer moving through the water will encounter seeds, leaves, twigs, and even large branches floating on the surface. I have a splinter in my right index finger from my attempt to throw a rough piece of wood out of my way.

The water is also choppy in the afternoon, when the wind picks up. It was much more tranquil when I went swimming the next morning.

I ordered a veggie pizza (with very thinly-sliced vegetables) for dinner and had a vegetarian prato feito (beans, rice, vinagrette, and farofa) for lunch the next day. The hotel breakfast was fruit-less, which is a first for me in Brazil.


An attempt at still life.




"The years you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when there was a water buffalo."

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In the end, however, despite the bad food and the fact that there was nothing much to do, I accomplished all my goals. I most likely won't go back to the island, except perhaps as part of a pampered package tour or if I happen to be stationed in Belém for an extended period of time and want to swim.

I can, however, say that I went swimming in the delta/basin/mouth of the Amazon, which is something.

No, there were no piranhas.

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I`m back in Belém for another week, and my luck in getting interviewees has (slightly) turned. I might have a chance to see more tourist sites here in Belém, and I've found a cheaper hotel.

Next Monday, I have an overnight bus trip to São Luís, the capital of the neighboring (corrupt, underdeveloped) state of Maranhão. I've already had two email responses from Maranhão to my letters, which portends good things.

So it goes. Or, as the Portuguese version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five translates that phrase, "Coisas da vida" or "E assim por diante."

Food blogging: O Nordeste

Above is a bottle of prune/plum-flavored yogurt from Alagoas. Admit it, you couldn't think of a better name if you tried.

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.