Arrival in Buenos Aires
Tuesday January 20, 2015 (Argentina, Buenos Aires, South America)
When we were only a few hours outside of Buenos Aires, our bus was stopped by a group of military police. They boarded the bus and started checking over documents. Everything was going well until they peeked inside the bags of two younger guys a few rows up from us. They smelled something funny. Weed. The two gents were summarily removed from the bus while the officers looked through their checked bags. The entire process took about an hour, wherein they were taken physically into the border checkpoint and then released. They made it back on the bus, but who knows what the consequences were! On the bright side, during our time outside waiting for this process to complete, we met two great Aussies named Jess and Dave!
Upon arrival, we walked to our Airbnb place to check in. Many elevators in Buenos Aires are of the old style wherein the user must close an outer and inner door manually for the elevator to function. They're fun and old-timey, but they're also tiny. Sandra and I barely managed to squeeze in with our bags still on our backs. We couldn't move on the way up to our floor and could barely push the buttons!
For dinner, we met up with our newfound Aussie friends and some other friends of theirs at a restaurant called Siga La Vaca in the Puerto Madero area. It's just a nice 3km walkway along the waterfront with a whole ton of restaurants. The dinner was a fixed price buffet that included a whole bunch of Argentinian meats straight off the grill and 1L of beer or wine. So everybody got their own bottle of wine! Well, technically I stuck with the mini-pitcher of beer, but I made Sandra get the wine so I could double up. Travelling smart over here!
The dinner grew in attendance as other hostel friends continued to show up. By the time we left, we had a group of about 12 that all wandered over to a bar. Sandra had a sip of "Fernet and Soda". Fernet is a drink primarily consumed in Argentina and Italy. Sandra was not a fan. I was stupid and didn't have a sip, so now we'll have to order it again somewhere else. We've heard it's better with Coke, so maybe that'll be the approach next time.