Argentina

For Joel's 40th birthday present my brother hooked us up with 2 buddy passes, anywhere that Delta flies. We'd be standby, but we could go first class if there was room. Our thinking was - we should fly somewhere that ishard to get to and also, somewhere that requires a long flight since we haven't ever done the 1st class thing we should do it for as long as possible. So, in Richmond we got on board and we got first class!!!! Clearly, it was exciting.Sadly, we only had first class from Richmond to Atlanta, but at least we got free beer and some goofy pictures out of it.

We landed in Buenos Aires and checked into our very adorable hotel in Palermo Viejo. The first night we went to a football match and saw Velez V Boca Jrs. You always hear about people talking about how everyone gets so worked up about soccer and that it's just crazy. I like soccer but am not from one of those countries that really plays outside of high school you just don't get it. Joel gets it more since the UK is pretty geared up for it. But those Argentines are lunatics. They have organized decorations and they have a band.

Boca Jrs (the favorite team in Argentina) was the visiting team and they had a small section of the stadium, but the did not stop singing or playing the instruments the entire time th game went on. They never stopped! They weren't clever songs either. They were something like...Go Boca, you are the best, we love Boca, yeah,yeah,yeah! (Obviously, those are my words, but it's a pretyt safe guess from the music that there weren't any complicated lyrics. The point is - not very exciting stuff). When the game ended (it was a draw 1-1) the Boca side had to be let out first and taken away in police escorted buses to stop any riots, standard practice apparently.

The next day it was off to see the sights of BA. We did a walking tour recommended in our guide book that pretty much would show us the whole city in a day. It was exhausting and spent way too long in boring areas. But we did see some great stuff. We saw the road 9 de Julio, the widest road in the world. I think it's 14 lanes. I am not a very good street crosser and you had to hoof it to get to the middle stop before the light changed and then start all over again. We went to the San Telmo street fair, there was also a little march going on and the spirit of Che Guevara still lives on in BA. as do Evita and Maradonna - both were mentioned a lot) So I was pretty insistent that we find some tango. They have tango clubs (milongas) that you can go to. I didn't want to goto a tango show - seemed a little too much. So we went to Salon Canning, a huge conference center type room with heaps of people in there. It was very interesting. First, we got there around 12:00 am and it had only just gotten started. Everyone was in little tables around the edges of the dance floor and people would just dance with whomever, there was no couples thing. Nobody seemed to dance with the same person. They would have about 3 tango songs and then a little different music for a minute or so and everyone would clear the dance floor. Then it would star again. Etiquette says that you when you make eye contact with someone, you are then paired up to dance. I didn't look at anyone. I was so scared, there is no way you can wing that dance. There were no amateurs there. It was serious business. I wanted to take some pictures, but it felt like someone might have come over and taken my camera to protect the privacy, it was almost like a secret society or something. We left around 2:00 and on our way out some 75ish guy was walking in. If you are a pervy older tango guy with a touch of insomnia - Salon Canning is the place for you.

We got on a plane and went to Mendoza, the home of the Malbec and the foothill of the Andes. We stayed in a nice little place and we ate well and drank some very good wine. We woke up to snow and headed up to some hot springs in the mountains. Was cold but beautiful. Then we left for a drive through the Andes. I didn't know very much about the Andes. I always think of those little rectangular mints in the green wrapper that you get at restaurants and hotels. They were better than those. I knew they were beautiful, but they are astounding. It was hard to stop looking around. You just wanted to drink it in. It was hard to ride in the car because you just wanted to walk around, but it was seriously cold, so we'd have to settle for the view. On our way back there were 2 condors really close to the car. Our driver, who could have been considered to be irrationally excited, said that that had never happened before and that he had never been so close to one. I don;t know much about condors, but I trust that that's a big deal. We headed back to Mendoza where we encountered a lot of people who were very serious about their wine, with good reason though - it's good stuff. We had some great food there. What's not to like about a country that specialized in wine and beef?