ARGENTINA!

It was a long day getting to Argentina. Not much to take pictures of either, so we each took a photo of what we’d like to see:

We’re fulfilling Jonathan’s dream first, heading for Mendoza via Chilecito, also wine territory.

Patagonia comes later in the month. Our flights were uneventful, which is a good thing. I do hate paying $6 for a quart of water, but that’s international travel.

1/27Details: Left Hotel Senorial at 9:30 am for Jorge Chavez airport. Our flight departed for Santiago at 12:30 pm, ate a reasonable sandwich and mini glass of wine for the meal and arrived. 4:30 pm. Local time was 6:30 pm. We ate at a Ruby Tuesday in the airport after I found there was no meal on the flight to Buenos Aires. Flight for BA left at 8:30 pm and arrived at the Aeroparque at 10:30 pm. Migracion and customs went rapidly and we arrived at the Alamo rental desk at 10:58 pm to find no one there. We took a taxi to our hotel, Conventillo de lujo, near the airport (100 pesos). It was a good thing we had the address because the hotel was unmarked and looks like an apartment building. It’s a hotel, rental apartment place, and tango tour center, managed by a Colombian woman (didn’t get her name) and Angel.
They have a covered dining area and kitchen on the first floor and covered rooftop terraces with seating and barbeques on the 4th and 5th floor. The elevator only goes up to the third floor, however. The entire place is decorated with tango theme posters and objects, and each room is named, all very funky looking, but clean and comfortable. We stayed in what may be the smallest, the Milongita, but the A/C worked, the shower was hot and we slept well.
1/28 Details: Ran out of hot water after the first shower, glad I took one last night. We met Ray, who owns the hotel with his wife who is Argentine. He went out for bread, then chatted. Ray and his wife lived in Detroit, where he worked at Ford and they gave tango lessons and brought tango groups to Buenos Aires. They couldn’t find a place that had all they needed for their gtooups so they built one. They have a small dance floor with a big mirror, good for lessons and demonstrations. We ate fresh bread with jam, coffee, banana and were offered oatmeal and eggs, which we declined.
Angel went out to find us a taxi in the downpour because the radio taxis were running 40 minutes wait at least and we were already late for the distnce we plan to cover. Left the Conventillo about 9:40 am got to the airport in about 20 min and had no trouble at the rental desk. While JH filled out the paperwork, I got money from an ATM (limit of 700 pesos per transaction) and bought a roadmap. We set off in the downpour and got out of town from the google earth map with directions that JH downloaded. The highway to Rosario and then Cordoba starts out as 6 lanes, goes down to four, then two lanes each way. It’s divided by a big green central area and we can easily go 100-130 km/hr—a lot better than Peru. Here speed bumps are called “lomo de burro”, burro’s back, compared to “rompe muelle” molar breaker, in Peru.
We left the airport around 10:45 am and were in our hotel, Le Parc Hotel and Suites, in Villa Maria by 3 pm. It stopped raining around 1:30pm. That is pretty fast for 550 km; fast compared to Peru, anyway.