Buenos Aires - First Impressions

By Lawrence Selby - Guest blogger traveling in Montevideo. It's Friday night at 11:30 pm and I'm in my hotel room in Buenos Aires. The Rough Guide says, ¨There's no excuse for staying in on any night in Buenos Aires.¨ And though I've only been here a few hours, from what I've seen of the city so far, I can understand why. But, it's been a long day, I'm tired and I've got a lot of exploring to do tomorrow. I need to wake up bright and early in the morning. Travel from Montevideo to Buenos Aires consists of a two hour bus ride from Montevideo to Colonia (in Uruguay across the river from Buenos Aires), an hour layover in the ferry terminal, then another hour long ferry ride to Buenos Aires. The bus and ferry service from Montevideo was relatively uneventful except for a screw-up at the border immigrations in Colonia that rattled me a bit. During the ride from Montevideo, I had been chatting with an elderly lady on the bus and starting to feel pretty decent about my new linguistic abilities. When I got to immigrations in Colonia, I realized that I had lost my Uruguay port arrival papers (or whatever the immigrations form is called) that I had gotten 2 weeks ago when I had entered the country. Immigrations sent me to talk to a supervisor there and he started blasting all sorts of questions at me in Spanish. This left me tongue tied and destroyed any residual good feelings that I had about my ability to communicate effectively. Eventually, the paperwork got worked out though I was stressed because: (1) I was in a hurry to settle the problems so that I could catch the ferry in time, (2) my bag was left near the counter of the immigrations booth while I was in the office talking to the supervisor (I don't like to leave my things much farther than hands reach away when traveling). They also charged me U$S 17, which may not sound like a lot of money but in Uruguayan pesos this amounts to the cost of a night out on the town. After I boarded the ferry, I realized that I had left my jacket somewhere in all of the shuffle. I was rather annoyed at first, but got over it quickly. At that point there was really no use worrying about it. During the quick shuttle ride from the Buquebus terminal to my hotel, I was pretty impressed with what I was of Buenos Aires: sleek modern high rise buildings, glimpses of grand sweeping boulevards, and European style pedestrian shopping thoroughfares teeming with people. I made it to my hotel room at around 8:30 pm and was tempted to just pack it in for the night but decided to walk around a bit and see more of the central district at night. I'm glad that I did. The city center definitely has a very European look and feel, perhaps more so than anywhere else that I've been to in the Americas (as I'm writing this I'm also thinking that the mall and surrounding areas of NW Washington D.C have a European feel as well). Before I left, my professor in Montevideo told me that Avenida 9 de Julio is approximately 300 meters wide and is supposedly the widest boulevard in the world. Whether or not that's true, Av 9 de Julio is enormous. At the point that I crossed it (at Cordoba and Av 9 de Julio), I counted 9 car lanes with a large divider in each direction, and a larger park like divider in the middle. There's also a grand obelisk monument in the middle of Av 9 de Julio at Av Corrientes that looks like a spitting image of the Washington monument in Washington D.C. At first I wondered if one of them was some sort of knockoff of the other, then realized that if anyone invented the obelisk it would have to have been the Egyptians. On one pedestrian street (Av Florida I think?) I saw a street performer dressed up like Michael Jackson doing a choreographed dance routine with a very passable impression and likeness. I have to give the guy credit for being good, but who would want to impersonate Michael Jackson? Maybe Michael Jackson doesn't have the same stigma here that he does in the States? Like all great cities there is a palpable sense of energy and electricity in the air. If I had some of my amigos with me from home, I'm sure that I'd still be out there. If my friend Andy from Virginia Beach was here, we'd probably end up in an Irish pub at 4 am. I don't know if Buenos Aires (or South America for that matter) has many Irish pubs, but I'd guess it's a pretty safe bet that we could find one. Irish pubs seem to be about as ubiquitous as McDonalds.