original little hellraisers

december 29th, 2009
i have terrible travel karma — i don’t know why.  we were scheduled to leave LAX for a connection in dallas at 1pm.  by the time we get through the gate, with its increased security, we’re looking at a 1 and a half hour delay because it snowed in dallas.  they tell us at LAX that there’s no way we’re going to make our connection to buenos aires in dallas and since it was a ‘governement’ closure, we’d be responsible for finding a hotel once we got to dallas.

after debating with the customer service desk on alternate routes (and were told they had none) a guy who overheard us told us that there are plenty of flights out of miami, that he takes this leg all the time and that he doesn’t know why they’re telling us they don’t have flights.  mysterious stranger then gives us the phone number for american and we call and, did, in fact get booked on the miami to buenos aires leg.  thank you mysterious stranger.  i did go back to look for you to say thank you in person, but the internet will have to do.

best part though: they wouldn’t take our bags off the dallas flight so we were going to hit the road without luggage.  little did i realize, i’d be in the same clothes for three days solid.

day 2 – december 30th, 2009
we land, a bit haggard, in buenos aires.  we then realize that our return leg to san francisco is wrong — we spent three or so hours at the airport trying to a) get our bags from dallas and b) reroute our return flight home.  we couldn’t get out of patagonia any earlier (which was our bottleneck), so we ended up delaying our return trip until the 14th.  we paid out the nose too.

but hey — we’re here.

we got to the hotel, checked in and then ran out to palermo which is an awesome part of town — it’s like mixing the mission with hayes valley.  it’s young and hip and filled with the kind of modern design spots that kara loves so much.  we stopped for a pitcher of beer and some empenadas.

but what i love the most is the late night dining culture.  we went out for dinner at 9pm and came home at 3am.  we went to one of argentina’s famed steak houses.  mine was overcooked.

day 3 – december 31st, 2009
we don’t get to sleep in much.  so we woke up at noon.  somewhere my father just grimaced.  we had some slow going and went out and did some more shopping.  around 9pm or so, we made our way out to our new years eve dinner at lo de jesus.

again, i love the late night dining here.  we sat down at dinner, they opened a bottle of wine for us, filled our table with food and then, slowly, ever so slowly, the resteraunt filled up with people.  in argentina, it is far more common to spend new years with friends at someone’s house.  the city itself is filled with private parties, so the resteraunt ended up being mostly travelers.

another bottle of wine got opened at some point.

at midnight, the entire resteraunt went outside to watch neighborhood fireworks.  it was pretty spectacular.  fireworks were being shot off in every direction from the intersection we were in.

after making our way back into the resteraunt we sat down for desert.  from 12:30 until 3am we stayed in the resteraunt while the lively table of travelling colombians started spontanously dancing in the resteraunt.  one of the couples at the table put on an impromptu tango show for the remaining diners.  champagne kept getting poured.  women kept dancing.  the waiter joined in by dancing with the ladies (including kara) and at one point put half a bottle of champagne balanced on his head.

somehow we managed to stumble out of the restaraunt and make it back to our hotel.  not before kara tripped on the sidewalk and hurt her knee.
oh, and we got invited to bogota to stay with the colombian family that was celebrating.  go figure.

day 4 – january 1, 2010
happy new year.

we took it slow today.  the dakar rally is in argentina this year so we went down to the starting podium with roughly a million other people and just milled about watching cars, motorcycles and buggies go by.
we then walked over to recoleta where we checked out Eva Perron’s tomb in their famous cemetary.  it’s quite a place — much different than the paris cemetary as it is all mausoleams, not a single headstone.  it’s like a small city of tombs with criss-crossing blocks.  Eva’s tomb is incredibly modest, given her stature within the country.  as you might expect, it is still adorned with fresh flowers.
we had dinner at a small resteraunt that was actually open.  we were the only customers, they were the only place open.  started strong with the appetizers, but overall it wasn’t anything to write home about.

not much else to report today — most of the city is closed for new years, so we’re basically in recovery mode from last night…