The Paris of South America
By: Gabriel Goldstein
Tags: Buenos Aires, Journey, Argentina, Travel, South America Travel

Wandered out into the afternoon, exploring San Telmo, old stone-brick streets, grand trees, charming buildings in variously curated states of decay. Came upon the old mercado, all specialty stands of antiques and curios, hipster heaven, and something of a food court in an iron and glass atrium. After much perusing of menus, sights and smells, I sat down at a little restaurant stand devoted to Choripan, which in fact was called La Choripanería and which I later found out is considered one of the best places for it in the city. If it isn’t self-explanatory, choripan is a chorizo sausage on a roll. But choripan is not a hot dog, or anything like it; it’s a more serious and significant item. There were pork and lamb and beef chorizos and they came alone or with accompaniments.

I ordered the variety that came with scrambled eggs, sharp cheddar cheese, and an artichoke chimichurri. I think this was a nod to America, and a sign that the foodie movement has arrived in Buenos Aires. The place was a little bit too cute, too casual/fancy/well-put together, but all that became irrelevant when my plate of food arrived, the breakfast I never had. Redemption in sandwich form.

A little further on into San Telmo I found the Plaza Dorrego, where respectable late lunch diners at the café tables, many with glasses of wine, were being entertained by an elegant couple all dressed in black, dancing tangos. This wasn’t real, it was a contrived version of Buenos Aires being sold directly on the street, but the most striking thing was how normal it was. The dancing was exquisite, and no one seemed particularly interested, though after each song most of them would still clap. I sat on a bench nearby to watch for awhile, and between songs the female tango dancer smiled at me, a miniature consolation for a lonely traveler.

When I got back to the hostel my bed was finally ready, in a nine-bed dorm room with only one other resident. This was good. I climbed in to my second-level assigned bed, pulled the curtain closed, and went into a deep deep sleep. Woke three hours later to find that five of the eight other beds were now taken, though I was the only one in the room; I’d slept through all of their arrivals and unpackings. Decided to make a cup of tea and then go out exploring, but the tea wasn’t powerful enough to overcome my grogginess, and I just couldn’t summon the motivation to brave the city street. This is what always happens to me after a night bus — a lost day. I laid in my bed and read a bit of my book about Patagonia, hung out on the balconies looking wistfully down at people with friends and somewhere to go.

In pursuit of at least making something productive out of my day, I started researching the ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay. My hope was that I had taken the last bus of my journey, but reality seemed to have little interest in my preferences. There was indeed a direct barca, three hours to Montevideo, but it was thirty five hundred pesos, the equivalent of more than eighty dollars — a very significant portion of my net worth. There was another ferry going directly across the rio, which is here really much more of a bay than a river, to the city of Colonia, followed by a three hour bus to Montevideo. This cost a mere fifty dollars. The third option was to take a bus that went north all the way around the mouth of the river, but that was eight hours on a bus and sixty five dollars. Ouch.

Looked further and found another ferry operator with an online promotion of forty dollars for the ferry-bus combo, and figured this was the best I was going to do. The only problem was that the “5” and “6” keys on my travel laptop don’t work. It’s been this way for awhile, and I usually work around this when necessary by copy-and-paste, but the credit card screen did not allow this. Another payment option was available, something called Pago Fácil, a network where you can go into a store and pay bills or buy tickets. Looking it up on a map, I saw that there were several options within a few blocks of me. I completed the transaction, and the site gave me a code to present at the point of payment.

On my way out I saw a sign at reception that they were having their weekly asado on the terreza that very night, two hundred fifty pesos for food, four hundred with beers, and I signed up for the former. My plan hit the next round of hurdles when all three of the nearby Pago Fácil locations were closed for the night and didn’t open again until Monday. Went back to my computer to try again, and saw that all PF offices are closed on weekends, but that various convenience stores also accepted payment. One, the place where I had bought my breakfast foods, was right around the corner.

After waiting in line behind a lot of people buying alcohol, the guy at the register told me that this was a Pago Fácil Expreso location, where they only accept payment by bar code, which I did not have, even in the confirmation email on my phone. No es muy fácil, I said, but my humor was lost on the guy and he just shrugged. Back at the hostel I talked about these difficulties with the folks at the reception, and they suggested I just go to the ferry terminal in the morning and pay in person.

According to the posted hours, the asado was now in progress, so I made a pot of yerba mate — I’m still drinking it like a gringo and have come to the realization that here in the land of mate I absolutely must have a calabasa and bombilla — and took the jumpy elevator up to the sixth floor terraza to find a bunch of guys hanging out. A chorizo party. There were the two Chileno party dudes from Santiago drinking Pisco and Sprite, Guy from London and Scotty from Fort Worth drinking beer, Raoul from São Paolo and a French group drinking wine, and a contingent of Argentinos drinking Fernet and Coke and keeping to themselves. They looked like they were in their early thirties and turned out to be the owners of the hostel.

On the parrilla built into the wall was a very impressive spread slow cooking over coals. Big thick slabs of beef, various vegetables and sausages. There was exactly one woman, one of the French, out of about fifteen persons. Got to talking with the guys who were not in a group, and the first thing is always to figure out what everyone is doing, where they are coming from and going to.

The Chilean guys were here for a long weekend, hoping to get lucky with hot Argentine women. Guy was traveling South America for three months. In his first month, he had made it down the coast from Rio to here. Raoul was here on business, and Scotty to attend a conference on universal basic income, something he’d heard about on a Joe Rogan podcast. Turned out the Chileans hadn’t paid to be part of the asado, and when it got to be serving time, they were politely kicked out.

The steaks were just excellent, a round of applause for the asaderos, as is customary. Not quite as good as in Cafayate, but that was my very first asado, and they weren’t charging anyone to participate, so that was a different beast, so to speak. There were various chorizos, grilled sweet potatoes, onions, red pepper, zucchini and carrot. Everything but the last was delicious. Maybe there are some things that aren’t meant to be grilled. Mostly talked with Guy and Scotty, first about filmmaking, as Guy wants to be a screenwriter, which I know a little bit about. My advice was to write. Perhaps it is overly simplistic, but in the end if you’re not writing, you’re not gonna be much of a writer.

After a while the conversation turned to politics. The big Brexit deadline was about a week away and the UK was in chaos; the Mueller report had just been delivered to the US Justice Department, but hadn’t been released. Raoul chimed in with the human rights abuses of Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president. Police rounding up protesters and opposition leaders, closing down media organizations critical of the government. None of us could figure out how or why things had gone so wrong in our countries, nor could we really see viable solutions going forward. When enough of the population is in favor of detrimental xenophobic policies and authoritarian leaders, and they become cultishly committed to them, simply getting rid of the leaders won’t be enough.

Scotty, the American, was all about going after the big banks and the world financial system, who he sees as the real enemy. Guy, the Brit, was just moving to Canada. Likewise, I am moving to Uruguay. As a positive, Raoul brought up the Green New Deal that has recently been released by progressives in my country. I sighed and said that legislation like that won’t pass for at least ten years, if ever. Guy asked if I thought there would be an impeachment; I said maybe but there was zero chance of getting the sixty seven votes to convict. We were all pessimistic about the future — Brexit was going to be a disaster; Trump was going to get re-elected. On some level US politics is very simple: Incumbents with an economy not in recession get re-elected. It was all very depressing.

When all the food was eaten, three rounds of asado, an absolute feast, we went downstairs to the main balcony to hang out with the other hostel folk. The sad beautiful blonde Swiss girl who didn’t see the point in traveling anymore. “I am in the most beautiful places, and I don’t feel anything,” she said; the Japanese guys speaking really broken English, the cute nerdy American-Chilean couple who’d met on New Year’s Eve in Mendoza, the Chilean guys who were drunk by now and talking about fucking. They were supposedly going to a club and trying to convince everyone else to come along. They made me a strong Pisco cocktail verging on toxic which I sipped very slowly for awhile and then called it a night.

All I really wanted was a good night’s sleep. It was not to be. Nine-bed dorms are not designed for good sleep. Every bed was taken by now, and when I laid down, only one other person was in. It was a parade of drunken travelers coming in, slamming the door, unzipping bags, talking, clambering up the metal ladders. Then, right on schedule, people were leaving first thing in the morning. Some of them were considerate, most weren’t. My breaking point came at seven am, with some young punk Japanese kid having an extended cellphone conversation from his bed.

Several times I said “PLEASE”, but he didn’t get the message until I climbed up to his third-level bunk, flung open the curtain, and said “Out. Now. We are sleeping!” He seemed offended and stomped down the ladder and out the door, which he proceeded to leave open and continue his conversation from right out in the hall, much louder than before. Someone else got up and slammed the door. After a while I fell back asleep, still angry.

✦✦

Today was even more sleep deprived than yesterday, stumbling through in a worn and emotional haze. I feel so over traveling, want to be in Uruguay already, to find my own room to live in, be done with hostels. But I know this more settled existence might be weeks away, if it comes at all. I have to find a job and a room in an expensive city. After a somewhat redemptive ham and bleu cheese omelette, the breakfast I’d meant to make the day before, I walked over to the Puerto Madero district and found the Colonia Express ferry terminal.

At the counter I managed to explain my situation to the lady. I had a reservation but needed to pay for it, and couldn’t do so at a Pago Facil Express. She was able, after some digging, to locate my reserved ticket, but then proceeded to accidentally delete it. She said she was very sorry, that she could sell me another seat, but for $12 more. The online promotion wasn’t available in person. I was so frustrated: that I’d walked forty minutes just to have to pay an extra twenty five percent for my ticket. ¿No hay nada que puedes hacer para mi? I asked, with ninety percent of my brain despondent and ten percent wondering if I should have used the subjunctive for my question, or por instead of para.

All she could do was say she was sorry, less and less convincingly. I walked out of there without buying a ticket and stood outside in the shade to assess my situation. I knew that I was not in a good head space, and was taking this stuff way too emotionally. But then before I could come to any rational conclusions, my not-good head space came up with a plan. I’d passed by the Casino Buenos Aires on my way in, and I would go play some blackjack, win enough to pay for the difference of the direct boat to Montevideo. I envisioned walking back into the terminal triumphant. The day would turn around and I wouldn’t have to take any more buses after all.

It was not a good plan. I knew it wasn’t. Gambling in a bad mood, when you are set on winning and can’t afford to lose, is never advisable. I knew I was frustrated and feeling empty and this scheme was a way to fill up that hole. But the hole and the bad mood were talking much louder than any voice of reason. At the casino, I sat down with a bunch of Argentino men, young and old, drinking and smoking lots of cigarettes at noon. One older guy couldn’t really see, and the other players had to tell him what the dealer’s cards were, and he was also a little bit deaf, which they responded to by yelling.

Things started well. I went up early, as it so often goes. After a few hands I had doubled my twenty dollar buy-in, and had an additional five hundred pesos, about twelve dollars, on the table. I needed to win one more hand to reach my goal of being up forty dollars, the difference between the boat + bus ticket and the direct boat. The dealer gave me a queen and a jack, twenty, and his card showing was a four. His next was a three, and things were looking really good for me. Turn over a face card and I’d win. But the next card was a four, and then he turned over a king. Veintiuno, he said, and looked sad as he took everyone’s chips away. From there it was all downhill. I had a clear feeling I should walk out right then, but I didn’t. Slowly went down to my original buy-in, which by my own rules is when I’m supposed to leave, but I didn’t.

Instead I went to play craps, which was stupid. You need a lot of money to play craps. The dice didn’t even make their way around the table to me before I was down to one hundred pesos, below the minimum bet, so I tried my nonexistent luck at roulette. Bet on red when it was black and black when it came up red, and that was that.

The best thing I could tell myself as I walked out and across the gigantic parking lot in the bright sun, as waves of people made their pilgrimage towards the sacred house of moneywinning, was that the money I had lost was almost exactly what I had won in Salta, so I was even for Argentina.

Walked by some soccer fields, the miniature kind with artificial turf and chain link fence, and stood there to watch for awhile. These guys were really, really good. I’d seen so many pick-up fútbol games like this in the past year and a half, and this was by far the highest quality I had encountered. Crisp passes, accurate shots on goal, diving keepers, actual strategy. This seemed like a much better, more wholesome way to spend an afternoon than the way I had, in that dirty seedy casino.

Spent the afternoon reading in bed and feeling down, and in the evening borrowed a laptop — with all the keys working — from the American guy who was passing the day in bed with his Chilean girlfriend. It took me five minutes to buy my ticket to Uruguay for the day after tomorrow, the boat + bus option, at the promotional online price which had gone up three dollars. I finally left the hostel again about five, walked all the way up Calle Perú to the Plaza de Mayo, the center of the country.

The first thing I came to was the cold gray neo-classical cathedral, which reminded me of a federal building in Washington D.C. The restos of General San Martín, the are buried here, and an eternal flame for liberty burns outside. If these things ever had any meaning for me, they have lost it. I’m sure this flame was maintained during the dictatorship that was run out of this very square, and I’m sure it was venerated by the Generals. Although I suppose to be fair it was burning throughout — maybe San Martín was a hero to the resistance, too — and still burning when the country regained some semblance of democracy and rights.There was a colossally big Argentinian flag, light blue and white with a sun in the middle, and a rust-pink Presidential palace, la Casa Rosada, whose color rumor has it originally came from paint mixed with cow’s blood, where Eva Peron addressed the people from the balcony.